For over twenty years, the late Ian Mathieson led an unprescedented and remarkably thorough investigation of an area of the Saqqara necropolis that until then, had been largely overlooked. Awarded a concession by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in 1990, Ian began his multidisciplinary investigation of an extensive area of the Abusir Wadi (see the image above – Ian’s concession was the area outlined in red), combining conventional techniques such as field-walking and geological survey (my small contribution to the project), with what at that time, was the pioneering use of geophysical techniques. The geophysical surveys that Ian undertook involved a range of developing and established non-intrusive surveys, allowing him to target conventional excavations at specific anomalies, often achieving spectacular results.
As part of the obligations under his concession, Ian was required to submit annual reports to the Supreme Council, which detailed the work that had been undertaken each year and the results that had been obtained. Although Ian and his team published the results of their work regularly in publications such as the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, much of the detail included in the annual reports could not be included.
Since Ian’s sad death, the project has continued in name only, with no further fieldwork being possible. With the project director’s permission however, and thanks to the efforts of the other team members, I am able to share scanned copies of the complete set of SGSP annual reports here, as a resource for interested researchers and as a tribute to the pioneering work of Ian Mathieson.
A set of these PDFs is also held by the National Museum of Scotland and is made available to researchers on request.
Please click on the report title below to download the relevant PDF. I have scanned the reports in high resolution to preserve the original detailed content. As a result, some of these are quite large files.