Amheida III. Roger S. Bagnall
the full descriptions of the stratigraphic units in the database (www.amheida.com; in the on-line version of this book, links are provided), as they were prepared by the excavation supervisors at the time. These contain full details of their characteristics but are not written from the broader vantage point of the buildings as a whole. We need to point out that it is not always clear how to classify a stratigraphic unit, particularly where floors have not been preserved and it is not obvious whether dumped material belongs to a phase before or after construction; we have tried to preserve degrees of uncertainty in our description, but again the database provides far more detail.
TABLE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS OF THE OSTRAKA, WITH DATES
This table represents an expansion of that given in O.Trim. 1, pp. 61–73, so that it includes all ostraka in the two volumes. The reason for this practice is partly that our analysis of the material in the previous volume has become more nuanced over the past five years, and partly that the common characteristics of the dumped and occupational layers across the whole of Area 2 have become clearer as excavation has been extended to B5, B6, and B7.
Ostraka are organized in this table by their archaeological context, Area, Room (where applicable) and S(tratigraphic) U(nit); the SU is a D(eposition) SU unless indicated to be a F(eature). The brief descriptions of context in the fourth column are given for all areas except 4.1 and 4.2. All contexts in those areas were thoroughly disturbed and without stratigraphic value. Room 3 belonged to the house to the south of B1.
Dates are discussed in the description of stratigraphy above, pp. 5–7, and in the notes to individual texts. Precise dates are generally based on regnal years or indictions, coupled with archaeological context. If internal evidence other than years helps indicate a date, this is noted in the edition of the individual texts. Texts without internal evidence of date are dated according to their archaeological context; it will be evident that some texts are probably older than these dates would indicate, particularly in the case of layers of material dumped in preparation for construction. Occupation layers, however, appear to have little or no older material except where a chinking sherd has come out of a vault or wall collapse and mixed with occupational debris.
In the column with text types we note if well tags have the Pmoun (Pm), Moun (M), or Hydreuma-Pmoun (Hyd-Pm) formula.