Arch UD 10A Midterm Key Terms

Paleolithic Era: period marked by predominance of stone tools; ~2.6 mya-10000 BCE

Hunter-Gatherer: A lifestyle marked by the reliance of hunting, fishing, and foraging for subsidence.

Tensile Structure: A construction of elements carrying only tension and no compression or bending

Stone Age: Period of prehistory lasting ~3.4 mya in which humans used stone tools. Ended ~3000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.

Neolithic Era: Final division of the stone age, saw the independent developments of farming, domestication, and change from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement

Dolmen: A type of single-chamber megalithic tomb usually consisting or ≥2 upright megaliths supporting a large flat “table”

Post and Lintel: A building system where strong horizontal elements (lintel) are held up by strong vertical elements with large spaces between them

City State: An independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory.

Cuneiform: logo-syllabic writing system, active from early Bronze age to beginning of common era, characteristic wedge-shaped impressions

Polytheism: belief/worship of more than more god

Ziggurat: An ancient Mesopotamian temple tower consisting of a lofty, stepped pyramidal structure with outside staircases and a shrine at the top

Axis Mundi: mythological concept of the “the connection between the heavens and the earth”

Necropolis: A large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments.

Mastaba: A type of ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure with inward sloping sides, constructed out of mudbricks or limestone.

Stepped pyramid: an architectural structure that uses flat platforms, or steps, receding from the ground up, to achieve a completed shape similar to a geometric pyramid

Pyramid: A structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single point or step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense

Benben: a representation of the sacred stone in the Temple of Ra at Heliopolis on which the first rays of the sun fell.

Bronze Age: approx. 3300-1200 BC, when certain weapons and tools came to be made of bronze rather than stone. Between the stone and iron ages.

Cyclopean Architecture/Masonry: A type of stonework found in Mycenaean architecture, built with massive, typically unworked, limestone boulders, roughly fitted together between adjacent stones with clay mortar.

Megaron: The great hall in early Mycenaean Greek palace complexes. a rectangular hall surrounded by four columns, with a central, open hearth venting though an opening in the roof.

Tholos/Beehive Tomb: A round, beehive shaped tomb structure famously built by the late Bronze Age Mycenaeans.

Rock-cut tomb: a burial chamber that is cut into an existing, naturally occurring rock formation.

Citadel: The fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress or fortified center.

Shedu/Iamassu: An Assyrian protective deity

Apadana: large hypostyle hall in Persian architecture, specifically in Persepolis

Hypostyle hall: a hall with a roof supported by columns

Protomes: a type of adornments that take the form of head and upper torso as animal or human

Stambha: A pillar or column employed in Indian architecture. It sometimes bears inscriptions and religious emblems.

Stupa: A mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (often Buddhist) that is used as a place of meditation and prayer

Relief sculpture: A sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material.

Polis: Greek term for “city”

Frieze: in classical architecture is the wide, central section of an entablature

Triglyph: term for the vertically channeled tablets that alternate with metopes on the Doric frieze.

Metope: A rectangular architectural element that fills the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze

Pediment: A form of gable in classical architecture, usually triangular, placed above the horizontal structure of the cornice or entablature.

Cornice: In classical architecture, it is the topmost element of the entablature

Entablature: superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above the columns. commonly divided into 3 major parts: the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice.

Peristyle: A continuous porch formed by a row of columns surrounding the perimeter of a building or courtyard

Acropolis: A citadel or fortified part of an ancient Greek city, typically built on a hill

Karyatid: A sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar, supporting an entablature on her head

Agora: central-public space in Ancient Greek society. center of athletic, artistic, business, social, spiritual, and political life in the city.

Stoa: A column lined, covered walkway or portico, commonly for public use

Roman Concrete: The concrete used in construction in ancient Rome. based on a hydraulic-setting cement added to an aggregate.

Barrel vault: architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves) along a given distance.

Groin vault: A vault produced by the intersection at right angles of two barrel vaults.

Forum: a public square in a Roman city, reserved primarily for the vending of goods

Aqueduct: A part of Roman infrastructure designed to carry water from outside sources into cities and towns.

Triumphal Arch: free-standing monumental structure in the shape of an archway with one or more arched passageways