Desert Taskscapes of Egypt (WGF - Post-PhD Research Grant)

Summary

This resource is an application for a Post-PhD Research Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

This project looks for ways to measure the relationship between cultural and environmental factors in the archaeology of desert landscapes. I focus on the Egyptian deserts, where millennia of human activity have created a subtle but dense palimpsest of archaeological evidence. Using a novel integration of remote sensing, environmental GIS analysis, archaeological survey data, and research questions focused on individual, embodied perception of landscape, I look for the ways that people in the past interacted with an arid but micro-climatically diverse environment. I am especially interested in the subtle archaeological signatures of water management and agriculture, which can show us the astonishing ability of people in the past to subsist in hyper-arid landscapes. This research shows the importance of cultural context on strategies of environmental adaptation, which are the result of individual decisions and change over time in response to social, political, and economic shifts. My work also explores different ways of interacting with the landscape as an archaeologist, ranging from traditional data collection to slow, creative rubrics of observation and documentation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WGF - Support for Writing Projects   •
• Wenner-Gren Foundation

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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