Geochemical analyses of sediments to reconstruct landscape changes and settlement dynamics in the western Nile Delta, Egypt

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jürgen Wunderlich
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392434407

For a long time, the northwestern Nile Delta was considered as a remotely lying swampland, which was difficult to access and to reclaim in the past. During the last decades archaeological campaigns and prospections in this region showed that colonization of this region started not later than in Predynastic to Early Dynastic times. Tell el-Farain, formerly known as Buto, served as an important centre during this early period. The evolution of this important site shows significant interruptions, and at about 4.2 ka BP, for reasons unknown, the site was abandoned for almost 1000 years during the Middle kingdom and presumably New Kingdom before the whole western Nile Delta, including Buto, was repopulated at a much higher density. The geoarchaeologic research design of this study aims to cast light on the palaeoenvironmental conditions and the highly dynamic fluvial history which determined settlement and land use in the Nile Delta and could explain major changes observed in the settlement history. For this purpose, the Holocene Nile sediments are excellent archives to study the environmental transformation of the area in context with the settlement history. Out of the fact that restrictions and regulations of the Egyptian authorities undermine the transport of sample material for comprehensive sedimentological analyses, a new research approach is being developed, which is based on geochemical data gathered with a portable XRF spectrometer (pXRF). It combines the wide spectrum of elemental data delivered by the pXRF spectrometer with new methods in geostatistics and machine learning techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN). These methods aim to detect element variations in the clayey Nile material near the settlements that result from changes in the settlement intensity and technologic innovations and which can be used to elaborate a chronostratigraphy. Together with the information the chemical signatures provide on environmental changes, an epoch-spanning, diachronous course of human-environment interrelations can be drawn for the area around Buto. The decade-spanning research history at Buto as well as substantial preliminary work guarantee the successful elaboration of this new research design that will also be of high value for comparable geoarchaeologic studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants