General Information

Repository Name: The Neolithic in the Nile Delta
Additional Name: MRMD
Description: In 1927-8, Herman Junker surveyed the desert edge of the West Delta from Ezbet Abu Amer in the south to Kom Hamada in the north, finding not only Neolithic remains, but Palaeolithic tools as well. During this survey, he discovered Merimde Beni Salama, the earliest Neolithic settlement with domestic structures, and excavated there from 1929 until 1939, finding several thousand pottery, lithic, bone and other artefacts. Junker and his team also found settlement and mortuary remains. To keep a horizontal and vertical control of his excavations Junker established a grid 200 x 240 m, with numbers along the X-axis and letters along the Y-axis. Each object or feature was then recorded as so many centimetres below surface. These are the numbers that are found on artefacts and associated documentation/box and jar labels today. This includes artefacts and organic remains (e.g. R10 -180; grid square R10 at a depth of 1.80m). In addition, several of the objects were given study numbers, as were graves, pits, silos, and houses. Floral and faunal remains were often recorded as being found in a certain hearth, in a particular grid square so many centimetres below the surface. As was usual at this time in Egypt, there was a division of finds, between those chosen to stay in the country, and those that the excavator was permitted to export. The director of the mission then granted a certain amount of objects to each institution or individual that had sponsored the mission. This has led to objects from archaeological sites, Merimde Beni Salama included, being found in museum collections across the world.