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Articles

Vol. 31 (2019)

Roman to Islamic Beads and Pendants from Matmar and Mostagedda, Middle Egypt

Submitted
January 16, 2025
Published
2019-01-01

Abstract

Between 1927 and 1931, British archaeologists Guy Brunton and his wife Winifred recorded over 150 graves assumed to date from Late Dynastic to early Islamic times in the cemeteries of Matmar and Mostagedda, Middle Egypt. Sixty-four bead objects found in funerary context are now located in six museum collections. Recent studies of material found in these tombs and the radiocarbon dating of textile samples allowed for a revision of Brunton’s initial chronology and an overview of the typology of the bead corpus based on the revised chronological framework. The analysis of the Matmar and Mostagedda corpus also opens the avenue for a study of the timeline, typology, use, and provenience of beads at sites in the Middle Egyptian Nile Valley during the Roman to early Islamic period.