Archiv für den Monat: November 2023

Upcoming DiverseNile Seminar: how to conceptualise narratives of Napatan shabtis figurines using 3D print replicas

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I am excited to announce the next DiverseNile Seminar for Tuesday, 5 December. Amanda Ford Spora will talk about her research with replicas of Napatan shabti figurines.

Amanda is currently a PhD candidate at the University College London. She is a community archaeologist with fieldwork experience in Sudan, especially at Mograt Island.

Her exciting research is “about co-creative meaning making using digitally produced replicas, and the process that non-professionals and professionals engage with together, to manifest authentic narratives of the ancient past.” The shabti figurines she is using for this include Napatan shabtis, of which the originals are currently in the UK. Amanda has undertaken research with teenagers in Sudan, Australia and United Kingdom, last but not least also to raise more awareness of the rich and endangered Sudanese heritage.

Her research fits perfectly into the agenda of the ERC DiverseNile project – as Kate Rose outlined in a previous blog post, we are also using the rich potential of 3D printing ancient artifacts. We are in particular interested in the implications these replicas hold for education and outreach, the accessibility of archaeological heritage, and explorations in experimental archaeology.

Speaking about education, I would once more like to advertise the fantastic recent volume “African Archaeology in Support of School Learning” – these contributions and also the splendid introduction are very inspiring and underline the wide-ranging relevance of our research (see also our article on the reconstruction of lived experiences in Sai City during the New Kingdom).

However, we must not forget the current challenges of school education in Sudan after more than 7 months of war. With an estimated 19 million children out of school, the country is facing a major education crisis. In a recent blog post, solutions to revive the education sector were proposed – I heartfully wish that the wonderful and amazingly resilient people of Sudan will achieve the revival of their educational sector by means of collaborative efforts. For this, they should receive as much international support as possible – and maybe also archaeology in Sudan and especially community archaeology can help a little bit to overcome this crisis.

Copper alloy production and use: upcoming DiverseNile Seminar

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I am delighted that our next DiverseNile Seminar is approaching. Frederik Rademakers will be speaking about brand-new research on copper production in the New Kingdom.

Frederik is currently employed at the British Museum, Department of Scientific Research as a metals specialist. His core research focus lies on ancient copper metallurgy in the Nile Valley and central Africa. Frederik’s approach is a combination of analytical studies of archaeological remains (from museum collections as well as ongoing excavations, e.g. Kerma and Amara West in Sudan) and experimental archaeology. Through the latter, we have been frequently in contact in the last years, and I can very highly recommend his seminal publications, e.g. Rademakers et al. 2022.

I am especially happy that the upcoming presentation by Frederik on November 21, 2023 will nicely connect to our previous DiverseNile Seminar 2022, focusing on landscape and resource management. In general, the procurement of materials and management of resources are topics which have gained popularity in archaeology in recent years, also in Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology. Modern multidisciplinary approaches enable us to investigate objects’ complete chaîne opératoire. An excellent example for these new advances is the study of copper in Egypt and Nubia (see Odler 2023) and in particular copper production at Kerma, a topic Frederic is an expert in (Rademakers et al. 2022). From the New Kingdom town of Amara West, a recent study in which Frederik was one of the main persons involved has provided important insights into the complexity of production chains, the question of material availability and supply in colonial Nubia and the direct comparison with Egypt (Rademakers et al. 2023).

In the upcoming DiverseNile Seminar, Fredrik will discuss unpublished material and data for the New Kingdom – nothing you want to miss if you are interested in archaeometry, copper production and interdisciplinary approaches to the topic.

References

Older, M. 2023. Copper in ancient Egypt: before, during and after the pyramid age (c. 4000-1600 BC), Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 132, Leiden; Boston.

Rademakers, F. W., Verly, G., Degryse, P., Vanhaecke, F., Marchi, S. and C. Bonnet. 2022. Copper at ancient Kerma: a diachronic investigation of alloys and raw materials, Advances in Archaeomaterials 3 (1), 1−18.

Rademakers, F., Auenmüller, J., Spencer, N., Fulcher, K., Lehmann, M., Vanhaecke, F. and Degryse, P. 2023. Metals and pigments at Amara West: Cross-craft perspectives on practices and provisioning in New Kingdom Nubia, Journal of Archaeological Science 153, 105766. 10.1016/j.jas.2023.105766.

One paper out, a new exciting Raman spin-off project just launched

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About two years ago, at the height of the Covid pandemic, the idea was born to initiate a scientific cooperation with our colleagues Fabian Dellefant and Melanie Kaliwoda from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the LMU and test together a new analytical methodology for archaeological ceramic material, namely Raman Spectroscopy.

Specifically, we aimed to first perform Raman spectroscopy towards carbon-bearing pottery and yields insights on the application of this technique for estimating maximum firing temperatures of Late Bronze Age vessels from Upper Nubia, comparing two site-specific data sets of samples, from the 18th Dynasty (1550–1290 BCE) at Sai Island and Dukki Gel (Kerma).

The encounter between natural sciences and archaeology was successful and from this idea an inspiring project developed, culminating in the publication of the paper: “Differentiation of Late Bronze Age Nubian- and Egyptian-style ceramics from northern Sudan by manufacturing firing temperatures using Raman spectroscopy”, in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, as part of the Special Issue Materiality of Earth edited by Pamela Fragnoli, Elisa Boccalon, Susanna Cereda, and Giovanna Liberotti, whom we all deeply thank for inviting us to contribute to this SI.

In testing Raman spectroscopy, our principal aims were to search for differences in producing technique and firing temperatures between the Nubian- and Egyptian-style samples; between the samples from Sai Island and those from Dukki Gel; and eventually among the different ceramic wares and types.

Now, as it is often the case, one idea leads to another and while some of the archaeological questions posed in the initial objectives of the work have not yet been fully answered, new exciting questions have arisen during the research and led us to further expand our Raman project into a new spin-off project focused on the investigation of the effects of oxidative weathering in relation to site-specific depositional environment and time.

Generally speaking, oxidative weathering is known to cause significant alteration modifications of the ceramic body after deposition resulting in distorting Raman spectra and potentially leading to an overestimation of the firing temperatures (Deldicque et al., 2023). Although all archaeological ceramics experienced oxidative weathering, our case study showed that the weathering effect was possibly more intense on the Dukki Gel than on the Sai Island samples hence to affect maximum firing conditions.

The new set of samples for which thin-sections were produced to perform Raman Spectroscopy.

In the coming months, together with Fabian Dellefant, we will particularly focus on this aspect of our research and perform Raman Spectroscopy on new samples, including ceramic sherds that have undergone extremely intensive oxidative weathering and experimental replica which were never exposed to any depositional and post-depositional processes.

Stay tuned to know more about the development of our work!

Reference

Deldicque, D., Rouzaud, J., Vandevelde, S., Medina-Alcaide, M.A., Ferrier, C., Perrenoud, C., Pozzi, J., Cabanis, M., 2023. Effects of oxidative weathering on Raman spectra of charcoal and bone chars: consequences in archaeology and paleothermometry. Comptes Rendus. Geoscience 355, 1–22. https://doi.org/ 10.5802/crgeos.186.