Sediment core dataset for "Shift away from Nile incision at Luxor ~4,000 years ago impacted ancient Egyptian landscapes"

This dataset contains all sedimentary core information used for reconstructing the Holocene evolution of the Nile Valley landscape near Luxor in Egypt.

Sedimentary information from 81 sediment cores retrieved by a combination of hand-operated Eijkelkamp augers and a gasoline-powered Cobra TT percussion corer was used to investigate the Nile’s Holocene fluvial deposits in its valley near Luxor, Egypt. Sediment samples were studied in ~10 cm intervals and had their characteristics such as sedimentary texture (conforming to USDA standards), grain size, Munsell colour, degree of sorting, mica occurrence and rhizolith percentages logged on-site. Boreholes reached to an average depth of ~8 m — with many penetrating >10 m. Their spacing varied from ~20 to 200 m, depending on the heterogeneity of the subsurface. The cross-section was strategically placed to span the entire valley, perpendicular to the main axis of the Nile Valley and the current river, while following governmental policies and regulatory procedures working in and around Egyptian Antiquities areas. Coring locations were recorded in UTM36N and the Survey of Egypt vertical datum using a Leica RTK-GNSS positioning system, and subsequently stored together with the sedimentary logs for future reference. Subsequently, UTM36N coordinates were converted to degrees, minutes, seconds for publication purposes. 

This dataset consists of one Microsoft Excel workbook:

1_sedimentary_core_dataset.xlxs

Further details can be found in Peeters et al. "Shift away from Nile incision at Luxor ~4000 years ago impacted ancient Egyptian landscapes" (Nature Geoscience, 17, July 2024, p. 645–653, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01451-z). 

Contact information:

Dr Angus Graham (angus.graham@arkeologi.uu.se)

Dr Jan Peeters (j.peeters1.uu@gmail.com)