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Staff Profiles

Dr Martin Odler

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow

Background

I am an EPSRC / MSCA post-doctoral fellow at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, working on a project EgypToolWear – Metalwork Wear Analysis of Ancient Egyptian Tools, under the guidance of Prof. Andrea Dolfini. My interests lie in the social and technological contexts of crafts in Ancient Egypt, especially metallurgy of copper and bronzes. My PhD thesis was defended at the Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, and I have worked for more than 10 years at the site of Abusir in Egypt, Czech concession, as an archaeologist and surveyor. In Prague, I have also studied, besides Egyptology, Prehistoric and Early Mediaeval Archaeology, and Classical Archaeology. I am a member of the board of trustees of Slovak Egyptological foundation Aigyptos. I am also interested in issues concerning the evaluation of scientific research, being a co-author of the Slovak translations of the Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics and of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (also known as DORA).

Research

Abstract of the project EgypToolWear – Metalwork Wear Analysis of Ancient Egyptian Tools


EgypToolWear is a groundbreaking analysis of the function and uses of metal craft tools from late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Egypt (c.3500 - 1070 BC). This is the first ever project to deploy Metalwork Wear Analysis (henceforth MWA) to precisely understand how copper-alloy tools were used in early Egypt, for what crafts, and with what bodily gestures and engagements. The research is grounded in a multidisciplinary approach combining MWA (both low- and high-magnification) with (a) a critical reassessment of written and iconographic sources (which are abundant and often detailed in this context); (b) metallurgical analysis; and (c) experimental archaeology. A corpus of c.170 copper-alloy tools of various periods, provenances, shapes, and presumed uses will be researched, giving much-needed temporal and geographical depth to the research. The project is important in that it deploys an innovative analytical and experimental approach to answer questions that have hitherto only been addressed by textual and iconographic studies. The new approach will overturn deep-seated misconceptions concerning Egyptian metal tools, e.g., the conservative character and lack of evolution in tool making and using. Furthermore, the project's importance lies in its being the very first large application of MWA to Egyptian bronzes. As such, it will reinvigorate a rather traditional field of scholarship and open new research avenues into early Egyptian metals. This strand will develop independently after the project's end thanks to planned MWA training and engagement initiatives (including in Egypt itself). This is a game-changer for the discipline of Egyptology and for the Fellow, who through the Action will acquire new analytical and interpretative skills enhancing his career prospects. In turn, he will transfer his specialist knowledge of predynastic and dynastic Egypt to Newcastle, where the archaeology of ancient Egypt is neither researched nor meaningfully taught.

Publications