Mamluk Archaeology

During the 1982 excavations at Quseir al-Qadim on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, a corpus of well-preserved textiles was discovered in an area called “the Sheikh’s House.” The archaeological nature of this corpus presents two assets over
a museum collection: the possibility of close dating and contextual association with other artifacts. This article discusses the collection of textiles in the Sheikh’s House from these perspectives. The archaeological contexts allow an association
with other artifacts within architectural settings. A more important feature of these contexts is the presence of hundreds of fragments of letters written in Arabic on paper; this textual documentation allows a reconstruction of the individuals
who used the textiles and, more broadly, an extremely detailed examination of their trading community. On a larger scale, the archaeological narrative may present this community in relationship to the people of the Cairo Geniza, to the archaeology of Fustat (Cairo), and its mercantile role in the larger picture of Indian Ocean History.

A study of the ceramic assemblage dating from the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods, which was found in Stratum II of the excavation on Ha-Eẓel Street, Ramla.

In this article the fabrics and forms of local and imported wares were explored to determine the geological source of the raw materials, in an attempt to pinpoint the production locales according to the geological source of the fabrics. It is hoped that this study will serve as a first step toward a reconstruction of the Ramla pottery industry in the Mamluk period. For the imports, the tracing of the fabric composition was based on previously published production centers.
The research methods used in this study are not the traditional typological ones for classifying pottery from historical periods, but rather, a study of the fabric composition, a method similar to those used in studying protohistoric assemblages. Due to budget constraints, we could not perform petrographic thin-section analyses; rather, we employed an intermediate solution to distinguish between fabrics. All the selected vessels were examined by the naked eye and the fabric color was described according to the Munsell Soil Chart (2000). Fresh breaks of the sherds were examined under a binocular microscope at magnifications of ×20–×40. The findings were subsequently compared with former results of previous petrographic and petrological investigations for contemporary periods and fabrics. Although the highest possible degree of precision was used in this study, association of pottery types with particular fabric groups should be taken with caution considering the limitations of visual observation with a binocular microscope; nonetheless, this study offers a good starting point for further research.
The study of the fabric composition of the Mamluk and early Ottoman-period ceramics from
Ha-Ezel Street in Ramla indicates that at least three different local workshops produced
pottery in Ramla and its vicinity during this time span. Among the imported wares, five
inter-regional fabrics from Greater Syria and Egypt, five Mediterranean fabrics from Cyprus
and Italy, and another four fabrics from distant, and thus far unrecognized regions, were
identified.

A unique monumental building dating to the early part of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900–1700 BCE) was uncovered at the southern Lebanese coast by the joint Lebanese-German excavation project at Tell el-Burak. The impressive architecture of the building was exposed in eight excavation seasons during the years 2001–2011. Inside the largest room of the Monumental Building at Tell el-Burak the excavations brought to light the sensational discovery of Middle Bronze Age mural paintings in situ on lime plaster covering the inner faces of its completely preserved mud-brick walls.
This volume edited by Jens Kamlah and Hélène Sader consists of the final publications of all excavation results concerning the Middle Bronze Age at Tell el- Burak. It furthermore includes an introduction into the joint Lebanese-German excavation project, chapters related to the site and the final publication of the excavated remains of the Late Medieval Period.

Probably in 1317 a charitable road-inn, a khān, was erected at Sukkariyya, a site that catered
to the Cairo–Damascus road at least since the early Islamic period. In this article we examine a
rich repertoire of literary, epigraphic, and documentary evidence that sheds some light on this
village and its inn. We learn this was a khān al-sabīl, a charitable public inn, which gave accommodation
to all faiths and all types of travelers. The Western pilgrims who passed this inn would
have either come from or were heading to Gaza, St. Katherine’s Monastery, and Cairo. We also
suggest that the amīr Āl Malik (d. 1346) might be its patron, and note the possibility that the “fair
mosque” seen by Felix Fabri and his companions in 1483 adjoining the inn is the one mentioned
in an inscription recovered at the site in the 20th century, dating the mosque’s erection to 1336.
Later the village of al-Sukkariyya and its lands may have been part of an endowment of amīr
Fakhr al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ghanī bin Abī ʾl-Faraj, ustādār of sultan al-Muʾayyad Shaykh, and surely
part of sultan Qāytbāy’s waqf lands. We see use of the khān waning around 1500, and by the
middle of the 16th century, even the village was abandoned and returned to agriculture.

Six excavation squares and three test trenches were opened. In Square A, a building was unearthed, probably first constructed in the Byzantine period and reused, probably as a stable, in the Crusader period (twelfth century); the last phase of the building (also a stable?) dates to the Mamluk period (fourteenth–fifteenth centuries). The earliest architectural stratum in Squares B and D dates to the late Byzantine or Early Islamic period, followed by an architectural phase from the Crusader period (the twelfth century); the last phase, including a water system, dates to the Mamluk period. Square C contained a large quantity of pottery, mostly from the Crusader period, but also from the Byzantine and Late Roman periods. Square E yielded fragmentary remains, and Square F yielded massive walls, closely aligned with the Crusader walls in Square A. The finds included pottery dating to the Persian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Umayyad and Abbasid periods, as well as from the Mamluk and early Ottoman periods. Most of the pottery dates to the main Crusader-period phase (twelfth–early thirteenth centuries) and is domestic in character, including mostly local ware and a few imported wares from Greece and the Aegean region. The glass finds, including dismantled glass furnaces (studied by Yael Gorin-Rosen), date primarily to the late Byzantine and early Umayyad periods.

Excavations and surveys at five sites in the ‘Akko Plain revealed evidence of sugar production from the 11th to the 17th centuries. The finds show the typochronological development of the sugar moulds, whose manufacture moved from the coastal region under Crusader rule, to further inland during the Mamluk period. This change is consistent with the transfer of government from ‘Akko to Safed, and is a clear archaeological indication of the active involvement of the central government in sugar production.

Excavations at Khirbat Burin uncovered three strata: two (I, II) of the Mamluk period and one (III), of the Byzantine–Early Islamic periods. Sporadic remains of the Persian, Byzantine, Early Islamic and Ottoman periods were found, corroborating the evidence from earlier excavations at the site. The large, well-planned buildings uncovered in Mamluk-period Stratum II (late thirteenth–fourteenth centuries) survived to considerable height. The pottery related to the Mamluk strata represents the types that were in use during that period, including unglazed wares consisting of decorated and undecorated handmade wares, wheel-made wares and mold-made wares, as well as a large variety of wheel-made glazed types, including imported wares. The site was probably a Mamluk-period village that was abandoned in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, conforming to our knowledge of a process of decline, depopulation and nomadization in the region during the fifteenth century.

As the devastating earthquake of 749 C.E. shook large parts of the Middle East, Gerasa, modern G ˇ eraš in Jordan, had for about four centuries undergone dynamic and penetrating transformations of its civic life between Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period. Also when today the Roman period ruins stand as the most impressive remains, the actual flowering periods with a peak in population were those of Late Antiquity and the early Islamic periods. Furthermore it has through a new archaeological project in G ˇ eraš over the last years become clear that the Ayyubid-Mamluk periods are much better represented than earlier thought. This article discusses the nature of this new evidence and relates it to the literary sources which mention G ˇ eraš in the early as well as later Islamic periods.

The site of Nahal Haggit is an ancient farming community situated in the Ramot Menashe region, south of the Carmel Range. Its stratigraphic sequence consists of three levels, dating from the Early Roman (Stratum I), Middle Roman (Stratum II; the main level at the site) and Mamluk (Stratum III) periods.

The remains of the Early Roman period are extremely limited It dates on the basis on the finds (pottery, glass and coins) from the first century BCE to the first century CE. From the little we could assess, there seems to have been at least a rectangular building, measuring 17 × 23 m, located at the center of the site. The miqva’ot provide a clear ethnic and chronological indicator that was confirmed by the finds, suggesting that the site was occupied by a Jewish or Samaritan family. A building of that size and location would most likely have functioned as a farm. 

- The major period of occupation at the site belongs to Stratum II of the Roman Period this stratum, dated by abundant ceramics and coin finds to  date this stratum from the late 2nd. century till the end of the 3rd. century / beginning of the 4th. century C.E.  It consists of a huge well planned structure displaying clear functional division of the space. The complex is surrounded by a square enclosure wall (89 X 89 metres and 1 metre wide), entered through a single gate.  Inside the external walls are two rows of rooms that abut the inside face around much of the complex.  These rooms interconnect and form individual functional spaces made up of a number of rooms.  Within the rooms were milling installations, baths and large quantities of finds, especially pottery.

Within the central courtyard were buildings built in at least four groups, but sub-divided into individual houses and an olive oil press consisting of a single crushing basin and two pressing units using different technologies. 
Despite the architectural similarity to the plans of castella of the limes of Provincia Arabia, Nahal Haggit  was agricultural in nature.  We reached the conclusion that the Roman period site was a rural farm settlement with meticulously ordered architecture displaying centralised planning or control.  The lines are straight and indicate planned construction rather than organic growth.  Parallels to farm buildings of this plan were absent from the Palestinian archaeological record, with greater similarity with military architecture and we know that veterans were settled in areas evacuated by the Jews following the defeat of Bar Kochba. Would is be to bold to suggest that Nahal Haggit was given to a veteran in the 2nd. century as a farm in the hinterland of Caesarea.  The farm built by the veteran was in an architectural plan with which he was familiar – the castellum. Such fortified villas, that are the direct legacy of the castrum, are known from various sites in the Roman empire.

The final period of settlement, after a long period of abandonment, is dated to the Mamluke period, from the 13th. to 14th. centuries C.E.  The resettlement of the site in the Mamluke period lacked the spatial organisation that characterised the earlier occupations.  A series of rooms of no particular plan were built clustered together in the south-east quarter of the site.  The cemetery was cut into the levels of the earlier period elsewhere on the site.

This paper presents results of an interdisciplinary study of thirty-five bead artifacts found at Quseir port sites and
presently stored in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. Many of the glass beads were
ascribed to chronologically mixed contexts of the Early Roman Myos Hormos (1st–3rd c. A.D.) and Late
Ayyubid-Mamluk Quseir el-Qadim (13th–14th c. A.D) periods. For both periods textual sources mentioned the
overseas trade contacts of the Red Sea ports, and Carol Meyer (1992) and Peter Francis Jr. (2002) suggested
the possible Indo-Pacific origin of some of these beads.While monochrome and decorated drawn and segmented,
beads should point to the Mediterranean or Middle Eastern glass workshops, monochrome drawn and more or less
rounded objects were considered by Peter Francis, Jr. as Indo-Pacific. By combining both macroscopic and compositional
analyses, in particular, using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS),
we present a bead typology and chronology of maritime bead trade subject within two main periods of Quseir
occupation.

Excavation and survey reports from Egypt make regular reference to sabakhīn digging and its disruption of the archaeological site's stratigraphy. This search for agricultural ertiliier, and the resulting destruction oo stratiied conteets, was commonplace throughout Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries. The appreciation, however, of the alue oo saltt and nitrogennrich sediments ooten ound in ancient ruins is speciically attested in medieval manuals that address issues of agricultural soil quality in Egypt. The exploitation of ruins has likely been a long, ongoing process in Egypt's history, much to the detriment of studying the medieval period from an archaeological perspective. Particularly disturbed, in many cases, are the most readily available layers at or near the surface, which contain evidence of Egypt's more recent past. In light of this history of disruption and the interpretation of sibākh in archaeological contexts, our view of late antique and medieval occupation in Egypt should be reconsidered, or perhaps, reimagined.