The Biting Wires

Sponsor Anna - Running for Gurob Fieldwork

2012-01-24T13:20:00.003Z

On 12 February 2012 I will be running the Southport Maddog 10k in order to raise funds for the 2012 Gurob Harem Palace project's fieldwork season. I would be extremely grateful for your sponsorship!

Total Open Station (TOPS) 0.3 Released

2011-12-02T19:15:00.004Z

A new edition of the open source software for the downloading and processing of archaeological survey data has been released today!
TOPS runs on any operating system, including mobile platforms like OpenMoko, and it is designed to support as many devices and formats as possible, all within the same program, opposed to having one program per device.

TOPS can be downloaded from here, documentation is also available.

TOPS has been succesfully tested and used at Gurob. The only drawback at the moment is the lack of support for line data, however, this feature is planned to be included in future!

Gurob Harem Palace Project Conference - part 2

2011-11-18T10:53:00.003Z

The conference report, written by Birgit Schoer, is now online! Please have a look at the Project website!

I have furthermore uploaded some more photos from the event to a Picasa album! I hope you enjoy them!

Gurob Harem Palace Project Conference 2011

2011-11-06T12:50:00.004Z

A conference on our fieldwork at Gurob was held November 4th and 5th at UCL, London to discuss recent fieldwork results of the Gurob Harem Palace Project and raise funds for future seasons. I have produced a short Twitter summary of the tweets produced mainly by Liz and myself using the #GHPP hashtag and a few RTs.

I will soon upload some pictures to the website.

In the meantime, please consider becoming a friend of the Gurob Harem Palace Project and sponsor great fieldwork!

The British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal - how to fundraise

2011-05-06T10:40:00.003+01:00

As I already wrote in the previous post, I will be running the Liverpool Women's 10k THIS SUNDAY in order to raise funds for the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.

Using the Justgiving.com website for fundraising should have been a lot easier, but we came across some problems, which is why I thought I'd post the relevant info here:

When setting up one's fundraising page on justgiving.com one can either select an event or a personal challenge, etc. - then you select your charity of choice. Now, it is NOT possible to directly select the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal. Instead, you should select the British Red Cross (without any further specifications) as your charity and then complete the steps to finish setting up your page.
Once this is done, you should email challenges@redcross.org.uk with the address of your justgiving website and ask them to code the page up to that the funds go directly to the Japan Tsunami Appeal.
You can also contact your local British Red Cross office and ask them to do the same. They will also be able to inform you about the logistics and requirements of any other fundraising activities you are planning in your area.

One-of donations can be made directly to the BRC Japan Tsunami Appeal, however, this might not suit your fundraising needs if you are collecting money over a longer period of time and rely on people donating for a particular event.

I would be extremely grateful for any donations made for Japan! The run on Sunday is not the only one I will be doing, I am intending to participate in the Liverpool Tunnel 10k (June 12th 2011) as well, and my page will remain open. Donations can be made here - Thank you so much! :)

Running for Japan

2011-04-18T14:51:00.004+01:00

On May 8th 2011 I will be running the Liverpool Women's 10k in order to raise money for the British Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.

This is a very important cause and I am hoping to raise as much as possible to help the people in Japan who have lost everything.

I am part of a team of students at Liverpool University, working together for this cause.

Please give generously! I am very grateful for your donations!

Link to my Justgiving.com page

Current Research in Egyptology 2009: Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Symposium published!

2011-03-15T18:43:00.001Z

The tenth annual Current Research in Egyptology conference was held at the University of Liverpool in January 2009 and welcomed Egyptology graduates from all over the world. (Oxbow Books 2011)

The proceedings include my own article, Mass-Production in New Kingdom Egypt: The Industries of Amarna and Piramesse, which discusses an aspect of my PhD research.

Guide: Helmert (two-point) transformation in Quantum GIS

2011-01-23T14:12:00.004Z

I have written a quick guide on using the Helmert georeferencing method in Quantum GIS. The summary can be read below and you can download it from here.
A big thanks to Conan Parsons (Oxford Archéologie Méditerranée) who pointed this out to me! :)

This quick guide is intended to guide the reader through the Helmert georeferencing
method, which is available in the plugin repository of open source desktop GIS package Quantum GIS.
The guide has been written mainly for an archaeological audience, as it is still common practice to offset plans of archaeological features using no more than two points, usually the section drawing points, which are surveyed.
The plans would then be scanned and referenced to the site data for digitisation using a two-point transformation in CAD software.
Until recently open source GIS packages, the use of which is becoming increasingly
popular within archaeology, have not been able to reference raster images using only two points, but required a minimum of three points for (usually polynomial) georeferencing.
This is undisputedly the most accurate method of georeferencing, however the offsetting and survey of additional points is time-consuming, which is not ideal on archaeological sites. Hence, proprietary CAD software still had to be regularly used for two-point transformations of archaeological site plans.
Now the excellent open source GIS package QGIS contains this tool within its georeferencing plugin and thus provides another reason not to use proprietary CAD software for archaeological spatial data.

gvSIG case study

2011-01-23T13:59:00.004Z

A case study, demonstrating the successful use of open source desktop GIS software gvSIG has recently been made available online on the gvSIG case studies website.

This study discusses how the gvSIG OA Digital Edition was used at Oxford Archaeology for the visualisation, maintenance and analysis of spatial (survey-) data, instead of the proprietary software normally used.
The methodology was documented and published online in the form of a downloadable manual.
Further research was undertaken into the production of high-quality maps from open source GIS, and a second manual was produced.

Commerce and Economy in Ancient Egypt - conference publication

2010-07-08T11:13:00.002+01:00

I have taken the details from my friend Marsia's blog. Marsia had also published a report on this conference, which took place in Budapest in September 2009.

My own paper on "High-status Industries in the Capital and Royal Cities of the New Kingdom" is contained within this publication, which you can order here.

Read Marsia's conference report here!

Sabine Hodgkinson

2010-06-06T20:01:00.000+01:00

My mother, Sabine Hodgkinson, nee Goos, passed away on November 7th 2009 after long illness.

I will be running a Race for Life at Sefton Park, Liverpool on Sunday, July 18th 2010 in Mum's memory. I would be grateful for your donations.
Here is the link to my sponsoring page!

This is my mother's orbituary as it was read by my father and me during her memorial service:
Ich begrüße Euch heute hier um von einem ganz besonderen Menschen Abschied
zu nehmen. All die Taten, die meine Mutter in ihrem Leben vollbracht hat
gebührend aufzuzählen und zu preisen würde Tage oder gar Wochen dauern, ohne
ihr dabei gerecht zu werden. Deshalb versuche ich die wesentlichen Dinge in diese
kurze Ansprache zu fassen. Dies ist, so meine ich, auch im Sinne meiner Mutter, da
sie nie eine Freundin unnötig langer Reden war und ich glaube, dass das Bild des
Menschen für diejenigen, die sie kennen, auch ohne zu viele Worte vorhanden ist.

I would like to welcome you all here in order to say goodbye to a very special
person. To recount and justly honour everything Sabine did in her life would take
days – perhaps weeks – and even then it would not do her justice. For this reason I
will attempt in this short address to give an accunt of the the essential points. I think this is how Sabine would have liked it for she was never fond of unnecessarily long speeches, and I believe that we who know her have her image in our minds now
without the need of many words.

Sabine Goos wurde am 6. August 1957 in Hannover geboren und verbrachte ihre
Kindheit und Jugend mit ihrer Familie/ihren Eltern und ihrer Schwester in
verschiedenen Orten in Niedersachsen. 1976 machte Mama ihr Abitur und begann
dann ihr Studium in Kunst und Anglistik in Braunschweig. Im Rahmen dieses
Studiums verbrachte sie auch ein Jahr in Cornwall, wo sie sich endgültig in das
Land und die Sprache verliebte. 1980 heiratete sie Alan Hodgkinson, unseren Vater, und hat mit ihm zusammen Tom und mich bekommen und zweisprachig erzogen.

Sabine Goos was born on the 6th of August 1957 in Hannover and spent her
childhood and adolescence with her parents and sister in vearious places in Lower
Saxony. Sabine passed her Abitur (school leaving exam) in 1976 and then began a
course of studies in Art and English in Brunswick. It was during her college career
that she spent a year as an assistant teacher in Cornwall, where she fell completely
in love with both the country and the language. In 1980 she married me and we
produced Tom and Anna, whom we brought up bilingually.

Die englische Sprache war eine ihrer größten Leidenschaften. Mama unterrichtete
jahrelang an der Kreisvolkshochschule, und später auch am Ratsgymnasium, wo
sie vor allem Vorbereitungskurse für das Cambridge First Certificate gab und eine
hochgeschätzte Dozentin war. Abgesehen davon, dass sie Englisch unterrichtete,
ist auch der allergrößte Teil der vielen, vielen Bücher, die sie gelesen hat, in dieser Sprache und sie sah fast ausschließlich englisches Fernsehen.
Sie hat aber auch das Land und die Menschen dort über alles geliebt, und in jedem
Urlaub und jeder Reise hat es sie auf die Insel verschlagen wo sie am liebsten an
die Küste fuhr. Mama hat sich sogar Rosamunde Pilcher Filme angeschaut, nur um
die cornischen Landschaftsaufnahmen zu geniessen. Als ich dann nach England
zog, nutzte Mama gerne die Gelegenheit, mich häufiger dort zu besuchen.

One of her greatest passions was the English language. For many years Sabine
taught English as a lecturer at the “Kreisvolkshochschule“. Later she was also
active at Ratsgymnasium, giving courses to prepare students for the Cambridge
First Certificate in English Examination and establishing herself as a highly
esteemed lecturer. In addition to teaching English, she loved reading it. The lion’s
share of the many books she read are in this language, and when she watched TV,
it was almost always a programme in English.
But above all she loved the country and its people. Every holiday she spent was on
the British Isles, if at all possible on the coast. Sabine even watched Rosamunde
Pilcher films, just in order to enjoy the views of the Cornish coast. And when Anna
moved to England, Sabine never missed an opportunity to visit her there.

Zu Hause hat Mama den gesamten Haushalt und Garten koordiniert und selber den
größten Teil geleistet. In jedem Raum ist sichtbar, dass Mama die Dekoration und
Einrichtung des Hauses im Griff hatte: Dies wird zum Beispiel jedem der das Haus
betritt durch die Präsenz ihrer Lieblingsfarbe, Blau in jedem Raum deutlich. Dies
betrifft im gleichen Maße auch den Garten, den sie liebevoll und mit viel Mühe
gestaltet und gepflegt hat. Außerdem hat sie sämtliche
organisatorischen/logistischen Angelegenheiten geregelt und sich jedes Jahr allein
mit der Steuererklärung geplagt.

At home Sabine had control over the complete housekeeping and garden, in both
of which she did the most work.. Each room in our house bears witness to Sabine’s
skill at decorating and furnishing. Anyone coming to our house at once notices her
mark – the predominance of her favourite colour, blue. The same applies to our
garden, which she looked after with so much love and care. On top of all that, she
took care of all the bureaucratic work – in particular that annual nightmare, the tax
return.

Als Mutter war sie nie ungerecht. Sie hat sich immer für uns eingesetzt und stand
immer hinter oder auch, wenn mal nötig, vor uns. In fast allen unseren Vorhaben
hat sie uns gefördert und unterstützt, und uns gleichzeitig zur Eigenständigkeit
erzogen.
Unseren Golden Retriever, Sandy, hat sie sehr geliebt und mit ihr viel Geduld
bewiesen, auch wenn Sandy manchmal im Unterholz verschwand und erst nach
stundenlangem Rufen wieder kam oder auch manchmal schon an der Haustür oder
am Auto wartete. Toms Heimtier-Zoo hat sie nicht nur toleriert, sondern eigentlich
auch gemocht.

As a mother, Sabine was always fair in her dealings. She always took the childrens'
part and stood behind them, or even, when necessary, in front of them. She
invariably gave encouragement and support. And she brought Anna and Tom up to
be independent in their thoughts and actions.
She really loved our golden retriever, Sandy, and was always patient with her even
when Sandy sometimes disappeared into the undergrowth and only came back
after hours of being called. She not only put up with Tom‘s domestic zoo, but also
derived some pleasure from it.

Als Daddy vor 10 Jahren krank wurde, war sie immer da und hat sich liebevoll um
alles gekümmert, von Pflege über Papierkram, Essen und Rehabilitation, und gab
dabei niemals die Hoffnung auf.
When I fell ill ten years ago, Sabine was constantly there for me with all her love,
whether it was a matter of caring for me, dealing with paper work, making sure I
was fed, or organising my rehabilitation treatment. She never gave up hope.
Vor ungefähr 15 Jahren hat sie durch ihre Freude an Textilarbeiten das
Kunsthandwerk des Patchwork für sich entdeckt. Sie war gleich sehr kreativ und
hat ihren eigenen Stil entwickelt. Aus dem Hobby wurde schnell mehr. Mama
begann auch selber Patchwork-Kurse anzubieten um die Freude mit anderen zu
teilen. Sie hat bei der Gründung der Patchwork-Gruppe Flickwerk Peine
mitgewirkt.
Sie hat sich auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene engagiert und wurde bald in
die Arbeit der Patchwork Gilde Deutschland involviert. Sie wurde in das Amt der
Internationalen Repräsentantin gewählt und vertrat die deutsche Gilde mehrmals
auf der Internationalen Messe „Festival of Quilts“ in Birmingham. Sie hat dadurch
im In- und Ausland, gerade in Großbritannien, sehr viele Kontakte geknüpft,
Freunde gewonnen und ist sehr bekannt und geschätzt.
Über die Jahre tauchten überall in unserem Haus immer mehr von ihren Werken
auf, die das Haus viel schöner und individueller verzierten als es eine Sammlung
an Gemälden je hätte tun können.

About fifteen years ago Sabine discovered another love: patchwork: Her creativity
enabled her to develop her own, very personal quilting style. And soon this hobby
led to more activities. Sabine began to give courses in patchwork so that she could
share her joy at this activity with others. She helped to found the patchwork group
Flickwerk Peine.
She committed herself both nationally and internationally to patchwork was soon
involved in the work and activities of the German Patchwork Guild. Following her
election to the office of International Representative, she represented the German
Patchwork Guild several times at the international exhibition “Festival of Quilts“ in
Birmingham. Through this office she got to know many interesting people and
friends both here in Germany and abroad, particularly in Great Britain, as a result of
which she is a highly esteemed celebrity in the world of patchwork.
In the course of the years her quilting works found their place all over our house,
giving our home an individuality and beauty which no collection of paintings could
ever have done.

Als sie letztes Jahr diagnostiziert wurde hat sie die vielen Behandlungen und
Arztbesuche geduldig und sehr tapfer durchgestanden.

When her illness was diagnosed last year, she bore the many medical
examinations and courses of treatment with oustanding courage.

Ich werde nun ein Gedicht vortragen, welches meine Mutter sehr berührte und sie
hier auch vorgelesen haben wollte:

I would now like to recite a poem which was very close to Sabine’s heart and which
she wished to have recited now:

Do not stand at my grave and weep –
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow –
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain –
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning‘s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Nun ist sie frei.
Sie wird uns allen sehr fehlen. Rest in peace.

Now she is at peace
We shall all miss her. Rest in peace.

Roadtrip! or Escaping Cairo...

2010-04-20T18:12:00.004+01:00

Dan, my colleague from Gurob, and I, arrived back in Liverpool at 4am on Tuesday morning after leaving Cairo on Saturday. The extreme delay is due to the volcanic ashes spreading over Europe from Iceland, the fact that we made it back at all is due to extreme creativity...

Here is what happened:

1) Saturday, 10-10:30am Packing of luggage and survival of the journey to the ground floor of the Carlton Hotel - Cairo, 26th July Street, Downtown.

2) Journey by taxi to the airport - we refused to pay the demanded £E100 (payed £E80 in the end) and had to give the driver directions to Terminal 3 despite the fact that he must have been there several times before...

3) Flight to Istanbul with Turkish Airlines (Scarelines)...

4) Arrival at Transfer/Transit desk at Istanbul Airport. The flight to London Heathrow had already been cancelled, so Rome seemed a good option - we change our booking, receive a mis-printed boarding pass, but after a short struggle with tired staff were allowed to proceed to the gate...

5) Once there, Dan treated us to a Gloria Jean's Australian iced coffee - never tasted anything that good! :-) We also roamed the souvenir shops to find stacks of Turkish Delight tasters (for free) in bowls in the shelves. Dan ate so much he ended up on a sugar high!

6) Still over coffee, Dan calls Esme back in Liverpool who dedicated hours to researching options to get home for us that and the following night.
Esme books us onto a ferry from Le Havre to Portsmouth for Sunday night (when our hopes were still high) - this was soon scrapped.

7) We got the plane and fly to Rome!

8) We arrive in Rome and spent a long time waiting for our luggage at the conveyor belt - Gave up after a couple of hours and had to declare the luggage as lost! Hopes are still high to receive our luggage back soon, especially given that my little toy turtle is in my bag :-(

9) No trains, planes or automobiles from Rome! Everything's booked or taken or stopped running for the night! Thus we ended up sleeping rough at the airport that night. Didn't get more than an hour or two each as it was cold and noisy...

10) Sunday 6am: At the break of dawn we decide to take a train into Rome - once in town it took a while to find a cashpoint but in the end we managed to get to the main train station, Termini, in Rome and set up camp there. By that point neither of us had much battery power left in our mobile phones...

11) We check out trains - nothing going north was available, at least not on the Rome - Milano route, so we thought about heading south where we expected planes, trains and automobiles!

12) At c.7:30, after a struggle with the Italian payphone system, we called Joseph, my boyfriend, in Oxford who managed to reserve us a hirecar from Europcars at Florence Airport. He managed to spell Dan's name "Bootright" instead of "Boatright" which caused some laughter...

13) We bought a train ticket to Florence / Firenze for c. an hour later, and therefore had a bit of time to stroll into Rome and see some archaeological wonders :-) also escaping the crowds that had by then amassed at Rome's Termini station – people queued up for several hours only to be told that they were stranded in Rome for several more days!

14) After purchasing crisps we got onto the train bound for Florence!

15) Once there we got onto the shuttle bus from the main station to the airport - Florence is very lovely! We then collected the hire car (and were told that we CANNOT take it over the border all the way to Le Havre (despite this being okay on the internet) but to take it to Nice and leave it there, without offerin to reserve us a (likely unavailable) car from Nice)! I also finally managed to post my - by that point - well-travelled postcards from Cairo...

16) Dan got behind the wheel and I behind the map - despite this arrangement Dan actively changed to course from Nice-bound to Le Havre (not paying attention to the car company's instructions) - this was the best decision ever!

17) At the first service station we purchased an in-car-travel-charger for our phones in order to re-mobilise all our problem-solvers in the UK!

18) We drove through a large portion of beautiful Tuscany and northern Italy - wonderful!

19) Swap drivers: I was given the privilege to drive our Fiat Punto through the Alpes and below Mont Blanc - what an experience! Such a shame it was dark, otherwise Dan's pictures would have come out better!

20) Once on the French side of things, Dan took over the wheel again and I finally was allowed to go delirious from my lack of sleep!

21) c.7:00am Monday morning, after Dan had driven through most of France, and c.100km south of Paris, I took over the wheel again. I managed to navigate through most of Paris ringroad's Monday morning mayhem whilst Dan spent some time unconscious, catching up on sleep. I do not like French traffic!

22) At c.10am we reached Le Havre without any sanity left but with a lot of rubbish from packets of crisps and pocket coffee sweets in the car! At least we were early!

23) We checked in to the Ferry nice and early to avoid the crowds there!

24) After getting slightly lost in Le Havre on a mission to refuel the car before return and another struggle through French traffic, we managed to find Europcar and returned the car. This went surprisingly well given that the booking we'd initially agreed upon said that, of course, we could return the car to Le Havre!

25) After this we returned to the ferry port's terminal building and sat and waited to be let onto the boat. We were allowed on board at c.5pm with a huge number of other people!

26) After a while relaxing and working at a table in the boat we bought the first proper meal in c.60 hours! Ship food can be extremely tasty!

27) We weren't able to leave the ferry until c.10:30 due to the large numbers of people at the port, but eventually were allowed onto British soils!

28) Joseph met us at Portsmouth and kindly drove us to Heathrow airport where Dan had parked his car.

29) Dan drove very well and fast and got us to Liverpool at c.3:50 on Tuesday morning!

A huge thanks goes to Esme for organising the ferry for us and constantly being there at the other end of the phone and to Joseph for booking the car and driving to Portsmouth, then to Heathrow and back to Oxford! Your help has been greatly appreciated!

Second Edition of Survey and GIS Manual available!

2010-03-15T17:53:00.003Z

I have been working on an updated version of the Survey and GIS manual and am now pleased to announce that it's ready!

It can be downloaded here.

The same four versions exist as before, now using the gvSIG OA Digital 2010 Edition (based on gvSIG 1.9)!

Malqata Blog

2010-02-20T12:52:00.003Z

This is the blog accompanying the current survey work at the New Kingdom Palace site of Malqata (Luxor, Westbank,reign of Amenhotep III) undertaken by the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University and the Department of Egyptian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

http://imalqata.wordpress.com/

GIS and Survey Manual on gvSIG website

2010-01-29T14:38:00.002Z

The GIS and Survey manual has now also been made public on the gvSIG Community Contributions website! :-)

Survey and GIS Manual

2009-12-03T09:13:00.004Z

I announce the release of the Survey and GIS manual produced at Oxford Archaeology North during the last few months after development of new on-site survey and GIS methodologies applicable to any archaeological project.

This document is intended to supply an easy-to-understand but comprehensive guide to survey and open source GIS, from setting up survey equipment to downloading and processing survey data. The manual is intended for speeding-up, or annihilating the training procedure and providing a guide to survey to field staff in case no professional surveyor is on site. An inexperienced member of field staff should, by following this manual step-by-step, be able to set up a Total Station, conduct survey and download and process the survey data, given a certain amount of time.

Procedures are explained in great detail with screenshots and photographs where appropriate and guides to troubleshooting and examples for data maintenance are provided. The manual is written in such manner that it can easily be adjusted for individual sites' survey requirements. Chapters can be extracted easily and supplied individually.

Versions exist for use on site with a robotic Leica TCR1205 Total Station together with a remote control unit as well as without remote control.

The downloading software used in this manual is Leice GeoOffice (can be replaced by whatever software comes with the Total Station used) and GIS software is the gvSIG OA Digital Edition. I furthermore recommend Inkscape as a vector editing software for touching up maps produced by gvSIG.

This document is available for download as PDF on http://www.openarchaeology.net/ or through the link above.

I would be extremely grateful for feedback!

Problems with Ubuntu 9.10 on my Advent Netbook

2009-10-31T15:40:00.003Z

I upgraded my Advent 4211c (or MSI wind u100) netbook from 8.10 to 9.04 last night which seemed to have worked fine. Then I decided to upgrade it to 9.10 and now several features have stopped working:

- The touchpad no longer works (rather important for a netbook)
- There is no sound and no option to turn it on
- The screen sometimes goes black without warning. This has only
occurred twice so far.

Some errors were reported at the end of the installation, but I took no note of them (realise now I should have done). The messages said something along the lines of "some errors were encountered, installation not done properly". Then it asked whether I wanted to report some errors and when I clicked "yes" it told me that I had no "genuine(?)" copy of Ubuntu.

Anyone got any ideas? I would be grateful for help!!! :-(

I have posted the same on the Ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1307922

Gurob Harem Palace Project Website

2009-08-21T10:18:00.003+01:00

As previously mentioned, I spent most of April 2009 working at Gurob in the Fayum. The project now has a website which is coming along nicely. Read about past and present work and take a look at the gallery (in production). We are holding a small fundraising conference in London on 11th September where some presentations on the site and its archaeology will be held! Please come along and join the Friends of the Petrie Museum (Gurob)!

Website of the week!

2009-07-06T14:13:00.002+01:00

Explore the Uluburun Shipwreck - this website has an interactive plan of the wreck with links to object photos - great fun!

The Moth

2009-06-27T19:37:00.002+01:00

A few shots (with my mobile phone camera) of a giant moth I came across recently. I was rather surprised to see a moth of that size and appearance in the North of England...
If anybody has an idea what kind of moth this one might be, please let me know...!

Amarna, Elephantine and Luxor

2009-03-28T19:49:00.002Z

I am writing from Luxor this time where I intend to stay until the day after tomorrow, before I go back to Cairo. Will probably take the day-train, just to see some more of the country and to make sure I can actually get some sleep during the night...

I travelled from Cairo to Mallawi by bus which took 5 hours but was a smooth ride and the desert road provided some beautiful scenery. At Mallawi I was collected by the project's house caretaker and its driver who took me to Amarna via the car ferry.

My visit to Amarna was superb - I was welcomed by some very friendly people working on the project. Barry kemp had kindly arranged for me to stay in the excavation house and share meals with the team. There were not many people working at Amarna at the time, and the three days and four nights I spent were the more enjoyable due to a very pleasant atmosphere.
The first morning I left the house which is located in the South Suburb and walked from there all the way to the Main City, accompanied by a policeman who was very kind and jolly and tried to communicate despite my lack of Arabis communication skills. the houses, some of which have walls preserved to shoulderheight, were great to look at and to go inside and I was able to take a large amount of good pictures. The layout of the city as a whole became a great deal clearer, as did the sheer scale of the place and the climatic conditions people would have dealt with on a daily basis. It was also good to observe what obstacles the survey of the site had to overcome, as some of the structures are only visible as very shallow mounds. I ended the walk just by the Small Aten Temple and the King's House, having incorporated the Great Palace and getting more and more to terms with the scale and layout of Amarna.
After a lift back to the house on a donkey cart, I left the house with the photographer, Gwil, and we were driven to the plain to the South of the Stone Village . We had to climb up the Gebel to reach the site, where we then met Anna and Wendy who were surveying some stone features, the function of which has not yet been determined. Gwil and I walked further to the Workmen's Village and walked around this before returning to the house.
In the afternoon I was given the opportunity to look at some of the cylindrical vessels connected to the glass workshop published by Paul Nicholson in 2007, most of which were surface finds from the vicinity of the Great Palace.

The following day I went to the Stone Village with Wendy and Anna and was assigned a feature to plan, so I actually did some work at Amarna :-) Spent some hours doing this, planning most stones and the cut at 1:25 and then left them and walked over to the South Tombs. I was able to see four toms: those of Eje/Ay (No. 25), Any (No. 23), Ramose (No. 11) and Maha (No. 9).

My last full day was spent driving around the site with a car Barry Kemp had hired for me to take me to the Northern part of Amarna. I first visited the North Palace and then the Northern City with the impressive Great Gateway.
After that I was able to see some tombs in the North Cemetary: Ahmose (No. 3), Merire (No. 4), Pentu (No. 5), Panehsy (No. 6) and Huia (No.1 ), and the Boundary Stela U before ending the tour at the Royal Tomb and returning back to the House. I mapped a large portion of the drive with the OpenMoko and shall display the results as soon as I have downloaded them.

I left at 8:30 the following morning, having to catch a train from Minya station at 10:40 to get to Aswan. I am extremely grateful to all the staff at Amarna for enabling me to visit and experience this site!

The train journey took longer than expected and I did not get into Aswan until 9pm... I cannot recomment the hotel (Nubian Oasis Hotel) I stayed in, despite the low prices the level of cleanliness is not satisfactory and the staff not very friendly and too pushy. I was not feeling too well, having been hit by the curse of the Pharaohs (it had to happen at some point) and maybe my temper was a little short for that reason. I managed to wake up at a reasonable hour and took the ferry to Elephantine Island where I met up with Cornelius von Pilgrim of the Swiss Institute who works with the German team on the New Kingdom settlement levels on Elephantine . he showed me around the site and pointed out the New Kingdom remains - these were not so obvious and rather badly preserved, partly due to the fact that in most cases the New Kingdom levels had been quarried out by later phases of occupation before these were established. Most of the recently uncovered NK remains were in fact, residential in nature.

I left for Luxor by train the same afternoon and fortunately this journey only took 3 hours and I got to my hotel on the west bank at c. 7pm. This morning I left for Malkata , the palace and temple city of Amenhotep III on the west bank. I met Ginger, a PhD student at Chicago, and she walked me over the site. As she is working on the current project she knows the site to a great detail and was able to explain the archaeology to me extremely well. I am very grateful to her for her time and help!

Tomorrow I intent to visit the mortuary temple of Seti I at Qurna amongst other (but not too many) things. Good night!

Egypt!!!

2009-03-22T06:06:00.004Z

I flew to Cairo from London Heathrow on Sunday, March 15, in fact exactly one week ago. Arriving rather late in the afternoon, there was not much time left to do lots, so I went to my Pension , relaxed, got something to eat and had an early night. That was necessary, as the following morning I had to be at the Austrian Archaeological Institute at 6:30 for a trip to Tell el-Dab'a. The objective of the current (and some previous) season is the 15th dynasty palace . I gained some insight in the archaeological conditions and the complex as a whole, was able to talk to Manfred Bietak and take a thorough look around the excavation house.

The first thing I did the following morning (17 March) was to pack my stuff together and move it to the Austrian Archaeological Institute on Zamalek where I was kindly permitted to stay for a couple of nights. The rest of that day I spent walking round Cairo, getting organised, getting lost - the usual sort of thing.

After a good night's sleep I left early and took a succession of several vehicles to reach the city of Tanis, near San el-Hagar in the Eastern Delta. I had to leave from Cairo's Aboud Station (for buses), take a Peugeot Taxi to Faqus, a microbus to Huseynia and then another bus to San el-Hagar...at which point I was so confused that I asked for help, as I was not sure how to reach the site itself. Thus I ended up following a friendly local who had been on the same bus to his workplace – a school, where I sat in the headmaster's office for about an hour, talking and drinking coffee. Talking mostly in English, mind you, as my Arabic is unfortunately still rather abysmal.
At Tanis, which I reached after being driven there by a member of staff at the aforementioned school, I took about 400 photographs with the lovely new camera I bought a short while ago. I managed to get a good feeling for the site, which I had entirely to myself, wandered far and got a decent overview over the amount of material from Piramesse-Qantir which had been brought there after the Piramesse was abandoned after the 20th dynasty.

The trip back to Cairo took a very long time - I managed to board the wrong Peugeot taxi at Faqus which had a bus station well outside Cairo as its final destination... I met a helpful guy there who travelled into Cairo with me, but managed somehow to lead me through some rather dark suburban streets. I was happy to finally take a taxi which took me to the closest Metro station from which I reached Zamalek and then the Austrian Institute rather late that evening.

The next day I went to Bubastis, a site which is on the outskirts of the city of Zagazig in the south-eastern Delta. The journey was unproblematic – a Peugeout from Aboud took me straight to Zagazig from where a cheap (£E 2) taxi took me to the site. Some friends from university in Berlin work there, now for the University of Postdam, and it was good to see them again. Apart from the temple and I was able to see the New Kingdom necropolis and Middle Kingdom palace with a policeman, and also the current excavations.

I was very lucky on the 20th – my plan had been to visit Memphis that day, as one of the key-sites for my PhD this site had some priority, but I was also aware that this trip was rather expensive. An American tourist who had been waiting for a taxi at my hotel and was only in Cairo for the day had already booked a car for the day and he kindly let me come along. He wanted to see more than just Memphis, so we first went to the Citadel in Islamic Cairo which was very enjoyable. We then went to Giza, where he even paid for a horse and carriage ride round the plateau, before we moved on to Saqqara, stopped briefly at Abusir and then went to Memphis. He gained some egyptological insight from me whilst all I had to pay for were my entrance fees. In Memphis, we visited the museum, but I was rather disappointed, as the site of Kom Rabi'a was closed to the public. Even begging did not work and I was only able to take some pictures through the fence. Finally I managed to find a way into a different part of the site and take some pictures of some mudbrick and limestone structures.

The following day I needed some rest and spent the day in the hotel, working on my GIS project, georeferencing the maps from Amarna which I had recently scanned. I was halfway successful but shall continue working on this.

Today, I am leaving Cairo and will take a bus to Mellawi in Middle Egypt, from where I will take a car to the site of Amarna . Barry Kemp kindly agreed for me to arrive a day earlier than intended and I am looking forward to getting there very much!
Photos to follow - the internet connection is not fast enough at the moment.

My Advent 4211C - a brief review

2009-01-29T19:01:00.011Z

I bought this netbook in November 2008 and I must say that I am very impressed with it! In fact, I am writing this little text on it right now.

The specifications are as follows:
- Intel Atom processor N270 (energy efficient)
(1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 512MB cache)
- 1024MB DDR2 RAM
- 120GB Hard drive
- 10" Widescreen Display
- Wireless enabled
- Bluetooth
- Built-in Webcam, microphone and speakers

With a weight of only 1.12KG the computer is very light and handy. But instead of being flimsy, it has a good feel to it - just like a small laptop. My back was aching quite a bit from carrying around my Dell Inspiron 1300. The Advent 4211c fits into its little padded pouch, which takes up the space and weight of a medium-size book in my rucksack.

The screen is large enough and comfortable to work with. Admittedly it is smaller than most laptops', but not as tiny as those found on common netbooks and does not make my eyes hurt at all. I prefer larger screens and often work on my old laptop at home, but that is often a simple case of convenience, as the Dell is usually plugged in and ready to go.

The keyboard is just slightly smaller than full-size and takes a bit of getting used to. I have small hands, so I can almost say I prefer this size to the usual. There is a Windows-key though...Who still needs a Windows-key these days??? The annoying thing is that this pointless key is sitting right next to the Ctrl key and thus gets in the way all the time...

The operating system it comes with is Windows XP Home, but I installed Ubuntu 8.10 on my Netbook a week after purchase. Due to the fact that it lacks a DVD drive I had to create a bootable usb-stick first. I created a dual-boot due to the fact that I was not sure at first about how well Ubuntu would run on the computer, as it might require a special version. In addition I sometimes use a couple of open source GIS applications only available for Windows. Therefore I keep all my files on the Windows partition and access them from Ubuntu (Windows cannot read the Linux file structure whilst it works the other way round).
Fazit: Ubuntu 8.10, the full version, not the mobile one, works perfectly fine on this computer. The only flaws I have come across so far are
a) the lack of a driver for the microphone - I cannot use the softphone on Ubuntu and have to switch to Windows to use it. If anyone has managed to get the microphone working, please let me know.
b) the low screen resolution does not allow Google Earth to display properly. I use other GIS applications, such as gvSIG and QGIS all the time and do not encounter any difficulties.
c) I have not worked out how to use the webcam, but this might not be a problem - merely the fact that I have not tried...

I have furthermore installed PostgreSQL on my Netbook for learning, and PhD purposes and have not encountered any issues.

Apart from the missing DVD drive, this little Netbook has entirely replaced my old laptop. I will take this netbook to Egypt in March and my back will be most grateful :-)

Pre - x-mas update

2008-12-07T10:40:00.007Z

I am keeping busy as ever. Cannot wait for x-mas, going home to Peine on the 23rd, flying to Hannover, where - hopefully - someone will come and pick me up!
Need some rest, proper food, some time for me and some time to get some more work done! Beforehand I shall be presenting my research at a work-in-progress seminar on Thursday which I find rather scary as I have never really spoken about it. Presentation's almost done, though, so could be worse. Once that's done I will have to prepare another presentation for the following Thursday, the essay for which I will have to write over x-mas. The topic for that one is 'Bubastis until the end of the Middle Kingdom' which I find rather nice, as I have visited the site before, in 2003, when I was working at Qantir, also in the north-eastern Delta.
The topic for my presentation this Thursday is "Mass-Production in New Kingdom Egypt - Capital Cities of the New Kingdom and their industries", and I shall introduce my research, which is still in its youth, talk about my intentions and then focus on the larger industries at Amarna and Piramesse, trying to find some conclusions in how far mass-production can be identified and how these related to the city and then contributed to its development and status. Check out The Amarna Project website for some more information.

I was working all day yesterday, sitting at my desk at home. When I first looked out of my window I had a nice surprise: There's an empty site opposite my (third) house, which had been cleared recently - for a new building, I thought, and some strange metal frames had been set up - Turn out they're using it to see x-mas trees! :-)
Enjoy the view I had yesterday: The busy Smithdown Road can be seen in the background.

This morning, whilst waiting for and on the bus, I had a good laugh - loads and loads of Santas were driving, walking through the city. On the bus I realised that they were all on their way to a charity event, running through Liverpool!
...the best picture I could get - sneakily shot from the back of the bus!

The Liverpool Museum's New Egyptian Gallery has opened!

My department has a christmas tree in its lobby - reminds me that it's not actually that long to go and I should better stop writing and get some more work done!

All the best!

No Papercuts!

2008-10-15T10:21:00.000+01:00

Not with digital maps, anyway!

I have begun my GIS project which will (hopefully) form a large part of my PhD, aid me with my observations and conclusions and - as an additional feature - look rather pretty ;-)

The software I use for this is none lesser than the renowned gvSIG which has been used by OA for a while now, and has undergone some development by the IT crowd. The version I use is the newly released OA Digital Edition, all nice, polished and open source. You can download it here. It certainly is my recommendation when picking open source GIS tools for any use! It even comes with a userguide - enjoy!

Enough advertising. I commenced my project by downloading the maps from the Digital Egypt website for the purpose of basemapping.
My initial problem during the georeferencing was the projection. In the end I decided that WGS 84 would be the best choice, as the info provided on these maps was given in lat/long. This worked well enough until I realised that some of the co-ordinates which should have been on the corners are missing. Oh well, some maps worked through guessing, many will (hopefully not) have to stay unreferenced for the time being...

Here's an impression of the Delta:

Some of the margins so not fit properly and it would take some time getting them all to match...

I decided to look elsewhere:
Maproom has a nice collection of data from all over the world. An abundance of information, especially in terms of administrative boundaries, is available - not all necessary, but free and nice to have. Problematic is the fact that the data comes in ArcInfo format, which is old and not very nice to use at all. Furthermore it is proprietary to ESRI and it can be a hassle to convert it. Please read here to see how the nasty route via ArcGIS and the likes can be avoided! ;-)

Maplibrary is also very useful. I like the georeferenced satellite images in particular, but the other data, boundaries mostly, is very nice. It comes in ESRI shapefile format (not only, but in my opinion the most sensible) and can be added to one's GIS project easily.

Last but not least, the CGIAR-CSI provide free SRTM 90m Digital Elevation Data for the whole of Egypt, which I used as well.

Here's an initial shot of SRTM data with Maproom on top. Funky stuff, but rather simple for now:

The current "state of affairs" - The cropped satellite image with a shapefile I made - sites of special interest to my research. The metadata is contained in the .dbf file:

I have played with contour line creation and the like but have not come very far yet. Please be patient, further updates on this front are to follow soon!

Liverpool - The first impressions

2008-09-07T12:35:00.009+01:00

I have just "survived" a rather stressful week with several trips to Lancaster to OA North whose lovely unit is located in an old mill building. Working from home proved to be a disaster on Wednesday, but through considering various options we have come to the conclusion that it is not quite impossible after all. Sleep was a rarity throughout the week and had to be caught up on. The collapse of my clothes rail was another factor of annoyance but even this has been resolved now...!
No, I feel I have started settling into Liverpool, my new house and Lancaster and am, in general, happy.

Yesterday I had the rare opportunity to visit Liverpool's City Centre. I had to do some shopping and wanted to be able to claim at least the knowledge of the High Street shops' whereabouts... Ended up bumping into a giant spider and getting covered in foamy snow!

This hydraulic spider operated by a minimum of six people, is a performance by the French group LaMachine within Liverpool's European Capital of Culture 2008 program of events.

ETANA Core Texts

2008-08-21T15:05:00.001+01:00

Thank you, Chuck, for your comment!
here's a link to the full list of texts currently available on ETANA:

http://ancientworldbloggers.blogspot.com/2008/06/awol-ancient-world-online-6.html

ETANA - a tool for ANE research

2008-08-17T11:14:00.006+01:00

stands for Electronic tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives. It is an incredibly useful resource run by the following bodies:
The purpose of this website is the online publication of archaeological monographs and journals, either as excerpts or whole publications. In addition to this a number of archaeological projects in the ANE have added in-depth information on their projects.

Originally intended for Ancient Near Eastern studies, it contains a good number of Egyptological publications. (e.g. see my link to Petrie's Memphis I on the left).

I find the website slightly confusing as the listing and the interlinking is not very neat, but the sheer amount of resources more than makes up for this.

Look Left!

2008-08-04T17:38:00.000+01:00

I'm referring to the links (haha, links means left in German) menu. I have spent some time assembling my favourite links inside and outside Egyptology.
I find them extremely useful for all sorts of things. Many of them lead are collections of further useful links.
Come time, I shall try and update and expand my collection.
Happy surfing!

Winckelmann Cup 2008

2008-08-03T09:30:00.000+01:00

This is a copy of my text originally posted here: http://blogs.thehumanjourney.net/shapefile/entry/1

The purpose of this legendary journey was to participate in the Winckelmann Cup 2008 as part of the (rather international) team
CARDIFF DRAGONS.
The Winckelmann Cup is the Archaeology Football Worldcup and takes place every year in a different location.

The OA crew left Oxford at ca 9:45am on Thursday, July 3rd after piling into our beautiful grey hired minibus and collecting everybody one by one from a variety of locations within the city.
Once complete we started making our way towards Dover with Markus at the wheel, getting us to the ferry well in time.

The OA delegation!
Top row from left: Markus Dylewski (Graphics), Mike Donnelly (Fieldwork), Joseph Reeves (IT), Gary Jones (Geomatics); Bottom row from left: Anna Hodgkinson (Geomatics), Sergio Carvalho (Fieldwork), Rafael Martinez-Jausoro (Buildings).

Naturally, people wanted to ensure no weakness of stomach would take place on the boat and therefore the port's very own Burger King was destination number one.

After a "good" meal and some excitement from Joseph's side about all the VW vans in line for the boat which were all very nice and colourful, we were ready for some serious sea action.

As soon as we got aboard and the compulsory Dover-White-Cliffs shots had been taken, the first bottles of "Juice" were to be consumed by those lucky enough not to drive on that day. Juice, to be quite precise refers to beer and was one of the vital ingredients for a day's worth of fun, especially appreciated by the Scottish side of the team. The boardshop proved to be less exciting than expected, but time and fears from setting one's foot onto French soil had to be used up, before the journey off the ferry could be risked.
Off the boat, our journey took us through four different countries - that's five in one day ;-) - quite impressive, really: France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany, where we finally stopped and spent the night. Markus' parents were so kind as to let a horde of archaeologists step through their gates and drink their beer... We got pizza from a shop nearby and had some fun chatting to Markus' friends and brother.

The next morning was a bit headachy and getting out of bed was not so happy... but we made it and yet again boarded the minibus which was to carry us to the Czech Republic. This leg of the journey was longer than expected due to Markus' clever GPS which had the tendency to request U-turns rather than re-calculating the route. After a long stop in Chemnitz (East-German city still awaiting some serious development) and a tour through the centre of Prague which ensured the compulsory sight-seeing to be covered ;-)

We arrived in Podoli just after 8pm, after following random instructions and finally finding a way to the sportsgrounds via a field of sunflowers.

(this is not Podoli, by the way, but similar.)

Tent City was almost completely erected by the time of our arrival, awaiting just the addition of OA's Cardiff Dragons' tents.

The team was complete with the actual Cardiff delegation, and so the first night was simply spent celebrating everyone's arrival. We missed the opening ceremony, and therefore needed to catch up on getting to know everybody over Czeck Juice, the price of which is very different from that available in the UK.
For me it was surprising and fun to meet up with some of the guys I went to university with in Berlin (HU) "back in the day" and who had come to play as well. Gladly, as we found out, we were not in the same group as them! There was a hog roast, the remains of which were plundered by the team from Würzburg and the heads placed onto stakes just outside their tents.

Saturday morning, getting up was painful and with the sun beating down onto the tents, turning each of them into a roasting tin, heads were sore, and not just from that. Breakfast consisted out of *proper* bread, cheese and meat and coffee, good for some, not so great for others, but everyone seemed grateful for some food. After breakfast the team gathered:

Nick, Ian, Martin, Nao and David from Cardiff joined us, and we ended up having a good selection of substitute players. The unfortunate thing was that Nao has been playing football practically all her life and I haven't. It is compulsory for every team to have at least one girl on the pitch at all times and due to the fact that I had to substitute for Nao, the chances for scoring went down by quite a percentage...

Our first match on Saturday was against a German team in green t-shirts and was won by us - well, I was in the field for a grand total of 3 minutes, at the end of the second half. It must be mentioned at this point, though that each half consisted of ten minutes.

We won this match with a lot of glamour, same as the second one, in which I was allowed onto the pitch a bit longer.

some more action shots:

The last match in the qualification series was lost against the only Polish team. Did I mention that most of the other teams were German, as the Winckelmann Cup originates from there? There was one team from the US and another from Italy and a few other nations were represented as well.
The fact that we lost against Poland did not matter too much, as we had won the first two which qualified us for the eigth-finals which were to be played that very evening.

Every match was a challenge for Joe, as he *insisted* on a different hairdo per match. A shame that there was no best-hair award to be won.

Some floral bits and pieces were added to the ensemble afterwards.

Throughout the day some minor injuries were acquired by several of our players and took them off the pitch temporarily or indefinitely. Tears were not involved, but pain and grief - as in proper football... People either recovered with the intake of juice, painkillers or cigarettes, or promised to sort themselves out once back under the caring grasp of the NHS.

We played our eigth-final match against the notorious BFC Spartacus Berlin. This bunch of tough boys did attempt to tire us out, but the hardiness of the Dragons did not fail and it came to a penalty-shootout which we, quite unfortunately, lost. It was not that nobody accepted Spartacus' victory, but rather the fact that they, over the years, had become quite infamous for their style and there have been rumours that their team might not be represented by the number of archaeologists required for a "legal" team... The fact that they made it to the final did not make it any better...

The longest match of that day was our friendly against the above-mentioned "Würzburgers" who bet us something like 30:2. Good job nobody was watching!

That night everybody gathered for some late-night football and drinking action which lasted rather long and produced new friendships and some headaches on Sunday morning.

Sunday, the final day proved to be just as exciting as the others, as it was the day for a) friendly matches for those teams who did not qualify or lost in the eigth-finals and b) the quarter-, semi- and *finals. We won one of these matches and lost against a team consisting almost in its entirety from girls.

Here's Nao in her element. She and Martin were later off-hired to Spartacus Berlin to play for them in the final due to their goal-scoring abilities.

Even I was allowed to wear a colour other than yellow, as the Würzburg team lacked a girl and thus I supported their numbers in a couple of matches. I even happened to kick the ball in the right direction once or twice...

The Würzburg team consisted about half-half from Würzburg Uni-students and archaeologists from a small archaeological unit associated with the university.

A special team who had arrived with the aim of gaining the so-called "Uschi-Cup", the award for the team who were most fun, were the Latene Lovers, Leipzig. These guys came dressed in pink t-shirts, equipped with drums and all sorts of other noisy equipment, and cheered for their favoured teams during the matches. Their support was greatly appreciated and I do hope they won this award!

We managed to pack most our things before the final, a spectacle which was observed and enjoyed greatly by everyone. The teams involved were the above-mentioned Spartacus Berlin and Maradona Napoli, with Nao and Martin representing the Cardiff Dragons under cover. This arrangement made it quite difficult to cheer, as we really favoured the Italian team, but wanted to support our teammates too... And nobody would have wanted to clash with Berlin's number 8 - I think he managed to gain himself 2 (is that possible - there shows how much I really know about football) yellow cards and fouled a player from the opposite team rather nastily.

Napoli won, so there was a great deal of cheering from the fans who had been sitting and standing around the pitch and then crowded on the same to congratulate the happy winners.

Unfortunately, the Cardiff Dragons could not afford to stay for the award ceremony which took place after the final, as our journey back was going to be a long one.
We made it to place 15 out of 30ish, a result which made us happy. Maybe next time, with a little more training, the Cardiff Dragons could make it to the final?!
The trip proved to take even longer, people requiring stretching breaks to cure their stressed limbs rather often and it was not until 11pm that we made it to a service station near (Kassel) where my brother collected me to take me home for a few days.

My part of the journey ends here, the rest of the OA part of the team, now including Nick and Ian, made their way back to Oberhausen, where they enjoyed a grand total of 3 hours of sleep, left Markus behind, and got back to Oxford the following day.

This trip was an exciting, very enjoyable and sporty adventure, unforgettable and, in short, fantastic! I think I am not the only one to say -

Bring on Winckelmann Cup 2009!!!!!
(in Bamberg, Germany)

Photos by: Anna Hodgkinson, Joseph Reeves, Sergio Carvalho

I'm back!!!

2008-08-02T16:01:00.001+01:00

I have decided to stick my name on here now and stop being so stupid. Whoever wants to laugh can do so, but it's my project and I don't want to loose it.

Will be updating as I go along. I will be leaving Oxford in a month's time to move to Liverpool. Once there I will have another month to prepare and get used to things. I don't think their library is as extensive as the Sackler in Oxford, so part of my luggage will hopefully be a massive bunch of photocopies. Just trying to prepare as much as possible, acquire the most important material and get my brain into the mood.

I bought Jeffrey's Survey of Memphis I for a fiver the other day. Good plans, I'm quite pleased.

I have another blog, which I keep updating with random stuff, too. Just thought I'd stick a link on here, in case anyone's interested.

This is me, by the way:

One early evening on the Cowley Road

At the Winckelmann Cup 2008 in Podoli, near Brno, Czech Republic

Hooray!

2008-06-22T20:32:00.001+01:00

News (well, a couple of weeks old) - I have now been accepted to do my PhD! I will be studying at Liverpool Uni and on a part-time basis, whilst I will be working at OA North. Can't wait to start!

Here is an excerpt from my proposal for whoever is interested:

My thesis will be concerned with capital cities in New Kingdom Egypt, focussing on major urban centres and their productivity. I intend to question whether and by what means a capital city could be defined and, in consequence, how far it contributed to Egypt's economy and wealth.
My core statement is that the presence of certain industrial establishments associated with an urban centre should be considered the major legitimisation of its status and wealth.
The outcome of my thesis will be an evolutionary model encompassing the emergence of urban centres in general and their industries until the end of the New Kingdom. Furthermore, I will be concerning myself with the establishment of a structural network based on the existence of industries within the cities of New Kingdom Egypt.
This approach will fill a significant gap in the current debate on Egyptian urbanism, providing an insight into relationships between industrial institutions and the seat of the administration and the king. My research will aid my career, preferably as a senior in fieldwork on an urban site, focussing on the development of major urban sites in Ancient Egypt.

I plan the evaluation of material remains known from urban production sites, such as the glass production sites at Amarna and Piramesse and the (later) metal and faience workshops at Thebes and Memphis. I will establish a database, which will enable me to filter the collected data into quantitative, local and functional groups and to be classified. This evaluation will take place with regards to the archaeological context and setting of the workshops. Thus, I will be able to gain insight into infrastructure and organisation of the cities, urban planning, and how far the production sites and their surroundings related to one another.
In addition to the local understanding of production sites within the capital cities, national networking will be of importance to understand the role of the capital as administrative centre, and royal seat as well as centre of distribution. The location of the city and its access to resources needs to be considered.
A discussion on international trade networks will highlight the roles and functions of Egyptian capitals of the period and their Middle Eastern equivalents.

Bibliography:

Baines, J. and N. Yoffee 1998. Order, Legitimacy, and Wealth in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Archaic States, edited by G. Feinman and J. Marcus, pp. 199-260. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Bietak, M. 1975. Tell el-Dab‘a II, Der Fundort im Rahmen einer archäologisch-geographischen Untersuchung über das ägyptische Ostdelta, Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes; Band 1, Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie; Band 4, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Bietak, M. 1979. Urban Archaeology and the "Town Problem". In Weeks, K. (ed.) Egyptology and the Social Sciences. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 95-144.

Bietak, M. 1981. Avaris and Piramesse: Archaeological Exploration in the Eastern Nile Delta. [Mortimer Wheeler Archaeological Lecture 1979] Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bietak, M. 1984. Ramsesstadt, In Lexikon der Ägyptologie V, Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 128-46.

Bourriau, J.D., Phillips, J. (eds.) 2004. Invention and Innovation – The Social Context of Technological Change 2. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Dorner, J. 1983. Archäologischer Survey in der Umgebung von Tell el-Dab'a, Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts. Beiblatt 54 (Grabungen 1982), Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 20-21.

Dorner, J. 1999. Die Topographie von Piramesse, Ägypten und Levante IX, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 77-83.

Friedman, F.D. (ed.) 1998. Gifts of the Nile: Ancient Egyptian faience. London: Thames and Hudson, c1998.

de Garis Davies, N. 1943. The Tomb of Rekh-mi-Re at Thebes. Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition 11. New York: Publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition.

Habachi, L. 2001. Tell el-Dab’a I: Tell el-Dab’a and Qantir, the site and ist connection with Avaris and Piramese; aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben von Eva-Maria Engel, Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes; Band 2, Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie; Band 23, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Hassan, F. 1993. Town and Village in Ancient Egypt: Ecology, Society and Urbanization. In Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B. and Okpoko, A. (eds.) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns. London: Routledge, 551- 586.

Hayes, W. 1937. Glazed Tiles from a Palace of Ramesses II. at Kantir, Metropolitan Museum of Art Papers; No. 3. New York: Ayer Company Publishers.

Hein, I., Janosi, P. 2004. Tell el-Dab’a XI: Areal A/V: Siedlungsrelikte der spaten Hyksoszeit,
Untersuchungen der Zweigstelle Kairo des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes; Band 25, Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie; Band 21, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Hodgkinson, A. 2007. The Final Phase of Per-Ramesses: The History of the
City in the Light of its Natural Environment. In Cannata, M. (ed.) Current Research in Egyptology VII: Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Symposium. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 99-115.

Kemp, B. 1977. The City of el-Amarna as a Source for the Study of Urban Society in Ancient Egypt. World Archaeology 9, London: Routledge. 124-139.

Kemp, B. 1989. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London: Routledge.

Lacovara, P. 1997. The New Kingdom Royal City, Studies in Egyptology, London: Kegan Paul International.

Nicholson, Paul 2007. Brilliant Things for Akhenaten: The Production of Glass, Vitreous Materials and Pottery at Amarna, Site O45.1. London: Egypt Exploration Society.

O'Connor, D. 1993. Urbanism in Bronze Age Egypt and Northeast Africa. In Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B. and Okpoko, A. (eds.) The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns. London: Routledge, 570-586.

Patch, D. 1991. The Origin and Early Development of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt: A Regional Study. PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvannia.

Pusch, E. 1994. Divergierende Verfahren der Metallverarbeitung in Theben und Qantir? Bemerkungen zur Konstruktion und Technik. Ägypten und Levante IV, 145-170.

Rehren, T. and Pusch, E. 1997. “New Kingdom Glass-Melting Crucibles from Qantir-Piramesses”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 83, London: Egypt Exploration Society, 127-142.

Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Andah, B. and Okpoko, A. (eds.) 1993. The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns. London: Routledge

Pusch, E. B., Becker, H., Fassbinder, J. 1999. Wohnen und Leben. Oder: Weitere Schritte zu einem Stadtplan der Ramsesstadt, Ägypten und Levante IX, Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 155-170.

Pusch, E. and Rehren, T. expected 2008. Hochtemperaturechnologie in der Ramses-Stadt. Rubinglas für den Pharao. Forschungen in der Ramses-Stadt 6, Mainz: von Zabern.

Uphill, E. P. 1968. Pithom and Raamses: Their Location and Significance, in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 27, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 291-316.

Uphill, E. P. 1984. The Temples of Per Ramesses, Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Uphill, E. P. 1988. Egyptian Towns and Cities. Shire Egyptology 8, Princes Risborough: Shire Publications.
Saldern, A.; von Oppenheim, A.L. et al 1970. Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia, Corning, Corning Museum of Glass.

Shaw, I. and Nicholson, P. (eds.) 2000. Ancient Egyptian materials and technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shortland, A.J. and Tite, M.S. 2005. A technological study of Ptolemaic – early roman faience from Memphis, Egypt, Archaeometry 47/1, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 31–46.

Trigger, B. 1972. Determinations of Urban Growth in Pre-industrial Societies. In Ucko, P., Tringham, R. and Dimbleby, G. (eds.) Man, Settlement and Urbanism. London: Duckworth, 575-599.

Trigger, B. 1985. The Evolution of Pre-industrial Cities: A Multilinear Perspective. In Geus, F. and Thill, F. (eds.) Mélanges offerts à Jean Vercoutter. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 343-353.

Van den Brink, E. (ed.) 1988. The Archaeology of the Nile Delta: Problems and Priorities. Amsterdam: Netherlands Foundation for Archaeological Research in Egypt/Uitgeverij.

Wengrow, D. 2006. The archaeology of early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yoffee, N. 2005. Myths of the Archaic State: The evolution of the earliest cities, states, and civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This is only an excerpt produced for an online-application which requires a resumee of the whole thing. I am not yet courageous enough to publish my name here. Thus I suggest leaving a comment in case anybody is interested in my research/co-operation/exchange of information etc. Many thanks!

Egyptian Archaeology

2008-04-05T17:19:00.000+01:00

...is my thing, as I might have previously mentioned.
Have excavated on one urban site in Egypt (not telling which) and have come to understand the importance of cities in Ancient Egypt. My concentration lies on the New Kingdom and its so-called capital cities and urban centres.

I feel the necessity to look into the development of the so-called Egyptian capital cities from the time of their foundation to their decrease in importance throughout the New Kingdom, and, where applicable, before and after.

My focus will be the cities of Piramesses and Amarna, due to the amount of recent work undertaken there and discoveries especially in the realm of industrial archaeology - extensive workshops of mass-producing character have been discovered within the last 20 years. These range from pottery over metal and glass production to the making of faience and lesser goods.

In my opinion the evaluation of workshops and other industrial evidence is a valid starting point for the discussion of New Kingdom capital cities, their development and status and their roles and functionality within the country.

From here, one can also establish national networks and international trade routes of goods coming from these capitals, linking the ancient world at the time of the New Kingdom.

I shall be adding to this in time to come.