Africa: Egypt (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Redding.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations in various functional areas of the Workers’ Town and other settlement sites at Giza, Egypt, have provided a nuanced understanding of the distribution of animal taxa and body parts to dependents of the king. The residents of most of the areas excavated consumed sheep, goat, cattle, various birds, and fish. Young cattle and Nile perch were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Tritsch.

A striking example of the sophistication of the vitreous materials industry at the time it was produced, a faience bead depicting Tutankhamun drinking from a white lotus chalice possesses tremendous symbolic meaning that reflects the mores of the ancient Egyptian culture of the time. Although a published piece from the Eton College Collection, this is the first time extensive research has been performed on this unprovenanced artifact bought on the antiquities market in the late 1800s. Production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Zaia. Katherine Rose.

In the early 20th century, seminal Egyptologist George Reisner excavated a series of predynastic cemeteries west of the Giza plateau and farther south in modern day Sudan. While some objects from specific cemeteries were published in original manuscripts, the majority of artifacts currently housed in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum remain unstudied. Through a combination of ceramic analyses, including petrography and stylistic analysis, we situate these assemblages within a discussion of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Walsh. Justin Yoo. Paul van Pelt.

This paper suggests that Egyptology has reached a critical juncture in which the opening of the field to other areas, such as anthropology and sociology, is critical in revitalising and safeguarding the future of the discipline. Discourse beyond disciplinary boundaries is becoming increasingly important in academia, due to wider changes in university structures, employment, and funding opportunities. Given the current importance of these issues, the authors wanted to determine how these aspects...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katharina Zinn.

This paper explores the possibility to extract information about sensory experiences inherent in the material culture of ancient Egypt which are often overlooked due to the difficulty to track them in the material. By implementing new intellectual frameworks like New Materialism and the consequent application of methodologies from archaeology and anthropology we gain insight in the actions of ancient bodies. Taking inspiration from Latour’s actants (2005), Barad’s agential realism (2007) and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Anne Sherfield.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic investigations into menstrual seclusion practices worldwide show that investigating these behaviors is not only fruitful, but also integral in understanding a community’s ideology and social structuring. Texts dating to the New Kingdom and Demotic periods suggest that ancient Egyptians engaged in a menstrual seclusion practice that included a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathlyn Cooney.

This is an abstract from the "Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historians often make blanket assumptions that female kings of Egypt ruled differently from men. Hatshepsut is often said to have been a pacifist, not leading her country into invasions abroad. Cleopatra’s rule has been characterized as drama-seeking, manipulative, not to mention hormonally imbalanced in the writings...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Wheeler. Lana Williams. Tosha Dupras.

Breast-fed infants living in communities with adequate food access experience particularly high health risks during complementary feeding between ages 6 to 36 months. The most vulnerable of these die in this period, characterized as the "valley of death," which represents a biocultural reality. The majority of those who survive are "vulnerable survivors." The Kellis 2 cemetery sample (Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, AD 50-450) provides a unique opportunity to analyze effects of biocultural disruptions...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Phelps.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tutankhamun, one of the last kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (circa 1330-1300 BCE), was buried in an non-royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. His burial assemblage is one of the most intact burials ever discovered in Egypt. Amongst the many items, are atypical items that have not been found in other late Eighteenth Dynasty burials....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Phelps.

Howard Carter discovered the relatively intact tomb of Tutankhamun (KV 62), one of the last kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. Prior to the discovery, Carter discovered several small artifacts in the cliffs above the valley’s floor, which he proclaimed were indicators of a possible escape route of the ancient tomb raiders from the Valley of the Kings. During the excavation of the tomb, Carter also claimed to have identified two distinct robberies that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod.

Many of the initial approaches to understanding ancient cultures were centered on ethnographic observations. These early studies tended towards overly simplistic arguments that often either overtly or inadvertently supported social Darwinism. Recent applications of ethnoarchaeology have also been accused of falling into similar pitfalls. While the critics are right to highlight the limitations of this approach, scholars can avoid making dangerous assumptions by working alongside the societies...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Silverstein. Sean Coughlin. Robert Littman. AbdelRahman Medhat.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2012, a salvage excavation exposed a workshop at Tell Timai, the Greco-Roman-Egyptian city of Thmouis. The workshop consisted of a parallel line of amphora bases, piping, and ovens. Adjacent to it was a hoard of coins and jewelry dating the feature to the end of the reign of Ptolemy XII and the beginning of the reign of Cleopatra VII. Thmouis was a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heba Abdelsalam.

Heritage interpretation is one of the best methods for preserving cultural heritage since it assists a neighborhood in having a better understanding of the importance of its museums and historic sites. Lately, the world has witnessed the loss of many such sites in the Middle East. Therefore, the adaptation of the American models of interpretation would be ideal for addressing this problem. This paper provides an example of the use of these methods of interpretation for the preservation of sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robyn Price.

While archaeological analyses that focus on the experiential and sensorial past are becoming more common, scholars continue to discuss and dispute what knowledge of the past is accessible. Without moving beyond the material remains and into the realm of the self-reflexive researcher (Hamilakis 2013: 119), this paper will demonstrate that archaeologists do not need to stray too far from their traditional methods to uncover rich evidence of past sensory lives. By drawing from the field of art...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Zaia.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The name Punt, the fabulous land of the gods, is known since the discovery and excavation of the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari. The queen undertook a commercial expedition to the land of Punt to collect precious materials to carry back to Egypt. Such resources were crucial for performing religious ceremonies and funerary rituals. Although the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Strong.

This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Given the modern abundance of artificial light, it is often assumed that ancient cultures had the means and desire to illuminate the night. The paucity of artificial lighting devices from ancient Egypt challenges this assumption and has led scholars to conclude that the evidence must be there, but earlier...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Boozer.

Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis preserves a Roman city, its hinterland, and a Romano-Egyptian house known to be occupied by a city councilor. We can do more than simply read these material remains as physical symbols of Roman political power. The intimate collaboration between imperial agents and the material world allows us to interpret the making and unmaking of Roman imperial power on the local level. This paper explores fluctuations in imperial power at Trimithis (Roman Amheida) through the changes...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Tritsch.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Receiving little scholarly attention to date, most prior work on the tomb of Amenemhet at Beni Hasan has either focused on the translation of the titles and autobiography inscribed in and around the door jamb or on the description of the tomb scenes and accompanying decorations. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of this richly decorated structure,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Tritsch.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2005 and from 2018 to 2020, the Johns Hopkins University Expedition at the Mut Precinct in Luxor (ancient Thebes), Egypt, unearthed New Kingdom domestic material, preliminarily dated to the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The findings included a considerable number of articulated, mainly red painted, mud brick features in close proximity to two column...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pawel Polkowski.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Situated some 350 km from the Nile Valley, Dakhleh Oasis is considered one of the largest rock art complexes in Egypt. The petroglyphs found there were executed in various periods, beginning from the Early Holocene, through Pharaonic times, towards modernity. Often being located in the same areas, they constitute large palimpsests witnessing a long history of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Silverstein. Hamedy Mashaly.

Water management in ancient Egypt entailed harnessing natural and supernatural forces. Thmuis grew to power in the heart of the Nile Delta evolving as a nexus of Greco-Egyptian ideological syncretism within a riverine/lacustrine environment. Water management challenges included mitigating damage from annual floods, optimizing production, and maintaining transport. To survive in this dynamic hydrologic regimen, the people of Thmuis harnessed and controlled the Nile waters through engineering and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Phelps.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Valley of the Kings was the royal necropolis of the New Kingdom in ancient Egypt. The types of tombs found in the Valley include the larger royal tombs, small-chambered tombs, and pit tombs. It is suggested that the location of the small-chambered tombs in the Valley followed the tradition set forth during the Old and Middle Kingdoms when smaller tombs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jay Silverstein. Robert Littman. AbdelRahman Medhat.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient sources reference the quality and importance of perfume manufactured in the Mendesian nome through the periods of Hellenistic and Roman control of Egypt. Archaeological evidence has identified areas of manufacture for Greek-style lekythoi, Roman Unguentaria, and possibly a location to produce incense at the site of Tell Timai that dates to the period...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susannah Clinker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, wealthy Europeans flocked to Egypt to see the ‘exotic’ and ancient land first-hand. On their journey, many tourists accumulated souvenirs, but none were so admired and desired as Egyptian mummies. The exploitative nature of European interest in Egyptian mummies meant little historical and personal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caroline Arbuckle MacLeod.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Children have long been considered one of the "invisible" communities of the ancient world. As they are infrequently mentioned in texts and incapable of constructing their own mortuary narratives, Egyptologists and archaeologists have contented themselves with only a basic understanding of the position of children in ancient Egyptian society; however, through...