EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
century BC or the beginning of the first century AD, to the end of the first century AD. These workshops in Buto provide the first examples of this technique for the Near East and may be evidence for connections with the eastern Mediterranean workshops producing Eastern Sigillata A and the Western Roman workshops (Arezzo or La Graufensenque). During the late Roman Period, from the second to the third centuries AD, this pottery production continued on a relatively modest scale and Buto then became a local centre specialising in the production of common wares as shown by the kilns which have been discovered on the north fringe of Kom A - in areas P11 and P3. A small trench in P6 (near P5) also revealed information about urban occupation during the Late Roman Period (third to fourth centuries AD). To complete the extensive examination of the relationship of the workshops to the settlement, some checking, by means of trenches, was also undertaken in the southern part of the city. In the depression between Kom A and Kom C (Sector P7) a group of circular anomalies detected by the magnetic survey revealed an occasional production of lime, which can be dated to the late Byzantine and early Islamic Periods, attesting the exploitation of the site for its raw materials, probably after the final abandonment of the settlement. In the south of
Kom C (P9) a reddened surface proved in fact to be the result of a building having caught fire, and not traces of a workshop. Nevertheless, the sondage made in this area provided interesting data on artefacts from the end of the late pharaonic period and the early Ptolemaic era. Further fieldwork is planned for the coming years (2012-15) to enable us to understand better the latest developments of the city of Buto, through new detailed survey techniques and cleaning methods, on a more extensive scale. It will shed more light on the vast urban installations of the Late Period that have been detected to the west of Kom A by the geophysical survey down to the latest occupation of the site (Late Roman and Byzantine Periods) which are clearly visible on the surface of the southern part of Kom A. These archaeological works will be augmented by research on the historical and written sources relating to Buto to build up a more complete picture of the city’s development. q Pascale Ballet (University of Poitiers, HeRMA) has directed the Poitiers work at Buto since 2000. Gregory Marouard (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, HeRMA), with Martin Pithon (INRAP), has conducted the archaeological work since 2007 (in areas P5-9, P11). The University of Poitiers team works as part of the German Archaeological Institute’s concession with the support of the French Foreign Office and IFAO, Cairo. Several preliminary reports of these results can be found in MDAIK 59, 63 and 65.
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