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Jessica Kaiser, head of the AERA Osteo team, works with Osteo Student
Maha Hassan Sayah.
Excavation: Can You Dig It?
Instructors James Taylor and Freya Sadarangani and their team
emphasized a true archaeological imperative: as SCA Inspectors,
the students must learn how to be independent excavators, capable
of supervising their own sites throughout Egypt and of analyzing
and reporting their own data. The students, therefore, carried
out all stages of the excavation process—excavation, recording,
analyses, and report writing—working shoulder to shoulder with
AERA archaeologists in the enigmatic area known as the Western
Compound.
Survey
The ability to survey varied terrains and structures using both
high-tech and low-tech strategies was the goal of our advanced
survey course, taught by Ana Tavares. Survey students were
assigned practice in a number of areas within and outside the
aera concession, and even at our newly purchased villa property
off Pyramid Street. Here the students gained experience in
handling urban salvage situations (such as the one we experienced
first-hand at last year’s Salvage Archaeology Field School
in Luxor). The mastaba of Nensedjerkai in the Western Cemetery
of Khufu afforded students the opportunity to survey and map
a superstructure with, among other features, a sloping enclosure
wall, an off-axis entry, and three floor levels. Pragmatism was
an important characteristic of the course. Not only did we train
students to use the total station, but also to measure by simple
pacing—the minimal recording strategy they would be able to
use at provincial sites. As SCA Inspectors working in locations
throughout Egypt, our students are destined to face the gamut of
there are essentially no options for
osteology study short of education
abroad and field schools. Further
underscoring the urgent need for
osteology training is the fact that so
many sites in Egypt, like ours, are
riddled with Late Period burials.
Because the burials are stratigraphically
later than our settlement, they
are effectively blocking excavation
of the Old Kingdom site. Through
a collaborative effort, the osteology
and excavation students excavated,
recorded, and analyzed a total of 38
burials, many with fragile, painted
mud coffins that required extracareful
handling.
The entire Survey group works in the
stone-lined basin (described on page
19) in operation KKT-AI.
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