Posted by Mary Anne Murray

Well, that was a long and interesting Giza Lab season!  The Giza Field Lab was open from January 8th and closed its doors on May 31st.  There were scheduled to be 36 specialists working in the Lab on the material culture and environmental evidence excavated from our sites in 2011, however due to recent events in Egypt only 24 specialists participated this time around.   The main objective of the 2011 season overall was to have each team member finish the analysis of their class of material culture from Area AA at Heit el-Ghurab (HeG) for publication,  including ceramics, all manner of artifacts, clay sealings, human bone, animal bone, plants, lithics, and pigments.   We… READ MORE »

Brian Hunt, AERABLOG editor, will be our guest writer from the Giza pyramids in Egypt for two weeks in March 2009 during our twentieth anniversary celebration.

Brian has been a volunteer with AERA since 2004 and has been the producer/writer of the AERA web site since its inception in 2005. He brings his longstanding interest in ancient and modern Egypt and his knowledge of our work to the task of reporting on our archaeological excavations from ground zero. Brian has been a lead writer at Microsoft on such titles as Age of Empires, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, Microsoft Train Simulator, and Microsoft ESP. He is also a freelance writer for the web and periodicals. He’s currently working on… READ MORE »

The excavations at Giza are off to a roaring start. One of the challenges of excavating the Lost City at Giza is that there are hundreds of Late Period burials (747-525 BC; see A Girl and Her Goddess) above the 4^th Dynasty layers.

They’re fascinating to study but they slow us down, as each one must be excavated and recorded. The osteology team, led by Jessica Kaiser, is very busy, as you’ll see from the excerpts below of team member Scott Haddow’s field report of but two of many excavated burials.

The burials mostly cover an area of our main dig site near the Wall of the Crow. We also find them in the… READ MORE »

Students and teachers have begun to arrive for AERA’s 2009 Giza Field School, cosponsored once again by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). We welcome back some of the 2007 Giza Field School alumni and 2008 Luxor Field School graduates. The students will be learning advanced skills in:

• Ceramics
• Illustration
• Survey
• Osteology (excavation of human remains) 

We’re proud to say that some of our graduates will be teaching classes to their fellow Egyptians. This is a great advantage, as it means they’ll teach classes in Arabic and the foreign instructors can take a step back. This helps us fulfill our mission of eventually… READ MORE »

AERA’s Giza Lab officially opened for the season on Sunday, February 1^st, 2009. It’s a funny place, doesn’t look like much from the outside – a low, one story brick-and-cement bunker painted a yellowish dung color – a building of little consequence nestled amongst Giza’s imposing pyramids.

When the rusty metal door opens with its loud clang, however, a different impression emerges as one’s eyes adjust to the light, and especially as one descends into the heart of the lab. Much larger than imagined and everywhere, boxes! These, stacked high on floor to ceiling shelves, are all labeled with the details of their contents and of their origin.

 … READ MORE »

AERA’s goals for the 2009 field season at Giza. Continue reading →