Archaeology | British Museum blog

March 13, 2012 • 12:00 pm 0

Amara West 2012: a pottery kiln?

Shadia Abdu Rabo, National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Sudan and Neal Spencer, British Museum

Towards the end of the season, working in layers beneath house E13.8, we found a circular kiln – our first at Amara West.

The kiln had been made by cutting a deep pit into the natural surface of the island, and building a circular brick structure above it, with internal cross walls. The red-orange colour of the bricks, especially on the inside, were the first indication that this might have been a kiln for firing pottery vessels, with an upper chamber for placing the pots to be fired, and the lower space – cut into the alluvium – housing the burning fuel (wood, charcoal?). A shallow pit, sloping down to the entrance of the kiln, would have allowed the fuel to be inserted into the lower chamber.

The kiln with the later wall of house E13.8 built over the top

We only excavated part of the lower chamber, as a wall of the later house ran over it. Inside, we found debris which post-dates the abandonment of the kiln, but right at the base were the compact ashy deposits we would expect in such a structure. Beneath that lay the burnt natural surface. There was clear evidence for the kiln being refurbished, with extra layers of plaster added to line the inside.

Many questions remain: what types of objects or vessels were fired in this kiln? What temperature could it have reached? We have taken samples from the walls, and the deposits inside, which might shed light on how this structure was used.

It is also interesting to consider how the kiln fitted into urban life. We found very little evidence for architecture in this area, so this might have been an open space between the house to the south (E13.3) and the imposing town wall – suitable for what must have been a smoky, dirty activity.

There’s a description of ‘the potter’ in a famous Egyptian literary text, the Satire of the Trades, which caricatures the profession as follows:

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, Research, excavation, kiln, pottery

March 12, 2012 • 11:32 am 1

Recording old cauldrons with new techniques

Stephen Crummy, archaeological illustrator, British Museum

As illustrator in the Department of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum, I am always looking for the best way to help our curators interpret an object. My role is to produce artwork that shows the form, construction and nature of objects and any decoration on them so that they can be clearly understood. This will usually result in illustration for academic publications and exhibitions as a result of research work on the Museum collection, or excavations.

Traditionally I have produced pen and ink technical drawings but new opportunities are available through various computer-generated methods of recording, analysing and understanding information about objects and excavation. With the Chiseldon Cauldrons material, I am exploring some of the possibilities of these new technologies, and in this case using photogrammetry and laser scanning programs to produce 3D records of the archaeological remains of individual cauldron blocks as they are excavated by Alex and Jamie.

Three-dimensional scan results

We are using a laser scanning system to produce 3D computer models of the individual pieces from each cauldron. This is achieved by plotting a thin red laser line as it is slowly moved across the surface of an object. Having recorded each piece we are hoping to use the photogrammetry programme to virtually re-construct the blocks as excavated.

The early results we achieved proved somewhat variable, especially with the laser scanning, but we are now starting to produce some very good quality scans in terms of both modelling and colour accuracy.

The plan is to produce virtual models of each cauldron as excavated which will enable us to understand much better what they would have originally looked like, and how they were made. It is also hoped that an overall plan of the pit and its contents can be reproduced. We’ll also be able to produce artwork for both printed and online publication, and to generate virtual re-constructions for publication and display. As we create interesting images, we’ll also post some of them here on the blog so you can see what we’re finding.

Filed under: Archaeology, Chiseldon cauldrons, Conservation, Research, cauldron, excavation, illustrator, laser scanning, research

February 22, 2012 • 4:50 pm 0

Amara West 2012: excavating one last tomb

Mohamed Saad, Inspector, National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums, Sudan and Amara West Field School participant

I spent the end of the season excavating a chamber tomb, Grave 319. The tomb features a two metre-wide burial chamber on the western side of a shaft cut into the alluvial surface; no above ground architecture is preserved.

A moment of contemplation: Mohamed recording G319

On the east side, we found the top of a doorway to another chamber, but this proved to be only 10 cm deep – for some reason plans to cut an eastern chamber were never completed. Some very large schist slabs found lying in the shaft must once have covered the grave.

Glazed steatite scarab (F8365)

As often at Amara West, these heavy stones did not protect this grave from looting in ancient times. Nevertheless, we recovered the skeletal remains of four individuals within the sandy deposit inside the western chamber.

Remnants of the funerary equipment buried with the deceased individuals indicated the range of original burial goods: pieces of wood and painted plaster (showing at least one individual was buried in a decorated coffin), ostrich egg shell, an Egyptian-style beer jar and a fragment of a wooden headrest.

Standing out among this material was the bright blue of a glazed scarab, bearing the inscription: ‘Ramesses, beloved of Amun-Ra and Ra-Horakhty, born of the gods, who founded the Two Lands’.

While this inscription mentions Ramesses II, the scarab might have been made after his long reign. Furthermore, we will never know which of the four individuals was buried with the scarab.

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, Research, excavation, Ramesses II, scarab

February 20, 2012 • 6:30 pm 3

Amara West 2012: the end of work on site

Neal Spencer, British Museum

Work on site finished yesterday, with final recording, photography and then the logistics of getting all our equipment back by boat to the expedition house after sunset.

A last sunset over the ancient town

Some of our workmen, experienced in building mudbrick architecture on Ernetta island, constructed new walls along the ancient walls of house E13.7, to preserve the painted plaster surface from wind erosion over the coming months.

Ghazafi Mohamed and Hassan Nouri constructing protective walls in house E13.7

In the next few days we’ll be closing the house, moving objects to the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum and starting our journeys home….

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, Research

February 19, 2012 • 8:39 am 1

Amara West 2012: a splash of colour….

Neal Spencer, British Museum

The houses at Amara West can look a little drab to the modern eye: brown mud walls, often with brown mud plaster and even brown clay floors. We are missing the wooden furniture and any textiles that might have broken this monotony, but it is also clear that some parts of houses were brightly painted.

British Museum conservator Philip Kevin has been studying and conserving fragments of painted plaster on mud from Mat Dalton’s excavations in house E13.7 last year. After removing a rather dull white plaster layer from one fragment (F5133d), we can now see that earlier decoration featured yellow, blue, red and black.

Painted decoration from house E13.7

It seems to consist of a yellow area bordered with a black line, and a more complex decorative motif to the right, which might have framed a door, or the shrine we believe was located in this room.

The same fragment, before removal of the white layer

Further fragments will hopefully reveal more of the room’s original decoration, and the discovery of areas where pigments might have been prepared provides potential for further avenues of research.

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, Research, fragment, houses, pigment, shrine

February 16, 2012 • 3:53 pm 4

Amara West 2012: coffin mask emerges from a pyramid tomb

Michaela Binder, Durham University

Painted plaster mask on a coffin lid, as revealed in G309.

There is a general rule in archaeology, the most important finds always come at the very end of the season… and why should it be any different at Amara West?

In the western chamber of pyramid tomb G309, Åshild Vågene has started to reveal a Ramesside coffin made of wood and decorated with painted plaster.

So far, we have exposed most of the red-painted face of a coffin mask, shown with large yellow earrings and a black wig.

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, Research, coffin mask, pyramid

February 15, 2012 • 5:08 pm 0

Amara West 2012: through ancient doorways

Neal Spencer, British Museum

Five weeks ago, Mary Shepperson revealed the remains of a stone doorway, tumbled into room two of house E13.6. Over the last few days we have reconstructed the gateway in the courtyard of our house – albeit laid flat on the ground rather than vertical…

Reconstructed sandstone door to room three
of house E13.6

The imposing appearance of the doorway is now more evident, standing 2.35m tall, with a passageway of 88cm wide by 1.75m tall. In terms of scale, many of our field team would have to stoop to walk through the door.

The lintel is made from an unusually fine sandstone – perhaps from Sai island – whereas the doorjambs are of the poor quality sandstone we more often encounter. This doorway would have been set into the mudbrick wall.

The jambs are not inscribed – any inscription would have been into a layer of white plaster, now largely disappeared. On the lintel, the red- and yellow-painted hieroglyphs invoke the god Amun-Ra and Horus Lord of Ta-sety, and also refer to king Tuthmosis III.

Doorway in house E13.9 (excavated 2009)

Interestingly, this door was not the main house door, but rather framed the entrance to the central reception room, with a low bench against its back wall. As such it may have marked the transition from more prosaic spaces at the front of the house, towards a more formal space which could be used for welcoming visitors.

Beyond lay two more rooms – presumably the most private areas of the house.

A doorway in an adjacent and contemporary house (E13.9), excavated in 2009, simply lined with mud plaster and with unworked schist slabs for a lintel and threshold, shows how simple internal house doors could be at Amara West.

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, Research

February 14, 2012 • 5:37 pm 2

Amara West 2012: fertility figurines discovered

Hélène Virenque, Egyptologist

Mary Shepperson and I found three small clay figurines in house E13.6, some of the few anthropomorphic representations found at Amara West.

Clay female figurines from house E13.6 (left-right F6018, F5998, F5996)

Although incomplete, the three figurines have the same rectangular shape and a fine polished surface. They each depict a naked woman, in a very schematic form, with only the breasts and a pubic triangle shown in detail. The breasts are usually added as separate pieces of clay, and thus easily break off, as with two of our examples. The pubic triangle was marked with a series of small holes. None feature legs or arms.

Wooden figurine of a woman with clay hair, from Thebes about 1750 BC. British Museum collection

Such representations are well known in ancient Egypt, especially from the Middle Kingdom onwards. By emphasing the genitalia, they evoke the woman as a source of fertility and thus could be associated with the cult of the goddess Hathor.

Some similar statuettes were found in Upper Egypt, placed in the temple of Deir el-Bahri during the New Kingdom. Other more elaborate types of fertility figurine, in painted wood, are known from late Middle Kingdom tombs.

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology

February 14, 2012 • 1:57 pm 3

A unique form of decoration

Jamie Hood, British Museum

As work on the Chiseldon Iron Age cauldrons progresses we are constantly making discoveries. Possibly the most exciting feature we have found so far is a decorated handle.

The decorated handle and section of rim came from a cauldron that had broken into several pieces during burial due to the weight of the overlying soil. Although we had used X-radiography to examine the handle fragment in its soil block before we began conservation, it was difficult to make out the surface due to the dense soil and corroded condition of the metal. This meant that when I was removing the soil I had to progress extremely slowly. However, it made discovering the decoration below especially exciting.

X-radiograph of the handle before conservation

The decoration consists of three curved plates that have been riveted below the rim on either side of and directly beneath the handle. The additional plates were carefully made and are likely not only to have been decorative, but also served to strengthen the point where the handle is attached.

Decorated handle after conservation.

While the plates could represent abstract decoration they strongly resemble a cow’s head, with the side-plates representing ears, the central plate a muzzle and the handle taking the form of boldly curved horns. Stylised decoration inspired by the shape of animals was not uncommon in the Iron Age and its association with feasting in this context is particularly relevant. However, decoration on cauldrons is extremely rare and this is a significant and exciting discovery.

Three-dimensional image of the handle

To help with the interpretation Stephen Crummy, an illustrator from the Department of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum, has been scanning the decorated handle with a laser to make a three-dimensional image which will show its shape far more accurately and aid in creating a virtual reconstruction of the vessel.

Filed under: Archaeology, Chiseldon cauldrons, Conservation, cauldrons, Iron Age

February 13, 2012 • 3:55 pm 2

Amara West 2012: preserving ancient basketry, textiles and wood

Philip Kevin, British Museum

Many objects discovered in the cemetery at Amara West require conservation to even allow them to be lifted, as they cannot support their own weight without consolidation.

This is particularly true with organic material, which tends to be poorly preserved in the burial conditions here. In addition to natural degradation through desiccation and the effects of termites, disturbance by looters (ancient and modern) has left objects in a very fragile condition.

Tools of the trade: consolidating fragile organic remains

The roofs of the burial chambers were often collapsed as looters entered to gain access to grave contents. The resulting fall of sharp schist gravel ripped through and crushed much of what lay below, including the coffin found in grave G309. Careful excavations by Åshild Vågene revealed traces of wood and plaster.

Tight working conditions: preparing to lift the bed in G314

These coffins are constructed from wood onto which a thin layer of plaster is applied to all surfaces; this is then painted, and in some cases varnished with a plant resin. Our two coffin fragments (of 20cm by 10cm) had only tiny traces of the internal plaster remaining, but pieces of crumbly wood were still in place. The outer plaster skin has survived in better condition, and is painted.

In order to impart some strength to allow the pieces to be lifted, I started by strengthening the wood and plaster with a mixture of solvent and a synthetic adhesive. It was impossible to remove the fine sand and soil without losing original wood and plaster; even using a small blower would cause some plaster to disappear in a cloud of white dust.

Having consolidated the wood and plaster, an additional support was attached to the back (inside of the coffin) and the fragments were then lifted and returned to the expedition house where they await further treatment.

In another grave being excavated by Laurel Engbring and Michaela Binder, fragments of a Nubian-style funerary bed and a basket were revealed, and I treated them in a similar manner before lifting. A fragment of textile (approximately 10cm2) was also conserved in this grave, offering a rare chance to study the weaving technique used.

This is my first time in Sudan, and it has been fantastic – except when I missed my step clambering out of the boat in the 6.30am darkness, and ended up in the Nile.

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Filed under: Amara West, Archaeology, conservation, excavation

« Previous Next »

British Museum blog

Amara West 2012: a pottery kiln?

Recording old cauldrons with new techniques

Amara West 2012: excavating one last tomb

Amara West 2012: the end of work on site

Amara West 2012: a splash of colour….

Amara West 2012: coffin mask emerges from a pyramid tomb

Amara West 2012: through ancient doorways

Amara West 2012: fertility figurines discovered

A unique form of decoration

Amara West 2012: preserving ancient basketry, textiles and wood

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