EES Minufiyeh Survey - Working in the storerooms!

In August and September 2011 Dr Joanne Rowland, Director of the Egypt Exploration Society's Expedition in Minufiyeh Governorate, will again be posting regular updates from the field. During this season Jo and her team will be carrying out a survey of the desert-fringe site of Khatatbah, undertaking a GPR survey at Quesna and running a field school for Egyptian archaeology students.
For further information see: http://www.ees.ac.uk/news/index/127.html

Working in the storerooms!

Tuesday 4th October 2011

The processing of the finds from the 2011 and earlier seasons has been ongoing since Saturday morning when we headed back up to Quesna. Today the post-excavation analysis of the skeletons excavated from T9 began, with Larry and Sarah confined to the bones ‘lab’ to focus on this material. One of the individuals examined today was the very tall individual found within the trench. Also relating to T9 our conservator, Yasser, continued to look for joins and to reconstruct the ceramic double vessel coffins that have been found during this season. The work of drawing the ceramic coffins began again as well, having been started by our ceramicist back in mid-August! Two more coffins - of varied types - were draw by Tass and Jo today and more will be completed on Thursday!

The students continued to be put through their paces by Mandy and Ashraf today as they worked again with ceramic finds and practiced drawing sherds - some apparently quite tricky! Practice is what is needed now! For a change of scene and to put their new knowledge into context, a field trip will take place to a Ptolemaic-Roman site in Minufiyeh tomorrow, where it is possible to examine the stratigraphic sections of old archaeological trenches and find the ceramic material in context! One of our ceramicists will join the trip, so this should really be quite enlightening! We will also be showing the students how to work with the theodolite as opposed to the total station which was mainly operational during the excavations at Quesna!

Today the backfilling of this season’s trenches was completed, ahead of schedule for the first time ever! The workers did a great job and we are going to miss them all - but they’ll be back next year (insha’allah). The day concluded nicely with a dinner of kushery from the corniche kushery stall. Very nice and a relaxing mealtime for everyone!

Sara, our inspector, measuring in the bones ‘lab’.

Mr Yasser, seemingly behind bars until he finishes the reconstruction of the pottery coffins!!