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.

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!

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!

More Observations from the Architectural Survey

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Ingrid Adenstedt

The architectural survey of the southern part of town proved to be very successful and many new observations could be made as well as old ones verified. Back in Vienna, the sketches and measurements taken on Sai will be integrated into a new map of the New Kingdom town and the written observations will be compiled into a so-called room book.

Overview of the residential buildings showing the grid-like pattern

Overall it can be said that the buildings in this part of the Pharaonic settlement were apparently well planned and executed. The walls are throughout perpendicular to each other, forming rectangular rooms and a strict grid of houses and streets.

Detail of the brick-laying technique

The building technique of the walls is very homogeneous as well: basically, only two brick formats were used, larger ones with 40x19x9cm at the so-called palatial building and smaller ones with 33x17x8cm elsewhere.The applied brickwork also always follows a similar pattern. One course of bricks consists of facing stretchers followed by a number of headers according to the thickness of the respective wall. In the alternating course, the stretchers were placed on the other side of the wall. Large gaps were left between the bricks, which could be up to 10cm wide. The thickness of the walls varies from about 54cm to 106cm, whereby one can assume that the houses with thicker walls had a second storey.

Of special note is the large residential building in the eastern part of the town. Apart from its considerable size, the execution of the brickwork and the building details sets it apart from the other dwelling units. The building had a central hall with six columns – two of the column bases are still in situ – and floors in the main rooms made of brick which were laid into a special pattern. The finely cut sandstone thresholds are further proof of the high standard of this residence.

Entrance into the so-called palatial building

Brick floor of the palatial building

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!

Praising Sai Island!

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Julia Budka

The first real weekend after finishing fieldwork at SAV1E with a bit of rest for all of the remaining team members!

It also gave us the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of Sai Island – we are very fortunate in working in awesome surroundings, a simply stunning landscape with impressive topographical features, a picturesque Nile river and beautiful fields, plants, animals and people!

The only downside is that we have to share all of this with millions of the small black flies, called nimiti, who seem to have a clear preference for Sai Island as well! But what we found out during the last weeks: Nimiti get most handsome if you use the flash photographing them – and they will appear on almost every picture!

Overview of the southern area of SAV1E, with “negatives” of nimiti in front of the camera lens

Post-New Kingdom evidence at SAV1E

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Julia Budka

As reported, we found a well preserved shallow basket with a diameter of ca. 30 cm close to storage bin 14, well outside of Building A. The material in this southern area of SAV1E was characterised by large amounts of mud brick debris and very mixed pottery, also comprising a lot of 18^th Dynasty material. Nevertheless, the basket itself can be well dated to Post-New Kingdom times: Plaiting is unknown for Pharaonic basketry, being introduced probably just from the Graeco-Roman period onwards. Sewn-plaits technique as it appears in our basket from SAV1E is especially common in Nubia until nowadays (see W. Wendrich, in: Nicholson/Shaw (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technologies, 2000, p. 261 – many thanks to F. Doyen for kindly checking this reference back at home!).

Examples of modern baskets

Even the baskets we are using for transporting our sherds are very similar!

Just compare the plaiting of these two pictures:

Detail of modern basket

Detail of basket from SAV1E

the basket from SAV1E suffered of course from post-depositional erosion and especially from termites – its base was completely eaten by these insects and unfortunately we were not able to recover it in one piece. It fell to pieces, but was of course documented by drawing and photos prior to moving.

All in all, I am suggesting a Medieval to Sub-recent date for the basket from our excavation, favouring slightly an Ottoman date (16^th century AD). There is an intriguing appearance of Ottoman pottery in the debris south of Building A – and in the south-western corner of our excavation we have a stone foundation for a very late rectangular structure which might also date to this time. We will present more about this feature in the upcoming week!

The basket – and the features respectively activities possibly associated with it – adds up to a more complete understanding of our area within the Pharaonic town of Sai, in use over a timespan covering more than 3000 years – from the fifteenth century BC to the sixteenth century AD!

AcrossBorders

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

Category Archives: Sai Island