30th
Tuesday 29th March 2011
View towards one of the remaining raised areas at Kom Usim taken from the track which runs nearly right around the kom
So, today we moved on to a site in Ashmun province, Kom Usim. It is one of the furthest sites from our base at Shibin el Kom, at it was a good two hours from the time that we left the appartment, until we reached the site. This did include a brief stop for tea and breakfast once we reached Ashmun as we realised there would be no scope for food at Usim; we will be better prepared for tomorrow, however, with cheeses, different varieties of bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, crisps, eggs and bananas, not to mention a bag of tea and a bag of sugar! The people who live and work on the land of Kom Usim were most helpful and happy to see us. We stopped twice to take tea - the lovely smoky variety - and have many more invitations which we will take up in the coming days. Although the fields are almost fully planted now, there was still some scope for pottery assessment in the ditches running around the fields and we saw quite a range of types, which our ceramicist, Ashraf el-Senussi, will examine next week. The plan for the summer, when some of the fields become free, is to re-visit and carry out a systematic survey across the land to give us a better idea of the distribution of ceramics by date and type. The area under investigation is roughly circular and of 400m diameter.
Although the kom (mound) is largely dug away now, some of it still remains and it seems that crop marks may help in identifying areas of interest too! We were able to walk around the kom nearly twice today - and have chosen some areas of interest for starting work with the burrima (drill core) tomorrow - again, we have chosen these not only to gain information on any further ceramic (and other finds) beneath the surface, but also to see whether we can identify the proximity to the ancient water sources, by looking on the southern and western edges of the kom. We are much looking forward to returning to Usim tomorrow and getting down to the drill core work!
The weather was perfect today - very bright and warm and it looks as though the bad weather of last week is well behind us now - which helps very much!
