An international team of archaeologists led by Joan Oller Guzmán, lecturer at the UAB Department of Antiquity and Medieval Studies, published the results of the 2020 and 2021 dig seasons at the Roman site of Sikait, a set of buildings surrounding Roman Egypt's emerald mines, located in the Eastern Desert. The area was known in Antiquity as "Mons Smaragdus," given that it was the only place within the Roman Empire where emeralds could be found. This scientific collaboration was conducted jointly with the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw, Poland, and focuses on the study of how emeralds were extracted and commercialized in Antiquity.