UNDERSTANDING POTTERY AND PEOPLE AT THE AMARNA STONE VILLAGE
Left: selection of Nile silt and imported sherds from the Stone Village assemblage
Below: selection of finewares, including blue-painted Nile silt and marl sherds, from the Stone Village assemblage
removed from the site as soon as the water was decanted. This might strengthen the case that the hole-mouthed jars are containers linked to the distribution of supplies from the Stone Village. However, further consideration of supply distribution at other desert sites is needed to shed further light on this issue. The abundance of zir sherds across the Stone Village assemblage proves that these storage vessels were also being used there. Their large size would mean that they were permanently or semi-permanently installed, potentially to contain water and other commodities. It is not yet clear, however, whether these zirs had a grouped, communal emplacement that remains to be identified or whether they were kept privately within individual households (or perhaps both). If there is indeed no communal water storage area at the Stone Village, this would be a signif icant hint of different pat terns of commodit y supply and inter nal water distribution at the site, compared to the Workmen’s Village, and could also have a bearing on the broader role and position of the Stone Village within Amarna. Fur ther recording and spatial analysis of the ceramic corpus during a second 2016 season, combined with statistical analysis of vessel types, will seek to elucidate this question of where and how the zirs were used, and the issue of supply and distribution at the Stone Village.
• Grateful thanks are due to the Egypt Exploration Society for their sponsorship and administrative support, and to the Amarna Project for the oppor tunity to under take this study. I am indebted to Anna Stevens and Pamela Rose, whose support of my work over the past years has been invaluable, and I would also like to thank Kate Spence, Isabella Welsby-Sjöström and Campbell Price for their encouragement and advice. EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY ISSUE NO 49 AUTUMN 2016
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