Steven E. Sidebotham

Where do you work?

I work in the Interdisciplinary Anthropology Program at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio.

What do you do?

My passion is field archaeology. Between summer 1972 and spring 1999, I will have participated in 34 expeditions, over half of which I have directed or codirected. These have been in Italy, Greece, Israel, Tunisia, Libya, India, North Yemen, and Egypt—both on land and underwater. I enjoy survey work and excavation, especially in the Eastern Desert of Egypt (between the Nile and the Red Sea). I love working with the Ma’aze and ‘Ababda Bedouin who live in the region. Many are good friends, excellent guides, and great excavators. Because of them, we have found scores of previously unrecorded ancient sites including gold-mining settlements, forts, road stations, quarries and Christian hermits’ villages. I enjoy doing the research following the fieldwork so that we can publish our results and let people know what we have found.

What inspired you to do what you do?

When I was in high school in Turkey in the 1960s, I had a great teacher of ancient history. I began collecting Roman coins and decided by the time I was 14 that I wanted to be an archaeologist. My passion for the Eastern Desert of Egypt stemmed from an excavation in 1980. At that moment I knew that this was the region I wanted to devote my professional life to. Beginning in 1987 my wish came true; I started directing my own excavation at a late Roman fort on the Red Sea coast at Abu Sha‘ar—about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Hurghada.

I knew from research on my Ph.D. dissertation in the late 1970s and early 1980s that I wanted to conduct fieldwork at Berenike, the site we have been excavating since winter 1994 with support from the National Geographic Society.

Besides your work, what other interests do you have?

I love to travel, especially to out-of-the-way places to see peoples, natural flora and fauna and, of course, archaeological sites. I like to scuba dive and collect ethnic objects. I also like working out in the gym when I am in the country (something not possible, of course, in the field). I also love photography and take my own photographs on my surveys and excavations.

What keeps you interested in your work?

I know that many of the sites we survey and study as well as excavate are in great danger from vandals, antiquities hunters, and the pressures of “development.” I know that if we do not record them to the best of our ability with the resources we have and as quickly as possible that many will be lost and their existence never known. This would be a terrible cultural loss for future generations. Time is not on our side. This is a great motivator for me. I enjoy piecing together a giant puzzle: the Greco-Roman-Byzantine sites and roads in the Eastern Desert and along the Red Sea coast—how did they relate to one another; who were the people who lived, worked, and died out here; what motivated them?

What was your most exciting moment in the field?

This is a very difficult question to answer, as there have been many. The discovery of new sites and ancient roads during our desert surveys is very exciting. Knowing the last Westerners to see these were probably the people who built and lived in them makes it doubly so! On digs, the discovery of ancient written documents—especially inscriptions on stone or ostraca and papyri, of which we have found a great many at Berenike over the past few years—is especially exciting. The unearthing of large pieces of bronze statues, of an early Roman pier or a Roman warehouse remodeled as a religious shrine have all been very exciting finds made at Berenike in recent seasons.

What goals have you set for yourself?

I’d like to continue work at Berenike (also called Berenice) and the Eastern Desert of Egypt for another 15 years. Then I would like to try my hand at doing survey work and excavation in Sudan or Eritrea. All have the same ultimate goals of better understanding the African Red Sea coast and its relationship with the hinterland and with other lands of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in the period of the third century B.C. until the seventh century A.D.

How would you suggest getting started in your field?

These days the job market is very difficult to break into. One would have to be incredibly focused, dedicated, and willing to work long, long hours—and that is just to get into the profession. Once there, the endless grind of raising funds for fieldwork, organizing and running the fieldwork, and publishing the results on top of earning a living (teaching, museum work, whatever) will take its toll. It is not the glamor portrayed in the Indiana Jones movie trilogy! It is, however, incredibly rewarding.

What resources can you suggest to the layperson interested in your field?

Some really interesting books which I think nonspecialists would like deal with the Bedouin as guides and the flora, fauna, and archaeology of the region. It is really that whole combination that makes the place fascinating for me.

Here are a few oldies, but goodies : A.E.P. Weigall, Travels in the Upper Egyptian Deserts (1909 & 1913); L.A. Tregenza, The Red Sea Mountains of Egypt (1955); G.W. Murray, Dare Me to the Desert (1967 & 1968).

A more recent source is J.J. Hobbs, Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness (1989).

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