Another reunion in Vienna – preparing Tomb 26 for final publication

The winter term is about to start in Munich, but I took the opportunity of the period still free of teaching obligations to spend some time in Vienna for different meetings and especially for get-togethers with former and also future team members for my work in Sudan.

Especially productive and full of positive memories was yesterday’s reunion with AcrossBorders’ physical anthropologists, Andrea Stadlmayer and Marlies Wohlschlager.

Andrea and Marlies have already published first insights on the burials within Tomb 26 – available online as part of our recently published book “From Microcosm to Macrocosm”. But the complete data from Tomb 26 will be published as a monograph in Vienna, in one of the OREA series by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. Yesterday, we discussed the general outline of this book and very soon talked already about exciting details about the New Kingdom interments of Khnummose and others in Tomb 26. There is still a lot of work to do, but we’re all very much looking forward to this task, bringing together results of three seasons of fieldwork with plenty of data from post-excavation processing.

Insha’allah the book on Tomb 26 will already be available next year – compiling all kinds of data from the excavation, the objects, the architecture to the human remains, C14 dates and strontium isotope analysis and thus highlightening the tomb’s significance for understanding New Kingdom Sai.

Presenting new C14 results from Tomb 26 in Vienna

Teaching classes and exams were finished this week in Munich and now some time for research has arrived! While we are still busy preparing the next monographs about the New Kingdom town of Sai, I am delighted that I will take a short break in the upcoming week going to Vienna. Thanks to an invitation for a lecture at the NHM Vienna, I will be talking about Tomb 26 and our latest findings there.

Among others, I will be presenting for the first time the very interesting results from C14 samples from Tomb 26. Unfortunately, the bone samples all failed to yield any extractable collagen for dating. This is why only charcoal samples were used and processed by the Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory. Nevertheless, these results are informative and support the phases of use of Tomb 26 as proposed based on the stratigraphy and the ceramic evidence.

I would like to highlight the results for the individual who was the first person interred in Chamber 5. This adult male was the one buried along the northern wall with a deposit of flower pots and other vessels at his feet.

Burial in Chamber 5 of Tomb 26 associated with flower pots deposit.

My archaeological dating – not earlier than Thutmose III, most likely mid-18th Dynasty – is now nicely supported by the calibrated dates of 1451-1291BC.

Looking much forward to this small break and the trip to Vienna which is very likely to result in fresh input for our ongoing analysis of Tomb 26.