Е. Ю. Басаргина. Русский археологический институтв Константинополе .
Review of: E. Yu. Basargina "Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople." St. Petersburg, Dmitry Bulanin, 1995. 243 p., Ill. by: Julil Jancharkova
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Review of: E. Yu. Basargina "Russian Archaeological Institute in Constantinople." St. Petersburg, Dmitry Bulanin, 1995. 243 p., Ill. by: Julil Jancharkova
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In April 1919, František Lexa, at that time a grammar school teacher of mathematics, physics and philosophy, started to lecture on Egyptology at the Czech Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Only three years later, he became Associate Professor of Egyptology at the faculty. As the only Egyptologist at the faculty (it was not until 1930 that his former pupil, Jaroslav Černý, started to read some lectures alongside him as a private senior lecturer), Lexa addressed a broad range of themes during his lectures. For several years in the mid-1930s, he was the only professor of Egyptology in Europe who taught Demotic studies. After the outbreak of World War II, when the Czech universities were closed by the Nazi regime, Lexa retired, to be reactivated immediately after the war’s end. Jaroslav Černý joined him again for a while until he left for England in 1946. Their pupil, Zbyněk Žába (who graduated in Egyptology in 1949), followed Lexa as Professor of Egyptology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University since 1959. The number of students was strictly limited during the Communist regime – only five of them (Miroslav Verner and Jaromír Málek among them) graduated between 1960 and 1990. Following Zbyněk Žába’s death in 1971, moreover, the study of Egyptology itself was almost cancelled at the faculty due to the tightening political situation. Since 1989, Egyptology is regularly taught at the Faculty of Arts, and the number of students has increased rapidly. At the same time, the lectures are read by a much greater number of specialists, including visiting professors from abroad.
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During the spring season of 2018, the mastaba of Nyankhseshat (AS 104; 29.60 × 13.20 m), belonging to the transitional type of tombs, was excavated at Abusir South. The tomb is located to the southeast of Ity’s tomb (AS 10) on the edge of Wadi Abusiri. The whole structure, with the core of irregular limestone blocks and mud brick casing, was built on a platform with a trapezoidal section. The superstructure consisted of a cruciform chapel, Serdabs 1 and 2, three shafts and a corridor chapel. The name of the tomb owner and his most important title – property custodian of the king – were preserved on an offering basin and a wooden panel in the western wall of the chapel (with a shortened form as Ishet). The mastaba was built in the early Fourth Dynasty. However, it was reused in the first half of the Fifth Dynasty (the reign of Neferirkare) when a stela of scribe of Treasury Sekhemka and his consort, Henutsen, were added, along with four limestone offering basins found in situ in the corridor. Although all the shafts were looted, they brought to light remains of burials. Apart from human bones, the remnants of the burial equipment were uncovered, including fragments of wooden coffins, travertine and copper model vessels, ceramic sherds and a mud sealing with the name of King Neferirkare. Animal bones and natural animal mummies were collected as well. Three structures, excavated only partially, were located in the vicinity of AS 104: AS 105 (to the east), AS 107 (to the north) and AS 108 (to the south).
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The pyramid complex of King Djedkare in South Saqqara is a key monument for our understanding of the history of the late Fifth and early Sixth Dynasties and of the social and religious transformations of that period. Despite its exploration in the 1940s and 1950s, neither the architecture of this monument nor its relief decoration and other finds have been fully documented and published. The current mission working in Djedkare’s pyramid complex therefore has three main aims to fulfil: 1. to document its preserved architecture in detail and provide a precise plan of the funerary temple; 2. to consolidate the badly damaged parts of the substructure of the king’s pyramid; 3. to document and catalogue the relief fragments collected in the funerary temple both by the previous and the current missions, and then to analyse the decorative program of the monument. A large part of the king’s funerary temple has been documented since 2010, revealing many details which were not or could not be noticed by the earlier explorers. The monument included the usual parts of a funerary temple but also some buildings which cannot be found in other Old Kingdom royal complexes. These include above all the two massifs situated in the eastern part, or an enigmatic building, today entirely gone, which was constructed in the southern part of the precinct. In 2018, the mission uncovered the northern part of the king’s precinct, which had not been explored previously and which revealed a high number of secondary burials from later periods of Egyptian history. Underneath these later layers, the remains of the architecture were documented belonging to the king’s monuments as well as to a smaller pyramid complex of his queen, which is neighbouring the king’s monument in the north. The mission not only uncovered and documented the southern part of the queen’s precinct including its entrance but also succeeded in finding the name and title of the owner of this unusual (and until that time anonymous) complex, the king’s wife, Setibhor.
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The aim of this article is to present the textile production in ancient Egypt. This material figured prominently in all aspects oflife of the Egyptians. Information about it derives from the fabrics themselves and from the representation on tomb-paintingsand models of workshops. In the first part, the author points to different uses of textile as documented in archaeological finds.Besides the clothes it was plentifully needed in the households, for funeral use, in religion and it has also its economical function.The second part deals with the technology of production of textile. The most common raw material for production was flax,but infrequently other plant or animal materials were also used. The prepared flax yarns had to be spun and iconographicalsources show that there were several ways in which this activity was carried out. Special attention is paid to weaving. Findingsindicate that in ancient Egypt two types of looms were known – horizontal and vertical. The extent of use of both of these typeshas been discussed by researchers for a long time. The finished products could be decorated in a variety of ways, the articlepresents especially those that are used on material from Abusir. Finally, various archaeological contexts of Abusir textile findsare outlined along with the functions of this material. Examples of some most interesting textile finds are also presented. Dueto the character of the site, they are dated to the Third and First Millennium BC.
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Graves of infants and children belong to a specific category of medieval and modern-age burial culture. The relationships between survivors and deceased children have been complex throughout the Christian period presenting, in many respects, an unresolved issue, in which the fundamental Christian rules and the simple emotional relationship of parents to children were in conflict. An expression of this relationship can be seen in a number of written, iconographic, and archaeological sources in past societies and it represents an interesting topic for a widely-focused interdisciplinary study. The graves of new-born infants are one of the few groups that had a privileged position in the cemetery; the only other such category being perhaps people outcast from Christian society. It is on the example of the graves of children that we can observe the transformations of funeral customs and the grave as a means of different systems of communication — between the world of the living and the dead, between the dead, and between the survivors.
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During the latest fieldwork in the pyramid complex of King Djedkare in the 2018 season, the Egyptian mission focused oncleaning and documentation of the central and northern parts of the king’s funerary temple, including the open courtyard(T.e), and the north court (T.o). In addition, archaeological exploration was pursued in the area between the king’s northernportico, the northern massif, and the south wall of the queen’s pyramid (T.g area), which had not been explored previously.Thus, this area constitutes a valuable source of evidence showing that this area was used as a dump during the late OldKingdom and First Intermediate Period and as a burial ground from the late Second Intermediate Period probably untilthe Ptolemaic and Roman times. Besides the burials, remains of the architecture of the king’s and queen’s precincts weredocumented, which allowed us to distinguish precisely between the king’s and the queen’s funerary temples; also, manyrelief fragments were uncovered, revealing not only details of the queen’s decorative program but also her name and titles,which had been unknown to scholars until now.Finally, one of the main tasks included the consolidation work in the substructure of the king’s pyramid, focusing on thenorth walls of its antechamber and burial chamber.
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In 1937 Walter Bryan Emery excavated tomb S3038 at Saqqara and discovered some astonishing new construction features inside. The tomb had a stepped core over the burial chamber, which was built over with two successive platforms, accessible from the outside. The construction showed a succession of stages, defined as changes in design. The shape of the core made Emery think that this tomb was a precursor of the later step pyramids. This hypothesis did not find much support. A re-evaluation from a construction perspective of all available data, including the unpublished field notes of the excavator, leads to different conclusions. Each successive stage was purposefully constructed to fulfil a role in the mortuary practices. In other words, the construction elements were part of a singular and preconceived design. Based on the premise of practices reflected in the construction of this unique tomb, it is also possible to reflect on the design of other tombs of the First Dynasty at Saqqara.
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The iconographic repertoire of the Old Kingdom tombs seems to show that the funerary cult during this period was developed by an important number of people that were able to hold a wide variety of titles. Among those, there is one that looms as particularly frequent: the Hm-kA. Usually known as the ka-servant or ka-priest, this title is almost omnipresent in Old Kingdom tombs. His main function was to satisfy the necessities of his deceased lord by providing his funerary cult with all kinds of offerings. However, in order to ensure the proper functioning of the cult and its supply, they also developed functions in the management of the properties allotted to its finance. The service of the ka was considered by ancient Egyptians as a communitarian system composed of several members, including women also. This circumstance makes the Hmt-kA one of the few female ritualists in the Old Kingdom. In this paper, I have aimed to shed light upon the position of the female ka-servants in relation to their male counterparts. By using both iconographic and textual sources, the paper aims at understanding what women’s means of access to the ka-servant office were, what responsibilities they held and what rights they enjoyed. The most limited occurrence of the Hmt-kA in the sources seems to reveal a preference for men above women, and an assistance role for the latter. Despite this situation, we also find evidence of females reaching powerful positions inside the hierarchical structure of the ka-service, consequently one can suggest that, once inside the institution, women had similar rights to those of men.
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The Archeological Committee was set up as one of the special Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts standing commissions in 1893 out of a need to bolster heritage conservation at a provincial level. Its establishment matched the increasing interest in heritage at the end of the 1880s and the 1890s. The committee became the expert supervisor for heritage conservation and a research institute whose three sections established the foundations of archeology, ethnography and the history of art in Bohemia. Its plenum gave rise to the ideas and plan behind the most successful publishing project in the entire academy: the Historical and Artistic Heritage Catalogue, a work of art historical topography used to this day, which in over fifty volumes, maps out in detail the heritage in practically one half of Bohemia. The author of this plan was Karel Chytil, a leading figure in Czech art history at the end of the 19th century. In addition to the undoubted importance that the Heritage Catalogue was to have for conservation, Chytil and other Czech art historians at the time (Bohumil Matějka, Karel Boromejský Mádl, František Xaver Borovský and Jan Koula) understood very well that it would also form the basis for their systematic research and thus a keystone for art history. The inventorization of heritage items precisely mirrored the attempts in this field, as in other humanities disciplines at that time, to “scientify” its methods, to cease being “writing about art” and to achieve the status of a true science. At the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the new century, the significance of the Catalogue was also seen at another important level. It was meant to be inspiration for creative artists at that time, for whom a thorough knowledge of domestic art was of crucial importance for their efforts to create a “national” artistic style. The Committee can be said to have set out a project that was unprecedentedly modern and fully comparable with contemporary European art history topographies, and yet at the same time it was enormously challenging, particularly in view of the personnel situation in the Czech history of art. However, a team that handled the project launch was successfully created in the Archeological Committee.
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This paper contains an edition of letters and an introductory essay concerning Egyptologists Jaroslav Černý and František Lexa. The careers of Egyptologists Lexa and Černý laid foundations for the history of modern Czechoslovak (and by extension Czech) Egyptology, which depended more on personal efforts than on an institutional background. The correspondence sent by Černý to Lexa during the interwar period (the 1920s to 1930s) illustrates well the efforts of the two men to institute a seminar, develop a methodology of their scholarship and establish a fieldwork position in Egypt. The latter was obtained with the help of the first Czechoslovak envoy in Egypt, Cyrill Dušek, and of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, the support of which was decisive. Černý developed a network of international contacts and mediated transmission of knowledge to Lexa and the circle of students in Prague.
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Prin această contribuţie arheologică ne propunem prezentarea a două figurine antropomorfe neolitice, a căror descoperire a fost efectuată în situl de la Deva – Cimitirul Reformat, judeţul Hunedoara (sud-vestul Transilvaniei), ca urmare a cercetărilor arheologice preventive efectuate în anul 2017, la o capelă mortuară. Artefactele preistorice au fost identificate în partea superioară a unui complex arheologic adâncit (Cx. 2) din neoliticul mijlociu, caracteristic culturii Vinča timpurii.
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În studiul de față ne-am propus să reanalizăm C/L6 de la Trestiana, atât din punct de vedere arheologic, cât și în ceea ce privește evoluția cronologică. În urma acestor analize putem preciza că cele două gropi (G1, G2) făceau parte din același complex adâncit, unite de un prag cruțat. Artefactele cu caracter de cult sunt mai numeroase în G2 putând indica un sanctuar casnic. Codificarea materialului ceramic din C/L6 și serierea cu cel din alte situri indică și poziția cronologică a complexului, ce începe în Starčevo-Criș (SC) IIIB și continuă în Starčevo-Criș IIIB – IVA și IVA.
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The Iron Gates is one of few regions in Southeast Europe where Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic are well represented. Still, both the origin and timing of the ‘Neolithic’ in the area are difficult to assess. The appearance of new cultural elements, including pottery, crouched burials and domesticates is believed to coincide with the spread of Starčevo-Körös-Criş farmers. The present papers briefly reviews the information on the Early Neolithic sites in the Iron Gates I and II areas.
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The stylistic canon of the steatopygic Upside-down Double Goddess giving birth has its roots in the Upper Paleolithic of Western Europe. Several instances point on the birth of a daughter. These representations strongly evoke the long lineage of women who gave birth before, and those who will give birth in the future. A focus is on the interpretation of the majestic, naked, corpulent and fertile post-Paleolithic Generatrix painted in red at the Ranaldi Shelter (Southern Italy) in the act of delivering a new life among a herd of stags. I am in debt with Gheorghe Lazarovici for his inputs in reading and discussing the image.
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This article presents the anthropological analysis of six individuals belonging to the Bodrogkeresztúr culture from an archaeological site situated in West Romania. These results will add new data to a cronocultural spectrum that has a gap in knowledge from this geographical region. Macroscopic observations were used to record the specific morphological aspects of the bones that determine the completeness of the skeletons, surface preservation, stature estimation, sex determination, age at death, non-metric traits, bone pathologies and entheses scoring. Our results indicate that there are 2 females, 3 males and one with ambiguous sex determination, age at death between 20 and 50 years old, and 162,08 ± 4,66 cm mean stature. Observed pathologies include cribra orbitalia, cribra cranii, dental pathologies and traumatic lesions on the cranial and post-cranial skeleton. Non-metric traits recorded like squatting facets, vastus notch, rhomboid fossae or femur plaque can be an indicator of the physical activities of this Eneolithic population. Entheses scoring shows a pattern on three skeletons from grave M7 on the insertion point for m. brachioradialis. The results may be an indicator that they had an agricultural lifestyle.
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Tibiscum is one of the biggest Roman auxiliary forts in Dacia and one of the most interesting sites of this kind. It comprises a military fort with its civil settlement and the remains of other structures related to them. The environment around Tibiscum makes it interesting also from the geological point of view. The Timiş River flowing along the fort changed its riverbed regularly in the past, causing troubles to the inhabitants and now to the archaeologists. The broader area around Tibiscum has been only partly researched and still awaits further investigations. The goal of our two-year research was a better understanding of the ancient landscape around Tibiscum and a spatial allocation of settlements and infrastructure. A set of various methods has been implemented to cover the largest area available for the surveys without using excavation methods. Non-destructive survey allowed to collect data which led to the new conclusions about the settlement complex. Following the analysed surveys, new roads were discovered, the necropolis area of the municipium Septimium Tibiscensium, new areas inhabited around the fortification, and especially the parts of the archaeological site that were destroyed by the floods and fluctuations of the river Timiș could be established.
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Recent decades saw the discoveries of numerous Stone Age archaeological objects on the territory of Karelia, which confirms that the prehistoric population interacted with its environment in many ways. Thus, today it is important to interpret such archaeological sites in the context of the interaction of the region’s prehistoric population with a particular landscape. This article is the first attempt to record the material traces of the Neolithic and Eneolithic transport infrastructure in Karelia, which determines the high degree of the research novelty. The examined data obtained by archaeological exploration are published for the first time. The aim of the research was to diversify the typology of the Neolithic and Eneolithic Karelian archaeological sites according to their functions by revealing the archaeological traces of the transport activity of the region’s prehistoric population. The article interprets the Neolithic and Eneolithic objects included into Kumsa VIII, X and XII sites located along the Kumsa River in the Medvezhyegorsk District of Karelia as stopping points of the river transportation network. These sites are concentrated on the lake-like extension of the riverbed before the rapids that are difficult for navigation. The microtopography of the sites speaks against interpreting them as sedentary residential sites. The findings at the sites suggest that various activities were performed there, which makes them different from limited activity sites like fishing or hunting sites. Interpretation of these sites as stopping points fits the contemporary views on the existence of intensive inter- and transregional communication in the Neolithic and the Early Metal Age, which could not exist without developed transport infrastructure (water communications).
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The author outlines the bio-bibliographical profile of Volker Wollmann (b. 1942), a German archaeologist and historian born in Romania, who specialized in the history of the pre-industrial and industrial heritage of Romania.
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During the period of Ottoman rule in Hungary (1541‒1686), palisaded castles of differing sizes were typical elements in the border-castle networks on both sides of the battlefront: the Ottoman and the Christian. Archaeological remains (post-holes, beam structures, parts of palisades) complement the data in the written sources, making perceptible and measurable the great quantities of timber used in the building of castles. In the case of the Ottoman palisaded castle at Barcs and in that of the royal palisaded castle at Bajcsavár (southern Transdanubia), attempts were made ‒ on the basis of archaeological observations and reconstructions of ground plans ‒ to determine the number of palisade stakes used for the walls at the time of building, as well as to establish the number of trees felled in order to make them. By way of environmental history researches, an answer was sought to the question of how much the construction of these palisaded castles impacted on the forests in their respective districts. In the case of Barcs Castle, investigations were conducted into whether forest clearance in its vicinity can be reconstructed on the basis of pollen samples. Other issues examined are how far forest clearance extended from the two fortifications, its intensity, and the approximate quantities of timber yielded by it.
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