The broken-circuit complex is fundamental to the shellability and homology of matroids, geometric lattices, and linear hyperplane arrangements. This paper introduces and studies the β-system of a matroid, βnbc(M), whose cardinality is Crapo's β-invariant. In studying the shellability and homology of base-pointed matroids, geometric semilattices, and afflne hyperplane arrangements, it is found that the β-system acts as the afflne counterpart to the broken-circuit complex. In particular, it is shown that the β-system indexes the homology facets for the lexicographic shelling of the reduced broken-circuit complex \(\overline {BC} (M)\), and the basic cycles are explicitly constructed. Similarly, an EL-shelling for the geometric semilattice associated with M is produced,_and it is shown that the β-system labels its decreasing chains.Basic cycles can be carried over from\(\overline {BC} (M)\) The intersection poset of any (real or complex) afflnehyperplane arrangement Α is a geometric semilattice. Thus the construction yields a set of basic cycles, indexed by βnbc(M), for the union ⋃Α of such an arrangement.