In 2019, the Polish–Slovak Archaeological Mission in Tell el-Retaba continued the excavation of a Third Intermediate Period settlement in Area 9. The paper presents two houses, {1095} and {3111}, in detail. Activity-area analysis is employed to determine the main occupations of the inhabitants in successive phases. The analysis is based on the archaeological assemblage recorded from these features, including small finds, pottery, and installationse.
The sixth season of fieldwork of the Tell el-Retaba Archaeological Mission has brought a number of significant results. For the first time remains of a Hyksos settlement (beside the previously known cemetery) were uncovered. Exploration of a large, regularly planned building, divided into a number of standardized flats, brought new evidence for the reconstruction of the function and organization of a strongly fortified town, which existed on the site during the Twentieth Dynasty. Remains of a Third Intermediate Period settlement showed that after the New Kingdom there was a clear change in the settlement pattern in Tell el-Retaba.
Excavations of the Polish–Slovak Archaeological Mission in Tell el-Retaba in 2016 were continued in the western part of the site, uncovering remains of domestic and funerary structures from the Second Intermediate Period in Area 4. Houses from the first half of the Eighteenth Dynasty were also investigated in this area. In Area 9, several houses from the Third Intermediate Period were explored and, for the first time, also substantial remains of a Late Period settlement, including at least one “tower house”.
The excavation at Tell el-Retaba in 2014 and 2015 comprised three seasons of fieldwork, carried out in sectors of the site already opened in previous years. The earliest archaeological remains date from the Second Intermediate Period and represent a Hyksos settlement and cemetery. Ruins of an early Eighteenth Dynasty settlement, fortresses from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties and from the Third Intermediate Period settlement continued to be excavated as well. Of note are some archaeological remains from the 17th–19th centuries, presented for the first time in the fieldwork report.
Archaeological remains excavated by the Polish–Slovak Archaeological Mission in Tell el-Retaba can be well dated to the New Kingdom till the Late Period. During the 2012 season domestic layers from the Hyksos period were found, indicating that the site was occupied for the first time around the end of the Thirteenth and beginning of the Fifteenth Dynasties. Next to the houses three Hyksos graves were found. Archaeological work also revealed houses from the early Eighteenth Dynasty located just above the Hyksos structures in Area 7. Very interesting material came from the late Twentieth Dynasty and Third Intermediate Period houses excavated in Area 9. Rich pottery assemblages mostly of domestic character have been recovered from all of the structures.
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