One of the most pleasant tasks as a PI of research projects is to introduce and welcome new team members. It is especially nice when this concerns junior staff – and it is great joy if the next generation of students replaces persons who have just completed their studies and are no longer working as student employees. This is exactly what I can proudly announce today: our former student assistant Jessica has graduated with great success and will soon join us as new PhD candidate with her own individual tasks in the framework of DiverseNile. Her place as student assistant is now taken by Sawyer Neumann, a very promising student of archaeology who is particularly interested in archaeological design and 3D applications.
Our new team member Sawyer
To some of you who follow our blog on a regular basis this name may sound already familiar – Sawyer is one of the students who wrote guest blog posts about our block seminar “Introduction to field archaeology” back in March. It was on this occasion of the online seminar that we first met Sawyer and some weeks later we were really impressed by his application.
I am very happy that he is now joining us and looking much forward to a fruitful collaboration both here in Munich and hopefully also soon in the field in Sudan.
Our DiverseNile Online Seminar Series under the general topic of “Cultural Diversity in Northeast Africa” has a wide chronological and regional scope. Tomorrow, we will expand this scope and include Eastern Sudan and the Red Sea. We will continue with an exciting presentation by Andrea Manzo (Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) who will speak about “Complexity and Connectivity Between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea in the 3rd and 2nd Mill. BC. A View from Eastern Sudan and Mersa/Wadi Gawasis”.
Our speaker is Professor of the Archaeology of the Nile Valley and Ethiopian Archaeology at the University of Naples „L’Orientale“ and has a rich record in fieldwork in Sudan and Ethiopia. He is one of the key figures who started to explore Eastern Sudan with state-of-the-art methods and theories in the last decades. Previously considered as “margial” area, simply reflecting our previous focus on the Nile Valley rather than desert areas, we now have a basic understanding of the complex history of this region over the millennia. His excellent book on Easter Sudan is available in Open Access and highly recommended (Manzo 2017; see also Manzo 2019). Most importantly, Andrea Manzo and his team were able to illustrate the high level of connectivity of Eastern Sudan with the Nile Valley and also the Red Sea, in particular Mersa/Wadi Gawasis. His work allows to contextualise several findings which go far beyond the reconstruction of trade but show the importance of areas outside the Nile Valley.
In Eastern Sudan, there are in particular the so-called Gash Group and the Jebel Mokram Group which are highly relevant to our understanding of cultural diversity in Bronze Age Sudan. Especially the Gash group is intriguing, with several sites where locally made and also imported ceramics were found, including „exotic ceramics showing similarities with Kerma, C-Group, Pan-Grave“ (Manzo 2017, 33).
Thanks to Andrea Manzo, we now understand Eastern Sudan as a crossroad between the Nile basin, the Eastern Desert, the Ethio-Eritrean highlands and the Red Sea. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow’s presentation within the DiverseNile Seminar Series on previously neglected regions far away from the Nile Valley!
Participation is free and registration via email is still possible. See you all tomorrow!
References:
Manzo, Andrea 2017. Eastern Sudan in its setting: the archaeology of a region far from the Nile Valley. Access Archaeology; Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 94. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Manzo, Andrea 2019. Eastern Sudan in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. In Raue, Dietrich (ed.), Handbook of ancient Nubia 1, 335-365. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter.
Tomorrow, the second lecture of our DiverseNile Seminar will take place. This time, it will be me presenting and I will talk about “Cultural Diversity in Urban ‚Contact Spaces‘ in New Kingdom Nubia: A View from Sai Island”.
Sai Island is one of the prime case studies to investigate settlement patterns in New Kingdom Nubia. In tomorrow’s presentation, I will focus on state-built foundations like Sai as colonial urban sites and their hinterland. I will explain why I introduced the concept of ‘contact space biography’ for the DiverseNile project and outline this approach.
A view from Sai Island: here towards Gebel Abri.
The starting point for my new research in the Attab to Ferka region were several open questions deriving from my work on Sai between 2011-2018 – tomorrow, I will address some of them, stressing why a view from a colonial temple town is crucial to understand cultural dynamics in rural and peripheral regions of the Middle Nile.
The location of Sai Island in the Middle Nile.
Since time is limited, I will select some examples to address cultural diversity in New Kingdom Nubia: the use of the so-called fire dogs and the question of cooking pots as well as foodways in general. For the latter, I would like to introduce the ‘food system’ concept as presented by Kelly Reed in a brand-new article which provides much food for thought. Reed argues that with such an approach, archaeologists are required to consider „all the processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population“ (Reed 2021, 57). This does seem particularly fitting for the DiverseNile project and our aims. I also very much like her attempt to apply system theory and social-network analyses to highlight the multiple links between society, environment and food. Within our contact space of the Attab to Ferka region, we also want to identify the specific stakeholders (actors such as families, individuals and official institutions as well as the ‚goverment‘, thus the Egyptian state) of this ancient Bronze Age ‘food system’ and thus presumably showing complex connections between the urban sites of Sai and Amara West and their hinterland with rural sites like villages at Ginis and Kosha. New information on food supply and distribution systems will be highly relevant to reconstruct contact space biographies in our project. Last, but definitly not least, the peripheral settlements in our research concession were always an integral part of the ‘food system’ of Sai and contributed to the dynamics we can trace in this state-built foundation (cf. Sulas and Pikirayi 2020, 80).
For more, please zoom in tomorrow at 1pm, late registrations are of course still welcome!
References:
Reed, K. 2021. Food systems in archaeology. Examining production and consumption in the past. Archaeological Dialogues, 28(1), 51-75. doi:10.1017/S1380203821000088
Sulas, Federica and Pikirayi, Innocent 2020. From Centre-Periphery Models to Textured Urban Landscapes: Comparative Perspectives from Sub-Saharan Africa, Journal of Urban Archaeology 1, 67–83 https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/epdf/10.1484/J.JUA.5.120910
The Seminar Series under the general topic of “Cultural Diversity in Northeast Africa” has a wide chronological and regional scope and we will start with a view from Prehistoric Sudan. I am more than happy that we have one of the renown experts in this field as our first speaker: my dear friend and colleague Elena Garcea from the Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale.
I first met Elena 10 years ago while we were both working on Sai Island – ever since, she has become a close friend and collaborator to which I owe fruitful comments, advices and plenty of discussion on various occasions. Elena collaborated already with the AcrossBorders project and one of the outcomes is a joint article which appeared in Antiquity in 2017, with Giulia D’Ercole (one of Elena’s former students) as the corresponding author (D’Ercole et al. 2017).
Here, it became very obvious that a shared view from Prehistoric and Bronze Age Sudan can result in interesting insights and pose a number of relevant questions. The long settlement sequence on Sai over millennia provided an excellent opportunity to study continuity and discontinuity in long-term pottery traditions. Thanks to Elena, we presented a preliminary version of this research at the 14th Congress of the Pan African Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies, hosted from July 14-18 2014 by the University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg, South Africa. This trip to South Africa was in many respects rewarding and one of my personal highlights of congress experiences.
Elena’s research is mostly focusing on the last hunter-fishers-gatherers and early food producers and users of domestic plants and animals in Sudan. All of her interpretations are always reflecting recent theoretical perspectives, in particular technical knowledge accumulation, storage strategies and optimal foraging theory. She has undertaken fieldwork not only in Sudan but also in Libya and Niger. In Sudan, she has worked in different parts of the country: Khartoum province and Jebel Sabaloka (central Sudan), Karima and Multaga-Abu Dom areas, Sai Island and Amara West district (northern Sudan).
Elena recently published a book on the Prehistory of Sudan (Garcea 2020). In my view this is an excellent piece of work, not only for students but for anyone who wants to understand the early history of Sudan within a wide framework. The book profits from more than thirty years of field experience and brings together this expertise with analyses in laboratories, conference presentations and numerous publications to develop a differentiated picture of Prehistoric Sudan.
I am personally very much looking forward to this kick-off of the DiverseNile Seminar Series! For those of you who I could convince that it will be clearly worth to attend Elena’s lecture: participation is free but registration via email is mandatory. See you all tomorrow!
References
D’Ercole, G., Budka, J., Sterba, J., Garcea, E., & Mader, D. 2017. The successful ‘recipe’ for a long-lasting tradition: Nubian ceramic assemblages from Sai Island (northern Sudan) from prehistory to the New Kingdom. Antiquity,91(355), 24-42. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.262
Since almost two decades, my research and teaching complement one another. Probably influenced by my own education in Vienna – at a department with traditional connections to a museum collection and a strong record in the archaeological fieldwork in Egypt, thus resulting in a very practically oriented academic curriculum – I believe that subjects like Archaeology and Egyptology need a practical approach as well as a good basic understanding of its methodologies and theories. There are things students will never learn from textbooks but can only experience on site and face-to-face with the object. Furthermore, for me the general goal is not only to submit the tools, methods and knowledge but also to pass on our own enthusiasm for the subject to the future generation. The latter makes the hard work, all the accuracy and patience needed to become an academic scholar endurable – and magnificent.
It goes without saying that in times of the Covid-19 pandemic, there are many challenges for academic teaching (and learning), in particular for practical classes. The block seminar “Introduction to field archaeology” I was offering this winter term together with DiverseNile team members had to be completely revised as an online format because of the lockdown in Munich.
This online seminar run via zoom, we used several breakout rooms and offered plenty of material to the participants via a moodle class, in particular short videos on subjects like photogrammetry and drawing and photographing objects/pottery sherds.
Although this was a kind of ‘test’ and we were a bit unsure about the success the seminar will have, the results were amazing. The participants, arranged in three teams, submitted very strong results on the task “remote sensing” (for which we used satellite/drone pictures of the MUAFS concession) and were all really active in the individual sessions of the seminar.
In order to emphasise the strong links between teaching and research and to highlight the importance of outreach, one of the tasks for the participants was to write a short blog post about their experiences in the seminar. Therefore, I am more than happy that I can introduce three guest blogs by our teams of students – they are written in German but they offer an insight and personal view of experiences of LMU students in challenging times. All of the students of our seminar showed an impressive motivation for archaeology – this is all a teacher can ask for and thus many thanks again from my side and on behalf of my team! Enjoy these guest blog posts and any feedback is of course very much appreciated.
A year ago today, the last official steps of our 2020 season of the MUAFS project were carried out, I submitted all paperwork to the Sudanese authorities and we were getting ready to leave Khartoum – of course not knowing that a) a sandstorm will delay our flight out, b) because of the extra night in Khartoum we will just catch the last flight to Munich from Istanbul before flights were closed in Turkey because of the pandemic and c) it will take us more than a year to return to Sudan.
One of my personal rituals I have developed in the last 10 years is that on the occasion of my last day in Khartoum, I always try to visit the Sudan National Museum, at least the garden with its wonderful monuments, but preferably the galleries with its treasures as well.
The entrance of the museum with rams of Kawa showing king Taharqa. Photo: J. Budka.
My first visit to the museum was exactly 20 years ago – but the building and its treasures impress and inspire me deeply every time anew. The Sudan National Museum in Khartoum clearly belongs to my favourite museums, together with the splendid Aswan Nubian Museum and the Luxor Museum in Egypt.
A glimpse into the ground floor gallery housing Egyptian, Napatan and Meroitic statues and much more. Photo: J. Budka.
It is always a great pleasure to give newcomers of the team a special tour though the museum – last year this was Jessica and we had the luck that our dear friend and colleague Huda Magzoub joined us. This photo shows us in the entrance alley to the museum together with one of the marvelous Meroitic lion sandstone statues of Basa, representations of the lion-god Apedemak.
The last selfie I took back in Khartoum in 2020: Huda, Jessica and me in front of one of the Basa lions.
I can just recommend to everyone: do not miss this marvelous museum and please calculate several hours for your visit – the ground floor gallery is full of important objects from all areas of Sudan, from Palaeolithic to Post-Meroitic times. And the upper floor gallery focusing on the Christian Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia is equally a must, featuring the world-famous wall paintings from the cathedral in Faras (a very useful guide through the collection is available online for free).
One of the impressive ceramic vessels in the museum: a painted Meroitic fine ware bowl. Photo: J. Budka.Another stunning object from Meroitic times: a glass chalice of highest quality from a tomb in Sedeigna. Photo: J. Budka.
Like at Aswan, I think the most charming aspect of the museum is its garden. Here, one can visit complete temples (the splendid New Kingdom temples of Buhen, Semna-West and Kumma) and one rock-cut tomb (of Djehuti-Hotep) but also a large number of statues, including monumental royal statues, reliefs and rock art respectively rock inscriptions are exhibited.
The entrance alley of the Museum flanked with Meroitic lion statues. Photo: J. Budka.
I very much hope that my yearly ritual of a stroll through this wonderful collection and enjoying the view of the monuments in the garden will be possible again soon, hopefully somewhen later this year.
As recently outlined by Rennan Lemos, a remarkable tomb of Ramesside date was found by Vila in Ginis West. We identified this monument during our survey in 2019 and it clearly once had a tumulus superstructure; the descent to the rock-cut chambers is still visible. Some broken pottery as well as bone fragments are scattered around the superstructure, but otherwise this structure is isolated and cannot be associated with burial monuments (apart from a few Christian tombs close by).
Figure 1: Site 3-P-50 in 2019 (photo: J. Budka).
A look at the distribution map of New Kingdom sites in our MUAFS concession (see Budka 2020, 65, fig. 14) is useful for a tentative contextualisation of the tomb which, among others, yielded shabtis of the lady of the house, Isis (Vila 1977, 151). The New Kingdom sites are clustered within the southwestern part of the research area, thus close to the urban sites Amara West and Sai Island. The role of these administrative centres Amara West and Sai Island needs to be considered when looking at the ‘periphery’ (cf. Spencer 2019; see also Stevens and Garnett 2017) and might have influenced the pattern of site distribution. The latter, however, is still preliminary as I pointed out in a earlier post.
Figure 2: Distribution of New Kingdom sites in the MUAFS concession including 3-P-50, 2-T-58 and 3-P-15 (see Budka 2020, fig. 14).
The closest possible New Kingdom site located in the neighbourhood of 3-P-50 is 2-T-58. This site is a small cemetery of several tumuli which can be attributed to the Late New Kingdom and/or the Pre-Napatan period. Unfortunately, 2-T-58 was already very much destroyed and plundered in the 1970s. There is little hope that more information than gathered by Vila can be gained from these tombs (Vila 1977, 119-122, figs. 53-54).
Figure 3: One of the looted tombs of site 2-T-58 in 2019 (photo: J. Budka).
Vila excavated one of the tombs and found the remains of four burials, of funerary beds, bodily adornment like beads and amulets and some ceramic vessels which seem to date to the late Ramesside period and the Pre-Napatan phase, finding close parallels at Amara West (Binder 2014, passim) and also at Hillat el-Arab (Vincetelli 2006, passim). A post-New Kingdom date is maybe the most likely for this excavated tumulus and its interments.
Especially interesting and most probably contemporaneous to the isolated tomb 3-P-50 is site 3-P-15 in Kosha West which is part of a cluster formed by three settlement sites (3-P-15, 3-P-16 and 3-P-17).
This habitation site on a mound of c. 55-100m shows a surface covered by schist blocks and sherds. In the northeastern part, remains of mud bricks are visible. The surface ceramics we documented show a continuation from late Ramesside times well into the ninth and maybe even the eight century BCE, thus into the Napatan era.
Figure 4: Overview of site 3-P-15 in 2019 (photo: J. Budka).
A more precise dating and a concise characterisation will require excavations – but the site seems to have been in use during the time the cemeteries at Amara West flourished and 3-P-50 was built. As already pointed out by Michaela Binder, the best parallel for 3-P-50 is tomb G244 at Amara West (Binder 2014, Binder 2017, 599-606). The latter is the largest multi-chambered tomb at Amara West with a tumulus as superstructure and, like 3-P-50, also situated in what seems to have been an isolated position during the 20th Dynasty. Maybe these tombs, their architecture, their seemingly isolated location and rich equipment (which is an intriguing mixture of Egyptian- and Nubian-style material culture) point to common aspects of local elite communities in the Amara and Ginis regions we are still far away from understanding in detail.
Our planned excavations at 3-P-15 and especially the joint efforts of Rennan Lemos focusing on the mortuary evidence and Veronica Hinterhuber on the settlement remains will hopefully allow a closer assessment of the Ramesside period in the MUAFS concession and corresponding lived experiences in the near future.
References
Binder, M. 2014. Health and Diet in Upper Nubia through Climate and Political Change. A bioarchaeological investigation of health and living conditions at ancient Amara West between 1300 and 800 BC. Unpublished PhD thesis, Durham University.
Binder, M. 2017. The New Kingdom tombs at Amara West: Funerary perspectives on Nubian-Egyptian interactions, in: N. Spencer, A. Stevens, and M. Binder (eds), Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, 591-613.
Budka, J. 2020. Kerma presence at Ginis East: the 2020 season of the Munich Universit Attab to Ferka Survey Project, Sudan and Nubia 24, 57-71.
Spencer, N. 2019. Settlements of the Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom, in D. Raue (ed), Handbook of ancient Nubia, vol. 1. Berlin, 433-464.
Stevens, A. and A. Garnett 2017. Surveying the pharaonic desert hinterland of Amara West, in: N. Spencer, A. Stevens, and M. Binder (eds), Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, 287-306.
Vila, A. 1977. La prospection archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise). Fascicule 5: Le district de Ginis, Est et Ouest. Paris.
Vincentelli, I. 2006. Hillat El-Arab. The Joint Sudanese-Italian Expedition in the Napatan Region, Sudan. Sudan Archaeological Research Society Publication 15. British Archaeological Reports International Series 1570. Oxford.
One of the small advantages in the Covid-19 pandemic is that there was a boost of online formats of lectures, seminars and workshops around the world. I consider this especially important since prior to the pandemic, it was a real challenge and a financial issue to ensure the participation of colleagues from Egypt and Sudan, that is, from the countries who’s archaeological remains our discipline investigates. With online formats, the place of stay is almost unimportant, if a stable internet connection is available. Numerous events are already trying to find time slots that are compatible for several time zones around the world. This new form of internationality has enormous potential and the high number of participants in Egyptological events worldwide over the last few months shows that for many people this is an incredible added value – which will hopefully also continue after the pandemic.
Therefore, I am proud to introduce the new DiverseNile Online Seminar Series which will run via Zoom, starting in April. Participation is free but registration via email is mandatory. For composing the programme and the organisation of the seminars, I am very grateful to Rennan Lemos. He did an excellent job, inviting a number of highly distinguished colleagues working in Sudan whose contributions fit perfectly under the general topic of “Cultural Diversity in Northeast Africa”.
Programme of the forthcoming DiverseNile Seminar Series 2021, starting in April!
I am very much looking forward to this new format discussing key issues of the DiverseNile project with an international audience and from various perspectives – fresh ideas are thus as good as guaranteed.
These are challenging times – for everybody, for many groups more than others (just think of the heroes in hospitals, schools, kindergarten and supermarkets as well as many other places and the awful situation for everybody involved in gastronomy, tourism and culture). We as archaeologists are more or less well prepared for doing much of our work from home. Spending weeks and moths per year in the field, often stuck on an island somewhere, we are also used to a certain kind of isolation.
However, there are of course real problematic issues for us we are currently facing. First of all, of course going to the field in Sudan and Egypt – nothing that is possible at the moment and also planning our next season in the MUAFS concession is still extremely difficult because of the pandemic. Second, our teaching activities are restricted to online formats. Whereas this works without problems for lecture classes and seminars, our planned block seminar “Introduction to field archaeology” where we wanted to have various practical training for our participants would need to be completely revised as an online format. We have postponed it for now, hoping that it might be possible in March – I remain skeptical (or realistic?) since the extension of the lockdown in Munich is very likely, but let’s wait and see. Third, working at home and taking shifts in working in the office to secure isolation and limited risks for everybody is currently without alternative, but I miss having the complete team present and exchanging in a casual way.
Well – as archaeologists we are trained to be patient, and all will be better somewhen!
For now, I wanted to give a small update on our work progress. Everybody of the team is busy with several work tasks within the work packages – much efforts are currently spent by Giulia and Veronica on databases, by Jessica on enlarging our digital library and by Cajetan on various aspects of remote sensing. Rennan was busy with his PhD viva at Cambridge which he passed very successfully and now continues with collecting data useful to approach the mortuary archaeology of the MUAFS concession.
It was very silent from my side as PI and this with good reasons – it is the end of the teaching term, there’s a lot of administration keeping me busy and most importantly: I tried to finish a monograph about Tomb 26 on Sai Island in the last months. This process has taken quite some time and actually benefitted from the lockdown and that I was unable to leave Europe over the winter. This book is now almost ready and I could easy repeat what I had written in 2018 about the merits and flaws of preparing archaeological publications, especially about crazy working hours and panic attacks. And about the feeling of being overwhelmed when you know exactly that the really important things in life are neglected but you can’t help it – partner, family, friends and pets suffer and need to be very patient and supportive (or bribed in the case of animals). Friends and family got used to my slightly bizarre answers on the phone “yes, all is fine, I am still in my tomb, can we speak later?” and for this I am very grateful! Interestingly, there was not much difference between the last months in lockdown and the final book preparation period back in 2018. The results of isolation are just the same, with more silence in the office and maybe with the slight difference that I could not meet friends now, even if I could spare the time.
For the DiverseNile project, preparing the AcrossBorders publications is hugely relevant. There are so many aspects we will be able to compare with sites in our new concession which are after all located in the ‘periphery’ of Sai Island. Tomb 26 is one of the Egyptian style pyramid tombs on Sai where the local elite was buried. We had more than 36 burials in this monument and we are now able to reconstruct in detail the life history of the tomb and its users. Although the burial assemblages like the one of Khnummose follow Egyptian standards, there are also certain local markers and individual concepts which I describe in the forthcoming book. We assume that none of the users of Tomb 26 was actually coming from Egypt, all of them are belonging to the local elite with indigenous roots. Interestingly, we also have some Nubian features, especially traceable by the choice of ceramics and bodily adornment.
The probably best example is a young female who was buried with an ivory bracelet in Tomb 26 (Fig. 1). This bracelet was badly damaged and broken, but its find position over the ulna of the individual allowed a clear interpretation. Similar bracelets are known from several New Kingdom sites in Nubia (e.g. Buhen, Mirgissa and Fadrus) and can be regarded as typical ‘Nubian’.
In situ position of ivory bracelet in Tomb 26 on Sai (photo: J. Budka).
Overall, Tomb 26 on Sai Island illustrates as a case study the potential of investigating the variability of funerary practices within a common repertoire of burial customs adopted from Egyptian standards as being rooted in distinct social practices. One of the main tasks for the near future within the framework of the DiverseNile project is, therefore, to determine the degree of diversity not only in elite contexts such as the pyramid cemetery on Sai but also in social groups not belonging to the elite of New Kingdom Nubia in order to achieve a more comprehensive picture of past communities in the Middle Nile region. Our cemeteries in the Attab to Ferka region will allow us to make here considerable progress in the next years, especially because of our joint approach using both funerary and settlement records to reconstruct past communities.
The time between Xmas and New Year is often a kind of transition, for many a moment to pause, but for others also a super stressful time in which all kinds of things have to be finished and loads of papers are sitting on one’s desk because one deliberately waited for this “break” between the holidays…
Well, I do not want to go into details, but my current work in home office is far from being relaxed. Nevertheless, it seems adequate to pause for a moment and remember what was achieved in the last few years.
Today one week ago, I gave the first DiverseNile Xmas lecture – this zoom lecture was meant as a kind of “Thank you” to all my friends, colleagues and collaborators who supported me in the last decades.
I tried to outline the most important waypoints leading to the new project in the region between Attab and Ferka, taking my visits and research in the cataract areas as case studies, starting of course with my participation in the Elephantine project.
From the First, to the Third, Fourth and Second Cataract.
Today two years ago, I was leaving Khartoum to go north and start work in my new concession between Attab and Ferka, the first field season of the MUAFS project started. Our very promising results of this first season served as the basis for the successful acquisition of the present ERC DiverseNile project – thus really a day to remember!
Preparing my lecture for last week, I reassessed my old documentation of rock inscriptions at Tombos, but especially of the Humboldt University Nubian Expedition at the Fourth Cataract as part of the Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project. I will never forget the moment when we first entered our concession area in 2004 coming from the desert and looking on a barren, yet infinitely beautiful cataract landscape.
The three years of fieldwork in the area of Kirbekan were a great challenge, but this work has shaped me and taught me so much about archaeology and surveying. We had a great variety of funerary monuments and for me besides rock art the most interesting sites were tombs of the Napatan era and others associated with the Kerma culture. The discovery of Kerma remains/a local Kerma horizon was among the most impressive outcomes of the entire Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project! And fits perfectly to our current investigations in the Attab to Ferka region.
My visits to the Batn el-Hagar, the Kajbar cataract and of course Sai Island will never be forgotten. Sudan is such an impressive country with stunning landscapes and much more!
Without the years of the AcrossBorders project on Sai Island, my current research focus on remains from the Egyptian colonial era in the Attab to Ferka region with an emphasis on cultural diversity and the materialisation of cultural encounters would not be possible. Thus, many thanks again for all who supported me – there are exciting years ahead of us, stay tuned for new results from the MUAFS concession!
