Field photos du jour This is actually sort of an update to this post on the Fayum. I have a couple more photos of the northern escarpment. This first one was taken in 1994 from the first escarpment near the western edge of Birket Qarun (the lake) near Qasr Qarun (map here). I went up here because the 1905 maps indicated that there were chert/flint deposits on top of that first bench. This is a view facing back eastwards:


Full image here.

And another from the same spot looking east but a little further south as well:

Full image here.

We came up from the bottom along that wadi going down. Most of it was filled with sand, and about halfway up we spied this little critter:

Full image here.

A desert fox! He's dead center running across.

Lastly, we come to something that illustrates one of the great dangers of archaeology. . .not to life and limb, but. . . .wait, it is to life and limb:


Full image here.

We were driving out to Wadi Rayan which is southwest of the Fayum. It was a nice new road so we were bombing along at like 60 wen we rounded a curve and found that a sand dune had covered most of the road. So the driver swerved and over the embankment we went, rolling over about 3.5 times and ending up as you see there. The only thing I was thinking as we were rolling was "So this is what a real rollover accident looks like. . ."

Nobody was really hurt (odd since seat belts are virtually unused). The horn still worked!