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http://www.linkedin.com/pub/colleen-manassa/67/484/77b

The Theban Desert Road Survey is an archaeological research project operated in conjunction with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture'sSupreme Council for Antiquities that is being conducted in the Libyan Desert in Egypt west of the Nile River that focuses on the ancient connections between Thebes and such settlements as the Kharga Oasis. The project uses remote sensing to identify roads and caravan trails that were used in antiquity to identify possible sites of previously unknown communities.[1] Established in 1991 byEgyptologists John Coleman Darnell and his wife Deborah Darnell, the survey project grew substantially when it gained the support ofYale University in 1998.[1] The Theban Desert Road Survey has discovered sites from Predynastic Egypt, including substantial caches of pottery and other artifacts.[1]

The project was begun by John Coleman Darnell and Deborah Darnell, who started searching along caravan trails in the Western Desert west of Luxor in the early 1990s under an approach they described as desert road archaeology.[2][3] Among their discoveries are inscriptions found at Wadi el-Hol, dating back 3,800 years, which are in the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, some of the earliest known examples of phonetic alphabetic writing, in contrast to the pictographs used in Egyptian hieroglyphs.[4][1]

Manassa was curator for one exhibit, so she wore this Egyptian costume.