Deir el-Ballas 2026, Week 3: 1/17-1/22

Week 3 of the Deir el-Ballas Expedition brought together active fieldwork, photography, and a major push on documentation and collections. The week began with Wael el-Kady joining the team on site to photograph and film excavation, conservation, and survey work across the monuments. Wael spent time capturing high-quality video footage and still photography for a short documentary on Deir el-Ballas that we are producing this season, documenting not only the archaeology but also daily life on site and the work of the Egyptian and international team. We look forward to sharing this film later in the season on our YouTube channel, as well as through our Facebook and Instagram pages. 

Teams were spread out across the site, with Victoria Shakespeare and Waleed Hawatky finishing work in their trench within the North Palace Enclosure Wall. Alongside this work, Ben Johnson, and Sarah Sowerby continued expanding the site grid and recording new survey points, extending accurate mapping across the settlement and palace areas. Ben Johnson and Sarah Sowerby took the lead to prepare new areas for survey at the North Hill Settlement at the start of the week, an area of the site that has not been investigated since Albert Lythgoe excavated there in 1900-1901.

We opened a trench at the North Hill Settlement in order to conduct a surface collection of the archaeological materials visible on the surface. Victoria Shakespeare, Sarah Sowerby, and Waleed Hawatky documented the area and gathered lithic and pottery samples, along with several ground stone tools, for study in a future season. 

Much of the week was devoted to collections, documentation, and survey infrastructure. In the on-site workroom, Beth Hart focused on lithic analysis and photography, Bettina Bader studied pharaonic pottery collected from earlier seasons, and Gillian Pyke continued her study of the Late Antique ceramic corpus.

A highlight of the week was a full day at the Quft (Coptos) Magazine, where Nicholas Brown, Gillian Pyke, and Beth Hart documented 58 stored objects—including beads, stone tools, statue fragments, and clay figurines—working closely with Egyptian colleagues Mohamed Sha’baan, Ahmed Osman, Abdullah Barakat, Ali Abdel Ati, and Ramadan Ali.

The week concluded with conservation and heritage management efforts at the North Palace Enclosure Wall, where workmen finished stabilizing the foundations and protecting remaining mud brick. Mud brick production also began in preparation for next season’s planned Wall Magazine. Across the site, trenches were backfilled, survey points were recorded for photogrammetry models, and materials were packed for transfer to storage at the end of the season. A brief walking survey west of the site in the high desert by Nicholas Brown identified several areas under threat from modern encroachment and looting. These archaeological sites and pottery scatters–dating to the Second Intermediate Period to New Kingdom transition–underscoring the urgency of documenting threatened areas beyond the core monuments. By the end of Week 3, work across the site—from survey and excavation to conservation, collections, and public outreach through photography and film—was already revealing new insights into the long and complex history of Deir el-Ballas.