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Workshops and urban settlement in Buto

EA 24 (pp.18-19) contained a report on the 2001-06 University of Poitiers eldwork at Buto focusing on the activities of potters at the site in the Graeco-Roman Period. Since 2007 the team has been investigating the relationship of the workshops and the city as Pascale Ballet and Gregory Marouard report.
To understand the development of the settlement of Buto and to identify the different functions of the town during the latest periods of occupation, from the end of the Late Period until late Roman times, an area of 1200m2 was opened on the north-east fringe of Kom A in sector P5. This area is close to the bath building rst excavated by the EES expedition, led by Veronica Seton-Williams, in the 1960s and now reinvestigated by our mission (see further p.16). The sector was partly covered by the geophysical survey conducted by Tomasz Herbich, offering the possibility of comparing the remains identied on the ground with the anomalies visible on the geophysical map. Extensive cleaning allowed us to determine the location of some pottery kilns and various buildings and, above all, to understand the history and development of this urban area in which the kilns were constructed. Deep stratigraphical trenches were made in the open areas, streets, lanes and courtyards where most of the layers and closed deposits (pits, dumps, ashes, etc.) were found. As the buildings themselves were preserved only at the level of their foundations, their occupation history had to be determined by excavating the exterior stratigraphic sequences and by investigating the domestic equipment set up outside the buildings. The ceramic evidence from these different contexts provided a chronological framework for evaluating the phases from their construction and occupation to their abandonment. Combining extensive survey work and large-scale cleaning with the excavation

Area P5. The enclosure wall and the early Ptolemaic buildings on the east slope of Kom A. View to the west during the 2009-10 excavations. Photograph: Gregory Marouard and Martin Pithon

Area P5. The Ptolemaic quarter on the terrace, east part of Kom A. View to the east during the excavations of 2007-08. Photograph: Gregory Marouard and Martin Pithon
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of the trenches, three main phases of the evolution of this densely urbanized quarter were highlighted. The main and the oldest element of the rst phase is an enclosed area, excavated in 2009 and 2010, previously detected by the magnetic survey, which is located in a depression between the bath area (P10) and the eastern fringe of Kom A. The areas enclosure wall, which had been built at the end of the Late Period, shows an irregular polygonal plan, with thick foundations and a circulation area alongside its exterior western face. It was probably built on the eastern side of an urban sector, and it seems possible that it was still in use during the Ptolemaic Period, when the rst buildings of the second phase were constructed. Two phases of construction had been recognised during our previous excavations in P2 in the northern section of the wall. A second phase is characterised by the development of a domestic quarter, dating from the end of the fourth century BC or the beginning of the third to early rst century BC, excavated between 2007 and 2010. The rst buildings in the west of the enclosure wall appear to have been built at the very beginning of this period on the east slope of Kom A. They are followed by a second phase of buildings on a terrace upon the slope, probably during the third century BC. In the two cases, the same mud-brick construction techniques were employed, using concave brick courses and the so-called casemate foundation system, which is very common for settlements in the Delta. This construction technique was not, as often previously thought, restricted to very specic

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Location of the various sondages (2002-11) conducted by the University of Poitiers. The areas shown in grey are those of the joint DAI/University of Poitiers magnetic survey by Tomasz Herbich (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences)

types of buildings such as cult installations, administrative buildings and storage complexes, but was also used in domestic architecture for the so-called multi-storeyd tower-houses (also attested at Tell el-Daba, see pp.2931), as illustrated by clay or limestone models known from this period.
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All these buildings (at least 15 have been identied) are set up in a regular street pattern. The houses themselves contributed to the formation of a circulation network, consisting of various streets of different types and sizes. This phenomenon is well known from other areas in Buto, and the geophysical survey revealed further

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examples to the west of Kom A which look very similar, being built according to the same techniques during the Late Period. This last observation underlines very well the characteristics of the settlement and the fact that Egyptian towns did not see a radical architectural change with the arrival of the Greeks. The urban tradition of the end of the pharaonic period is still inuential in terms of settlement development. The Ptolemaic domestic quarter was deserted at the end of the Hellenistic Period and was reoccupied in the Early Roman Period by several kilns, producing red ne ware, similar to those excavated in P1 from 2002 to 2004. This main change in function on the north-east fringe of Kom A, characterised by a decrease in the number of domestic installations in favour of industrial activity, is not yet attested elsewhere on the kom and remains to be veried. At least ve of the pottery kilns of the early Roman workshop are particularly remarkable due to the use of a radiance ring process for the pottery production. In this peculiar bipartite type of kiln, smoke and heat were conducted through columns of tubes set into the upper chamber (continuously oxidizing ring) and the complex ventilation system in the lower part, which has been found in two of the ovens, underlines the highly elaborate technique used by the local potters and their desire to imitate as closely as possible the more prestigious production of sigillata. The kiln constructions and the

Area P5. The complete ventilation system of kiln 5280, Early Roman Period. View to the north-west. Photograph: Gregory Marouard

ring technique, as well as the typology of the Fine Red Wares produced in this sector, provide evidence that the beginning of activity must have been relatively early in the Roman Period, around the very end of the rst

The baths of Buto

The focus of the French mission at Buto on pottery production of Greek and Roman times and its place within the urban fabric of the city has naturally led us to re-examine the work made on the site by archaeologists from the Egypt Exploration Society in the 1960s, in particular on a small kom, in the north-east part of the site, now known as the English kom. The EES team uncovered there a very interesting group of kilns and baths, identifying several architectural phases dating from the second century BC to the second century AD. The interest of the building and its particular context led us to start re-excavating the baths in 2008. After more than forty years of neglect, much of the building complex has gone, especially the remains corresponding to the last reconstruction of the Greek tholoi baths into Roman thermae. However, this state of ruin allowed us to make in-depth research in the destroyed areas and then to explore new parts of the building. A series of old photographs of the excavations, kindly provided by Peter French (a member of the EES team in the 1960s), helped us to understand better the plans of the excavation reports published in the JEA. In addition to the presence of an industrial zone on its periphery, these baths have the peculiarity of having, in a single location, a sequence of construction and evolution of bath building over a long period, and thus the potential to illustrate the transitional mechanisms from Greek to Roman baths in Egypt. Excavations between 2008 and 2011 have uncovered the remains of the early Ptolemaic bath (phase 1), the building of phase 2, dated to the transition between the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, and the third reconstruction (phase 3), which probably occurred during the second half of the second century AD. Most of the work focused on phase 2, of which the layout demonstrates the originality: while it is still a Greek-style bath with tholoi (rotundas) and hip-bathtubs, it also shows the presence of latrines and, in a nal stage of modernisation, of a hypocaust room, both features of Roman baths. Latrines have already been observed in Greek baths in Egypt, at Tell el-Herr (North Sinai), dated to the rst century AD. However, the Buto baths, with not only latrines but also a heated oor (hypocaust), appear to be quite innovative and unique in Egypt at the beginning of our era. BRENGRE REDON and GUY LECUYOT
q Brangre Redon (IFAO, Balneorient) and Guy Lecuyot (CNRS ENS UMR 8546) are conducting the excavations in the bath building. They will be publishing a report on the Buto baths in Boussac, Denoix, Fournet and Redon (eds.),Balaneia, thermes et hammams: 25 sicles de bain collectif (ProcheOrient, gypte, pninsule Arabique), IFAO-IFPO, forthcoming.

Area P10. The baths from the south at the end of the 2011 campaign with, in the background, the overlying tholoi (phases 1 and 2). Photograph: Guy Lecuyot and Brangre Redon

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century BC or the beginning of the rst century AD, to the end of the rst century AD. These workshops in Buto provide the rst examples of this technique for the Near East and may be evidence for connections with the eastern Mediterranean workshops producing Eastern Sigillata A and the Western Roman workshops (Arezzo or La Graufensenque). During the late Roman Period, from the second to the third centuries AD, this pottery production continued on a relatively modest scale and Buto then became a local centre specialising in the production of common wares as shown by the kilns which have been discovered on the north fringe of Kom A - in areas P11 and P3. A small trench in P6 (near P5) also revealed information about urban occupation during the Late Roman Period (third to fourth centuries AD). To complete the extensive examination of the relationship of the workshops to the settlement, some checking, by means of trenches, was also undertaken in the southern part of the city. In the depression between Kom A and Kom C (Sector P7) a group of circular anomalies detected by the magnetic survey revealed an occasional production of lime, which can be dated to the late Byzantine and early Islamic Periods, attesting the exploitation of the site for its raw materials, probably after the nal abandonment of the settlement. In the south of

Kom C (P9) a reddened surface proved in fact to be the result of a building having caught re, and not traces of a workshop. Nevertheless, the sondage made in this area provided interesting data on artefacts from the end of the late pharaonic period and the early Ptolemaic era. Further eldwork is planned for the coming years (2012-15) to enable us to understand better the latest developments of the city of Buto, through new detailed survey techniques and cleaning methods, on a more extensive scale. It will shed more light on the vast urban installations of the Late Period that have been detected to the west of Kom A by the geophysical survey down to the latest occupation of the site (Late Roman and Byzantine Periods) which are clearly visible on the surface of the southern part of Kom A. These archaeological works will be augmented by research on the historical and written sources relating to Buto to build up a more complete picture of the citys development.
q Pascale Ballet (University of Poitiers, HeRMA) has directed the Poitiers work at Buto since 2000. Gregory Marouard (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, HeRMA), with Martin Pithon (INRAP), has conducted the archaeological work since 2007 (in areas P5-9, P11). The University of Poitiers team works as part of the German Archaeological Institutes concession with the support of the French Foreign Ofce and IFAO, Cairo. Several preliminary reports of these results can be found in MDAIK 59, 63 and 65.

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