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Investigating Nubt and the Naqada Region: 19th - 21st Centuries
by
Mon, Nov 2, 2026
7 PM – 8:30 PM (GMT+2)
Hill House, AUC Tahrir Square - Room 603
AUC Avenue, P.O. Box 74, New Cairo, 11835, Egypt
Details
Although one of the major sites of the Predynastic period in Egypt, Naqada has been less extensively investigated than other contemporary sites, with major periods of archaeological fieldwork in the 1890s and the 1970s and 1980s. This talk will present aspects of the work by the Naqada Regional Archaeological Survey and Site Management Projects, which have been active since 2018. Results of regional surveys as well as focused activities based at Nubt will be presented, linking the site with past research and activity.
Speakers
Jo Rowland
Visiting Simpson Professor
Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology, The American University in Cairo
Joanne Mary Rowland's research has focused on the fifth to third millennium BC in Egypt (Neolithic, Predynastic and Early Dynastic) since 1997 for her master's degree and then PhD. She has been active in fieldwork since 1998, and from 2005 has directed projects in the Delta, including Quesna and Merimde Beni Salama. In 2024, she became the director of the Naqada Regional Archaeological Survey and Site Management Project in southern Egypt.
After completing her PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and starting to develop her teaching portfolio, Rowland became an Egyptological fellow at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2009. Here she worked with colleagues on a project synchronizing historical chronology with scientific dating, which involved collaboration with worldwide museum collections. Following this, from 2009 to 2010, Rowland moved to Brussels to the Royal Museums of Art and History to work on the Elkab project, which saw her co-field direct fieldwork during a season when the Old Kingdom settlement was first located.
Following this, she became junior professor in Egyptian archaeology from 2010 to 2016 at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she taught on a range of courses of varied period and theme, and began the Neolithic of the Nile Delta Project as part of the TOPOI Excellence Cluster. In 2016, Rowland moved to the University of Edinburgh, where she is now senior lecturer in archaeology. Here, she instigated the Egyptian archaeology taught component at the university, which has since expanded, including an Online Ancient Worlds MSc program. Rowland has participated in conferences, symposia and workshops on a regular basis since 2000, both focused on Egyptian prehistory and early history, and broader international congresses including research relating to the archaeologists from Quft, as well as results from the field projects and associated research. She has lectured to Egyptology friends' groups, the wider public and local archaeology societies. Rowland is the current chair of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology at University College London, UK.