19th
Last day on site
Lovely weather on site today after all the heat – sunny and warm but with a nice cooling breeze. It’s a shame we’re leaving! First thing this morning we completed recording the ten red granite mill-stones that are visible on the surface – there could well be others completely buried.
Patricia brushing earth from one of the mill-stones.
Seeking out mill-stones took us to the south-east corner of the site which is used by the villagers as a rubbish dump and somewhere to tether animals. We then walked back to the high brick mounds along the edge of the village of Tell el-Daba and past the trenches of some SCA excavations carried out in 2003-04 to test the ground for antiquities before releasing the land to the local council for the construction of buildings for local services.
SCA excavation trenches in the foreground in front of the village of Tell el-Daba.
There are villages on both the eastern and western sides of the tell, so there are a number of tracks which cross it and are quite heavily used, both by wheeled vehicles (including heavy farm tractors and bulldozers) and by more traditional means of transport.
Donkey travel across the tell.
We investigated our large brick wall further this morning and worked out where would be a good place to start proper excavation next year. After saying our farewells to everyone at the site, we drove to Riyad and called at the office of the local Mamur (chief of police) who turned out to be very interested in archaeology. After drinking tea with him, we returned to Kafr es-Sheikh. Tomorrow we will meet Salwa at the local SCA office to ‘sign off’ after a short, but very successful season.
Our ‘team’ this year. From left to right: the two policemen from Riyad with the site guard between them, then Mohammed, Salwa, Patricia, Jeff and Ahmed.
