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 »

Posted by Sabine Boos

As everybody knows, people in ancient Egypt used stone to build their monuments and statues. What is much less known, however, is that a large number of their tools were made of stone and this holds true for the Predynastic period as well as for a major part of Pharaonic times. Chert, sometimes referred to as flint, was the preferred stone for making their tools. Nodules of chert can be found almost everywhere in Egypt’s deserts and because of its good quality with robust, sharp edges people chose chert as raw material to produce many types of tools.

Most people associate stone tools with the Paleolithic period (the Old Stone Age) and thus with a time,… READ MORE »

Posted by Claire Malleson

Arriving in Cairo this time had an extra air of expectation to it. After the events of the past several weeks what might have changed? Well, not much yet! Not that affects the day to day business of archaeobotany (the study of ancient plants) on the Giza Plateau anyway.

I’m settling back into a familiar routine comfortably already. Work days in the lab for me all follow the same pattern; breakfast in the villa, drive up to plateau to the lab, settle down at my microscope with a cup of tea, my tweezers, and my iPod, then sort though archaeobotanical samples all morning until ‘second breakfast’, then back to work until lunch. After a drive back… READ MORE »

Posted by Richard Redding

I am an archaeozoologist, which means I identify and analyze all the fragments of animal bone that come form archaeological sites. I use the information I gather from the fragmented animal bones to examine the diet of the inhabitants and to try and reconstruct their subsistence system. What animals are the residents at a site consuming and what tactics and strategies are they employing? At Giza, in a larger sense, I am trying to understand the economic and social infrastructure of pyramid construction. To get an idea of what I do I suggest you see the “Feeding the Pyramid Builders” article.

To identify the fragmentary bone remains from a site I need to have comparative skeletons… READ MORE »

Posted by Mary Anne Murray

A bucket of water and a bag of dirt…an inauspicious start to a journey of discovery.

This journey is an ancient botanical one and the beauty of the thing is that plants float – the key to their recovery. Indeed, the process is known as flotation and it is how we find the many plant species from our two town sites of Heit el-Ghurab (HeG) and Khentkawes Town (KKT).

Plant remains (seeds, fruits, nuts, etc) are taken from the diverse living areas within these towns – hearths, ovens, floors, pits, alleys, storage jars, silos, rubbish dumps and so on – and can reveal vital details about food, as well as agriculture – one of the… READ MORE »

Posted by Valerie Steele

I arrived in Giza in the early hours of Monday morning on my first visit to Egypt. I never imagined I would visit the pyramids and yet here I am, not just visiting but doing a job I really enjoy right next to a pyramid (actually two)!  What am I doing here?

My work involves looking at the organic residues that have been preserved in ancient pottery. These residues are the degraded remains of plant or animal material – everything from food and drink to cosmetics, medicines, waterproofing materials, glues, dyes and, elsewhere, even Neolithic chewing gum made from birch bark.

Pottery is a great place to look for these materials because unglazed pottery is full of holes like… READ MORE »

The Giza Lab, nestled amidst the pyramids, may not look that impressive from the outside as it blends into to the yellowish sand colored landscape of the Western Cemetery. Continue reading →