Xavier Droux
The initiator of the Ponda.org project, Xavier is the curator of the collection of Egyptian archaeology at the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art in Geneva as well as an Academic Fellow at the University of Geneva's Faculty of Sciences, where he works with team of the Archaeology of Africa & Anthropology Laboratory (ARCAN).
Xavier is active in archaeological work in Egypt. Since 2003, he has been a senior member and assistant field director of the Hierakonpolis Expedition, directed by Dr Renée Friedman. He has worked in the field at several localities (Nubian Cemetery HK27C, Fort, production center HK11C). But it is his experience at the Elite Cemetery HK6 that is more closely related to his research interest. There, over the past few years, Xavier took part in the excavation of the earliest known above-ground funerary architecture in Egypt and of several burials. In 2011 and 2012, he kept busy digging out the vast cattle burial known as Tomb 49, but his most significant find was human burial Tomb 72 that still contained a large part of its assemblage in situ. He also undertook his own excavation project on an expansion of cemetery HK6 thanks to support from the Schiff-Giorgini Foundation.
