British experimental archaeologist who spent about two decades cutting stone with the tools Egyptology actually credits, copper tubes and saws driven with quartz sand abrasive, and published the programme as Experiments in Egyptian Archaeology: Stoneworking Technology in Ancient Egypt (Routledge, 2003), with the Aswan granite trials reported separately in Antiquity 75(287), 2001. The experiments reproduced tube-drilled cores, tapered holes, striated grooves and sawn faces in Aswan granite, with measured cutting rates and tool-wear figures. The rates are slow and the labour is enormous, which is the point: the method scales with workforce, and it is the direct empirical answer to Ancient Machining that did not exist when Christopher Dunn wrote in 1998.
Connections
Ancient Machining · Core No. 7 · Christopher Dunn · Great Pyramid of Giza