ArchaeoBlog

And more photos! Today was a pleasant day, marred only by my waking up before four. =( But I got up at 4 and had a leisurely morning anyway, so it wasn’t all bad. I actually spent most of the day at the bath house by myself — I usually have between 2 and 6 workers with me removing sand. But they were needed elsewhere so I was alone most of the day. Very nice. We had been looking for a drainage system coming out of one wall, but hadn’t had any luck for some reason. So after the guys left I was able to just sit there and trowel around looking for it. And I did!

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More photos! Today I was clearing out more of the tepidarium and noticed that some of the bricks seemed to be resting in some kind of order rather than all jumbled up together as they were in the rest of the room. I cleared away some of the sand and found that they had indeed fallen roughly as they were sitting as part of the roof:

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[Note: photos delayed by network problems]

With photos! I snapped a few today as we were finally uncovering something recognizable and perhaps vaguely interesting. To recap: This Roman bath was first fully uncovered and somewhat restored/conserved in 1975. Since then not much has been done and it’s deteriorated quite a bit. I am in the process of removing all of the wind blown sand and garbage and wall collapse that has been accumulating since 1975. We’ve been working the last couple of days in the apodyterium or disrobing room, it’s the first room one enters before heading into the frigidarium.

So, here it is:

That is the apodyterium with the entrance steps leading in. You can see a bench over to the right of those which sit in front of a niche or perhaps a window. The frigidarium is farther right and is considered a separate room. Note how deep the sand is: 35 cm nearer the steps and increasing to 55 cm farther back where the guys are standing.
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Another day exposing myself in the . . . .errr, wait, I mean another day exposing my stuff in the. . . .no, that’s not right. . . . well, at any rate, here are some more photos of some of the stuff I uncovered today in the Roman bath house:

This is in the frigidarium. The exposed section is part of the sand covering most of the area surrounding and in the bath house. As I mentioned yesterday, the top 5-10 cm or so is loose wind-blown sand but under that is much more compact sand. It’s tough to dig through, especially when we have to be careful near the floor and the walls, so we end up chunking it out in the middle with trowels and then brushing near the floor and along the walls.
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[EDIT: photos loading slooooowly]

First full day in the Roman bath house! I’m thoroughly enjoying this little project, although it’s turning into something of a major project the more we uncover and find that needs doing. As a bit of history, it was cleared and restored somewhat in the 1970s, so all you see in the following photos has happened since then.

Our first thought was to remove the trash and windblown sand that had accumulated in order for the conservator to get some plaster samples and attempt fixing some to the wall better. There turned out to be more sand than expected, and also of a different consistency than we’d initially thought: There was some loose sand, but under it was an uneven layer of compact. . .something. . .of unknown depth. Actually, I didn’t know what it was at first and just cleared down to the compact stuff. I soon discovered that it was just the same sand but very compacted due probably to rain and trampling by visitors. So, a couple-hour project turned in a couple of days and perhaps several more to go.

First up, another serene sunrise over Karanis:

Next, here’s the overall view of the bath building:

That first area is the frigidarium or cold-water bath. To the right of that you enter into the tepidarium or warm-water bath. From that room you exit to the left into the laconicum or steam room, and thence into the caladarium or hot-water bath. You would go into each in a particular sequence, but I don’t know which at the moment.
Here’s a closer-up view of the frigidarium:

The tub is on the left there and you can see a step next to the tub for entry and exit. Just right of the step you can kind of make out a dropoff: that’s the compact sand we’d been removing from the back wall out (towards the camera). It’s about 40 cm thick there and the floor underneath is of large paving stones. Most of the mud bricks you’ll see in here are fired rather than just dried to provide some moisture resistance, hence the red color.

Next is the doorway from the tepidarium into the laconicum:

This was also covered in about 30-40 cm of compact sand and fallen bricks and plaster. The large paving stones are the floor surface and comparing to photos from the 1970s work, one is missing and the first one there has been broken in half and one part is now missing. The three small brick structures were for a bench — it’s a steam room after all.

A couple of niches in the laconicum. The semicircular one is where I first discovered that the compact sand was the same as the loose sand (just more compact): it was the same stuff and also had recent junk in it, mostly cigarette butts and styrofoam.

One corner of the laconicum with some plaster still attached and some that has fallen.

And here we are in the caldarium with its nice stone tub. Note the spout coming out of the tub in the middle. There was a deep pit just to the left of where that is, but it has been filled in.

Lengthwise view of the tub. It was partially filled with sand when I got to it and the interior was a bit surprising: it’s three stone pavers with plaster around the edges. The near side has been broken off at some point, probably before the last century. Again, note the drainage hole in the center right.

Finally, a small platform outside of the frigidarium. This was in photos from the 1970s project and it’s still in halfway decent shape, although the wall behind it has deteriorated markedly. Actually, much of this building has deteriorated quite a bit since then. Some of the wall parts are now just plain gone, at least one wall is visibly bowing out and could really collapse at any time, and the stone lintel above the tepidarium-locaonicum doorway is now cracked, apparently all or most of the way through. Once I saw that I became somewhat concerned as it’s a pretty serious crack.

Really, at this point nothing much can be done to save the structure from ultimate destruction apart from perhaps reconstructing every single by encasing them in concrete or filling the entire thing with sand up to the tops of the walls. Were I God-Emperor of Egypt I would immediately do the latter. But I’m not, so we do what we can.

[Note: All of the photos aren't uploading right now, will have them up in the next couple of hours, I hope]

Few photos from our trip to Amarna and environs. We stayed in Minya at a resort — yes, resort — but geared to Egyptians so the price was very reasonable. For any potential future travelers, Minya is only worth going to for Amarna and maybe Bene Hassan, otherwise, it’s of extremely limited interest.

First up, Beni Hassan, some First Intermediate/Middle Kingdom tombs:

Yours truly in front of the tombs with the Nile in the background, also showing the sharp delineation between Valley and desert that Egypt is so famous for. That also shows the height at which these were cut into the local limestone. Interesting stuff, the limestone, probably part of the larger Theban limestone formation but very different from that found at the type site near Luxor. That stuff is bright white and very fine grained and homogeneous, apart from abundant chert nodules and fractures filled with quartzite. This junk is fairly heterogeneous and layered throughout so finding good spots was probably tricky (part of this formation in the area is, in fact, similar to the white Luxor stuff and is mined for building stones).
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These are from a field trip we took yesterday to a nearby site called Bachias. There’s not much out there on it, but it’s a pretty neat site. A small Italian team has been working there since 1993 or 1994. It’s Late Period through Roman. These are just a few little shots that I thought were interesting from a more general archaeological perspective.

A nice example of what you often find at tell or mound sites when building episodes take place on earlier remains. In this case a later wall was built on top of earlier rubble, much of it old ceramics. Note the slope of the underlying deposits. Also an example of a section of a wall that has somehow survived while the rest of it has fallen down and largely disintegrated into essentially melted mud brick.
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A few photos of the site that have recently been cleaned off:

This is the road that cuts through the site here. Actually, I should say ’street’ because it’s an ancient street. The granary where I’ve been working is on the left there and there are houses on the right.
Not how I cleverly caught the bag being thrown just before the moment it is caught.
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Nothing much to report today. I spent half of the morning hanging out by a, errrr, toilet facility. Not ill mind you, but the dinner last night — boxed kofta sticks and a spicy cream sauce — decided it needed to make a hasty exit this morning AFTER I got to the site. Not an emergency, but definitely a needed break. I managed to wait around until the driver and the rest of us had tea and then went back to the field house to. . . .well, “dump fuel over the ocean” IYKWIMAATTYD.

Anyhoo, nothing exciting was found today, just trying to figure out stratigraphy and such, so just a bunch of trying to decide what dirt was different from what other dirt. By the end of the day we had it worked out pretty well. Here is a funny little object one of the Egyptians found on the surface:

That’s a swastika to the left there. It’s an ancient symbol to be sure, but the piece itself doesn’t appear to be old. Unclear what it was doing there or when exactly it dates from. The Nazis used a right-crooked swastika like the one here, so it could date from mid-century. At any rate, funny little piece.

This one is just for fun: It’s us on the way back to camp in a 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser. That’s 9 of us in the back, 4 in the front, 3 on the roof, and 2 hanging off the back. No, not safe or comfortable (albeit squishing up against the females isn’t too shabby), but we make do.

Back from the field with a new camera! Only a couple of photos today and they are of iffy quality: it’s an iPod Touch after all. But hey, it works. Low-light photos are problematic, but the others seem okay.

Reasonably productive day, although we ended up – IMO – digging too many different units again. M. is a splitter and makes lots of smaller units, while D. and I are, if not lumpers, at least not as concerned about taking a lot of material out. At this point, I think we’re confident that what we have is a jumbled up deposit of collapsed wall and roof material along with a lot of blown in sand. There are separate deposits, yes, but digging each separately doesn’t seem to me to provide any more useful information than simply noting it as such and taking it all out. One could argue that we’re losing data that way, but we’re losing data anyway: we don’t, for example, map out and draw every fallen brick even though someone might be able to use that data later. Kind of a tradeoff.

First up, Justine:

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