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Expeditions sent to the mines and quarries accessed by the ancient Egyptians - at sites along the Nile down into Nubia, throughout the Eastern Desert, and up into the Sinai - became events of monumentalization in themselves, beyond the materials being removed to construct the temples that rose up in the landscape. A worker on an expedition could well expect to face injury or death while away. Quarries and mines thus became stages for art, veneration and even miracles. Although I am at the beginning stages of my research, I am planning on focusing on the rock-cut chapels and shrines that developed at these special use sites. How did they interact with the quarry-/minescapes within which they were constructed? Why were they constructed, and for/by whom? And did they become inactive when the resources of the area were fully exploited and no longer available?

Arnold, Dieter. Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

Bloxam, Elizabeth. "Miners and mistresses: Middle Kingdom mining on the margins." In Journal of Social Archaeology 6 (2): 277 - 303 (2006).

Bard, Kathryn A., ed. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt (New York: Routledge, 1999).

Boivin, Nicole. "From veneration to exploitation: human engagement with the mineral world." In Soils, stones and symbols: cultural perceptions of the mineral world, ed. Nicole Boivin and Mary Ann Owoc (London: UCL Press, 2004) 1 - 29.

Caminos, Ricardo A. "Surveying Gebel Es-Silsilah." In The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 41: 51 - 55 (1955).

Caminos, Ricardo A. and T. G. H. James. Gebel es-Silsilah, V. 1 The Shrines (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1963).

Dean, Carolyn. "The Inka Married the Earth: Integrated Outcrops and the Making of Place." In Art Bulletin 89.3: 502 – 518 (2007).

Forbes, Dennis. "Where Tourists Seldom Venture: The Sandstone Quarries & Rock-cut Chapels of Gebel el Silsila in Upper Egypt." In KMT 15 (3): 64 - 76 (2004).

Nicholson, Paul T. and Ian Shaw. Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Shaw, Ian. "Exploiting the desert frontier: The logistics and politics of ancient Egyptian mining expeditions." In: Social Approaches to an Industrial Past: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Mining, ed. AB Knapp et al (Routledge, London 1998) 242 - 258.

---. "Pharaonic quarrying and mining: Settlement and procurement in Egypt's marginal regions." In Antiquity 68 (258): 108 - 109 (1994).

Wright, G. R. H. Ancient Building Technology, V. 1 - 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2000).