Wrapping up the loose ends: ASP 2024, Week 2
Hello again, from the past!
Week 2 of my time in Abydos has been equally as productive as the first, although the heat is slowly increasing day by day - I shouldn’t be complaining though, I get to work inside a shady lab while my colleagues are out in the field.
I was able to knock out a large amount of my measuring last week, which primarily left the tasks of talking to my team about my dissertation (a conversation I won’t bore you with here, however, it was very fruitful) photographing items, rectifying duplicate tags, and the unexpected additional task of sorting pottery for drawing. Luckily Ayman, who has been our photographer through every season, was able to take some time to do the photography, which sped my work up exponentially. Further, Ayman’s photography is clear enough that his photos can be sent to an illustrator to do archaeological drawings for me, which is such a godsend since I am not yet trained in artifact illustration.
In a second strike of luck, the duplicate tags, which I assumed would take the majority of my time in Abydos, were almost all the result of a typo in the record, or the accidental creation of a duplicate entry. Had this actually been the duplicate use of a single tag number, this would have required a significant amount of rectification in the record, as well as the issuing of a new tag number (which is more work than it seems).
This, pretty much, just left the sorting of pottery for analysis and drawing by our ceramicist. Pottery for our project was almost completely handled by a team in the field, which resulted in many of us not seeing some of the really nice vessel fragments that had been recovered during excavation. While I was only tasked with finding the diagnostic pieces (pieces of a broken vessel that allow us to extrapolate the vessel’s shape or decoration) in a small bag of fragments, I still found some really interesting things. Some of these things included a great example of the two types of material used for Egyptian ceramics (Nile Silt - the red material, and Marl - the white material), and a decorative program that allows for the exact dating of the vessel (and thus the tomb) to the Abydos I period.
The bag also contained something else really fascinating - apparently a large chunk of mud-like material had been accidentally bagged with these fragments, remaining unidentified until I poured the bag onto my analysis table. The size and shape - particularly the bowl-like imprint on the bottom - led me to realize that this was the solidified contents of an offering vessel, likely a shallow bowl.
Although it’s impossible to identify the material makeup of this item without XRF or (more destructively) breaking it open, a quick examination of the surface suggests that this may be the remains of bread, or possibly the mix of mud and seeds, similar to the makeup of our “corn mummy” but in a different form. What likely happened was that a vessel containing some form of foodstuffs was deposited in a shallow bowl and offered at the site of one of the small pit burials. Over time the interior solidified and the bowl broke, either due to animal activity or the robbery of the tomb in antiquity. The solidified offering remained, separate from its vessel but preserved the shape of the bowl in its solidified form. While this is a really wonderful find on its own, it also represents one of many examples of items that will require further analysis to allow them to fully spill their secrets.
Afaf’s work for this phase of the project is also coming to an end at the end of this week, but she will return two more times this year to keep working on the material. The results of the shaft she’s been examining are as follows: Although we thought the individuals in the two other shafts were wealthy, as reflected in their good health, the individuals from the sloped shaft are on a completely different level. Of the 17 individuals examined, there was only a single cavity and only one example of possible nutritional deficiency at some point in the individual’s lifetime. There were no spinal stressors (the other shaft contained multiple individuals who dealt with slipped discs) and no fractures. This seems to suggest that these individuals lived a very (relatively speaking) easy life, with the body indicating a mostly sedentary job, possibly in administration. This, when combined with the items found in this tomb - most notably the bricks stamped with the name of the king - seems to indicate that this family belonged to the top echelon of society during the Ahmosid period. This seems to only raise more unanswerable questions about who these individuals were, but it’s still so fascinating to think about.
Afaf also was able to identify two pieces of evidence that seem to suggest that individuals in the Ahmose Cemetery received some amount of mummification. Prior to working in Egypt I didn’t realize how difficult it can be in some cases to identify mummification because I was used to seeing royal mummies, as most of the public is. This, however, represented the peak of mummification, when in reality, even elites couldn’t afford this level of preservation. Instead, mummification could be as simple as a linen wrapping and little additional body treatment; a practice that relied on the low humidity and hot sand of the burial to do the majority of the work. Afaf was able to identify the remains of linen wrapping and some possible resin-coated flesh on one of the long bones of our sloped shaft, while Ayman found a single bone still wrapped in fabric that had been bagged for photography. Although a small amount of evidence, this opens a million new pathways for examining the burials and the funerary practices at this period in time. With all of this excitement this season, I can’t wait to see what else Afaf can uncover when she returns!
Ultimately, what this week in the lab has really taught me is how much of an archaeological dissertation is a group project. While the text and ideas are my own, if I didn’t have the assistance of a photographer, osteologist, ceramicist, and illustrator, it likely would take me an additional decade to finish my project. The dissertation process can feel really lonely, so it is nice to see how many other people are invested in getting this data out into the field, and how many people are rooting for me from the inside.
This emotional overtone also extended into my last night in the dig house this week, before I head to Luxor. Debbie has put a “stop work” order on me, prohibiting me from doing more work in Egypt until I finish my degree and, while I know I will be done in May (come hell or high water), knowing it would be my last night in my domed room of the dig house for the foreseeable future had me feeling pensive and slightly wistful. I’ve spent a lot of my time in this space since 2022 and it feels like I have to leave an old friend who I know I will see again, but I’m not sure when - a feeling only made worse in saying goodbye to all the people here too. All this means though is that it’s the last time I’ll be there as a non-PhD, and if I think about it that way, it’s pretty cool.
That’s all for this week! Next week, I’ll have some visitors in Egypt so instead of making the next issue a “vacation photos” newsletter, I’ll be discussing a few sites that I got to visit on this trip, which have yet to feature in this newsletter.
Talk soon!
Emily
