The Reexamination of Location Choices for Pyramids Complexes From the Third through the Sixth Dynasties

This dissertation is the first overview of location choices for Early Dynastic Period (2900-2545 B.C.E) and Old Kingdom (2543-2118 B.C.E) pyramid complexes since Miroslav Bárta’s 2005 article “Location of the Old Kingdom Pyramids in Egypt.” The factors that went into the decision of Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom pharaohs for the locations of their pyramid complexes is based on a variety of geological, religious, and historical contexts. An overview and analysis of the geology of the seventy-one-kilometer stretch of pyramid complexes from Abu Rawash to Meidum will be conducted. Additionally, the overall history of each site prior to the construction of their pyramid complexes will be discussed as well. While the first pyramid complex ever constructed in ancient Egyptian history comes from the Third Dynasty (2592-2544 B.C.E), many of the eight sites discussed in this dissertation: Abu Rawash, Giza, Zawiyet el-Aryan, Abusir, Saqqara, South Saqqara, Dahshur, and Meidum had a history prior to the construction of the first pyramid complex. Outside of the political histories that incorporated the Early Dynastic Period, the history of construction and monumental architecture that emerged at these sites prior to the first pyramid complex of Djoser at Saqqara will be discussed as well. Further analysis will also delve into the larger religious symbolism and veneration of the past that pharaohs portrayed in choosing a location for their complex. This includes looking at the ancient Egyptian sense of the past and how they viewed their own history. Of course, this data will lean towards the elite members of society, more specifically the pharaoh, because most surviving textual and archaeological sources on pyramid complexes dealt with the pharaoh. As this dissertation will show, the ancient Egyptian sense of the past and how a pharaoh used that past to display their power changed over the course of the almost 500 year period that made up the Old Kingdom. Together, these facets are undeniably part of larger reasons why the Third through Sixth Dynasty pyramid sites of chosen. While there are undoubtedly more reasons than what is listed, the three factors mentioned above: geological, religious, and historical, are at the forefront of the current study. With their analysis, I will provide a clearer picture of understanding the mindset of the pharaohs who built their pyramid complexes from Abu Rawash to Meidum during the Early Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom

Gully cut- and- fill cycles as related to agromanagement : a historical curve number simulation in the Tigray Highlands

Gully cut-and-fill dynamics are often thought to be driven by climate and/or deforestation related to population pressure. However, in this case-study of nine representative catchments in the Northern Ethiopian Highlands, we find that neither climate changes nor deforestation can explain gully morphology changes over the twentieth century. Firstly, by using a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate historical catchment-wide curve numbers, we show that the landscape was already heavily degraded in the nineteenth and early twentieth century – a period with low population density. The mean catchment-wide curve number (> 80) one century ago was, under the regional climatic conditions, already resulting in considerable simulated historical runoff responses. Secondly, twentieth century land-cover and runoff coefficient changes were confronted with twentieth century changing gully morphologies. As the results show, large-scale land-cover changes and deforestation cannot explain the observed processes. The study therefore invokes interactions between authigenic factors, small-scale plot boundary changes, cropland management and sociopolitical forces to explain the gully cut processes. Finally, semi-structured interviews and sedistratigraphic analysis of three filled gullies confirm the dominant impact of (crop)land management (tillage, check dams in gullies and channel diversions) on gully cut-and-fill processes. Since agricultural land management – including land tenure and land distribution – has been commonly neglected in earlier related research, we argue therefore that it can be a very strong driver of twentieth century gully morphodynamics

Parameter interdependence and uncertainty induced by lumping in a hydrologic model

Throughout the world, watershed modeling is undertaken using lumped parameter hydrologic models that represent real-world processes in a manner that is at once abstract, but nevertheless relies on algorithms that reflect real-world processes and parameters that reflect real-world hydraulic properties. In most cases, values are assigned to the parameters of such models through calibration against flows at watershed outlets. One criterion by which the utility of the model and the success of the calibration process are judged is that realistic values are assigned to parameters through this process. This study employs regularization theory to examine the relationship between lumped parameters and corresponding real-world hydraulic properties. It demonstrates that any kind of parameter lumping or averaging can induce a substantial amount of ‘structural noise’ which devices such as Box-Cox transformation of flows and auto-regressive moving average (ARMA) modeling of residuals are unlikely to render homoscedastic and uncorrelated. Furthermore, values estimated for lumped parameters are unlikely to represent average values of the hydraulic properties after which they are named and are often contaminated to a greater or lesser degree by the values of hydraulic properties which they do not purport to represent at all. As a result, the question of how rigidly they should be bounded during the parameter estimation process is still an open one

Water Management in the Next Century

Proceedings of the 1991 Georgia Water Resources Conference, March 19-20, 1991, Athens, Georgia.Water management policies are products of knowledge, modified by political forces. They are born of human perception of need, or confrontation with crisis. Federal and state statutes, case laws, regulations, and administrative actions define U.S. water policies. New courses of action reflect changing times and perspectives, but old ones cling to traditions and many are associated with institutions having parochial rather than global outlooks. Furthermore, many outdated policies linger on interminably, often conflicting with contemporary beliefs. The issues identified herein concern Georgia and every other state.Sponsored by U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and Georgia Institute of Technology.This book was published by the Institute of Natural Resources, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602 with partial funding provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey, through the Georgia Water Research Institute as authorized by the Water Resources Research Act of 1984 (P.L. 98242). The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of The University of Georgia or the U.S. Geological Survey or the conference sponsors