Short entry today :3 WITH PICTURES TOO!!!!
4.00am: Alarm goes off and we shuffle off to breakfast. The mornings here are effin cold. The Land Rovers are packed with gear, and the human contingent of the survey project pile into the remaining space. You certinally get to know your field crew pretty well being in this proximity straight off. 30 minutes of driving brings us to a large concrete irrigation channel cut into the otherwise empty dessert. These structures were part of an initiative 15 years ago to turn the Fayum desert into agricultural land, howver, like everything else in Egypt the project remains unfinished and unused. These structures mean very little to most people but to us these structures destroy the entirity of the surface record, meaning the primary context of millions of artifacts and sites is disturbed, that data lost. The first sighting of these mega-structures (incoming emotional moment) made me realise the destructiveness of modern progress, and the naivity that precedes it. How meaningless so much of the destruction is, and how little we understand about our past to do this to the landscapes we have lived on for so many milenia.
Emo moment aside, we cross the escarpment and get the first real view of our study area. Like most deserts, it kinda looks like miles and miles and miles of sand. and sand. and more sand. But on closer inspection it is revealed that hearths and artifacts are periodically scattered around.
The corridoor or transect that we are surveying today is on the upper limit of the paleo-lake and as such we expect low densities of habitation evidence. To many people the prospect of walking round a desert for 10 hours a day, in the glaring heat, staring at the ground seems less that appealing, but the 11 of us lap it up, excited as all hell at the amazing landscapes and finds we come across. This behaviour confirming that all archaeologists are indeed insane.
By the end of the day we had walked over 20k, surveyed 3 transects and logged over 1000 points on the theodolite. Satifying first day in the field.
Back at the dig-house later we were introduced to the dutch, american and british counterparts of the project before crashing out again. Tomorow will be first party night, but for now, sleep is badly required.
Sunrises in the desert are quite pretty. 6am from Transect 24.
Measuring Hearths. Note the all important indianna jones hats.
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