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24
Capital Zone Walkabout 2010
Climate change was very much on the mind of AERA team
members and colleagues when Ana Tavares organized the
second AERA-hosted “Capital Zone Walkabout” for April 9–10.
Climate change is certainly a hot topic these days, at the beginning
of the 3rd Millennium AD. But at Giza we discussed major
climate shift in the middle of the 3rd Millennium BC, just about
the time people built and lived in our Lost City of the Pyramids.
During the first Capital Zone Walkabout in 2006 we met
informally with colleagues who work in the narrow neck of
the Nile Valley, from the entrance of the Fayum to the apex
of the Delta. Within this zone emerged settlements that ruled
a major part of Egyptian territory over the long duration of
ancient Egyptian history. Issues of common concern include
the distribution and stratigraphy of settlements, the location
and movement of the Nile and its branches, and the question of
harbors near the valley temples of pyramids.
This year we hosted the second round of meetings in
the new AERA Egypt Center with Miroslav Barta and Lisa
Lenka (Charles University, Prague), from the Czech Institute
of Egyptology mission at Abusir; Nicole Alexanian from the
German Archaeological Institute mission at Dahshur; Judith
Bunbury from Cambridge University; and Angus Graham
from the University of Sunderland. AERA team members
included Mark Lehner, Richard Redding, Mary Anne Murray,
Ana Tavares, Will Schenck, and Philip LaPorta.
We discussed the relationship between the erosion of the
Sphinx and 4th Dynasty settlement ruins at Giza to research
Ancient Egypt Research Associates 2009–2010 Annual Report
that shows a southward retreat of summer monsoon rains and
the drying of Saharan grasslands beginning in the north as late
as 2500 BC. Judith Bunbury and Angus Graham brought to the
discussion recent work at several sites along the Nile Valley
from Giza to the Sudan.
We toured spots at Giza pertinent to these questions: Did
people occupy the Lost City and Khentkawes Town sites before
and after the transition between moister and drier conditions?
If the main river channel and its levees pressed up against the
western side of the valley, then migrated eastward, what does
this mean for the possibility of harbors in front of the pyramid
valley temples strung along the desert edge at Giza, Abusir,
Saqqara, and Dahshur? We discussed the AERA team’s recent
discovery at the eastern end of the Khentkawes causeway of
ramps, corridors, terraces, and stairs around the edge of a deep
artificial depression, possibly a harbor.
Miroslav Barta and Lisa Lenka reported on their recent
work in the dry bed of the Abusir Lake, long thought to have
been a waterway fronting the main wadi up into the Saqqara
Plateau, possibly connected to harbors in front of the valley
temples of the Abusir pyramids and sun temples. Miroslav
and Lisa related evidence that the Abusir Lake existed in the
Old Kingdom, when it played an important role in the ideology
and practical use of the landscape for ritual and funerary
purposes, as it may have in later pharaonic times. Evidence for
the Old Kingdom climate shift is diverse, from analysis of lake
bed sediments to remains of beetles found in tombs. On the