Settlement processes may be considered on different scales. On the macro level, the individual settlement site is placed, regardless of its internal structure, within a larger regional context and is thus analysed from a perspectiveof its settlement area with regard to its origin and evolutional dynamics. From this chiefly landscape archaeology stance, settlement history is viewed from its interaction with an environment which is itself is subject to historical dynamics. This approach furthermore highlights the network character of settlement systems. Only with regard to such networks does the emergence of complex, multi-tiered settlement structures become visible as a characteristic of the Egyptian settlement pattern since the end of prehistory. Crucial for this level of large-scale analysis are recent developments in prospecting methods, geophysics and geo-archaeology, satellite data, as well as in GIS testing. Using this treasure trove of methods for Egyptian archaeology is of particular concern in this field of research.
The analysis of settlement sites on the micro level potentially hold just as much information. The aim here is to focus on individual, concrete livelihoods as they become manifest on a daily,idiosyncratic level. Only in this way may settlements be understood as settings for human experience and activity where concrete, historical realities of life become apparent.

Rituals, sanctuaries, and tombs traditionally stand at the centre of Egyptian archaeology, especially when it comes to the pharaonic period, and indeed the sheer extent of monumentality in sacred spaces is a specific feature of pharaonic culture. Beyond a primarily monument-related approach, analyses of the practices that once had taken place inside these venues determine sacred spaces as privileged locations of social communication. Such communication processes relative to the venues and situations in which they occurred, the media they used and, above all, the contents of the discourses discussed here, are crucial for understanding the structure and integration, structural change, and diversity of ancient societies.
Exploring communication processes within sacred spaces is closely linked to the layout and appearance of such spaces, especially with regard to the built structures and the direct testimonies of the actions performed there. In this sense,epigraphic evidence occupies a privileged position, especially the so-called secondary epigraphy.

Egypt, especially under the pharaohs, is widely viewed as a monolithic entity. Excessive focus on elite culture tends to eclipse the moments of social diversity; later periods, when Egypt came under ethnically and culturally foreign rule, are often viewed as no longer genuinely Egyptian. However, such ideas which tend to be taken for granted in academic and scholarly circles do no justice to the historical findings. In Egypt, groups of different ways of life, culture and socio-political organisation have always coexisted and functioned together.
This dialectic between diversity and unity over a period of six millennia is a remarkable peculiarity of Egypt's social and cultural history if compared to other cultural areas, and the department's research programme isincreasingly addressing this issue.
The research projects arrange along two lines of approach. The one pertaining to synchronicity investigates how groups of different cultures and livelihoods coexisted in functional networking. Here, the focus is on the ecological-cultural gradient between the floodplain and the adjacent desert areas. This furthermore opens the perspective on Egypt's interaction with the African continent. The diachronic approach, on the other hand, relates to processes of the political, cultural and ethnic overlapping of Egypt and asks on the basis of which framework parameters which characteristics are repeatedly produced as elements of a longue durée, and on the other hand what the social and cultural "degrees of freedom" in Egypt's situation consist of.