Exposing in situ-remains of Dynasty 18

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Julia Budka

Week 4 of fieldwork in SAV1 West and SAV1 East was very busy and fruitful – in both areas we have by now exposed in situ-remains dating from Dynasty 18, the main occupation phase of the New Kingdom site.

At SAV1 West, work in Square 1S, partly excavated in 2015, was continued – and feature 123 along the southern baulk of the trench is getting more and more exciting. We have not yet cleaned its foundation level, but have reached clear occupational deposits of high interest.

Feature 123 in SAV1 West, Sq. 1S, was exposed further.

Work was also continued in the “wall street” – exposing more layers which will hopefully be of excitement for our micromorphologists arriving next week!

At SAV1 East, a very nice area for bread making (on a flat baking plate) was discovered – the baking plate was cut and partly hacked away like all the surrounding structures and layers. BUT: below the plate there are still 20 cm of occupational deposit – very exciting and again a task for Sean Taylor and Sayantani Neogi!

With two walls in Square 4B going into the northern baulk, we were forced to extent our excavation area: Square 4B1 covers 3 extra meters to the north and to the west.

The new extension at SAV1 East, Sq. 4B1.

And here we really found the extension of the walls. Most importantly, my assumption that we had remains of a collapsed schist pavement in the northwestern corner of Square 4B was proven to be correct: yesterday just before noon, I cleaned the scarce but definitely solid and in situ remains of a very nice schist pavement! It was not easy to find, as it is was literally covered by mud brick debris and is cut off from all four sides!

View on scarce remains of what used to be a schist pavement – cut off on all edges in medieval time.

All in all, with this last puzzle piece, it is now completely clear that our large rooms/magazine areas equipped with the sophisticated schist pavement extended to the west – of much importance for understanding the town plan of Sai.

In terms of pottery, I already shared some excitement about very nice findings from SAV1 West. At SAV1 East, it is less spectacular, but very interesting: still, mostly bread and beer! And all pottery associated so far with the walls and pavements are clearly mid-18th Dynasty in date, most probably Thutmose III. Our 2016 results therefore nicely back up the work of years 2013-2015.

Since Ken Griffin is back to teaching at Swansea, Meg Gundlach is carrying on with the registration of finds on her own at the moment – assisted by Huda Magzoub for some Munselling, and more assistants will arrive in mid-February. There were a number of really exciting finds this week – animal figurines, female figurines and most importantly the first seal impression of this season from SAV1 East!

After 4 four weeks of excavation, I am very happy with the progress so far and looking much forward to the results of the upcoming week…

A modified Egyptian cooking pot from SAV1 West?

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Julia Budka

Work is progressing well in SAV1 West – occupational deposits and new sections of walls with several phases of use datable to the mid and late 18^th Dynasty have been exposed in the last days. The ceramics are very exciting – a large percentage of Egyptian marl clay wares, considerable amounts of painted wares and a very good state of preservation.

One context was especially interesting and I would like to share first impressions, hoping for some feedback at this early stage of processing. The stratigraphic unit in question comprises the last level of debris covering a small mudbrick structure in the south-eastern corner of Square 1SE. Because of its preservation, it is very likely that the pottery represents the original inventory that was shifted/mixed when the late antique pitting in the area occurred, cutting down to the original layers.

154 diagnostic sherds attest to a late 18^th Dynasty date. 12 % of these diagnostics were Nubian cooking pots with clear traces of use (their surface is smoked and soothed) – mostly with basketry impression and one single piece with incised decoration. Except that this is quite a high amount of Nubian pottery, all is consistent with the findings in SAV1 West so far. Most of the Nubian cooking ware in the New Kingdom town of Sai features basketry patterns, whereas coarse incised patterns with diagonally cut lines below the rim (very common at Elephantine and mostly associated with the Pangrave culture) is less common.

Snapshot from the field: the pencil marks the unique sherd in question; below are some of the Nubian sherds.

What makes the context in Square 1SE special is one rim sherd: An Egyptian Nile clay cooking pot occurs side by side with the Nubian ones – basically, something which is not unusual, but already well attested at SAV1 West. Imported, authentic Egyptian wheel-made cooking pots and locally made examples thrown on the wheel are used side by side with Nubian-style products in New Kingdom Sai and were found in all sectors in the Pharaonic town (SAV1 North, SAV1 East and SAV1 West).

But: this authentic Egyptian cooking pot (produced in and imported from Egypt) is not smoked (so maybe was not yet used?), but displays a very unusual feature. Below its rim, there are several diagonally arranged black lines – definitely painted/drawn. With these strokes, the Egyptian cooking pot resembles Nubian style variants with incised decoration. So-called hybrid styles – Nubian surface treatments on otherwise Egyptian pottery vessels – are well attested at Sai, other Nubian sites and also Elephantine. But is this also the case with the unique piece in question? Did the “artist” of these black lines wanted to show that something is missing on this pot? Was it a spontaneous idea of someone familiar with the incised cooking ware? Or are these lines really to be interpreted as decoration, to fuse Nubian cooking tradition with the Egyptian style? Since the authentic Egyptian cooking pots are made and fired in Egypt, it was of course not possible to apply pre-firing incised decoration on them like on the Nubian ones and the hybrid forms at Elephantine. On the other hand, we have a number of locally produced Egyptian style cooking pots on Sai – and none of them shows incised decoration…

Much food for thought and a lot of open questions – but at the end of a long working day with much routine work and processing, findings like these are inspiring and give fresh ideas and much energy!

Special mid-season thanks

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Julia Budka

Currently in our 4th week of fieldwork, we unfortunately had to say already good-bye to two of our team members who travelled back to Khartoum today: Kenneth Griffin, a Lecturer in Egyptology at Swansea University, was here as an external expert. As last year, Ken was, together with Meg Gundlach, registering all of our objects – quite a task with the numerous finds from SAV1 East and SAV1 West (apologies that there were yet no new seals Ken loves so much – hopefully we’ll find some in the next weeks :-)).
Being very grateful to Ken who did a great job as always, I would also like to express my thanks to Swansea University and all the colleagues who enabled him to join AcrossBorders again – much appreciated!

The second person who left us today after a productive stay was a newcomer to the project: Roa Abdelazim joined us as a trainee from NCAM – coming for the first time in her life to Sai Island!

Our two happy NCAM pottery ladies: our inspector Huda helping Roa with all the pottery fragments.

Being interested and specialised in conservation, Roa spent 2 of her 3 weeks on Sai working on the pottery from tomb 26. With amazing results! The sherds from the lowest shaft filling and the uppermost layers of the chamber nicely match and she was able to reconstruct 8 almost complete vessels, among it a very nice Marl clay amphora. I am confident that we will find more matching pieces during the next weeks.

One of the vessels Roa was able to reconstruct out of small fragments!

I am very thankful to Roa and I hope she enjoyed her stay – despite the nimiti and our very limited skills in Arabic conversation – as much as we were happy to have her here!

Hope to welcome both, Ken and Roa, soon again – next season insha’allah!

A scarab, lots of schist, pottery and stone tools: good progress in the New Kingdom town of Sai

Posted on January 22, 2016 by Julia Budka

Week 3 of fieldwork in sectors SAV1 East and West of the New Kingdom town of Sai has just ended. There were several highlights this week – first of all a scarab from the floor of a small, not yet completely excavated room in SAV1 East. Of course this find came up just after our registrars Meg and Ken finished a blog post about their activities! We’ll share this highlight in another post very soon.

Very good news from SAV1 East: more remains of mud brick walls in situ were unearthed – in combination with lots of schist plates and plaster: evidence of destroyed pavements.

Pottery and stone tools were especially numerous from SAV1 West – more blue painted sherds were found, a number of fire dogs including a very unusual one without a “nose”, and lots of beer jars, dishes/plates and pot stands. The stone tools included very nice palettes, grinders and small dishes with yellow and red pigments. They seem to fall into the category of Egyptian type cosmetic instruments well attested at New Kingdom sites. Together with some painter’s pots this all fits very well to last year’s results and attests to some sort of production and use of pigments during the 18^th Dynasty.

At SAV1 East, the upcoming week will focus on the clearance of the already visible 18^th Dynasty buildings. At SAV1 West, strong layers of debris still need to be removed and are hopefully hiding some in situ-remains of the New Kingdom.

The new square 1SE enlarges our excavation area substantially.

The new square 1SE enlarges our excavation area at SAV1 West substantially.

A Day in the Life of AcrossBorders Registrars

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Kenneth Griffin Meg Gundlach

Object registration for the AcrossBorders Project is performed by Meg Gundlach and Ken Griffin, who return to Sai Island for their second season. Meg Gundlach is a post-doctoral researcher for the AcrossBorders Project while Ken Griffin, a Lecturer in Egyptology at Swansea University, is here as an external expert. This blog post is an account of their daily activities on Sai.

Our day starts with a 6.30am alarm. The last few mornings on Sai have been rather chilly so it’s out of bed and dressed as quickly as possible! Work officially starts at 7.00am, but beforehand we have a small breakfast and a drink, then make our way to the storage magazine. The first task of the day is to register objects that have been left for us by Julia. These are usually objects found during pottery sorting from the previous afternoon, such as re-used pot sherds (lids, scrapers, tokens, gaming pieces, and sometimes figurines). One of the highlights for us this season was a beautifully painted figurine of a horse (SAV1E 2675), dating to the Christian era, of which only the head survives (fig. 1).

fig. 1

Objects are registered in a FileMaker database, which now consists of an impressive 4300 objects. The most common type of object is stone tools, which make up over half the database: pounders, hammers, grindstones, handmills, and whetstones.

Around 8.30am we relocate from the magazine to the office, in order to spend the next two hours undertaking photography. The objects that have been registered in the past 24 hours are photographed first. This season we have also been photographing objects from the 2013 and 2014 excavation season that were not previously done. Today we had two boxes of whetstones, which are perhaps the most frustrating objects to photograph because they are usually friable sandstone, thus continuously leaving grains of sand on the backdrop.

Our main breakfast takes place between 10.30–11.00am, following which we return to the magazine to continue our work. The next two hours are spent sorting photographs. Photos from today (usually around 350 images) are renamed, rotated, cropped, and straightened by Ken. Next, a set of low-resolution thumbnails are produced for each image, which can be inserted into the FileMaker database without making the file-size too large. The images are sorted into folders by Meg, who also inserts the thumbnails into the database and clickable links to high-resolution images of the objects. With our photo duties complete, we undertake any number of tasks outstanding before lunch at 3.00pm. This often includes more object registration, washing of some re-used sherds, and inventorying boxes of objects.

Our lunch break finishes at 4.00pm and it’s back to the magazine for the final two hours of work. With the excavation work completed for the day, we are greeted by new finds! Meg sorts and records the non-registered material, such as bones (both human and animal), charcoal, organic material, shell, and wood. Ken, on the other hand, starts registering of the other objects into the database. This season we had a number of nice objects to register, including a finely produced faience earring (SAV1E 2729), of which only half survives (fig. 2).

fig. 2

We have had several new fragments of New Kingdom Nun-bowls, which were studied last season by Sabine Tschorn, including one that preserves part of the pool in the centre (SAV1W 1544 fig. 3).

fig. 3

Most recently, a model boat (SAV1W 1574) was discovered in the Western part of the town (fig. 4). Crudely modelled in clay, the boat was painted white, and closely resembles the papyrus skiffs commonly depicted in Egyptian tomb paintings.

fig. 4

Over the past week we have been joined in the magazine by our Sudanese inspector, Huda Magzoub, who has volunteered to Munsell the stone tools. For this, we are extremely grateful (fig. 5)!

fig. 5

With work finished, it’s time for a shower and some rest before dinner is served at 8.00pm. Now for some sleep to recharge the batteries for the following day’s work!

New insights at the end of week 2

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Julia Budka

The second week of fieldwork in the Pharaonic town of Sai, in sectors SAV1 East and SAV1 West, went really well. Yesterday, remains of a large mudbrick wall with parts of a schist pavement left in situ were discovered at SAV1 East. Apart from this find in Square 4C, work focus on Square 4B – and was quite successful. Although the layers of mixed debris and sandy pits on top of the New Kingdom structures are again massive, a minimum of three, possible four sections of walls were found. Together with the wall of the schist-covered room, all of this is very promising – it seems as if a lot will be added at the end of this season to the town plan of Sai around the sandstone Temple A and Building A!

North-western corner of Square 4B with remains of new mudbrick walls between layers of debris.

Regarding pottery, the mixed layers hold a large percentage of early-mid 18^th Dynasty ceramics – mostly beer jars and bread moulds. Like proposed in earlier seasons, possibly an indication that the area we are currently excavating was functionally attached to the temple and its cult.

AT SAV1 West, Martin Fera and Klara Sauter made very good progress documenting substantial debris and large sandy pits cutting into the New Kingdom levels. We are still busy with Post-Pharaonic layers, but the New Kingdom material found in these mixed contexts is very well preserved and of great interest. Exactly like in the last years, there is a striking high amount of painted wares. The highlight of this week is definitely a fragment of a nice Egyptian Blue Painted marl clay vessel.

Work in the lab was of course also continued – this week, Meg Gundlach and Ken Griffin got some help from Huda Magzoub, especially in checking the Munsell codes of objects.

Thanks to our enthusiastic Sudanese trainee from NCAM, Roa Abdelaziz, also some work on ceramics from tomb 26 was conducted. Roa and I are currently puzzling with material from the uppermost debris found in the burial chamber and the lowermost shaft filling. This includes a number of Pre-Napatan and Napatan storage vessels.

All in all, I am more than satisfied with the progress and results of the first two weeks! Many thanks to all AcrossBorders team members and especially to the gang of local workmen headed by Hassan Dawd – great job so far!

Finally: a schist floor found in situ at SAV1 East

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Julia Budka

Sometimes the greatest finds just come up 30 min before the end of a day… Our week 2 just ended perfectly: finally, after two years of documenting large fragments of schist with plaster at SAV1 East – obviously dismantled pavements of rooms – we located in situ remains of a substantial mud brick wall with abutting plaster and schist!

In the southwestern corner of Square 4C, a large sandstone block caught our attention. It was dumped between mud brick debris; a faded line of brick was soon visible a bit further to the east. Cleaning these bricks today, I realized that they are the last remains of a large wall, running almost north-south, thus with a similar alignment as Building A.

Still attached to the small section of this wall, there is a large plate of schist and lots of plaster. There was no time today to properly clean the area, but the sandstone block is definitely also sitting on this schist pavement!

Of course it is still too early to speculate about the shape, size and function of this room – but the new elaborate schist floor finds its best parallel in the large magazines in the southern part of the New Kingdom town. Very exciting and looking much forward to the upcoming week of fieldwork!

First results of week 1

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Julia Budka

We just finished our first field in the field, working on the New Kingdom remains on Sai Island. Unfortunately, our schedule had to be slightly modified – on arrival we found out that tomb 26 was looted back in early summer 2015… So the first unexpected task was of course to document its present state, document the effects of the plundering and clean up the recent debris.

With some delay because of this unfortunate development at cemetery SAC5, we started work as planned in the New Kingdom town. New squares were opened in both sectors currently investigated by AcrossBorders, SAV1 East and SAV1 West.

At SAV1 West, the new extension lies in the south-eastern corner – we are hoping for more mud brick structures contemporaneous to the enclosure wall and located at the inner side of the town. The present findings closely resemble the results from 2015: much material of mid to late 18^th Dynasty date was re-deposited in antiquity and now lies on the surface of the area. Large areas of mud brick debris are promising and might cover some structures below.

At SAV1 East, we extended the squares towards the west in the southwestern corner of the area. One of the aims is to assess the east-west extension of Building A; another is to clarify whether a north-south street existed in this part of the town (as it was documented further south by M. Azim).

There are no surprises so far at SAV1 East – thick layers of mixed material comprising 18^th Dynasty, Ramesside, Post-Meroitic, Medieval and Ottoman finds are covering scarce remains of the New Kingdom. Possibly, we have already located another “negative wall”.

Contemporaneously with the excavations, processing of the pottery is conducted directly at the site in newly set-up sherd yards. The amounts from both sectors are very large – 135 baskets of sherds were processed in the first days from SAV1 East, 100 from SAV1 West.

Stone tools and all other categories of finds are registered by Meg Gundlach and Ken Griffin in the digging house. There are already a number of new fragments of firedogs, net weights, female and animal figurines and of course plenty of grindstones, hammers and pounders.

All in all, week 1 suggests a promising 2016 field season, confirming results from previous seasons, but also enabling us to draw further conclusions.

Déjà-vu at SAV1 East: more negative walls?

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Julia Budka

Being back on an excavation, one quite often has the feeling of never having been away – the same routine again, time flies by… Today was particularly full of déjà-vu at SAV1 East – not only are the nimiti-flies already active as ever, the Gebel Abri the same splendid scenery as always, but there are also strikingly similar findings to the last years.

In our new Square 4B, located towards the west of our former area, part of a mudbrick wall was found in situ – however, with the sandy filling next to it and a deep pit in line with it, this all reminds me a lot of earlier finds in other squares. I am quite convinced that the bricks are nothing else than the remains of a substantial wall which was otherwise completely removed in Christian/Ottoman times. Thus, we have probably located another negative wall at SAV1 East!

Maybe the first traces of a new negative wall in SAV1 East?

Although for once, I would have preferred a standing structure in this sector of the New Kingdom town, I am very happy with the results of the last days. We will be able to trace at least parts of the outline of a seemingly substantial building dating to the 18^th Dynasty and investigate its relation to Building A. All in all, our ongoing fieldwork will produce fresh and important information about the internal structure of the town. Of course we’ll keep you posted!

AcrossBorders

This is the blog of the ERC starting grant project AcrossBorders (ERC grant agreement n° 313668)

Monthly Archives: January 2016