The tempo of the working day gathers pace…
Being a new member of the British Museum’s excavation team at Amara West I’ve had to adapt to a different set of working conditions including a new set of colleagues, unfamiliar archaeology, wide-ranging temperatures and a spectacular dawn commute to work on a crowded boat down the Nile.
Having left behind my regular archaeological job in Britain where one typically investigates ditches, field systems and scant remains of housing I now find myself in one of the best preserved pharaonic towns (chiefly thanks to 3000 years of windblown sand).
As I’ve worked on other archaeological projects in the near east I have encountered buildings constructed in mud brick before. Many archaeological principles remain the same and now that the excavation is nearing a close I’m very familiar with the process of revealing buried architecture among collapsed buildings, and clay floor surfaces and recovering a variety of domestic objects such as large grinding stones, ovens and masses and masses of pottery.
My task is to supervise the excavation of a narrow house dating to about 1100 BC with local workmen removing the archaeological structures and deposits after I identify, draw and describe them. This task is complicated by the fact that several different phases of architecture still exist in the same space. Distinguishing them and reconstructing the original sequence of events is a crucial component of the work.
Now that the end of this season is approaching, the tempo of the working day gathers pace – while the number of as yet unanswered questions increases.
After excavating three rooms in the building almost completely, only the standing architecture and the very earliest floors (and deposits) remain, my attention now turns to the rest of the house next door, partly excavated in 2010 during last year’s season.
At present we think there are three architectural phases, although identifying each one and its true extent sometimes feels like informed speculation at best – or at worst a confusing set of circular relationships. A simple sketch plan of the archaeology as you interpret it can be much more constructive than unsatisfying discussions of the buildings under the glare of the midday Saharan sun.
In most cases the answers usually reveal themselves with further digging…
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