conference

Poster Abstracts

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Charlotte Booth and Debbie Challis (University College London)

Sock It! Making Egyptian socks from scratch

In October 2009 the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology began an experimental archaeological project called “Sock It!” which was funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The aim of the project is to reproduce the two-toed Coptic socks (400-500 AD) from the Petrie Collection (UC16766), using ancient techniques. The project continued until March 2010 and involved two groups of participants: members of the University of the Third Age (U3A) and ad hoc public participants who attended the monthly drop in sessions. The techniques employed throughout the project included carding wool using a variety of methods, spinning using a drop spindle and knitting using the single needle technique. Various difficulties were encountered along the way, but the archaeological objective was for the participants to produce completed socks using these techniques and patterns which enable others to reproduce them. As the project continued video and written diaries recorded progress, which would be part of the final presentation.

Reg Clark (Swansea University)

The importance of the brick-mould in Egypt

At first glance the humble wooden brick-mould seems a mundane item of little significance. However, without it the cities, fortresses and necropoleis of ancient Egypt could not have been built as we know them today. Indeed it’s importance to the Egyptians is demonstrated in vignettes, reliefs and models found in temples, tombs and funerary artefacts. This poster explores some of those themes, following research undertaken during a ‘Problems and Practice in Egyptian Material Culture’ module at Swansea University.

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Alice Stevenson (Pitt Rivers Museum)

Experimental archaeology in the Pitt Rivers Museum

In 1872 a Victorian English gentleman was seen throwing a curved stick around the public park of Wormwood Scrubs in the London borough of Hammersmith. The gentleman in question was General Augustus Henry Lane Fox, later known as General Pitt Rivers, and the curved stick was a facsimile of an ancient Egyptian boomerang on display in the British Museum. As Pitt Rivers’ second biographer Mark Bowden has noted such experimental work is amongst his great achievements and his interest in the development of technologies and techniques such as stone-working distinguishes his collections from many others. With the foundation of the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884 these interests took root in Oxford and were to greatly influence early archaeologists that came to work in Egypt, including David Randall MacIver and John Garstang. This poster presents some of the results of early experiments in the technologies of ancient Egypt in the Pitt Rivers Museum, including Predynastic pottery production and ancient Egyptian flint working.

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