The village and its surrounds: Excavations, architecture and artefacts
This project will see the publication of fieldwork from 1979–86 at the Workmen’s Village (27° 38’ N, 30° 54’ E) associated with the pharaonic Egyptian city of Akhetaten (modern Amarna). Akhetaten was built by king Akhenaten in c. 1350 BCE. Occupied for only around 20 years, and with limited overbuilding, it is exceptionally well preserved. On the city outskirts, a walled settlement – the Workmen’s Village – housed workers who constructed tombs for the royal family. The site comprises a walled mudbrick village with 72 houses, most of standard design, with adjacent chapels, tombs, garden beds and animal pens.
While several ancient Egyptian workers’ villages survive, most were rapidly excavated in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The Amarna Workmen’s Village is an important exception. The Egypt Exploration Society (UK) partly excavated the village in 1921–2, but from 1979–86 they returned to the site and reinvestigated it using updated fieldwork techniques, under the direction of Barry Kemp. The excavations incorporated diverse activity spaces, from houses and chapels to middens and farmland, and yielded a diverse assemblage of artefacts including jewellery, figurines, implements, furnishings, and production-debris. The dry desert conditions also preserved organic materials better than most other areas of Amarna. This project will collate unpublished field records and, with the permission of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism an Antiquities, undertake on-site recording of small finds, to provide a full report on the excavations, architecture and artefacts recovered during the 1979–86 field seasons.
Weblink: https://www.amarnaproject.com/pages/amarna_the_place/workmans_village/in...
Dr Anna Stevens, Assistant Director of the Amarna Project, is the lead researcher for this White Levy Publication Program project.
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