End of the 2015 season on Elephantine Island

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Julia Budka

Six weeks of excavation and study season passed by very quickly – we closed the work on House 55 at Elephantine yesterday, preparing to fly back home tomorrow.

The results are very satisfying ‒ both the new information gained from the continued excavation by Cornelius von Pilgrim and the new data from the studied material ‒ and support the special importance of House 55 as extraordinary building within the New Kingdom town of Elephantine. Meg Gundlach did a great job in object registration, assisted by Mona el-Azab, Oliver Frank Stephan and Eva Hemauer managed to get more than 350 drawings of complete vessels and diagnostic pieces done!

A preliminary macroscopic classification of the Nubian wares from House 55 was conducted by Giulia D’Ercole. Four main groups of fabrics were distinguished and – other than at Sai Island – the corpus here at the border of Egypt is clearly dominated by fine-medium and medium wares dung and/or chopped straw tempered.
I personally concentrated on processing the pottery from this season and the one from last year – more than 41.000 sherds passed through my fingers in the last weeks, including over 12.500 diagnostic pieces. The latter comprised almost 2000 Nubian sherds – quite a substantial amount which will be further assessed in the next season.

In less than a month we will be already working on the other island currently under investigation by AcrossBorders – the 2016 season on Sai Island is approaching and promises similar exciting results like our work at Elephantine.

For now, many thanks to all participants and everybody involved making our work here possible – Ma’a Salama and looking much forward to the 2016 season in House 55!

From Leipzig to Munich: A Decision Made Because of Perfect Perspectives

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Oliver Frank Stephan

Hello, it’s me. I was wondering if after all these DIGS you’d like to meet…

Oliver Frank Stephan, Master of Arts in Egyptology with a thesis that dealt with wooden face fragments of (mostly) Late Period coffin-lids from the Egyptian Museum (Georg Steindorff) of Leipzig University. After finishing my masters in Leipzig, I quickly decided to take part in Julia Budka’s AcrossBorders project…

So hello from the other side… introducing myself after one fruitful year, looking back at four excavations in Egypt and Sudan: a huge amount of drawn pottery, a lot of experience and some new perspectives.

I had my first season on Elephantine for seven weeks from 18 October to 06 December 2014. My task was to draw pottery sherds and complete vessels from House 55. The current excavation of this intriguing building conducted by Cornelius von Pilgrim allows a very detailed analysis of material dating to the early and mid-18^th Dynasty. Here the focus is on a functional analysis of the ceramics found at Elephantine as an important settlement in southern Egypt, at the border to Nubia. AcrossBorders is joining Cornelius von Pilgrim’s ongoing work on Elephantine, with Julia focusing her research also on the relations with Egyptian settlements in Nubia, especially Sai Island.

Before I joined Julia’s project, I worked with New Kingdom pottery and Old Kingdom stone vessels at Leipzig University for the first time. My first season on Elephantine showed me the broad variety of pottery: big and small dishes, bowls of different sizes, squat jars, cups, pilgrim flasks, beakers, flower pots, amphoras, zirs, beer jars, baking dishes, bread moulds and many more. Some of those were really challenging but with much practice I can now deal with all of those types of pottery.

For me, the most interesting thing about pottery is not only their shapes or use, but also the details of the production process. While drawing pottery you develop an understanding of their creation and it’s quite special to see that you can put your own fingers in ancient fingerprints which the potters left on the vessels. With every fingerprint I get more excited to get additional information out of these „pots“.

After my first experiences in drawing and understanding early New Kingdom pottery I planned to go to Sudan from 12 February till 15 March 2015. On Sai Island I noticed many similarities to the Elephantine material and got even more confident in dealing with pottery, seeing the importance of how easy it can be to date with the analysis of pottery (cf. Budka, J., “The early New Kingdom at Sai Island: Preliminary results based on the pottery analysis (4^th Season 2010),” Sudan & Nubia 15, 2011, 23-33). Those who are following this blog already know about Feature 15 from Sai Island. From here, there was a huge quantity of complete and almost complete vessels which I drew during four weeks in Sudan.

As you can see, it’s hard to stop your interest in pottery, so I decided to assist Julia for another four weeks in Luxor with the South Asasif Conservation Project (SACP) by Elena Pischikova. The main task was to draw most of the complete vessels from TT 391 of Karabasken, which came from Area I (the courtyard of TT 391) and Room IA (a burial chamber in the north wall of the courtyard) while Julia was processing and analysing the diagnostic sherds for the database (cf. Budka, J., Pottery from the tomb of Karakhamun, in Tombs of the South Asasif Necropolis, Thebes. Karakhamun (TT 223) and Karabasken (TT 391) in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, ed. by Elena Pischikova, Cairo 2014, 247–262). To sum up this site, I’d like to give a short overview of the vessel types I worked with: conical beakers, pot stands, large storage vessels, small two handled cooking pots, oil jars containing a black and oily substance and goldfish bowls. Most of this material is dating to Ptolemaic period and it is an excellent experience to work in a funerary context, as well as a different time period (but you will hear more about this from me later…).

Now I am again on Elephantine, working on New Kingdom pottery, with exciting shapes and types of vessels. Work started 26 October and will end 5 December. There are a few days of work left and I surely will enjoy every minute dealing with my special friends.

My enthusiasm and my will to get more into pottery and dating with it is now at an all-time high. I am looking forward to upcoming seasons here on Elephantine, Sai and Asasif. That’s why I can happily announce that I will move to Munich at the end of January 2016 to extend my knowledge of the intricacies of pottery.

Fishing for more details of 18th Dynasty contexts

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Julia Budka

We are already well into week 3 here at Elephantine. Reinforcement from Munich reached us – Giulia D’Ercole and Mona Elazab joined us yesterday. Giulia is concentrating on the petrographic assessment of the Nubian fabrics in comparison to Sai Island. Mona is assisting Meg Gundlach in the object registration while Eva Hemauer and Oliver Frank Stephan are still busy drawing ceramic vessels.

Two groups of vessels are of special interest besides the Nubian wares. First, the intriguing fire dogs – with a recent find from today, we are now up to 4 pieces directly associated with house 55. Compared to Sai Island, this is of course an almost ridiculous small amount. However, the total number of fire dogs from all early-mid 18^th dynasty levels at Elephantine only comes up to 9! So actually the amount of fire dogs found in our building is quite significant within the local context. And since excavation of house 55 continues, there might even be more fire dogs waiting for us!

The second group of vessels are the so called “fish dishes” which kept us busy both at Sai and here at Elephantine in the past years. One of my first ideas was that the preference for Nile silt “fish dishes” on Sai Island compared to Marl clay version indicate that the “real” Egyptian Marl B/E trays were frequently reproduced in Nubia – and for this local material (Nile silt) was used. However, already last year things got more complicated: from site SAV1 West, a large number of Marl “fish dishes” were unearthed falling into exactly the same types as known at Elephantine, currently being studied for house 55.

Today, I just a very nice fragment of a Nile “fish dish” on my desk – coming from house 55 and closely resembling the Sai pieces – in ware, technique, shape and decorative pattern. Checking the pottery database, it surprised me a bit that from 19 “fish dishes” documented so far in house 55, 6 are made in Nile clay. For all 18th Dynasty layers and a total of 33 “fish dishes” only 9 were made in Nile clay. Thus, if one checks the proportions between Nile and Marl “fish dishes” not just on Elephantine, but takes the specific example of house 55 it becomes clear that the Nile versions were also quite frequent (31 %). The general preference for Marl clay is of course persistent for “fish dishes” at Egyptian sites (see e.g. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2014/03/21/pottery-project-guest-blog-the-enigmatic-fish-dishes-of-the-petrie-museum/).

All in all, the current study of the material from house 55 nicely illustrates the rich potential of a focused analysis of finds from one specific context, especially if these data are at a later stage compared to other contexts on the site-level and, if possible, even on a more regional scale like we are aiming for with our study.

Linking and differentiating Sai and Elephantine further

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Julia Budka

The first week of our season on Elephantine just flew by! There are also many things and tasks keeping us busy, besides the glorious surroundings and wonderful setting.

As announced earlier on this blog, the 2015 season on Elephantine, concentrates on the material excavated by the Swiss Institute from House 55. The presence of Nubian ceramics is highly relevant, especially for establishing links between the region of the First Cataract and Sai Island.

While my assistants are busy with drawing Egyptian type vessels, I was mainly focusing on Nubian pottery this week. A set of 35 Nubian sherds was studied in detail and drawn. There are striking similarities between the Nubian pottery corpus from Elephantine and Sai – especially regarding the fabrics, both the black topped fine ware and cooking pots with basketry impressions. But there are also certain differences, suggesting maybe a more “local” Lower Nubian tradition here on Elephantine like a preference for incised decoration.

The percentage of Nubian ceramics within House 55 very nicely compares to both SAV1 North and SAV1 West – from 4119 sherds studied in this first week, 140 were Nubian pieces. 3.4 % equals our findings in Sai Island where the average was 3-5 % during the early to mid-18^th Dynasty.

Among others, Egyptian water jars, so-called zir vessels, are common features here on Elephantine. A considerable number of them are present in House 55.

Typical early to mid-18th Dynasty Marl zir vessels from Elephantine (after Budka 2005).

Although the typical Nile clay versions of this vessel group are also known, most of these large jars are made in a very typical Marl clay variant. And here another difference to Sai can be observed – at Sai, the Nile clay vessels dominate, the Marl clay vessels are present, but only in small numbers.

Typical Nile clay zir-like vessel from Sai (after Budka 2011).

Whether this indicates a different system of water storage or the Nile clay variants simply replaced the Marl clay jars in Sai (produced locally “on demand” once the imported ones were no longer functionable/out of stock), will be considered further, taking related pottery types like drinking cups and beakers into account.

References

Budka, J. 2005 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, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 61, 90–116.

Budka, J. 2011 The early New Kingdom at Sai Island: Preliminary results based on the pottery analysis (4^th Season 2010), Sudan & Nubia 15, 23–33.

Making progress – post and pre-excavation working steps

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Julia Budka

Another jour fixe brought most of AcrossBorders’ team members together yesterday – after a very intense summer full of excavations in Egypt (Asasif, Abydos…), lab work (geoarchaeological samples, strontium isotope analysis, mollusks…), data base updates (pottery) & conferences (Florence, Vienna, Athens)!

Currently travelling back and forth between Vienna and Munich, I am very happy that the planned publications by Ingrid Adenstedt (reconstruction of SAV1; architectural report) and Florence Doyen (SAV1 North) are well in time and almost completed. Furthermore, nice first results came up from the strontium isotope analysis!

Within the framework of my FWF START-project, a first set of samples from Sai Island (soil, water, recent and ancient animal bones) were processed, thanks to a cooperation with Thomas Prohaska, at the Department of Chemistry – VIRIS Laboratory of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. Anika Retzmann presented these data at the 3rd Doc Day 2015 in Tulln, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences on Oct. 13. The poster was entitled “Human mobility along the Nile: Preliminary strontium isotope analyses for migration studies in ancient Nubia” and illustrated the Sr isotope ratio of the environmental samples from Sai Island. Very exciting already and I am looking much forward to the next field season and further sampling!

Besides lab work and databases, we are currently also getting ready for the upcoming season on Elephantine! Work will again focus on the pottery and small finds from House 55 and is scheduled for late October until early December. With the new discovery of feature 15 and its contents at SAV1 East, I am excited to conduct a fresh comparison of aspects of the material culture from Sai and Elephantine during the early to mid-18^th Dynasty. Now off to Vienna, we’ll keep you posted!

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.

Down and up again – impressions from the shaft of tomb 26 on Sai

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Julia Budka

Having just submitted a paper about our new discovery of tomb 26 in cemetery SAC5, Sai Island, for Sokar (focusing on the pyramidion of the deputy of Kush Hornakht), I got to review the entire documentation of the excavation of the shaft in March 2015.

As a reminder: the rectangular shaft (2.6 x 1.8 m) of tomb 26 is a bit more than 5.2 m deep – it has several interesting features and revealed some significant finds. I would like to share some of them in the following photographic time line:

March 3: The outline of the shaft is discovered, hurray!

March 4: First foot holes appear on the lateral sides! Current depth: 1.7 m!

March 5: Down at 2 m! Work gets more difficult!

March 5: A schist slab appears along the southern side.

March 5: Martin Fera documents the situation with the fully exposed schist slab with SFM – down at 2.5 m.

March 5: Getting ready to get the slab out…

March 5: Done – mabrouk to all!

March 5, afternoon: Uuuups… really a challenge to measure this deep shaft…

March 7: Work continues, worked stone blocks appear!

March 7: Space is limited down at the shaft, but the foot holes are perfect for climbing up and down.

March 7: Standing safely in the foot holes, I could shoot photos in both directions.

March 8: The entrance of the burial chamber appears on the northern side!

March 8: Together with other worked stone, sitting on complete pottery vessels, the pyramidion of Hornakht is discovered and cleaned!

March 9: The situation below the pyramidion – lots of nice pots!

March 10: Shaft base reached, entrance of burial chamber cleared!

March 10: Martin using the ancient foot holes during the final SFM documentation.

March 11: Shaft backfilled again – secure to wait for the 2016 season!

Last steps in recording Faience vessels from Sai Island, New Kingdom town

Posted on September 8, 2015 by Julia Budka

Time flies by – only some months ago, we were working in the magazine of Sai Island documenting the different groups of objects. Sabine Tschorn had the special task to focus on faience vessels form the New Kingdom town. Most of the vessels within this group represent Nun- or marsh-bowls, frequently depicting marsh scenes with fishes, lotus plants and other motifs.

Sabine just came for a few days to Munich – in order to discuss things, to finalise small details of the drawings and records. We are in particular focusing on the distribution of the faience vessels – most of them were found in SAV1 North and SAV1 West and seem to be of late 18th Dynasty date. Adding the stratigraphical information and context as well as the data from the associated pottery will hopefully allow Sabine the fine-dating of some of the fragments.

Looking much forward to the outcome of these days of checking and adding post-excavation data!

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.

AcrossBorders

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

Category Archives: New Kingdom