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is a village called Kom Mazin by the local population, but it seems to
be known on the SoE map as Bulin. The local people and ghafir knew of an
area of antiquities land said to lie about 1km to the north of this village.
This area is now covered by an orchard and fields. Some pottery is visible
lying on the fields and in drainage ditches. Two drill cores were made
in this northern area. After a brief top soil layer, there was alluvial
silt from about 0.5m to 3m, and then a gradual change to a sandy matrix
with a blue-black colour. A second transect was made through the village
of Bulin, starting in a field next to the Kanoubiya Canal. Core 3 consisted
of silty alluvium to about 4.5m when it became sandier and darker in colour,
with much brown-orange mottling; Core 4 next to the mosque had some modern
rubbish on the surface, but then alluvial mud turning to a sandy dark matrix
at about 3.5m. This pattern was repeated in Core 5 to the east of the village.
From the evidence of the field survey and cores, it is difficult to believe that there ever was an antiquities area at Kom Mazen. The scatter of pottery in the fields could have come from elsewhere and there is no depth to any of the pottery in the cores; it is rare in the cores and virtually at the absent at the surface. The underlying geomorphology shows good alluvial land in the last thousand years based on sedimentation rates, and before that sandy soil, perhaps from the sand hills, with organic material here. The presence of the
Kanoubiya Canal is an interesting feature in this area.
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Photographs
from a larger collection taken by Penny Wilson in 2005. Copies of the others
are kept at the EES London office.
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