Excursion to Abri: comparing ancient and modern pottery traditions

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Giulia d'Ercole

The scientific analyses of the first set of samples from the last Field Season (SIAM Mission 2013) are almost concluded in Vienna and the preliminary processing of the data has already shown some very interesting and intriguing results.
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During the current season my main task is primarily selecting new ceramic specimens for the next analyses – having a large set of samples appears extremely important especially for the chemical results in order to improve the statistical reliability of the data! Beside many different New Kingdom wares (Egyptian and Local Nile clays, Nubian fabrics, Marl clays and Imports from Canaan, the Levant and the Oases) from the excavation areas SAV1 North, East and West within the Pharaonic town, we selected also some modern traditional ceramics to be used as comparative samples for the ancient production.

For this reason we went to the near-by city of Abri last week: Huda, our inspector of NCAM, and also Erich joined me – as a geologist Erich is also interested in seeing where the modern potters collect the raw material for their vessels.
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Not so far away from the centre of the village and from the area of the market there is in fact an intact ceramic workshop where a family of modern potters (‘bagadra’) still produce different kind of vessels according to a traditional recipe handed down from one generation to another!

Thanks to Huda (for this occasion our personal interpreter!) we had the unique opportunity to interview the potters and to ask them about their job, the function of the vessels and the manufacturing process!
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The pots are wheel-made (on a slow wheel), even though the upper part of the vessel is sometimes finished by coiling. Before the firing, they are put for 2-3 days upside down in the sand and then left some more days under the sun till they become completely dry.

Over 50 vessels are produced and then sold to Abri, Sai, Ernetta and even to Khartoum every month! This production consists mainly in large jars (zir) used for containing and keeping cool water, but they also make smaller vessels (e. g. milk/mish jars), cooking pots (hala), flower pots, incense burners and so on!
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In addition, what appears really interesting is that the potters seem partially to differentiate their ‘recipe’ (in terms of choice of clayey raw material and tempers), according to the specific function and the performance required by the vessel!

We learnt a lot from this conversation and we came back home very inspired bringing with us some nice ceramic pieces kindly offered by the potters – they have been already documented and will be soon submitted for the next laboratory analyses!

Preparing samples for Neutron Activation Analysis

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

Time really goes by… not just for us but also for our dear ceramic samples. Not too long ago they were still hidden under the warm sun of Sudan in the nice setting of Sai Island. Since then, they have passed through the hands of different people and they have been – in turn – been photographed, drawn, recorded in our File Maker database and, finally, selected for the different laboratory analysis.
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At the end of July, thanks to our cooperation with the Departments of Lithospheric Research and of Geodynamics and Sedimentology and the great work done by Claudia Beybel at the ‘Dünnschlifflabor’, we successfully managed to conclude the preparation of the thin sections for a first group of 36 ceramics. Just today, we submitted the second group of 24 samples to the lab – so we will have a total of 60 thin sections for petrographic studies.

After the summer break, the first group of samples were taken to the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics (AI) for the Neutron Activation Analysis. Johannes Sterba, Ing.Dr. will be my scientific supervisor at the AI, introducing me to the wonderful world of INAA. He has not only a lot of experience in NAA and chemical analyses on ceramic materials, but also in working with archaeologists and ceramics from Egypt and the Levant.
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Under his supervision, I have prepared all the samples and on Friday August 23 Johannes put them in the machine ‒ so by the end of September we will hopefully have the first results! Waiting for them, I will share some of my experience about the preparation of the samples, illustrated by pictures taken in the lab.

Step 1 – Sampling strategy

Example for grinding the sample in the agata mortar.

Drilling one of the samples.

Some of the prepared samples.

One of the main advantages of INAA is that you need only very few grams of powder for each sample!

For most of our ceramic samples we just selected the small chips produced after the break for the thin section and ground them in an agate mortar to obtain a fine and homogeneous powder. This procedure takes only few minutes, but then you have to clean carefully both the mortar and the pestle in order to avoid any contamination between the samples (and an agate mortar can be quite heavy to hold and to carry…).

Seven potsherds were sampled by drilling, carefully avoiding the slip and/or the painting!

The obtained powder is temporarily collected in small plastic containers.

Step 2 – Weighing the powder

After one night in the oven at 90 °C, the sample is weighted by means of a precision balance (we need about 100 mg of powder) and transferred into pure silica vials. Both the vials and the spoon used for this operation are very small and thin. This is a good training both for your nerves and your hands (better not drink too much coffee before!)

The precision balance for weighting the powder.

Step 3 – Sealing the vials by fire

Before going into the reactor and to be irradiated, all the vials must be sealed. This operation is quite delicate and, at the same time, extremely important: poor seals will cause samples to open during irradiation! The sealing is made by fire, using a soldering iron arrangement in the same laboratory in which the samples were prepared. Once finished, we used an engraving tool to write the number of the sample on the side of each vial.

Important step: sealing the vials by fire.

At this point everything is ready to start with the irradiation… just the time for our small samples to ‘rest’ a little bit immersed into a pure water solution!

Sealed sample within pure water solution.

Pots & pieces

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Julia Budka

In some respect I am very old-fashioned when it comes to analysing pottery – for example, I am still a big fan of organising a preliminary corpus of shapes on paper, with the copied drawings! It nice to have all of them together on a table and arranging them into groups, with the big advantage to simple add pieces or rearrange them differently.

A very uncomplaining cutter…

Over 800 pencil drawings from 3 field seasons at Sai Island (2011-2013) have been quite a challenge for Daniela the last weeks – after the heroic accomplishment of copying all the drawings, she is now using the spaciousness of our nice office to deal with the arrangement of the copied pieces.

This old-fashioned but effective mode of arranging pottery drawings according to shapes and ware groups goes back to my training at Elephantine – first supervised by Dietrich Raue, helping with his Old Kingdom material and later adapting it to my New Kingdom material. At Elephantine, one of the prime considerations was to have a back-up copy of all drawings in the dig house.

Samples of paper copies of pottery drawings from Elephantine: fragments of decorated marl clay vessels.

A nice group of decorated vessels from mid 18^th Dynasty contexts at Elephantine provides good parallels for sherds from the New Kingdom Town of Sai Island. Marl clay bottles with a long neck are painted either in red and black, in red, black and blue, or in black only. The motifs comprise simple linear designs as well as floral and faunal elements (e.g. flowers, lotus buds, ducks and papyrus). The as-yet published parallels are dated to the reigns of Amenhotep II to Thutmose IV (see especially Hope 1987, 108–109 and 116), which corresponds well with the stratigraphic evidence at Elephantine (see Budka 2010) and also the findings from Sai. On the basis of the parallels, a Theban provenience has been proposed for the decorated vessels found at Elephantine – and this seems also very likely for Sai. We will address this issue of provenience in the upcoming years by means of scientific analysis, especially with Neutron Activation Analysis and XRF, hopefully providing more information about the contacts and exchange of wares and pots between Upper Egypt and Upper Nubia.

References

Budka 2010 = J. Budka, The New Kingdom-Pottery from Elephantine, in D. Raue, C. von Pilgrim, P. Kopp, F. Arnold, M. Bommas, J. Budka, M. Schultz, J. Gresky, A. Kozak and St. J. Seidlmayer, Report on the 37^th season of excavation and restoration on the island of Elephantine, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 84, 2010, 350-352.

Hope 1987= C. A. Hope, Innovation and Decoration of Ceramics in the Mid-18^th Dynasty, CCÉ 1, 1987, 97-122.

First week at the Lab

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

Here in Vienna, things are proceeding quickly and very well. Thanks to the efficiency and the professionalism of our colleagues from the Departments of Lithospheric Research and of Geodynamics and Sedimentology and to the excellent scientific facilities available at their ‘Dünnschlifflabor’ (thin section laboratory) in the Centre of Earth Sciences, the first set of samples is already prepared: ready for being looked at under the microscope!
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First set of thin sections.

So, last week, coming back from London, we started also with the preparation of the second group of ceramics: 24 samples including different Nubian and Egyptian fabrics as well as imports.

At present, I’m temporary settled in the lab where I’m splitting my day between the observation of the first set of thin sections at the microscope and the preparation of the new samples together with Claudia Beybel who is patiently teaching me how to realize – step by step – a perfect ‘Dünnschliff’!

First of all, before starting with the cutting, the samples need to be consolidated, so they were immerged in a special glue (araldite) and put in vacuum so that the glue can penetrate deeply into the ceramic material. Since several of our samples (for example the Nubian wares) are very porous and brittle, this operation has sometimes to be repeated more than one time.
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As a next step, the samples remain 24 hours in the oven at 40 degree Celsius to become completely dry.

On the next day, they are finally ready to being cut in order to obtain a straight slice,almost completely plan.

The new cutting machine.

Thanks to the new wonderful machine present in the lab, this procedure took relatively short time and the result was perfect.

Further steps involve the grinding and the polishing of the section; for this operation horizontal rotary plates with diamond discs of various grit sizes that magnetically adhere to the grinding wheel were used.
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Polishing the section on the plate.

The plates work in water and in transition from a coarse to the next fine grit size, the surface of the sample becomes perfectly flat and smooth! The final polishing is realized by hand with Si abrasive powder.

Gluing the section on the glass.

At this point, the samples can be glued on the glass slides, previously cleaned and matte on one side. After another night in the oven at 40 degree Celsius, the samples are ready to be cut at 30 micron.

And for Claudia and me it is finally the time for a coffee together on the nice terrace of the department!

Making progress: Towards petrographic studies of our pottery samples

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Julia Budka

Today, Giulia is invited to watch first steps of works with our samples in the thin section laboratory of the Center for Earth Sciences, University of Vienna, Department of Lithospheric Research. We brought the first 12 samples for thin sections there yesterday – a group of Marl clay amphorae and another group of Oasis ware.

We are very grateful to all the colleagues who made this cooperation possible – the infrastructure at the Center is fabulous and promises high quality results, important steps forward for our petrographic studies on New Kingdom ceramics from Sai Island! The thin sections will allow Giulia to investigate under various types of microscopes the properties of the individual wares in detail and to assess the microstructure of the sherds. This will help us tremendously to understand the differences we have made between the wares from the macroscopic point of view and might already challenge some of our classification. For example, one “Marl D” sherd is a bit peculiar and different from the others – I suspect it might be a Mix clay after all, but hopefully the thin sections and the comparison between the samples will shed light on these questions.

We wish to thank in particular Prof. Christian Köberl, Deputy Head of the Department of Lithospheric Research (and Director General of the Natural History Museum Vienna) for his kind support, Dieter Mader for welcoming us at the department and Sigrid Hrabe and Claudia Beybel for the work in the lab, for realising the thin sections of our samples and especially for giving Giulia the great opportunity to learn a little bit about the technical steps of work.

The pottery samples: materials and methods

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Giulia d'Ercole

The ceramic samples for the archaeometric analyses comprise by now sixty-one sherds selected during the last field season from both sectors SAV 1North (48 samples) and SAV 1East (13 samples) of Sai Island New Kingdom Town.

All of the sherds have been classified according to their macroscopic features and these data were collected in the File Maker Database of the project.

In addition, prior to proceeding with the laboratory analyses, we took photographs of both the surfaces and sections of each sample. The samples are labelled with a new code: the acronym “SAV/S” (= “Sai Island New Kingdom Town/Sample”) followed by a progressive number, starting from SAV/S 01, and linked to the original ceramic number as recorded in the pottery database.
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NC 702.1 (SAV/S 14) – Dish in Nile clay B2/C2

The samples from both SAV 1North and SAV 1 East come from distinct areas, structures and layers of the archaeological deposit. They include different kinds of wares and shapes representing the variability of the pottery corpus. Among others, ceramics comprise Nubian beakers and cooking pots, Egyptian Nile silt wares (dishes, bowls, bread plates and bread moulds), Marl clay jars and imported amphora from both Canaan and the Egyptian oases.
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NC 702.8 (SAV/S 23) – squat jar in Marl A2

NC 766 (SAV/S 41) – Oasis amphora

Forthcoming petrographic and chemical analyses will help us discriminating between these different samples and answering very important archaeological questions concerning the provenience, the technology of production, as well as the geographical distribution of these ceramics.

Strengthening AcrossBorders in Vienna

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Julia Budka

Today, Giulia d’Ercole joined us at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. As new PostDOC researcher of AcrossBorders, she will investigate in the next three years chemical, mineralogical and petrographic properties of New Kingdom ceramics from Sai. Giulia has worked at Sai Island since 2009, focused on the local ceramic tradition of the Prehistory (within the research project directed by Dr. Elena Garcea, Cassino University, Italy). She has already conducted petrographic (MI), mineralogical (X-Ray Diffraction) and chemical (X-Ray Fluorescence) analysis on pelitic and ceramic samples from selected sites on the island. She will now expend her experience of archaeometry to apply scientific analysis on samples from New Kingdom contexts on Sai.

I hope that Giulia will very soon settle down in her new domicile Vienna – “Seervaas und herzlich Willkommen!”

AcrossBorders

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

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