Thursday 13 August 2009

Image 19 - Flinders Petrie with Camera



Hilda Petrie Letter November 1900 (Drower 2004: 159):

“Half a day’s excavation brings in fragments enough to take three of us several days’ time to mark up, classify, draw, photograph, and otherwise work over. It takes much of each day to group and sort these fragments: the fitting is often a great puzzle.”

Hilda Petrie Letter 13 January 1901 (Drower 2004: 163:

“There is an immense amount of accumulations of stone-bowl-fragments to sort out, from tombs of Den, Zer, Perabsen, and Khasekhamui. Flinders works half his day at the final sorting (with a magnifier) of the stones of Den, preparatory to our hunting for fits in the fragments, and, the remainder of the day, he does 15 or 20 photographs, to different scales, and draws the said stone vases when the scanty portions of them are put together.”

3 comments:

  1. Mark up, classify, draw, photograph: the work behind the scenes of an archaeological excavation of which it is difficult to realize for the general public.

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  2. Are all of the photographs in the Flinders Collection available in digital formats?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unfortunately not yet. We are working on getting funding to do that.
    best, Debbie

    ReplyDelete