Contributor, DH in General
Rolland Long is an archaeologist whose main focus is the problem of urbanism in pharaonic Egypt. Currently finishing his PhD in Egyptian archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, his research focuses on the continued habitation of Wah-Sut, a planned settlement originally built ca. 1850 BCE to support the mortuary foundation of a pharaoh named Senwosret III. The settlement is located in Abydos, a large site within the modern day Sohag governorate in southern Egypt, where he has been privileged to excavate on 8 occasions as part of the Penn expedition. With this research he hopes to answer decade long questions that have filled his head since learning about the settlement during his undergraduate education: How long would such a settlement have been inhabited after the decline of the strongly centralized state that established and administered it? What is a “planned” settlement anyway, especially in an ancient context? Did its inhabitants face some of the same challenges in modern day planned settlements established by the Egyptian government in its desert frontiers?
In the process of attempting to resolve some of these questions, he has found the use of photogrammetry as such, i.e. the science of taking measurements from photographs, to be an indispensible quantitative tool. Therefore a strong additional interest for him has gradually become the creation (and sharing) of field-tested methods for making concrete inferences about the distant past, whether on the scale of landscape archaeology, settlement archaeology, or small finds analysis. As ancient urbanism is a transregional problem by nature, hard measurements and solid maps and diagrams constitute an important lingua franca amongst its specialists.
He is also a big fan of droning on about the grammar of the ancient Egyptian language and its diachronic development. Outside of academic interests, his current hobbies include slathering meals with Chicago style giardiniera and open water swimming.