Collecting Groups: visualizing the archaeological context of the late Middle Kingdom cemetery A at Harageh

The importance to individuate block categories of objects to define separate chronological periods within the history of Ancient Egypt has often clashed against the necessity to keep find-context at the centre of study as the only possible way to encounter and explore past societies and cultures. Collecting types and arranging objects in categories could have been one of the easiest way to explore unknown cultures as Egypt was at the beginning of nineteenth century, while accurate records of find-groups would have generated slow process of data acquisition and would have moved the discipline towards fragmentation. The resolution of difficulties in constructing visual diachronic typologies and in reassembling find-groups as a source of knowledge is still today one of the tasks to be accomplished. The aim of this paper is that to show new possible directions for the future of the research, receding its focus from types to groups. The late Middle Kingdom Cemetery a in the necropolis of Harageh has been selected as case study, in order to show the potentiality to reassemble the original find-groups.