STUDENT DAYNOTES AMHEIDA 2008

Name: Adam Prins Supervisor(s): Roberta Casagrande Date: 2/16/08

X Excavation □ Small Finds □ Topography X Photography □ Ceramics

└►Area: 4.1; Temple Room(s): AR50 and AQ50 □ Data entry

What I have done:

In the morning I took the day height with Elsbeth and Page. I then supervised and directed the digging in DSU 115 and DSU 108. Due to their close proximity and the fact that there is relatively loose sand between the two DSUs, Roberta and I agree that they will eventually become the same pit and we will thus equal the DSUs. This of course depends on how much time we have left in the season to excavate. We cleaned the DSUs and articulated what is possibly a wall in DSU 108. While we were cleaning these DSUs, I came across an inordinately large number of fragmentary and intact bread moulds. I checked them for decoration and kept the ones that were decorated. A common decoration found on the bread moulds is a tree-like design that is simply etched into the clay before it is fired.

After the workers carried away the blocks that had previously been stored outside the northern part of the area, we began removing all the blocks in DSU 118 since Valentina had already drawn them and they had been photographed. Before we took them out, I set up the photo-board so we could photograph the collapse. While removing the blocks we discovered that two of them had painted reliefs; we gave these blocks Field Numbers 70 and 71. We also found two grinding stones and a jar stopper in this DSU. We gave the jar stopper Field Number 74.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon after second breakfast, we made lots of interesting discoveries. At one point we had a shortage of pottery buckets so Page and I sorted the pottery we had found so far to free some up. While doing this we found a very small ostrakon with three characters written on it. While we sorted, I noticed what appeared to be Sheikh Muftah potsherds. This suggests that the temple might have been occupied during the Old Kingdom, but it is of course not entirely compelling evidence. One of the workmen digging in DSU 123 found an ostrakon and left it in situ. We took its elevation, but it was too small to photograph.

Meanwhile in DSU 115 a worker found two fragments of a seated Osiris. One fragment was a head and the other was possibly a leg although it was unclear in its current state of preservation. Together these fragments of bronze were given the Field Number 76. Also in DSU 123, we found a piece of worked limestone which appears like it may be part of a basin. Soon after finding this limestone, we found another bronze head of Osiris and gave it Field Number 77.

What I have learned:

Today I learned the complete way to adequately document a stone collapse. The collapse in DSU 118 was what one would imagine as a quintessentially "pretty" archaeological ruin, and we needed to make sure it was documented to it could be analyzed in the future. With Valentina's expert drawing and our collective photography skills, we documented it as well as it could be documented. Each step of the entire process was valuable.

Problems I have found:

I did not encounter any problems today.