archaeo-, archeo-, archae-, arche-, archa-, archi-, -arch

1. Living in the earliest geological era.
2. The time from 3,800 million years to 2,500 million years ago; earth's crust formed; unicellular organisms were the earliest forms of life.
3. Formed in the earlier of two divisions of the Precambrian era.
4. Noting or pertaining to the earlier half of the Precambrian Era, from about 5 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, during which the earliest datable rocks were formed and from which the oldest known fossil forms, blue-green algae and bacteria, have been recovered.

The study of animal remains from archaeological sites.

1. Marked by the characteristics of an earlier period; antiquated: an archaic manner; an archaic notion.
2. In a linguistic form, commonly used in an earlier time but rare in present-day usage except to suggest the older time, as in religious rituals or historical novels. Examples: "thou, wast, methinks", and "forsooth".
3. Forming the earliest stage; prior to full development: the archaic period of psychoanalytic research.
4. A reference to or designating the style of the fine arts; especially, painting and sculpture, developed in Greece from the middle 7th to the early 5th century B.C., chiefly characterized by an increased emphasis on the human figure in action, naturalistic proportions and anatomical structure, simplicity of volumes, forms, or design, and the evolution of a definitive style for the narrative treatment of subject matter.
5. Ancient; old; in Jungian psychology, denoting the ancestral past of mental processes.
6. A term used to describe an early stage in the development of civilization.

In New World chronology, the period just before the shift from hunting, gathering, and fishing to agricultural cultivation, pottery development, and village settlement.

Initially, the term was used to designate a non-ceramic-using, nonagricultural, and nonsedentary way of life. Archaeologists now realize, however, that ceramics, agriculture, and sedentism are all found, in specific settings, within contexts that are clearly archaic but that these activities are subsidiary to the collection of wild foods. In Old World chronology, the term is applied to certain early periods in the history of some civilizations.

In Greece, it describes the rise of civilization from about 750 B.C. to the Persian invasion in 480 B.C. In Egypt, it covers the first two dynasties, circa 3200-2800 B.C. In classical archaeology, the term is often used to refer to the period of the 8th-6th centuries B.C.

The term was coined for certain cultures of the eastern North America woodlands dating from around 8000-1000 B.C., but usage has been extended to various unrelated cultures which show a similar level of development, but at widely different times.

For example, it describes a group of cultures in the Eastern U.S. and Canada which developed from the original migration of man from Asia during the Pleistocene, between 40,000-20,000 B.C., whose economy was based on hunting and fishing, shell and plant gathering.

Between 8000-1000 B.C., a series of technical achievements characterized the tradition, which can be broken into periods: Early archaic 8000-5000 B.C., mixture of big-game hunting tradition with early archaic cultures; also marked by post-glacial climatic change in association with the disappearance of Late Pleistocene big game animals; then Middle archaic tradition cultures from 5000-2000 B.C., and a Late Archaic period 2000-1000 B.C. In the New World, the lifestyle lacked horticulture, domesticated animals, and permanent villages.

Referring to something belonging to the distant past; from an ancient period in history; such as, an archaic system of government or an archaic law, rule, or language.

Relating to or being an early form or subspecies of Homo sapiens, anatomically distinct from modern humans.

Neanderthals in Europe and Solo man in Asia are usually classed as archaic humans. According to one model of human evolution, widely separated but interbreeding archaic groups in different parts of the world evolved independently into today's physiologically distinct geographic populations.

A series of jugs and bowls of the early 13th to late 16th centuries in Tuscan and Italian towns.

They were decorated with geometric motifs, leaves, and other forms outlined in brown and set into green or brown backgrounds.

They were sold as far away as Spain, North Africa, and northern Europe. There seems to be a connection to earlier Byzantine and Persian products.

A word or expression that is not generally used any more.

Imitatively archaic; affectedly and deliberately antique.

1. The original development or origin of life.
2. The origination of living matter from non-living matter.
3. Spontaneous generation; abiogenesis.

A reference to archetype.

The name given to a hypothetical scheme of wing venation proposed for the very first winged insect.

It is based on a combination of speculation and fossil data. Since all winged insects are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor, the archediction represents the "template" that has been modified (and streamlined) by natural selection for 200 million years.

According to current dogma, the archedictyon contained 6-8 longitudinal veins.

1. Spontaneous generation.
2. The hypothesis that life can come into being from nonliving matter.

A multicellular, often flask-shaped, egg-producing organ occurring in mosses, ferns, and most gymnosperms.

Spontaneous generation; abiogenesis.

Occurring at the beginning of sleep.