Field photos du jour These two are again from Kom el-Hisn where I worked in 1988. I remembered these because an earlier post mentioned pits, and this was my first true excavation of a storage pit. These are from Room 2 which is also the first room I excavated in Egypt! Again, this is mostly Old Kingdom mud brick architecture, mostly habitation type stuff. Within the room was this brick pit structure:

Full image here.

Several of these were found throughout the area we excavated. Presumably they were used to store grain or other foodstuffs, though we didn't find any direct evidence of such. To be honest, most of what we did find was fish cranial and spinal elements. My idea is that, after these structures were abandoned they were used as little garbage dumps where fish heads, among other junk, was tossed. At any rate, as I neared the bottom in that photo there, you can see two layers present, both of which are thin strata of clay or very fine silt. The top layer there is in the proces of being excavated. Both covered the whole bottom of the pit, which one assumes was put there to keep moisture and/or insects from getting up into the perishables. In this next photo, you can see the actual floor of the pit after both those layers were removed:


Full image here.

Note that you can see the bricks themselves in three dimensions. The clay layers were pressed over the rounded brick tops and the floor then flattened out. I'd like to say that removing the overlying material while still maintaining the 3D shape was a simply masterful bit of excavation practice, but in truth, I had some help. I had gotten down to the clay layers late in the day and then let them sit overnight. Next day it had dried sufficiently that I really just had to peel it up gently.