Tell el-Da´s XXIV The Late Middle Kingdom Settlement

Tell el-Dabca XXIV. The Late Middle Kingdom Settlement of Area A/II. A Holistic Study of Non-élite Inhabitants of Tell el-Dabca - Vol. 1. The Archaeological Report, the Excavations from 1966 to 1969. The current volume presents the final excavation report of three settlement layers at the site of Tell el-Daba in the north-eastern Nile delta in Egypt. These settlement layers comprise a number of dwellings built from mud brick, which belonged to non-elite people judging by their size and remaining inventories, who lived in the marsh like environment in the north of Egypt in the late Middle Kingdom (ca 1830- 1700 BC). Beside the mud brick architecture typical for ancient Egyptian housing and the lay-out of their houses, also storage facilities such as rounded silos with mud brick pavements, open air hearths, industrial ovens, and irregular alleyways were unearthed in the excavation campaigns from 1966 to 1969. The houses are systematically described and analysed in combination with the associated finds. These finds include pottery and stone vessels, stone tools such as querns and grinders and chipped stone tools and a few other items made of faience. A small number of objects made of hard rock implies that they must have been imported because such stones do not exist in the delta. Importantly animal bones inform on the diet of the people living there, while imported pottery vessels show an exchange network with the Levant. Although finds made from organic materials such as wood, leather and rushes were not preserved due to the wet subsoil conditions, which are usually well preserved in the south of Egypt, this book provides a much needed primary source for the generally neglected settlement archaeology, particularly for the late Middle Kingdom. In addition, the book describes a type of settlement so far not represented in the known repertoire, namely a self-organised settlement with individual dwellings not uniform in size or lay-out. Such a lay-out is in stark contrast to intentionally founded settlement structures, which are set up according to a rigid plan in rows with orthogonal streets and regular blocks of houses as they are known from Lahun in Northern Upper Egypt or from the Middle Kingdom forts in Nubia. Moreover, due to the fact that three successive layers of settlement structures are presented, it is possible to follow the development of the settlement over a period of more than 100 years. While the earliest settlement structures in this area were founded at the end of the 12th Dynasty, they show a network of thin walls and very small rectangular houses or even stables. In the course of the next two phases a certain lay-out develops and is kept in place, while after the last settlement phase of the late Middle Kingdom described here the function of the whole area changes with a focus on a sacred area with temples and numerous tombs.