ostraka, but few Greek texts. The texts in the present volume have helped to add coherence to our understanding of the texts in volume 1, to which some improvements are given in an appendix at the end of this volume; perhaps more significantly, the analysis of their archaeological contexts has helped sharpen the distinctions between types of material and the contexts that produced them and has improved our grasp of chronology. Although the introduction to volume 1 described the contexts of the ostraka in some detail, and subsequent discoveries have only confirmed the correctness of most of the analysis given there, we now can see the particulars laid out there in a more coherent general framework. We have for this reason organized volume 2 to give priority to categories of archaeological contexts, ordering the texts by type within these categories. We have particularly come to see that our body of texts is dominated by ostraka that found their way to their findspots through ancient processes of dumping and reusing waste.
2. ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS
In volume 1, the archaeological contexts have been described under the headings of the three areas of the site from which the ostraka have come: Area 1 (mainly Area 1.3, i.e., House B2), a house with adjacent street and courtyard in the north part of the site, located on the widest street of the city (S1);1 Area 2 (mainly Area 2.1, House B1, the “House of Serenos”), the central area of the site as we see it today, located to the east of the temple area; and Area 4 (mainly Area 4.1, the temple area), the highest hill of the site, on which was located the precinct of the Temple of Thoth (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Plan of Amheida.
The ostraka in Area 1 came predominantly from levels connected with the occupation of B2, although some of the contexts are not very secure, as a result of severe deflation caused by wind erosion. There was no excavation in Area 1 since 2007 until the initial seasons of work by the team from the University of Reading (now CUNY), led by Anna L. Boozer, in spring 2012 and 2013. The small groups of ostraka from those seasons are reserved for later publication.
The ostraka from Area 4 come entirely from insecure contexts, because of the extreme degree of mixing of material from different levels that has occurred as a result of treasure-hunting, stone-robbing, sebbakh-digging, and wind erosion. It can in general be said that although in a few places specific contexts with stratigraphy of the Old Kingdom, Second Intermediate Period, and the Late Period have survived, the characterization of find contexts as insecure remains true for the parts of Area 4 excavated in 2008–2013. As a result, all ostraka from Area 4 are presented in a single section of this volume, without attention to the stratigraphic units in which they were found. It may be assumed that none came from a secure context capable of providing useful information.
In Area 2, the situation is far more complex. Already in volume 1 it was possible to distinguish material located under floor levels and thus presumably in place at the time of construction from that accumulated during the period of occupation, particularly during the phase after the partial renovation of B1 around 350. The stratigraphy of B1 and of the courtyard area of Rooms 9 and 10 immediately to its north is described in detail in volume 1. There are just a few texts from this area included in the present volume, as they were found in sorting pottery in years after 2007. As work continued to the north of this zone and in the adjacent streets, and then in Areas 2.2 (Building 6) and 2.3 (the church, B7), it has become increasingly possible to see that the stratigraphic pattern is in large part common to the entire area and to distinguish the ostraka by broad categories of contexts. At the same time, further distinctions can be introduced to take account of the building histories of the individual structures and streets (Fig. 2). This more nuanced picture allows us to describe these contexts under four broad categories:
(1) Windblown sand in the uppermost layers excavated. This sand is not a secure context in any instance, but it is our observation that the material found in such layers is almost always from the period of occupation, and we have therefore included such layers in the broad category of occupational debris. These ostraka have in many cases probably come to their location at the time of excavation as a result of being left on rooftops or other surface levels, although it is not excluded that some sherds used for wall or vault chinking could turn up in such levels. We have in particular kept the possibility of chinking sherds in mind when dealing with apparently anomalous texts in this group.
Figure 2. Plan of the House of Serenos (Building 1).
(2) Identifiable occupation levels, with materials accumulated during the period in which the buildings were lived in or actively used. Here again, there is often the possibility that chinking sherds coming from wall or vault collapse can find their way into the upper parts of occupation debris.
(3) Material dumped in preparation of the site for construction, and always found below the lowest floor (or street) levels. This material will have accumulated over a shorter or longer period before construction and quite possibly at another location at Amheida. It may have varying degrees of internal homogeneity or heterogeneity. In general, it seems that the materials for a general spreading of debris to level the site for the construction of B1, B5, and S2 came from a single large source of debris that included building waste and ash along with ostraka coming from jar stoppers. These ostraka have dates ranging from year 1 to year 21 but not higher. It is thus possible that they could all belong to the regnal years of Diocletian (year 1 = 284/5). Years from 8 up, however, could also belong to other reigns, and we do not see any means of being certain that many of them are not from the reign of Constantine. For this reason we have given a full set of the possible years when publishing these pieces in the present volume, and in the corrections to volume 1 we have listed all of the possible years for such texts in that volume.
Alongside, or perhaps better on top of, this general layer of debris there are more restricted places in which we can find pre-construction dumped material, for example in a foundation trench. There are a few instances of such ostraka in this volume. More generally, it looks as if some of the sub-floor and sub-foundation debris in B6 and B7 may have been laid down in a separate operation before building began, and we have concluded that these buildings were either built a little later than B2 and B5, perhaps not until the 350s or, in the case of the south block of rooms in the church, even the early 360s. Alternatively, this material may date from renovation of B6 and removal or renewal of floor layers in the process (Fig. 3).
(4) Material dumped in spaces intended to hold waste or in places after they had ceased to be used, i.e., after the end of occupation; very often, such rooms had been blocked by walls built in doorways before this dumping began. Such material may come from contemporary use, but it may also represent debris found elsewhere and dumped, and such contexts may therefore contain more diverse contents. Rooms 9 and 10 contained some such debris, and Room 30 in B6 contained a couple of stratigraphic units of very mixed character.
The texts in this volume are thus arranged in four parts: (1) Ostraka coming from occupation and post-occupation layers, broadly speaking; (2) Ostraka coming from pre-construction dumped material; (3) Ostraka from the potentially post-occupation or renovation dump layers in Room 30 of Building 6; and (4) Ostraka coming from Area 4.1.
Figure 3. Plan of the baths (Building 6).
Α detailed discussion of the nature of the dumped material in Area 2.1, with more general reflections on the issues involved in working with dumped and recycled material, is given in an article of Rodney Ast and Paola Davoli, to which the reader is referred for a deeper analysis.2
In the following table, we list the stratigraphic units by area, categorize them briefly, and indicate which ostraka came from each of them. The reader is invited