29th
Nearly Eid Mubarak!
Monday 29th August 2011
While it is the Bank Holiday weekend in England, Egypt is readying itself for Eid - tomorrow! There is now a holiday break for a few days to celebrate the end of the month of Ramadan - Eid el-Fitr. So there is no work now until Saturday, so that everyone can celebrate the holiday. The team will meet in Cairo on Friday and head up to Shibin, where we will ready ourselves for the survey on the western edge of the Delta from Saturday morning! The equipment that we need for the survey is all ready and waiting in Shibin! The work will be survey work relating to our reconnaissance survey which looked for prehistoric - and other - potential sites in the region of el-Khatatbah back in 2009!
This season we will me making a systematic detailed survey at selected locations that were visited in 2009! We will plan certain areas and the distribution of artefacts therein using the total station and we will then collect the lithic material (and any ceramic sherds that emerge) and the team - including 2 lithics specialists from New Zealand and London - will analyse the lithic material, the stone tools, to assess where the stone came from, what types of functions the tools were for, and what date range we might be able to ascertain from the tool! It stands to be a very exciting survey and will bring much new information to our understanding of the area!
We look forward to reporting back from the end of this week onwards!
Eid mubarak!
Khatatbah during a visit in 2009, looking from the survey area to the cultivation
