Ellen Swift - A Social Archaeology of Roman and Late Antique Egypt: Artefacts of Everyday Life

The project for which this is one of the published outputs, Roman and Late Antique Artefacts from Egypt: Understanding Society and Culture, was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council project grant, we are very grateful to the AHRC for this support. Thanks also to current and former staff at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London, especially Louise Bascombe, Anna Garnett, Maria Ragan, Alice Stevenson, Alice Williams, and Catriona Wilson. It was a real pleasure working with Petrie Museum staff and we are very grateful to them for their contribution in making this project a successful one.

Thanks also to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; the British Museum, London; the Egypt Centre, University of Swansea; the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of London; the Petrie Museum; Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and World Museum, Liverpool, for permissions to reproduce images of objects in their collection, and/or assistance with study visits. The Brigham Young University Egypt Excavation Project, and Alexandra Plea, also assisted with illustrations for the book.

Many thanks to Karlis Karklins, St John Simpson, Joanna Then-Obuska, and Marilee Wood, for assistance with object identifications, and to Elisabeth OConnell, Joanna Then-Obuska, and Carol van Driel-Murray for comments on draft chapters. Csaba Lada kindly assisted with a Greek inscription, and Tian Tian provided information from a beads list from Xia Nais archive, and translated it from Chinese. Thanks also to David Creese, Jenny Cromwell, and Joachim Quack for their comments.

We would also like to thank our project advisory board, Kevin Dawe from the University of Kent, David Creese from Newcastle University, and Richard Alston from Royal Holloway, University of London. They provided invaluable advice and support throughout the project.

Making the replica objects and sound recordings was a particular challenge and could not have been achieved without substantial help. David Walsh and Ada Nifosi kindly assisted by playing some instruments for sound recording, and Frank Walker made the recordings. Egert Phlmann kindly allowed us to use his transcripts of music in the recordings. Eric Hall, formerly a professional potter, provided advice about the replica creation for the ceramic artefacts, and Andrew Lamb, of the Oxford Bate Collection, assisted with information about comparative ethnographic musical instruments; Keith Greenhow, Daniel Knox, George Morris, Julien Soosaipillai, and Georgia Wright, currently or formerly at the University of Kent, and jeweller Justin Richardson, made the replicas of the sound-making objects. Many thanks to all of them.

Finally, Lloyd Bosworth, Archaeology Technician at the University of Kent, has contributed in multiple ways to the success of this project, 3D scanning the objects, creating 3D models, editing most of the photographs taken by us at the Petrie Museum, and helping with many other queries throughout the project. We are very grateful for his assistance.