23rd
Excavations in the Ptolemaic cemetery continue!
Wednesday 21st September and Thursday 22nd September 2011
Work continued at a good pace in T9, the trench investigating the northern extent of the main part of the Ptolemaic (and possibly Early Roman) cemetery. More information will become available after Friday when Ashraf el-Senussi joins us from the Fayum to investigate the ceramics that have been collected from the surface layers and from the individual burials until now! As usual the ceramics are all broken into small pieces - sherds - but there is at least one amphora that might be reconstructable!!
Investigation and excavation of the ceramic (double vessel-type) coffins continued as the students got to grips with drawing burials over the course of the week. Some of the students have picked up the main aspects of archaeological drawing very quickly and there have been a number of excellent drawings of the burials in addition to the coffins. As is usually the case at Quesna, the bones are in a poor state of preservation, but our conservator from the SCA mixed a solution of Primal which is being used as a consolidant before lifting the skeletal remains so that there is a chance to study the bones in more detail in the on-site ‘lab’.
Two of the local university students drawing one of the burials in T9.
In the north of the site, not far from the mastaba, another trench was opened to investigate the radar results and it now seems that the features may be a little deeper than had originally been anticipated, so the number of local workers increased on Wednesday and Thursday, enabling us to work at a quicker rate - although still sieving every basket of sand as we move down. We still hope for good news on this front in the course of the next few days!
The students are all really enthusiastic and keen to stay and work as many hours as possible! On Thursday they finish a little early, although one asked if he could stay a little longer with us until 3pm, when we all pack-up to head home. It was a very quiet couple of hours at the site, but Jo managed to help out with Larry, Tass, Mohamed and our inspector, in T9 in order to further investigate one of the coffin burials as well as a very tall individual!
In the conservation ‘lab’, Yasser continued to work with the reconstruction of the ceramic coffins, including the consolidation of part of a double-vessel coffin which had been reconstructed during 2010 but had not held together. He is now attempting to reconstruct it for a second time and hopefully it will remain intact this time. On Saturday, when Ashraf el-Senussi joins us, one of the aspects of his work will be to draw the ceramic coffins, which will be another interesting experience for the fieldschool students!
Yasser consolidating and reconstructing the ceramic coffins
