Expanding our Data from the Old-Middle Kingdom Western Delta First Analyses of the Kom el-Hisn Provincialism Project

Abstract

The Kom el-Hisn Provincialism Project (KHPP) began new excavations at the site of Kom el-Hisn, Baheira governorate in 2016. Our work specifically targets the Old–Middle Kingdom settlement remains with the aim of studying the activities and population of the site’s late third/early second millennium inhabitants from a local, bottom-up perspective. Previous understandings of the kom have interpreted it as part of a centralized government system. Indeed, authority and personal agency in the provinces is a subject of much recent discussion; discussion to which the excavations at KHPP aim in the long term to contribute. To date, limited new exposure at the site has extended our knowledge of the site’s date, differential settlement zones, and introduced new methodologies for object analysis.