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143 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
What does stratigraphy show? |
How site is formed, why it was formed that way` |
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How are stratigraphy finds recorded? |
Paper, plans and section drawings |
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What is anthropogenic deposit and give examples? |
buildings, mining, rubbish, burials, man made structures, coprolite |
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What are natural deposits found in stratigraphy? |
land slide, floods, ash layers, leaf mould |
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What's the difference between cultural transforms and natural transforms? |
cultural: how people change the site natural: how nature changes the site |
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Example of stratigraphy? |
york coppergate site |
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What is votive deposition? |
precious offerings being thrown away, they are sometimes broken up beforehand. |
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what happened at flagfen? |
bronze age, religious barrier made, precious offerings thrown in |
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why does silt preserve things? (give example) |
no oxygen so decay can't take place e.g. Mary Rose |
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What's dendrocronology? |
The study of tree rings used for dating finds. |
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Where are documents likely to be held for desktop survey? |
planning departments, couny records, Historic Environment Records, Sites and Monuments records |
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What are maps used for? |
locate and explore sites, answer questions about previous use of landscape, helpful to track changes through time |
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What do early maps show? |
proposed routes of turnpikes, railways, changes in ownership, taxes (tithe maps) |
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What is desktop surveying? |
Collecting all the documents you can find without going into the field. |
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example of desktop survey documents? |
internet, library, arcaheological records, maps, newspapers, photographs |
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What is SMR? |
Sites and Monuments Record |
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What is HER? |
Historical Environment Record |
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What's NMR? |
National Monument Records |
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What's ADS? |
Archaeological Data Service |
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What's regression analysis? |
Comparing old maps with new maps to observe a change in the landscape and land use over time. |
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What are some problems with early maps? |
not to scale so inaccurate |
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What's GIS? |
Geographical International System |
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Examples of legal documents used in desktop survey |
records of ownership, court records of boundares, wills and inventories |
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Examples of economic records used in desktop survey |
bill receipts, order lists, estate agent bills |
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Examples of pictorial records used in desktop survey |
aerial photographs from 1940s |
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What's topography? |
way the land goes up and down |
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what's a baulk? |
bit that's left undug for vertical info |
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What's a feature? |
anything in the ground you can't take away |
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What's a DMV? |
deserted medieval village |
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What's coprolite? |
fossilised faeces |
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What's excarnation? |
leaving bodies out in sun to dry the bones and remove flesh. |
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What's open area excavation? |
stripping layers of vast ground |
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what is ethnoarchaeology? |
studying current groups of people that live in a similar way to fill in gaps about sites |
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what does aerial photography identify? |
crop marks, soil marks, shadow sites |
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what are verticals? |
camera pointing straight down at ground with aircraft flying along gridlines |
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values of verticals? |
planning and illlustrating, steroscopy, photogrammetric mapping |
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limitations of verticals? |
not as clear, not taken for specific purpose, difficult to measure contours. |
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what are obliques? |
taken from point of interest from high angle to reveal contours, taken from low lying aircraft at angle to ground |
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strengths of obliques? |
used to locate sites, good coverage, can give 3D image, can reveal features invisible from the ground |
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limitations of obliques? |
difficult to use for mapping, can miss features if their signatures aren't visible from air |
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what are shadow sites? |
where surface shadows are caused in a site by irregular elevations indicating the presence of submerged features. |
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when are shadow sites best to photograph? |
in low sun as shadows will be cast at right angles to sun rays |
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What are crop marks? |
Cropmarks show as differential growth in arable crops caused by the presence of sub-surfacearchaeological features |
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Do crop marks always stay the same? |
they change throughout seasons |
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What are positive crop marks? |
They appear darker from air as crops are buriedd over ditch or pit so growth is more vigurous |
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What are negative crop marks? |
They appear lighter from air as crops grow over a buried building so will grow thinner and ripen too quickly. |
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limitations of usefulness of crop marks? |
only show for a few days, don't show on clay or areas of deep topsoil, don't show up in some crops (beans), geological features can be mistaken for archaeological cropmarks. |
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what are soil marks? |
Soil marks are differences in soil colour as a result of archaeological features. |
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when are soil marks most noticeable? |
in winter when vegetation is low or immediately after ploughing. |
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why are molluscs useful in archaeology?
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They are environmental indicators.
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Name three types of molluscs and their preferred environment. |
open country snails (living in open), woodland snails (living in shade), catholic snails (indifferent). |
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how do molluscs show environmental change? |
sample snails from each layer show changes |
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three types of sampling and explanation? |
random sample, stratified sample, systematic sample |
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who is Osiris? |
God of the dead, married to isis, brother to seth, cut up in 14 pieces, put together by isis. architypal mummy. depicted with green skin and partially mummified. |
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who is amun |
creator god , lived in chaos, created patch of holy land ben ben, created everything with semen from divine masturbation. |
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who is isis? |
wife of osiris, mother of horus. |
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who is ra |
sun god. consumed by Nut every evening, delivered every morning. |
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who is anubis? |
god of embalming and mummification, depicted as jackal. |
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methods of underwater surveying? |
photography, recording, surveying practices |
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how is geophysics used in water surveying? |
sonar and radar. |
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what is the underwater equivilent of magnetometry?
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magnetometers are effective in surveying wrecks on sea bed |
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what is the underwater equivilant of resistivity? |
echo sounders and sonar scanners. |
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what is underwater equivilent of aerial photographs? |
nothing, only can work in clear and shallow water |
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name 4 wrecks |
mary rose, wasa, titanic, the swan |
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what is a proton magentometer? |
towed well behind boat and detects large iron and steel objects |
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what is a side scan sonar? |
this transmits sound waves in a fan shaped beam to produce a graphic image of the surface features on the seafloor. |
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what is a sub bottom profiler? |
emits sound pulses that bounce back from features and objects buried beneath the sea floor. |
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what is geochemistry? |
study of chemical differences in soil |
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what's main technique of geochemistry? |
phosphate analysis |
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why is geochemistry not used everywhere? |
relatively expensive |
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what does geochemistry detect? |
bones and coprolite in large quantities. |
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what is phosphate analysis? |
soil sample taken using an auger and analysed to detect high phosphate levels. |
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what can phosphate analysis detect? |
bones, coprolite, lead, cadmium, lipids |
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case study for geochemistry? |
flag fen, sample soil high in phosphate showed cremated bodies. |
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what is geophysical surveying?
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using techniques derived from physics to detect features through their physical differences with the surrounding soil |
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two aspects of geophysics? |
resistivity and magnetometry |
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what is resistivity? |
resistance of the subsoil to the passage of an electrical current |
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what does low resistance mean in geophysics? |
ditch or a pit |
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what does high resistance mean in geophysics? |
walls or buildings |
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what sites is resistivity used on? |
only sites that have been recognised as it is too time consuming to use blind |
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why is resistivity commonplace? |
non destructive |
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what are resistivity results presented as |
graph and turned into grayscale plots |
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magnetometer surveying? |
detection of changes in magentic fields in subsoil |
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what human activities can change magnetic fields? |
stone walls = less magenetivity burning = more magnetivity |
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what are the best types of magnetometers? |
caesium vapour as they are more sensitive to minute changes |
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pros of metal detectors? |
can detect things other than iron. portable volounteer used to go over spoil heaps |
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cons of metal detectors? |
only go to 15cm underground only useful if context is recorded in detail |
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what is GPR?
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ground penetrating radar |
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how does gpr work? |
sends waves into soil which bounce off and read into computer |
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what is gpr useful for? |
urban sites and detecting voids such as internal structures of building |
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example of gpr? |
richard III |
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why is gpr helpful? |
only effective geophysics technique in urban sites as it can penetrate tarmac, can create 'pseudosections' can create 3D map |
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what is SONAR? |
form of acoustic sensing |
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what is SONAR used for? |
mapping sea bed and revealing depth and form of sunken structures |
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what is bosing? |
crude form of acoustic sensing on land |
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what does bosing involve? |
hitting ground with mallet and listening for variations in sound |
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what can bosing indicate? |
ditches and walls |
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what's dowsing? |
using wooden rods to detect water or archaeology underground. |
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limitations of geophysics? |
limited, not useful on waterlogged sites, not useful for finding new sites. |
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Who is Khepri? |
dung beetle that rolls sun across sky |
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What does LIDAR stand for? |
light detection and ranging |
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what kind of aircraft does LIDAR use |
exact position can be known through GPS |
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how does LIDAR work |
laser scanner rapidly pulses beams to the ground |
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pros of lidar |
digital surface model can be made, vegetation can be eliminated, can be used in under optimum conditions |
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example of lidar |
mayan buildings |
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what's random sampling? |
areas given numbers then randomly selected |
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what's stratified sampling? |
numbers selected randomly for each zone in proportion to the size of each zone. |
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what's systematic sampling? |
requires large numbers of samples that are selected at equally spaced intervals |
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what's systematic - stratified sampling? |
combines both methods, could be used to take more samples in particular zones than others. |
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what are box grids? |
practice of dividing an archaeological site into squares for ease of recording features. |
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why is open area excavation the key approved method? |
complete structures can be studied, provides excellent recording possibilities, total understanding of horizontal relationship is possible |
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what is palynology? |
study of pollen |
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how is palynology used in archaeology? |
morphology of exeine can tell you about species of pollen and therefore the type plant it came from. |
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when was the ice maiden buried and where? |
500BC, Siberia |
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when was oetzi buried and where? |
3300-3255, Italian Alps |
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when and where is flagfen? |
900BC, Bronze age, |
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what was found at flagfen? |
walkway, votive deposition, fence |
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what is must farm? |
bronze age settlement on the banks of River Nene |
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what was found at Must Farm? |
8 long boats, fishing traps, votive deposition, no bodies |
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what era was Herxheim? |
neolithic |
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what happened at Herxheim? |
community disappeared |
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what was found at Herxheim? |
at least 500-1000 people in mass grave, bones show evidence of flesh scraped off, |
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When was Cashel man? |
4000 years ago |
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how was cashel man preserved? |
body compressed by peat and preserved |
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when was tollund man?
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4th century BC |
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what happened to the tollund man? |
only signs of decomposition were a result of the excavation |
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how was the ice maiden preserved?
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permafrost |
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issues of ice maiden? |
ethical, her tribe claimed connection the body, display in museum caused uneasiness |
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what are two types of status? |
ascribed and achieved. |
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when were the petroglyphs made? |
6000 BC |
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who made the petroglyphs? |
bashendi culture |
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what were the naqada pots? |
filled with foods and drinks for the after life |
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where were the naqada pots found? |
in banks of river |
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what is the narmar palette. |
shows earliest heiroglyphics, commemorates victories. |
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when was the narmar palette made |
3000 BC |
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what are the statues of ranotep and nofret? |
had cray eyes made from rock crystal, were Ka statues to house souls |
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where were the medium geese? |
in nefahmant's tomb |
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when were the medium geese painted? |
4000 years ago |
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who was the great pyramid built by? |
khufu |
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when was the great pyramid built? |
2500 BC |
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where is the statue of khafra? |
found in khafra's valley temple |
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what is the statue of ka-aper |
statue of a self-important priest.. |
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what's the tomb of Ty. |
tomb of a hairdresser at Saqqara, has Ka statue and sculptures. |