The 13th European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics (EMAC) in Athens

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Giulia d'Ercole

Back again in Munich ‒ after three dense and highly inspiring days fully dedicated to the archaeometric study of pottery and ceramic materials at the 13th European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics (EMAC) held in the Acropolis Museum in Athens from Sep. 24-26.
Fall has definitively arrived and the EMAC meeting successfully closed a very fruitful conference summer season, started in June with the AcrossBorders workshop “Settlements patterns in Egypt and Nubia” at the Egyptian State Museum in Munich ̶ and continued over the summer with the International Congress of Egyptology (ICE) in Florence and the International Congress for Young Egyptologists (ICYE) in Vienna.
Since I am not an Egyptologist and unfortunately not even so young anymore, I happily represented, as the archaeometric ceramic specialist in our team, the AcrossBorders project at the 13th EMAC in Athens with a poster co-authored by Julia Budka, Elena Garcea and Johannes Sterba. The title of our poster was: “Discrimination of Nile clay ceramic ware by geochemistry: three case studies from Sai Island (Northern Sudan)”.

The entrance of the Acropolis Museum in Athens, venue of the EMAC 2015.

This was the third time I personally attended the European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics (EMAC) which has already a fairly long tradition. The first EMAC took place in Rome in 1991 with the aim of gathering together different scholars working on ceramics in the Mediterranean regions.
Over the last three decades, the European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics (EMAC) has become established as an important international forum in the field of ancient ceramics with a particular attention to the development of new scientific methodologies and laboratory techniques applied to the study of ceramic materials.
Nowadays, the geographical focus of the EMAC is not restricted anymore just to the Mediterranean regions, but the topics of the conference have been greatly extended and include also several different European and non-European countries.
Also the time frame of the conference topics is always very broad, ranging from the early pottery productions dated to Prehistory till more recent evidences and case studies from the Iron Age up to Roman, Medieval and post-Medieval times.
However, what represents to me the principal reason for interest in this conference is the exceptional condition of having gathered together in the same room so many specialists working on archaeometry and ceramics either with a background as archaeologists, or as hard scientists in the fields of petrography, mineralogy, chemistry and geology.

More than 200 abstracts were submitted in this last EMAC 2015 of which 197 were accepted and allocated either to poster or oral sessions.
The scientific committee did a great job in organizing both the poster and the talks by following a dual policy in the definitions of the sessions ̶ on one hand organized according to the main topics (i.e. methodology, raw materials, pyrotechnical ceramics, building materials etc.), and on the other hand according to chronological and geographical criteria.

The auditorium hall in the Acropolis Museum.

For the session “Methodology”, two very useful talks regarded the application of the portable XRF- analyser to archaeological ceramics: what is the good, the bad and reality about (by A.M.W Hunt and R.J. Speakman) and which are the new prospects for the archaeological studies (by M. Daszkiewicz et al.). Highly interesting was also the talk given by some colleagues from Vienna (A. Kern, T. Ntaflos and D. Arnitz) about the “Experimental verification of calcite dependent temperature determination”. Material of AcrossBorders from Sai Island was mentioned in the co-authored paper by I. Hein et al. on “Patron recognition with Gabor filter and K-nearest neighbor algorithm applied to archaeological ceramic materials.”

Several stimulating talks were also presented in the session “Early pottery production and mobility”, among them I want to point out the one by S. Amicone, P. Quinn et al. regarding the study of late Neolithic and early Calcolithic communities in the Balkans and the one given by M. Dikomitou-Eliadou, V. Kilikoglou et al. about the earliest cooking pots traditions in Cypro.

The poster session was simply spectacular both for the variety of topics, chronological and geographical contexts presented and for the beautiful sunny open-air setting in the garden of the British School at Athens. Moreover, a parallel virtual session provided a complementary platform for the poster presentations.

Open-air poster session at the British School in Athens.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how both Egypt and Sudan were very well represented in several posters and through different ages.
Our poster (P-016) in the session “Raw material” presented three patterns of variability recognized in the composition of both raw clay material and tempers in Nile clay ceramics from Sai Island, by means of chemical (INAA) and petrographic (OM) analyses.
The results, organized in three distinct blocks, included 1) a diachronic analysis of the Nubian-style handmade wares from Prehistory till the New Kingdom age, 2) a comparison between the Nubian-style and the Egyptian-style New Kingdom ceramics and 3) a comparison between the Egyptian-style and the Real Egyptian imported New Kingdom wares.

Coffee breaks and lunches, of course based on local delicious Greek specialities, offered the opportunity for informal talks and meetings with new and old colleagues from different countries.
Finally, I took a bit of time for sightseeing and for discovering the city ̶ there is simply no chance to avoid archaeology in Athens: the whole city is plenty of wonderful archaeological buildings and museums you cannot escape.

“HOME AWAY FROM HOME” – BACK AT THE “ATOMINSTITUT”

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Giulia d'Ercole

When, at the time of the New Kingdom, the Egyptians came to Sai Island in Upper Nubia and founded a Pharaonic town, they settled on the island taking with them their own traditions – but they also made contact with the indigenous Nubian cultures and adopted part of the local customs. Thus, Sai Island soon became for them a “home away from home”.
Well, I can say that in the last two years since I left Italy for joining AcrossBorders, Vienna became as well for me something very similar to a “second home.” Still, now that the project moved to Munich, if I have the chance to go there because of my work, I feel like coming back home.
So nothing better than a one-week business trip to the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics (AI) in Vienna to mitigate a little my “homesickness” and, most of all, together with Johannes Sterba, to take stock of our INAA chemical data! After two years there are more than 200 samples.

The main purpose of this Viennese “reunion” at the AI was to elaborate some of our recent results in view of the forthcoming workshop in Munich. In particular, during the last week Johannes Sterba and I have been focusing on our numerous set of Nubian samples – from the Khartoum Variant (c. 7400 – 5000 BC) till the New Kingdom period (c. 1550 – 1300 BC) – with the intent of linking the compositional data with the macroscopic and petrographic information we have about the local pottery and to look in detail at the chemical behavior of the Nubian samples.
Is it possible to recognize any variability in the use of the clay raw materials and tempers and in the pottery recipes through the course of the different chronological horizons? And what happened at the time of New Kingdom when for the first time Egyptian and Nubian ceramic traditions coexisted on Sai Island?

Apologies, but I am not going to reveal much more now as we prefer to keep you curious for the workshop! I can just say that Johannes and I were quite busy (but we had as well some fun) trying to plot different chemical elements against each other and to figure out how the samples might cluster (or not) according to their chemistry.
Besides that, spending one week at the AI gave also to me the opportunity to enjoy once again the unique atmosphere of the lab (I somehow like the smell of acetone and distillate water and all the chemical devices and small vials of which the lab is plenty) and to prepare a new bunch of 43 samples from our last field season in the winter of 2015.

The new bunch of samples mostly includes local Nubian and Egyptian style Nile clays plus a number of Egyptian cooking pots and decorated ware which according to their macroscopic features could be imported on Sai Island from Egypt and we are now going to test by means of INAA analysis.

Johannes properly cleaning the agate mortar with pure quartz powder.

The protocol we adopted for their preparation was exactly the same we used in the past:
1- few grams of sample were manually ground in an agate mortar into fine powder and temporally stored in small plastic vials
2- the samples were dried over the night at 90°C in a kiln
3- around 100 mg of sample were weighed and sealed into Suprasil glass vials waiting for irradiation.

Proud of our sample number 8 (of this last bunch)!

Labelling our samples by engraving the numbers on such small glass vials can be a lot of fun!

All these operations require a lot of patience and concentration. Once again, the expertise and the great support of Michaela Foster, technical assistant at the AI in Vienna, were essential to me in the lab and I would like to thank her deeply.

Michaela sealing the glass vials by fire (definitly not a job for archaeologists)!

Some more potsherds from 2015 are still waiting to be prepared in the lab so that at the end of this year our total number of samples will amount at more than 300.

With the hope to come soon back to Vienna (my personal “home away from home”) and to prepare more of our samples, I am now looking forward for the upcoming workshop here in Munich!

From Abri, Sudan to Asparn, Austria: experimenting with ancient recipes for making pottery

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Giulia d'Ercole

In January, during the 2014 field season, together with Huda Magzoub – our inspector of NCAM – and Erich Draganits – the geologist of the project – we went for a one-day excursion to the pottery workshop in Abri (1). Our purpose was to interview the two modern potters working there and collecting information concerning the manufacturing sequence of the vessels they produce for the people of the village and surroundings.
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Talking with them, we learned they produce every year many kinds of vessels (i.e. large jars for storing the water, cooking pots and vessels for milk production), following a traditional recipe. This recipe,however,will vary according to the specific function and performance of use of the respective vessels.

They explained to us, for example, that for the zir (water storage vessel) they prefer to use as the raw material a soil collected in the inland, far from the river banks: this soil is less hard and compact compared to the proper Nile silt and therefore more suitable for the production of such large vessels that have to be porous and also light in order to be movable.
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In addition, the modern potters seem partially to differentiate also the tempers they add to the clay: they select intentionally the dung from goat or sheep for the small pots, while the one from donkey is preferable for making larger vessels.

The variables in terms of clayey raw material and tempers we observed in the nowadays pottery production at Abri may explain some minor technological differences we also notice in our New Kingdom assemblage from Sai Island and especially in the organic-rich Nubian fabrics.
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Three full days (26/06-28/06) of experimental archaeology at the “MAMUZ” open-air Museum in Asparn (Lower Austria), organized thanks to the kind cooperation of our colleagues from the University of Vienna (especially the archaeologists and prehistorians responsible for the experimental archaeology class: among others Stefan Eichert, Mathias Mehofer and Hans Reschreiter – the latter with the initial idea for us to join!), were the perfect occasion to test our ideas and impressions, playing a bit with clay and tempers in order to experiment by ourselves the ancient pottery recipes!

One of our experimental projects in Asparn (the other one concentrated on fire dogs and their possible function) was dedicated to the production of small clay test tablets (c. 9 x 9 cm) using different kind of clay and tempers we collected in situ at Sai Island.

As a raw material, we employed two different samples of clay (labelled clay “type A” and “type B”) collected at different locations of the island. As a tempers we used: sand, caliche, charcoal and dung from goat, cow and donkey from Sai Island plus a sample of horse dung from Austria.
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Preparing the temper – dung from donkey.

We prepared the test tablets following an accurate protocol, taking notes of all the relevant scientific steps: from the preparation of the clayey raw material and tempers (STEP 1) to the production/forming of the tablets (STEP 2) and then to the drying (STEP 3) and the firing (STEP 4) phases.
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Mixing the clay with water.

All in all, 17 test tablets were realized of which: eight were produced using the clay “type A” in combination with the different set of tempers and eight using the clay “type B” with the same tempers (for each series one tablet was made only with clay). In addition, a further tablet was realized with clay “type B” by adding a larger amount of dung from donkey.

Clay type A and dung from goat.

Vera and Nicole forming the tablets.

The tablets were weighted during the production and then after the drying and the firing to check how much water they lost.

Our test tablets.

Our next step will consist in analyzing them by iNAA and also in preparing thin sections to be studied under the microscope!

Looking forward for the results, we already learned a lot from this experience and had so much fun working together!

Many thanks go first of all again to our colleagues and to all students of the experimental archaeology class of the University of Vienna, to Vera and Ludwig Albustin who have been of invaluable help in preparing the clay and much more! Thanks also to the AcrossBorders’ team: Julia Budka, Nicole Mosiniak, Jördis Vieth and Arvi Korhonen. We did a great team job, sharing for three days the joys and also the pains of being potters!

Having fun in Asparn…

The hard life of a potter…

(1) A comparable excursion was already done by our colleagues working at Amara West – the pottery specialists Marie Millet and Michela Spartaro also used the valuable information provided by the modern potters and included modern clay samples into their scientific analysis. See the recent paper: M. Spataro, M. Millet & N. Spencer, The New Kingdom settlement of Amara West (Nubia, Sudan): mineralogical and chemical investigation of the ceramics, in: Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 2014, esp. fig. 4 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12520-014-0199-y).

Excursion to Abri: comparing ancient and modern pottery traditions

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Giulia d'Ercole

The scientific analyses of the first set of samples from the last Field Season (SIAM Mission 2013) are almost concluded in Vienna and the preliminary processing of the data has already shown some very interesting and intriguing results.
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During the current season my main task is primarily selecting new ceramic specimens for the next analyses – having a large set of samples appears extremely important especially for the chemical results in order to improve the statistical reliability of the data! Beside many different New Kingdom wares (Egyptian and Local Nile clays, Nubian fabrics, Marl clays and Imports from Canaan, the Levant and the Oases) from the excavation areas SAV1 North, East and West within the Pharaonic town, we selected also some modern traditional ceramics to be used as comparative samples for the ancient production.

For this reason we went to the near-by city of Abri last week: Huda, our inspector of NCAM, and also Erich joined me – as a geologist Erich is also interested in seeing where the modern potters collect the raw material for their vessels.
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Not so far away from the centre of the village and from the area of the market there is in fact an intact ceramic workshop where a family of modern potters (‘bagadra’) still produce different kind of vessels according to a traditional recipe handed down from one generation to another!

Thanks to Huda (for this occasion our personal interpreter!) we had the unique opportunity to interview the potters and to ask them about their job, the function of the vessels and the manufacturing process!
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The pots are wheel-made (on a slow wheel), even though the upper part of the vessel is sometimes finished by coiling. Before the firing, they are put for 2-3 days upside down in the sand and then left some more days under the sun till they become completely dry.

Over 50 vessels are produced and then sold to Abri, Sai, Ernetta and even to Khartoum every month! This production consists mainly in large jars (zir) used for containing and keeping cool water, but they also make smaller vessels (e. g. milk/mish jars), cooking pots (hala), flower pots, incense burners and so on!
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In addition, what appears really interesting is that the potters seem partially to differentiate their ‘recipe’ (in terms of choice of clayey raw material and tempers), according to the specific function and the performance required by the vessel!

We learnt a lot from this conversation and we came back home very inspired bringing with us some nice ceramic pieces kindly offered by the potters – they have been already documented and will be soon submitted for the next laboratory analyses!

Preparing samples for Neutron Activation Analysis

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

Time really goes by… not just for us but also for our dear ceramic samples. Not too long ago they were still hidden under the warm sun of Sudan in the nice setting of Sai Island. Since then, they have passed through the hands of different people and they have been – in turn – been photographed, drawn, recorded in our File Maker database and, finally, selected for the different laboratory analysis.
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At the end of July, thanks to our cooperation with the Departments of Lithospheric Research and of Geodynamics and Sedimentology and the great work done by Claudia Beybel at the ‘Dünnschlifflabor’, we successfully managed to conclude the preparation of the thin sections for a first group of 36 ceramics. Just today, we submitted the second group of 24 samples to the lab – so we will have a total of 60 thin sections for petrographic studies.

After the summer break, the first group of samples were taken to the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics (AI) for the Neutron Activation Analysis. Johannes Sterba, Ing.Dr. will be my scientific supervisor at the AI, introducing me to the wonderful world of INAA. He has not only a lot of experience in NAA and chemical analyses on ceramic materials, but also in working with archaeologists and ceramics from Egypt and the Levant.
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Under his supervision, I have prepared all the samples and on Friday August 23 Johannes put them in the machine ‒ so by the end of September we will hopefully have the first results! Waiting for them, I will share some of my experience about the preparation of the samples, illustrated by pictures taken in the lab.

Step 1 – Sampling strategy

Example for grinding the sample in the agata mortar.

Drilling one of the samples.

Some of the prepared samples.

One of the main advantages of INAA is that you need only very few grams of powder for each sample!

For most of our ceramic samples we just selected the small chips produced after the break for the thin section and ground them in an agate mortar to obtain a fine and homogeneous powder. This procedure takes only few minutes, but then you have to clean carefully both the mortar and the pestle in order to avoid any contamination between the samples (and an agate mortar can be quite heavy to hold and to carry…).

Seven potsherds were sampled by drilling, carefully avoiding the slip and/or the painting!

The obtained powder is temporarily collected in small plastic containers.

Step 2 – Weighing the powder

After one night in the oven at 90 °C, the sample is weighted by means of a precision balance (we need about 100 mg of powder) and transferred into pure silica vials. Both the vials and the spoon used for this operation are very small and thin. This is a good training both for your nerves and your hands (better not drink too much coffee before!)

The precision balance for weighting the powder.

Step 3 – Sealing the vials by fire

Before going into the reactor and to be irradiated, all the vials must be sealed. This operation is quite delicate and, at the same time, extremely important: poor seals will cause samples to open during irradiation! The sealing is made by fire, using a soldering iron arrangement in the same laboratory in which the samples were prepared. Once finished, we used an engraving tool to write the number of the sample on the side of each vial.

Important step: sealing the vials by fire.

At this point everything is ready to start with the irradiation… just the time for our small samples to ‘rest’ a little bit immersed into a pure water solution!

Sealed sample within pure water solution.

Re-assigning Marls as Mixed clays?

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

Few days ago, preparing our sherds for the cutting of the thin sections, we stumbled across two samples (SAV/S 57 and SAV/S 59), previously classified as “marl D”. With a fresh break, they appeared a little bit peculiar compared to the others classified as this well established Egyptian fabric. Therefore we wondered if they actually were something different from a marl D (being aware of the variations within this group, cf. Rose 2007: 14-15), as for example a mixed clay, attested at other New Kingdom sites like Elephantine and Memphis (see Aston 1999: 6; Budka 2005: 94-95; Bourriau 2010: 27-28, G6b).

This ‘suspicion’ seems now to be confirmed by means of the microscopic observation of the thin section!

SAV/S 57

Under the thin calcareous layer forming the white slip of the vessel, both of these samples disguised a quite ferruginous matrix, surrounding by numerous silicate minerals as quartz and feldspar (mainly plagioclase). Among others, the non-plastic inclusions included: Fe-oxides, biotite and muscovite mica, clino-pyroxenes and possibly volcanic rock fragments plus scattered clay pellets. In addition, small to medium calcareous inclusions were identified in the framework – but in a significant lower amount than in the proper marl D fabric.

SAV/S 29

SAV/S 57 and 59 show a very fine and homogeneous texture and few shrinkage cracks. In contrast, some of the marl D samples (for example SAV/S 29) are characterized by a high secondary porosity.

Taken together, the present data suggests that both SAV/S 57 and SAV/S 59 are likely to be either a mixture of Nile and Marl clays, or even pure Nile silts containing a small percentage of limestone particles (cf. Bourriau 2010: 24, G6a)! Forthcoming chemical analyses will allow us to confirm (or modify) this idea looking at the bulk composition and at the comparison between the samples!

SAV/S 59

By now we can just stress once again the usefulness of such kind of scientific interdisciplinary approach and the advantages that may derive from combining macroscopic observations and analytical methods in the study of the ceramic materials.

References

Aston 1999 = D. A. Aston, Pottery from the Late New Kingdom to the Early Ptolemaic Period, Elephantine XIX, AV 95, Mainz am Rhein.

Bourriau 2010 = J. Bourriau, The Survey of Memphis IV. Kom Rabia: The New Kingdom Pottery, Excavation Memoir 93, London.

Budka 2005 = J. Budka, XII. Zur Keramik des Neuen Reiches – erste Beobachtungen anhand des Materials aus der Oststraße B II, in G. Dreyer et al., Stadt und Tempel von Elephantine, 31./32. Grabungsbericht, in MDAIK 61, 2005, 90–116.

Rose 2007 = P. J. Rose, The Eighteenth Dynasty Pottery Corpus from Amarna, Excavation Memoir 83, London.

First week at the Lab

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

Here in Vienna, things are proceeding quickly and very well. Thanks to the efficiency and the professionalism of our colleagues from the Departments of Lithospheric Research and of Geodynamics and Sedimentology and to the excellent scientific facilities available at their ‘Dünnschlifflabor’ (thin section laboratory) in the Centre of Earth Sciences, the first set of samples is already prepared: ready for being looked at under the microscope!
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First set of thin sections.

So, last week, coming back from London, we started also with the preparation of the second group of ceramics: 24 samples including different Nubian and Egyptian fabrics as well as imports.

At present, I’m temporary settled in the lab where I’m splitting my day between the observation of the first set of thin sections at the microscope and the preparation of the new samples together with Claudia Beybel who is patiently teaching me how to realize – step by step – a perfect ‘Dünnschliff’!

First of all, before starting with the cutting, the samples need to be consolidated, so they were immerged in a special glue (araldite) and put in vacuum so that the glue can penetrate deeply into the ceramic material. Since several of our samples (for example the Nubian wares) are very porous and brittle, this operation has sometimes to be repeated more than one time.
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As a next step, the samples remain 24 hours in the oven at 40 degree Celsius to become completely dry.

On the next day, they are finally ready to being cut in order to obtain a straight slice,almost completely plan.

The new cutting machine.

Thanks to the new wonderful machine present in the lab, this procedure took relatively short time and the result was perfect.

Further steps involve the grinding and the polishing of the section; for this operation horizontal rotary plates with diamond discs of various grit sizes that magnetically adhere to the grinding wheel were used.
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Polishing the section on the plate.

The plates work in water and in transition from a coarse to the next fine grit size, the surface of the sample becomes perfectly flat and smooth! The final polishing is realized by hand with Si abrasive powder.

Gluing the section on the glass.

At this point, the samples can be glued on the glass slides, previously cleaned and matte on one side. After another night in the oven at 40 degree Celsius, the samples are ready to be cut at 30 micron.

And for Claudia and me it is finally the time for a coffee together on the nice terrace of the department!

The pottery samples: materials and methods

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

The ceramic samples for the archaeometric analyses comprise by now sixty-one sherds selected during the last field season from both sectors SAV 1North (48 samples) and SAV 1East (13 samples) of Sai Island New Kingdom Town.

All of the sherds have been classified according to their macroscopic features and these data were collected in the File Maker Database of the project.

In addition, prior to proceeding with the laboratory analyses, we took photographs of both the surfaces and sections of each sample. The samples are labelled with a new code: the acronym “SAV/S” (= “Sai Island New Kingdom Town/Sample”) followed by a progressive number, starting from SAV/S 01, and linked to the original ceramic number as recorded in the pottery database.
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NC 702.1 (SAV/S 14) – Dish in Nile clay B2/C2

The samples from both SAV 1North and SAV 1 East come from distinct areas, structures and layers of the archaeological deposit. They include different kinds of wares and shapes representing the variability of the pottery corpus. Among others, ceramics comprise Nubian beakers and cooking pots, Egyptian Nile silt wares (dishes, bowls, bread plates and bread moulds), Marl clay jars and imported amphora from both Canaan and the Egyptian oases.
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NC 702.8 (SAV/S 23) – squat jar in Marl A2

NC 766 (SAV/S 41) – Oasis amphora

Forthcoming petrographic and chemical analyses will help us discriminating between these different samples and answering very important archaeological questions concerning the provenience, the technology of production, as well as the geographical distribution of these ceramics.

LOOKING THROUGH THE NUBIAN POTTERY

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

During the last two weeks, I had the pleasure to share the lab with Huda, our inspector, Vicky and Nicole – still very busy and concentrate on her plenty nice fire-dogs! – and to have a first look at the Nubian ceramic assemblages from both SAV 1N (excavations 2008-12) and SAV 1E (the new excavation) areas within the Pharaonic town of Sai Island.
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I am very grateful to Julia Budka to allow me to access these materials and to daily exchange with me precious remarks and ideas about pottery! Having the opportunity to study and to compare these ceramics already now, on the field, is really useful to me and also very important in order to elaborate the best sampling strategy for the future laboratory analyses (OM, XRPD, XRF, INAA)!

In these days, a preliminary macroscopic classification of the wares was realized and four different fabrics were recognized, basing on content and the typology of the main non-plastic inclusions present in the pastes.
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As a general remark, all the Nubian wares are characterized by a sandy-silt matrix and contain – in a variable amount – small (< 0,5 mm) to medium (1 < 2 mm) quartz grains, mica plus white calcareous inclusions (probably micritic calcite aggregates?). Organics (dung and/or straw and chaff remains) are also present and they seem to represent the main tempering agent used by the ancient potters.

Example of Nubian Fabric 1 – Fine ware, dung tempered

Example of Nubian Fabric 3 – Coarse ware, chaff tempered

It was a very nice ‘surprise’ to me realizing close similarities between these ceramics of the New Kingdom (c. 1500-1100 BC) and their ‘ancestors’ from the Pre-Kerma period (c. 3000- 2600 BC)! Such a continuity observed in the selection of both raw material and tempers appears to be the result of a very ancient and durable local tradition; highly important to recognize and to understand in its cultural and social meaning!
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In the next days, I will have also the opportunity to compare this Nubian material with the Egyptian-style pottery from the same contexts!

AcrossBorders

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

Author Archives: Giulia d'Ercole