ARCHAEOLOGICAL VOCABULARY

The SASA Archaeological Terms and Translations project serves as an open-access resource for students of archaeology to have a quick-access list of terms and phrases that are common in archaeology and scholarly publications.

 

The core of these lists was formed from an anonymous list of excavation terms shared with participants in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens' excavations at ancient Corinth in Spring 2018 (and possibly other years). Users will find the following categories: surface/soil types, archaeological excavation features, materials/finds, drawing/measuring vocabulary, adjectives, colors, excavation tools, and key verbs. We have expanded this list substantially to include numismatic terms, as well as plant and animal species.

We envision these resources assisting both participants on archaeological excavations in the field and students who might be engaging with scholarly literature in archaeology. Where necessary, we have also included definitions of jargon and otherwise obscure terms. We recognize the varied and complex nature of languages, and we strive for the most accurate definitions and translations possible.

 

Version 1.0 here exists as downloadable .pdf documents of German, French, Italian, Modern Greek, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, and Hindi. Lists in Dutch and Polish are in progress. Future versions of this project will incorporate interactive translation tools.

 

The SASA Access Team would like to thank all of our SASA volunteers who contributed to producing these lists (Habiba Hussein, Maximiliano Angeletti-Cots, Agniezska Arcisz, and Mirta Schievano, Shruti Sharma, Paula Martinez Bernal), as well as our volunteer peer-reviewers Bettina ter Haar (German), Jennifer Zimni (German), Charlotte Dietrich (German), Emily Peacock (French), Katerina Magaraki (Modern Greek), Elisavet Karafyllidi (Modern Greek), Ismyni Papagiannopoulou (Modern Greek), Silvia Umbriano (Italian), Shruti Sharma (Hindi), Yazan Hatamleh (Arabic), Habiba Hussein El-Tayeb (Arabic), Duke Akiba (Japanese), Alejandro Mizzoni (Spanish), Maximiliano Angeletti-Cots (Spanish), Gidgette Natasha Ulloa Torres (Spanish), Katia Margariti (Modern Greek).

 

We welcome feedback from the public on how to improve this resource, and we will periodically update these files. Please e-mail Access Team leader, Dr. John Haberstroh (jhaberstroh@saveancientstudies.org) for any comments or questions, or if you would like to contribute to this project.