Landscape Archaeology of the Western Nile Delta

About this book

Different ideas of what constitutes an archaeological site have developed over two centuries of scholarship and heritage law in Egypt, with sites often (unconsciously) conceived as lands with museum-quality pieces and striking monumental, mortuary, and/or epigraphic remains. As a result, the material record of the powerful dominates Egyptological discourse, leaving hundreds of unexplored sites in the Delta floodplain and their potential contributions to a narrative of Egyptian culture largely ignored.

Attempting to correct this, the author integrates historical maps, remote sensing data, and ancient texts to understand the dynamic landscape of the western Nile Delta. Weaving together new archaeological survey, Corona satellite images, and a targeted program of drill coring, Landscape Archaeology of the Western Nile Delta offers a palimpsest of settlement and paleoenvironment from the New Kingdom to Late Roman era. In the face of forces undermining many sites' integrity, this study adapts techniques in landscape archaeology to an Egyptian context, anticipating triage and salvage in the decades to come.

Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Introductions

Chapter 1: Regional Survey, the Nile Delta Floodplain, and the Archaeological Site in Egypt
Chapter 2: Prior Research within the Cultural and Natural Landscape of the Western Delta
Chapter 3: Methodology for Investigating the Cultural and Natural Landscape of the Western Delta
Chapter 4: Presentation and Spatial Analysis of Detailed Fieldwork Kom el-Abqa'in (KABQ)
Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks

Appendix 1: List of koms and archaeological lands
Appendix 2: AOIs visited during the Fall 2007 cultural inventory
Appendix 3: List of collection units (CUs) identified by CUID
Appendix 4: Sums of period indices for each CU
Appendix 5: Sums of period indices for all AOIs

Bibliography
Subject Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Joshua R. Trampier received his Ph.D. in Egyptian Archaeology and Egyptology from the University of Chicago in 2010. He has worked in archaeology for fourteen years and in Egypt for over a decade.