Monthly Archives: August 2016

In focus: Tomb 26 & a re-union in Vienna

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In Tomb 26, March 2016. Photo: Martin Fera.

Andrea Stadlmayr, Marlies Wohlschlager and I were busy working in Tomb 26 earlier this year. The season has been very successful – yielding nice finds like scarabs, a Base Ring II juglet and a number of other complete ceramic vessels. As physical anthropologists, Andrea and Marlies are focusing on the human remains from the tomb. A minimum of 10 individuals were documented from different levels. These skeletal remains are, despite of a rather poor state of preservation, highly interesting for key questions of AcrossBorders related to the occupants of Sai during the New Kingdom. We know that there were several phases of use of Tomb 26 – based on the stratigraphy and pottery we are currently trying to establish a sequence.

Photo: Martin Fera.

Photo: Martin Fera.

Today, in order to plan the next season with a special focus on the documentation and processing of the skeletal remains, we had a very productive meeting here in Vienna. The physical anthropology is conducted within my FWF START project, hosted by OREA of the ÖAW. We are grateful for support from the NHM and the cooperation with VIRIS Laboratory of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences for the strontium isotopic analysis.

Looking at the documentation from Tomb 26 earlier today, and especially on the 3d models by Martin Fera, it was almost like being there again. Looking very much forward to the upcoming season 2017 and a re-union at the site!

A Visit to Berlin for the Summer School in Landscape Archaeology

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Currently I’m busy with some preparations for a participation in a Summer School in Landscape Archaeology, which is taking place in Berlin, Germany from August 29th to September 3rd organised by the doctoral program Landscape Archaeology and Architecture of the Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies. As the topic “opening the landscape–methods in landscape archaeology” already reveals, the focus lays on an examination of the broad spectrum of methods applied in landscape archaeology and here in particular the underlining theoretical concepts as well as the applicability of specific methods.

The school is open for young researchers from all different disciplines working on landscape archaeological issues and is not limited to either region or time period, which I’m sure, will make this event especially interesting. Additionally, an excursion to a Neolithic excavation site and a visit of the laboratories of the German Archaeological Institute and the Neues Museum Berlin is planned. Every participant has to present her/his own research project with a poster. Of course mine will be dealing with the Egyptian temple towns in New Kingdom Nubia, focussing especially on the methods and aims of landscape archaeology I’m using to investigate the distribution and development of the temple towns based on spatial as well as environmental analysis and site typology.

I am very happy to have the chance taking part in this Summer School. It is in particular for young researchers and Ph.D. candidates a good opportunity to gain insights into new techniques and methods of potential relevance for one’s own research and last but not least to show an ongoing Ph.D. project to other fellows from the same field of discipline.

AcrossBorders post-excavation work – a short update

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Time flies by as usual – summer has arrived in Munich and we are already busy in preparing the upcoming season in Egypt!

Post-excavation processing has kept all of us extremely busy during the last months – especially, because we are also preparing a monograph on SAV1 North, presenting the architecture together with the pottery and small finds. Work on the various kinds of samples from the 2016 field season – here especially the geological and micromorphological ones – is well on its way, both in Munich and in Cambridge. The Harris Matrix for the stratigraphy of SAV1 West is getting prepared, data for the pottery corpus were added and descriptions of features updated. All drawings of the 2016 season have already been digitalized and the database of objects is kept up-to-date.

Recently, Martin Fera presented our GIS-based documentation system at a conference – the paper is already published as open source. By the example of both the town excavation and work in tomb 26, the advantages of the SFM documentation were illustrated with selected high quality orthophotos and surface models. Another open access publication is an eBook high-lightening general aspects of settlement archaeology in Egypt and Nubia, presenting AcrossBorders’ microarchaeological approach.

Within my START project, new soil, animal bones and water samples were incorporated for our strontium isotopic analysis in the context of interpreting the skeletal remains from tomb 26. Looking much forward to get here the latest result at a meeting next week with my cooperation partners at VIRIS Laboratory of the Department of Chemistry, Division of Analytical Chemistry of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna!

The journey of a New Kingdom beer jar

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Hello, it’s us, Vanessa and Daniela!

After working for the project for over a year now, we finally made our first blog entry. We wanted to show you how a pottery illustration from the original sherd to the final drawing is generated.

The development of a pottery illustration for a publication from a single sherd is a long process and includes a lot of different steps in different locations. After the discovery and documentation of the sherd or complete pot, the object first has to be cleaned. This of course happens in the field.

The next step is to create a drawing of the specific piece.

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For that it is measured and drawn as detailed and accurate as possible. The diameter and ultimate height are taken, as well as its specific attributes, like coloured rims or other elements of decoration, which are included in the drawing. In the case of the lower part of the beer jar illustrated here, details like finger impressions around the base must be given. This step takes place at the magazine on Sai, where working photos of the pottery are taken as well.

Bild 3But after the field season is finished the work on the sherd has to be processed. Whereas in former times the final drawing for the publication was done by hand, we now create a digitized version of the drawings that were made on Sai.

In the new office of the project, we are well equipped for this last step. We are working with an Adobe Program on an interactive tablet to “re-draw” the sherd once again and create a vector graphic. For that, the outlines of the object are generated with the original drawing as the initial point. Then the inner lines, details or decorative parts of the sherd are transferred.

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It is important that this step is very accurate, because the original size and form of the sherd must not be changed. The object is named and the file is saved in different formats to be used with other programs.

So for the process of developing this final drawing, the piece of pottery has journeyed over hundreds of miles and a lot of months, from the actual sherd on Sai to the graphic illustration in our office in Munich.