Tell el-Retaba (West) Season 2019
Tell el-Retaba (West) Season 2019

Summary/Abstract: Excavations in 2019 in Area 4 at the western edge of the site of Tell el-Retaba confirmed that the settlement activity, albeit different in nature, continued here from the Second Intermediate Period well into the Twentieth Dynasty of the late New Kingdom. This part of the site, which was a settlement in the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period (Phase G in the site chronology), was turned into a cemetery after it had been deserted, and used throughout phases G2 and G1 and into Phase F5, that is, into the early Eighteenth Dynasty. Despite this long period of use, only two cases of supraposition of tombs were recorded, both of them in 2019. In the Eighteenth Dynasty (Phases F4–F2), the excavated area was again a settlement of mud-brick houses. A rich assemblage of small finds and a battery of ovens bear testimony to a lively industrial activity or craftsmanship of its inhabitants and their long-distance contacts. The discovery of a walkway, dated to Phase D4, is an intriguing detail of Twentieth-Dynasty military architecture. Isolated finds from the Third Intermediate Period (Phase C) demonstrate the spread of the settlement, known from previous excavations, further east on the tell.

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