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.

Fire dogs and food preparation on Sai

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Julia Budka

Among the most interesting functional vessel types found in the New Kingdom town of Sai are so-called fire dogs, currently studied by Nicole Mosiniak.

The common assumption is that these vessels were used to hold a cooking pot over a fire. In 2014, thanks to the cooperation and help of the University of Vienna and the NHM, we conducted one experimental project on fire dogs at the “MAMUZ” open-air Museum in Asparn (Lower Austria).

We had several questions we wanted to investigate, first of all the way of manufacture of the fire dogs and their possible function(s). All in all, our experiments showed that cooking is possible with copies of the Ancient Egyptian devices – but it is still not a very convincing way of preparing food, thus Nicole is still taking into consideration also other possible uses respectively a multi-functional use.

Our modern copies of ancient fire dogs holding a cooking pot above the fire place in Asparn.

This year, an interesting new find came up in SAV1 East. From this sector, until 2014 only five fire dogs were documented – except for one all from surface layers and thus without proper context. This should change during the 2015 season while excavating feature 15.

Feature 15 is a subterranean room located in the central courtyard of Building A. It is of rectangular shape and once had a vaulted roof. Feature 15 is lined with red bricks and red bricks also form the pavement of the structure.

Ashy deposits, large amounts of charcoal, hundreds of dome-palm fruits and abundant animal bones with traces of burning, suggest that feature 15 might have been used as a room for food preparation. Among more than 80 almost intact vessels, mostly plates and dishes, beakers, storage jars and pot stands, there was also a fragment of a fire dog.

Drawing of fire dog fragment from feature 15 (Oliver Frank Stephan).

SAV1W P163 has a rim diameter of c. 16 cm and shows traces of burning on several spots. It is the first fire dog found on Sai from a sealed context dating to the early-mid 18^th Dynasty. Although its function is not explicit, the associated finds from feature 15 might point towards a use within food preparation and here as support for cooking pots. However, it should be noted that only one cooking pot was found in feature 15.

All in all, the fresh finds from feature 15 stress that the large number of fire dogs from Sai might result from a quite complex use of these devices which is still not completely understood.

Nubian household pottery on Elephantine and its potential

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Julia Budka

Having just returned from – despite the heat wave – a very pleasant stay in Luxor, I am currently working on the ceramic database of the material from Elephantine. As mentioned in earlier posts, the striking similarities between the early 18^th Dynasty levels on Sai Island and Elephantine are currently of key priority for our research.

The upcoming season on Elephantine, scheduled for October-December 2015, will concentrate on freshly excavated material as well as on Nubian pottery from House 55. The latter are of high interest, especially for establishing links between Sai and the region of the First Cataract.

At present, 28 Nubian sherds from House 55 were documented in the database and by drawings and photos. Most of them are cooking pots of various types, but also storage vessel, drinking cups and fine ware are present. Black topped Kerma beakers appear in different qualities. The rim sherd 27606G/c-01 was made in a very fine Nubian fabric and compares well to fragments from the New Kingdom town of Sai and also Kerma itself.

Nubian storage vessel and Black Topped Kerma Beaker from House 55.

Very interesting is a large storage vessel of a type well attested both in the Kerma cemeteries and in the Pharanic town on Sai. 27605N/b-03 illustrates the use of a heavily chaff-tempered, coarse Nubian fabric – a fabric attested for large Nubian cooking pots but most often for thick-walled storage vessels.

It will be of particular value to establish, once the excavation of House 55 is completed, the percentage of Nubian pottery within the whole ceramic corpus and the total number and distribution of the various household vessel types – comparing these data with building units on Sai might allow further thoughts about the coexistence of Nubians and Egyptians at the beginning of the New Kingdom.

“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!

Tracing Ramesside burials in SAC 5

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Julia Budka

Since a few days we have the confirmation that the burial chamber of tomb 26 opens to the north. Today, the excavation of the shaft was completed, reaching a depth of more than 5.20 m.

Cleaning remains on top of the shaft base of tomb 26.

The filling material of the shaft was highly interesting – especially in the lowest level just above the shaft base, two scarabs, a number of complete vessels as well as some stones (pieces of architecture) were found. Three nicely decorated, complete Marl clay pilgrim flasks are especially noteworthy, found together with other pottery vessels (especially storage vessels) and one complete stone vessel.

Three almost complete Pilgrim flasks were found together against the east wall of the shaft.

Since these finds were clustering along the eastern wall of the shaft and in particular in the southeastern corner, the most likely explanation is that remains of a burial were removed from the chamber in the north and left in the shaft during one of the phases of reuse (or possibly plundering?).

Probably the most important finds so far are two sandstone fragments with the name and title of the jdnw of Kush Hornakht. This official of the Egyptian administration in Upper Nubia is already well attested from Sai Island and was active during the reign of Ramesses II. Several of the vessels from the shaft of tomb 26 are datable to the 19^th Dynasty, suggesting that the inscribed pieces actually belonged to one of the burial phases. Of course everything has to wait until we checked also the burial chamber and understand the complete picture of tomb 26 and its complex use life, but for now it is possible to say that we found traces of early Ramesside burials in SAC 5. This is extremely exciting and opens much room for new thoughts about the importance of Sai during the Nineteenth Dynasty and its relation to the now flourishing site of Amara West.

Cemetery, seals, pots and Nun-bowls in week 8

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Julia Budka

This week work focused again on fieldwork in the cemetery SAC5 and registration and studying of various find categories in the dig house.

Excavation in area 1 in the southern part of SAC5 proved to be very interesting: we now know that this large sector set between two small hill outcrops probably was completly void of tombs. No burial monuments were located, but rather various interesting topographical features exposed – Martin Fera will compose a digital landscape model in the next weeks attempting a first interpretation of this topography. The fresh information will allow some new insights into the landscape, evolution and size of the New Kingdom cemetery SAC5.

Area 1 with newly exposed topographies.

In agreement with Florence Thill, we started digging another area in SAC5: area 2 is located north of area 1, just next to various 18^th Dynasty monuments like tomb 8. The surface material discovered so far covers all the periods attested for the use of SAC5 as a burial site: mid-late 18^th Dynasty, Late Ramesside, Pre-Napatan and Napatan.

Today, a sandy depression was found, surrounded on three sides by bedrock – we’ll continue excavating there, of course hoping for a shaft opening belonging to a new tomb.

Promising new area 2 in SAC5.

Feature 15 keeps us busy in the digging house – most of the washing of the ceramics is now done, but sorting is still ongoing. 60 vessels have been reconstructed so far – dozens of more are still waiting to be joined. Oliver Frank Stephan concentrates on drawing the complete profiles and reconstructed pots. Registration of finds from feature 15 continued – Ken Griffin and Meg Gundlach have been very productive in entering different types of objects into the database. By now, a total of 329 small finds were registered from feature 15! And I am not yet done with sieving, some bags with material from directly above the pavement are still unchecked, for sure comprising more objects. Already 171 seal impressions were documented, mostly dating to Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. We continue to be a bit baffled about the large amount of clay sealings from such a small structure!

Exciting: this week a substantial number of new seal types were registered.

Sabine Tschorn started with drawing representative fragments of faience vessels – most of which are Nun-bowls, but other shapes like small chalices are also attested. The number of fragments from SAV1 West is much higher than from SAV1 East – probably related to the different character of the areas, but it could also be explained by the slightly later date of deposits in SAV1 West. The late 18^th Dynasty, a well-known heyday of faience production, is better attested in our western area than within the surroundings of Building A towards the East.

Happy with small, but diagnostic pieces of Nun-bowls from SAV1 West.

Happy about small, but diagnostic pieces of Nun-bowls from SAV1 West.

Last but not least I am very thankful to Stuart Tyson Smith and his team for welcoming us this week in Tombos – we got a splendid tour through the cemetery and the town site. There are many parallels to Sai Island and I am looking much forward to future results of the Tombos mission and a continous open exchange and collaboration.

First glimpses of Post-New Kingdom use in SAC5, area 2

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Julia Budka

Sai Island in Northern Sudan has been continuously settled from Prehistory to modern times being occupied by various people throughout the ages. It is well known that the New Kingdom monuments, both the town site and the cemeteries, were reused in periods after the Pharaonic era. We found plenty of evidence during our excavations at SAV1 West and SAV1 East this year – one very nice piece is the adorable giraffe graffito.

For the cemetery SAC5, a re-use of 18^th Dynasty tombs in the Late New Kingdom and in the Prenapatan and Napatan Period is well attested thanks to the excavations of the French mission (see Thill 2006-2007). This period, roughly the late 11^th century up to the 8^th century BCE, is still little understood in Northern Sudan (as it is the case for Egypt) – current excavations, especially at Tombos and Amara West, illustrate that much remains to be discovered from this era.

Today, we started the surface cleaning in a new area in cemetery SAC5. Thanks to the arrival of Florence Thill, who joined us for the upcoming weeks as external expert, we agreed to investigate an as-yet unexplored zone between the already excavated tombs.

Work has started in area 2, cemetery SAC5.

Work started in area 2, cemetery SAC5.

We are currently focusing on the southeastern surroundings of tomb 8. This 18^th Dynasty tomb was also used as burial place in the Napatan period – therefore it came as no surprise that the ceramics we collected today from the surface cover a large time span: mid-late 18^th Dynasty, Late Ramesside, Pre-Napatan, Napatan and Christian period! Most of the material dates to the 10^th-8^th centuries BCE – very exciting!

The sorting of the pottery fragments is undertaken at the site – wares and forms are counted, diagnostic pieces selected for further analysis.

Thanks to our amazing washing man, the diagnostics found this morning were already clean after lunch: nice painted pilgrim flasks, amphorae (including 2 oases ones!) and especially Napatan cups and beakers.

The next days of work will hopefully tell us whether there are more reused 18^th Dynasty tombs in this sector of SAC5, or even a Post-New Kingdom burial place. The first finds are very promising in many respects!

Reference:

F. Thill. 2006-2007. Les réoccupations “(pré)napatéennes” dans la cimetière égyptien 8B5/SAC5 de Sai, in: Mélanges offerts à Francis Geus, CRIPEL 26, 353–369.

End of week 7: mud sealings, pottery vessels & not yet a tomb

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Julia Budka

The final phase of our 2015 field season is approaching, only three more weeks to go!

This week, Miranda Semple and Sayantani Neogi successfully completed their geoarchaeological research respectively the micromorphological sampling within the New Kingdom town area – several profiles of cultural deposition were taken from SAV1 West and SAV1 East. This set of soil blocks is the starting point for thin section manufacture and micromorphological analysis in the upcoming years. Taken from 18^th Dynasty contexts, they will allow us addressing questions of site formation processes and the ancient use of space.

Our group of Viennese physical anthropologists (Anna Sonnberger, Andrea Stadlmayr and Marlies Wohlschlager) started their work with sorting bones from the town excavation – even if there are some interesting human remains from SAV1 West and SAV1 East, they are of course eagerly waiting for new material from the cemetery site SAC 5. At the cemetery, the group of workmen supervised by Pierre Meyrat and Huda Magzoub were busy with surface cleaning in area 1. No clear outlines of possible superstructures or shafts of New Kingdom tombs were yet found, but several sandy areas are notable.

Work in progress, area 1, SAC 5.

In the magazine, registering of both finds and pottery continued. In addition, Sabine Tschorn has joint us to work on the quite substantial corpus of Nun-bowls from the town site. The current focus of find processing, however, is still on the large amount of material coming from feature 15 – Oliver Frank Stephan is currently drawing the intact and almost complete vessels from this important context. A large number of pots is broken in many fragments – reconstructing and gluing them is very time-consuming, but of course essential.

30 complete or almost complete pots from feature 15 were already drawn this week.

Ken Griffin and Meg Gundlach continued with registering finds – our database now comprises a total of 3800 objects! Especially interesting is the corpus of seal impressions from feature 15 – 42 mud sealings were already registered, more than a dozen new ones just came up today! There is a number of well-preserved impressions of seals of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, but others are still in the style of the Second Intermediate Period.

One of the fragmented mud sealings with knotted geometrical patterns common in the Second Intermediate Period.

One of the fragmented mud sealings with a knotted geometrical pattern common in the Second Intermediate Period.

Processing and photographing different categories of finds, drawing and sorting of ceramics and of course the field work in the cemetery SAC 5 will keep us very busy in the next weeks.

Beyond New Kingdom ceramics – our first giraffe from SAV1 East?

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Julia Budka

With the end of the town season and because the work in the cemetery has just started, I finally have the opportunity to go back to the substantial backlog of sherds waiting in the courtyard. Today I processed some of the mixed material coming from the debris above our 18^th Dynasty walls and floors in SAV1 East. Apart from re-used sherds, there are frequently fragments of animal figurines within the pottery baskets (which are then transferred to the desk of Meg and Ken for registration). A considerable number of mould-made animal figurines, especially of horses and other quadrupeds came up from the mixed fillings of SAV 1 East from 2013-2015. With the finds from today, I think we can add another animal to the group of quadrupeds from Post-Pharaonic times.

One very nice pottery fragment caught my attention: it is a Post-New Kingdom, most likely Christian sherd of a large closed vessel. On its interior, the fragment was incised – this was done after firing and because of its location on the inner side definitely for a secondary use when the vessel was already broken.

The adorable sherd from SAV1 East with an incised zoomorphic motif.

The motif of this “pot mark” is just adorable: the upper part of a giraffe eating from a tree is preserved. I was immediately reminded of the work undertaken by Cornelia Kleinitz on the graffiti at Mussawarat es Sufra – among her large corpus of pictorial graffiti there (dating to the Meroitic Period and later times) the “giraffe + tree” group is well attested (see http://musawwaratgraffiti.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/musalib?fn=permanent/Musawwarat/Graffiti/Website_Photos/Historical_Graffiti/Musawwarat2011-11-29_120553). The motif can also be found within rock art corpora, for example in the Fourth Cataract area.

Discussing this lovely piece with some of our team members, the idea was put forward whether our “giraffe” might be a donkey or antelope after all. Any thoughts here! ? I am personally very happy with our first giraffe-like animal from SAV1 East, but of course open to other suggestions…

Vaults, pavements, pots and sealings: closing the New Kingdom town season

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Julia Budka

6 weeks have passed since we started work in SAV1 East and SAV1 West – today, we managed to finish the final tasks in the field and with the coming week we will move to the New Kingdom cemetery SAC5; work in the cemetery will keep us busy until the end of the 2015 season. Of course processing of finds and pottery from the town season will continue – the amount of finds was very impressive this season!

Martin Fera and Stefanie Juch finished documentation at SAV1 West – the cellar discovered in the last days of fieldwork in week 5 was successfully cleaned – its vault was still partly preserved.

Very nice small finds and a good collection of pottery were found in it – all datable to the 18^th Dynasty. At the moment, a mid (to possibly late) 18^th Dynasty date is most likely. All in all, SAV1 West yielded in 2015 both new features and more parallels to sector SAV1 North. Loads of useful data to deepen our understanding of domestic architecture and daily activities in 18^thDynasty Sai!

At SAV1 East, Feature 15 almost seemed like a never-ending story – but we managed to finish its excavation today! A very nice red brick pavement was reached in a depth of 1.20 m, still partly covered with a mud floor.

Dozens of intact vessels were found on this pavement and in the deposit above it, together with a substantial amount of clay sealings, small finds like figurines, gaming pieces, stone tools and faience beads. A large number of charcoal and numerous bones (often burnt) imply an association with food preparation respectively consumption. Besides work in the cemetery, processing of finds and ceramics from feature 15 will be one of the main goals of the upcoming 4 weeks. This structure is definitely of key importance for many aspects of living in a “temple town” like Sai Island.

AcrossBorders

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

Category Archives: Ceramics