| domestication | The taming of wild plants and animals by humans.
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| cultivation | The human manipulation or fostering of a plant species (often wild) to enhance or ensure production.
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| llama | A woolly South American ruminant camelid, used as a beast of burden.
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| alpaca | A domesticated South American herbivore with long, soft wool.
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| camelid | A ruminant mammal—such as camel, llama, and extinct related forms—having long legs and two toes.
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| oasis hypothesis | The theory that domestication began as a symbiotic relationship between humans, plants, and animals at oases during the desiccation of Southwest Asia at the end of the Pleistocene.
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| natural habitat hypothesis | The theory that the earliest domesticates appeared in the area that their wild ancestors inhabited.
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| population pressure hypothesis | Lewis Binford’s theory that population increase in Southwest Asia upset the balance between people and food, forcing people to turn to agriculture as a way to produce more food.
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| edge hypothesis | The theory that the need for more food was initially felt at the margins of the natural habitat of the ancestors of domesticated plants and animals; a revised version of the population pressure hypothesis.
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| social hypothesis | The theory that domestication allowed certain individuals to accumulate food surplus and to transform those foods into more valued items, such as rare stones or metals, and even social alliances.
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| sedentism | Living in permanent, year-round contexts, such as villages.
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| Levant | A mountainous region paralleling the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, including parts of the countries of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.
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| mortar | A bowl-shaped grinding tool, used with a wood or stone pestle for grinding various materials.
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| quern | A stone grinding surface for preparing grains and other plant foods and for grinding other materials.
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| gazelle | One of several species of small to medium swift and graceful antelopes native to Asia and Africa.
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| net-sinker | A small weight attached to fishing nets.
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| sickle | A tool for cutting the stalks of cereals, especially wheat. Prehistoric sickles were usually stone blades set in a wood or antler handle.
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| Fertile Crescent | An upland zone in Southwest Asia that runs from the Levant to the Zagros Mountains.
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| tell | A mound composed of mud bricks and refuse, accumulated as a result of human activity.
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| flotation | A technique for the recovery of plant remains from archaeological sites. Sediments or pit contents are poured into water or heavy liquid; the lighter, carbonized plant remains float to the top for recovery, while the heavier sediments and other materials fall to the bottom.
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| paleoethnobotany | The study of plant remains from archaeological sites.
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| rachis | The stem that holds seeds to the stalk in wheat and other plants.
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| glume | The tough seed cover of many cereal kernels.
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| shattering | A natural mechanism of seed dispersal.
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| archaeozoology | The study of animal remains from archaeological sites.
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| obsidian | Translucent, gray to black or green, glasslike rock from molten sand.
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| anthropomorphic | Having human form or attributes.
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| lapis lazuli | A semiprecious stone of deep blue color.
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| stone boiling | The process of heating stones in a fire and then adding them to containers to boil water or cook other foods.
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| jasper | A high-quality flint, often highly colored.
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| bow-drill | A device for perforating beads or other small objects, in which a bow is used to rotate the shaft of the bit.
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| potsherd | A fragment of a clay vessel or object.
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| temporal marker | A morphological type, such as a design motif on pottery or a particular type of stone tool, that has been shown to have a discrete and definable temporal range.
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| wheel-thrown pottery | Pottery that is made using the potter’s wheel.
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| hemp | A tall annual plant whose tough fibers are used to make coarse fabrics and ropes.
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| spindle whorl | A cam or balance wheel on a shaft or spindle for spinning yarn or thread from wool, cotton, or other material; usually made of clay.
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| kiln | A furnace or oven for baking or drying objects, especially for firing pottery.
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| geomorphic | Having the form or attributes of surface features of the earth or other celestial bodies.
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| zoomorphic | Having animal form or attributes.
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| jujube | A small, edible fruit from an Asian tree of the buckthorn family. The fruit has one seed in the center, somewhat like a cherry.
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| temper | A nonplastic material (such as sand, shell, or fiber) that is added to clay to improve its workability and to reduce breakage during drying and firing.
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| bier | A stand on which a coffin or a corpse is placed.
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| metallurgy | The art of separating metals from their ores.
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| reducing atmosphere | The oxygen-deficient atmosphere that is achieved in kilns for baking pottery or smelting ores.
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| annealing | The process of heating and gradually cooling metal (or other materials) to reduce brittleness and enhance toughness.
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| alloying | A technique of combining or mixing two or more metals to make an entirely new metal.
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| optical emission spectroscopy | A technique used in the analysis of the elemental composition of artifacts. Material is heated to a high temperature, causing its electrons to release light of a particular wavelength, depending on the elements.
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| photomicrograph | A photograph of a microscopic object, taken through a microscope.
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| microband | A small family group of hunter-gatherers.
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| maguey | Any of several species of arid-environment plants with fleshy leaves that conserve moisture.
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| mesquite | A tree or shrub of the southwestern United States and Mexico whose beanlike pods are rich in sugar.
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| inflorescence | The flowering part of a plant.
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| teosinte | (Aztec teocentli) A tall annual grass, native to Mexico and Central America, that is the closest relative of maize.
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| Mesoamerica | The region consisting of central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and the western parts of Honduras and Nicaragua that was the focus of complex, hierarchical states at the time of Spanish contact.
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| seasonality | The changing availability of resources according to the different seasons of the year.
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| scheduling | The process of arranging the extraction of resources according to their availability and the demands of competing subsistence activities.
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| setaria | A wild grass with edible seeds.
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| montaña | (Spanish) Mountain, specifically referring to the wet, tropical slopes of the Amazonian Andes.
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| tuber | A fleshy, usually oblong or rounded outgrowth (such as the potato) of a subterranean stem or root of a plant.
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| rhizome | An edible, rootlike subterranean plant stem.
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| puna | (Spanish) High grassland plateaus in the Peruvian Andes.
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| lactational amenorrhea | The suppression of ovulation and menstruation during breast-feeding.
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