Sixth Dynasty shaft deposit from tomb AS 84b

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss a single context from a small mud brick tomb, AS 84b, built immediately south of large wooden boat (AS 80) at Abusir South. This context is exceptional due to the fact that the rela tively small Shaft 2 contained a very large number of fully preserved vessels found in situ at diverse depths of the shaft, as well as hundreds of additional fragments in the general fill. The vast majority of the pottery belonged to a single type, namely beer jars with a tall slender body with a sharp pointed base (Abusir J-1c). Among them, at least half of the examples exhibited an intentional hole made in the base of the jar. This paper also offers a short typological and morphometric study of these beer jars and an interpretation of the deposit as a whole within our current knowledge of diverse funerary contexts.

Keywords

• abusir
• tomb
• shaft
• pottery
• beer jars
• deposit
• morphometric analysis