A Brief Summary of the 2013 field season

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Julia Budka

After 10 weeks in Sudan, it feels very strange to get ready for leaving in a few days! Today I had to pack everything up at the Museum and to say goodbye to all of the kind and helpful colleagues of NCAM and the French Unit.

Having spent the last days with preparing the lecture and writing the report, many new ideas and thoughts have crossed my mind and I am very eager to continue the post-excavation processing of SAV1 East! We really made some significant discoveries this season – for now, I will just give a brief overview focusing on the most important results.

The key discovery at the new excavation site SAV1E and the highlight of the 2013 season on Sai Island was of course the confirmation of the geophysical survey picture: we were able to trace the eastern part of a very large rectangular mud brick structure (North-South extension of 16.3 + x m; East-West 10 + x m) which we labelled Building A.

Most of the bricks from its walls have been taken out and are now just “phantom walls” represented by a sandy pit, but we found large sections of the foundation trench and also an area with a floor coating towards the North. Associated finds and especially potteryallowed us to date Building A to the mid 18^th Dynasty (see below). Its western part still remains to be excavated – the prime task for next season!

All in all, the new fieldwork conducted in 2013 at SAV1E adds important aspects to the understanding of the development and history of the Pharaonic Town of Sai Island:

(1) The earliest remains at SAV1E are dating to the early 18^th Dynasty; there is nothing of the Kerma period prior to the New Kingdom. The area can therefore be safely interpreted as part of the newly founded Egyptian town. The Kerma ceramics we found are clearly originating from early New Kingdom contexts as in SAV1 North.

(2) The southern part of SAV1E with remains like the storage bin (feature 14) can be linked with the domestic zone excavated around Temple A by M. Azim – this area is characterized by small structures with single-brick walls and storage facilities. It is an early occupation phase comparable to Level 4 at SAV1N and clearly of pre-Thutmose III date. The in situ vessels of storage bin 14 give a more precise dating as early 18^th Dynasty, possibly Ahmose-Thutmose I.

(3) The northern part of SAV1E yielded so-called Building A – a not yet fully exposed mud brick structure with an orthogonal layout and most importantly with striking parallels to the so-called residence SAF2 in the Southern part of the Pharaonic Town. We really cannot wait to excavate the western part of Building A in order to confirm this hypothesis! As we have been fortunate to discover pottery in the foundation trench, we have a good dating indication of the building date of Building A: the pot sherds give us a terminus ante quem non for the setting of the foundations and this is the time of Thutmose III! This all suggests that Building A belongs to the major remodelling of the New Kingdom Town of Sai during the reign of this king. The newly discovered structure does also fit nicely into the grid-pattern of the Southern part of the town with roughly north-south and east-west aligned streets and it is most likely contemporaneous with Temple A and the mud brick enclosure wall.

View above Temple A to SAV1E at the end of fieldwork in 2013

Summing up, the first field season of AcrossBorders in 2013 was very successful and will allow us making very specific plans for the upcoming seasons!

Lecture in Khartoum, March 12 2013

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Julia Budka

Its a great honor and pleasure that I have been invited by the Sudan Archaeological Society to give a lecture at the Greek Athletic Club here in Khartoum. Tomorrow, at 7.30 pm I will present our latest findings of this season: “New Archaeological Fieldwork on Sai Island, New Kingdom Town”.

I intend to give an overview of our excavations at SAV1 East, focusing of course on Building A and the new evidence we have for substantial Thutmoside building activity within the Pharaonic Town of Sai.

Overview of SAV1 East at the end of our 2013-season.

Special thanks at the end of the field season

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Julia Budka

Having just finished packing, we are ready to leave to Khartoum tomorrow morning after nine busy and successful weeks on Sai. Although it’s time to say goodbye to our beloved island for this season, we take a lot of memories, pictures and of course tons of documentation material with us! SAV1E will continue to keep us busy at home! I will write a post wraping-up things once I am in Khartoum.

I don’t want to finish this 2013 field season without expressing my warmest thanks to a very special person: Huda Magzoub did a fantastic job as our inspector, was always extremely helpful, working both in the field and in the lab, taking an interest in all of the team members with their different tasks and being a real support to me in many respects! Neither wind, nor heat, nor the worst nimiti-days could stop her from endless efforts and enthusiastic participation!

I also appreciate her support in our good relations with the local communities and her energies trying to communicate the importance of archaeology in present times! Together we set up new signs marking the areas of some of the most important archaeological sites on Sai Island like the Kerma cemetery and the Pharaonic town. It was a real pleasure working with Huda and I am deeply grateful for all.

Pottery from the Foundation trench of Building A

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Julia Budka

Processing of the pottery from SAV1E comes towards a closing – still not to an end, as the finds have been far too numerous and will also keep us busy at home and for next season. However, the most important data are already collected allowing some first observations.

Among the most important pottery vessels of the 2013-season are for sure the two rim sherds recovered from the foundation trench of the northern wall of Building A.

P57 in its original find position: the foundation trench of wall 31.

Especially relevant is the fragment of a decorated Marl clay vessel. P57 is made in a so called Marl A4 according to the Vienna System. Its mouth diameter measures 10.6 cm and 48 % of the rim of this nice jar thrown on the pottery wheel are preserved. An irregular band in dark brown is painted along the top part of the rounded lip; the beginning of a slightly flaring neck is partly preserved.

Such vessels are known from various contexts in Egypt from the Thutmoside era onwards (mid-late 18^th Dynasty) – our example seems to be Thutmose III in date (or slightly later, maybe Amenhotep II). Its find position within the otherwise undisturbed section of the foundation trench of wall 31 is therefore very important and gives us a good dating indication for Building A!

P57 was documented by a detailed drawing in scale 1:1 and by digital photographs.

Back to some initial ideas: Bread at SAV1E

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Julia Budka

Having finished excavating Square 2b, the southern extension of our area SAV1E in the New Kingdom town, I would like to come back to some of my thoughts at the very beginning of our work there: It intrigued me from the start that especially in the southern part there are so numerous fragments of bread moulds – several hundreds of fragments were found this season, the detailed quantitative analysis is still on-going. Naturally, we connected this frequent appearance of bread with the neighbourhood to Temple A, located just 30 meters further to the South.

Today, having completed the section drawing of the Southern baulk of Square 2b, I noticed again a high number of bread cones and some ashy areas. It is especially feature 26 which is interesting in this respect and it shall be briefly introduced here: From the very start of digging, the South-western corner of Square 2b comprised a sandy depression and a lot of mud brick fragments.

Overview of eastern part of Sq. 2b – feature 26 is visible in the background.

We soon labelled this “feature 26”, obviously a kind of pit in the surroundings of feature 26 and not too far away from the storage bin 14. Going deeper and cleaning all the collapsed bricks, the size of feature 26 decreased from 1.85 x 2,05 m to just 1.30 x 1.70 m – but its outline became much clearer! Its eastern side is quite well preserved, no matter that the bricks are very decayed. It definitely had once a circular shape and both inside and towards the western part there were ashy deposits – and again, a large number of bread moulds appeared!

Feature 26 in its final state of excavation.

Altogether, feature 26 might really represent the remains of an oven – and maybe an area for heating the typical bread cones.

As feature 26 is located well outside of Building A, set against the natural gravel deposit on the sloping ground at the southern area of SAV1E, I tentatively propose that this structure belongs to some kind of an industrial zone between Temple A in the South and Building A in the North.

The final week on Sai Island

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Julia Budka

Today we started into our final week (Week 9) on Sai Island; luckily for us the temperature is increasing daily – nimiti don’t like it hot!

All of us are busy with finishing various tasks – Joerdis and Sebastian with final level plane drawings, Nicole with her fire dogs, Giulia started to look at Egyptian Marl clays, Vicky is drawing and washing pot sherds excavated this season at SAV1E and Huda switched from documenting sherds in the lab to writing up her report of a very busy and long season!

I spent today cleaning a bit more in Square 2b: things are definitely getting clearer and several new observations are possible. Nevertheless, it is already clear that we will have to extend digging in this area and will continue here next year, insha’allah!

Both pottery and small find databases increase daily and we will carry on processing, taking a lot of pictures of both objects and especially pottery sherds in the next days!

The tiny highlight of this week: a frog amulet

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Julia Budka

A very small faience object delighted us this week: a nicely done, really tiny (only 8 mm in lenght!) amulet in the form of a squatting frog with open mouth came up while cleaning around feature 28, the Post-New Kingdom stone foundation in Square 2b. It is in fact an uninscribed frog amulet or scaraboid as the flat, oval base was left uncarved.

The amulet was obviously once used on a string – whether on a necklace or a bracelet remains open – it has a regular perforation at its lateral side, piercing the amulet in the centre, not longitudinally. Unfortunately, the archaeological context – found in dense mud debris with mixed ceramic material, filling material of the depression south of feature 28 – does not provide any glue for dating.

In Ancient Egypt, frogs were primarily associated with fecundity, (female) fertility and birth – they are common amulets used during a long time span, both for the living and in funerary contexts. Beads in the form of frogs are also well known from New Kingdom domestic contexts – for example in Egypt in Amarna (see Anna Stevens 2006. Private religion at Amarna, pp. 56-57) – however, the frogs there differ in shape and have a characteristic upraised head. Very small frog pendants or amulets are reported from Eighteenth Dynasty votive contexts in Egypt – these I will have to check back home with a proper library! It would of course be tempting to connect SAV1E 294 with the temple area in the Pharaonic town of Sai! But as amulets in form of frogs survived well beyond the New Kingdom, until the Ptolemaic time and were also common in later phases of Nubian cultures (e.g. in Napatan tombs), I definitely want to deepen the search for parallels before our small frog from SAV1E can be tentatively dated by analogies! Regardless of its date, it is a very nice artefact and one of this season’s favorites!

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!

A bit of cleaning and more

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Julia Budka

Intrigued by the statistical analysis of the ceramics from Square 2b, the southern extension of SAV1E, with its high percentage of early to mid 18^th Dynasty pottery, I decided today to devote some more time to this area.

Overview of part of Square 2b, looking towards North-West showing feature 27 and its surroundings

A bit of cleaning around feature 27 (which yielded the Post-Pharaonic basket) was conducted and of the relevant ceramics 74 % are again 18^th Dynasty in date, only 26 % are post-dating the New Kingdom. However, this is a small assemblage of 114 sherds in total with only 12 diagnostic pieces of the 18th Dynasty. Fine-processing of the ceramics is on-going and I am very positive that more bits and pieces of New Kingdom activities at SAV1E will be soon traceable!

The foundations of walls of Building A

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Julia Budka

Today, apart from documenting ceramics in the lab and some mapping in the field, we focused on the North-eastern corner of Building A. As reported, we have a Northern wall running almost East-West, extending beyond the eastern wall towards the Nile. Unfortunately the corner between these two walls is heavily disturbed by a later pit, probably dug in Medieval or Ottoman times. Most of the bricks are lost or broken off; only a few have remained in place. Some of the mud plaster has survived as well – between bricks, but also with negative impressions of now lost mud bricks – thus allowing us to reconstruct part of the masonry. All in all, we are therefore able to trace the alignment of the wall. The northern wall is only 75 cm wide, whereas the eastern wall is more solid with a thickness of 106 cm, thus fitting nicely to a measurement of two Egyptian cubits.

To check the alignment and the junction between the walls, we partly exposed the foundation trench of the northern wall. It is well visible both from above and in the section – on both sides of the wall a quite narrow pit, filled with loose gravels and some large mud bricks. Very unexpectedly, two diagnostic pottery sherds were found in this otherwise findless foundation: both seem to give a very good dating indication for Building A at last! At the first glance, both are mid 18^th Dynasty in date and a painted rim sherd, shown here in its original find location south of wall 30, will be very indicative as it can most probably be tied down to Thutmose III or Amenhotep II.

Thus, a dating of our major New Kingdom structure at SAV1E to the reign of Thutmose III becomes more and more likely, confirming our thoughts about the development of the Pharaonic Town of Sai so far!

AcrossBorders

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

Category Archives: Archaeology