Craft interactions in a New Kingdom industrial landscape (Egypt, 1550-1069 BCE)

Craft interaction affords a fresh perspective on one of archaeology's oldest challenges: how did people make things? This project advances new, interdisciplinary avenues of research, which will transform the field of ancient craft studies on a global scale by examining the limitations of modern craft perceptions. This project explicitly charts for the first time the interaction between high-temperature technologies in New Kingdom (NK) Egypt (1550-1069 BCE). We focus on this pivotal time in history when industrial-scale glass production was developed alongside growing copper alloy, faience and pigment manufacture and these materials were conspicuously exchanged throughout the Mediterranean. Although these high-temperature industries have been examined individually to varying extent, we propose an urgent paradigm shift is needed to fully understand them in the light of each other. Our innovative analytical and theoretical framework is set to fundamentally change our understanding of ancient societies by explicitly considering the flow of materials and people between crafts in the past. This project introduces an integrated methodology, envisioning individual material production chains (chaînes opératoires) within wider production networks (réseaux opératoires). To develop this model for the NK, we focus primarily on the site of Amarna (ancient Akhetaten, Middle Egypt, 18th Dynasty, c. 1353-1336 BCE), which provides exceptionally extensive evidence for different high-temperature crafts, making it the most suitable starting point to develop this new perspective. This project seeks to address three fundamental research questions: 1. Can cross-craft interaction better explain New Kingdom technologies? Craft interrelations are widely assumed in archaeological studies of technology but rarely built into research designs. Identifying these interactions can offer new pathways towards understanding the social contexts of production, the mobility of craftspeople within urban environments and the exchange of materials and ideas. Our pilot studies have already shown such interplay existed during the NK, yet its explicit study is needed to assess the extent and complexity of these interactions throughout the Nile Valley and beyond, and define a consistent approach. 2. How were high-temperature crafts organised at Amarna? We will examine the organisation and interplay of Egyptian high-temperature technologies, in particular with regard to the origins and cross-craft flow of materials on an urban and regional level. This will be achieved through a novel implementation of state-of-the-art analytical methods contextualised by fresh excavation and guided by ground-breaking laboratory-based experimentation. 3. To what extent was craft organisation at Amarna different to earlier and later New Kingdom sites? Parallels with other 18th-20th Dynasty urban sites (Malqata, Amara West, Gurob and Pi-Ramesse) will be examined to assess how craft organisation at Amarna can serve as a model for urban practices in Egypt and the wider Mediterranean world. By pursuing these questions and lines of research, we will provide the first in-depth overview of craft interactions in ancient Egypt, greatly expanding our overall understanding of how ancient technologies were organised and embedded in their specific contexts. The resulting, unprecedented dataset will enable a fine-grained evaluation of (de-)centralised models of production and consumption in NK Egypt, developing alternative narratives to traditional Egyptological knowledge. Furthermore, this approach will deliver a new tool to assess cultural exchange through the lens of ancient technology across the Mediterranean region, developing a novel research line for comparative archaeology.