It comprises, in open access format, 15 articles around the general topic of African Archaeology in Support of School Learning, including our piece on A Day Along the Nile. Once again, I am very grateful to Ann for inviting us to be part of this project with is fabulous accomplishment! I am thankful to my co-authors Chloe and Carl. We all hope this special issue of AAR will be much appreciated by a large and diverse community of both scholars and educators.
Although the current temperatures both in Germany and Egypt would suggest it is still summer, our short summer break comes to an end. I am delighted to announce the next DiverseNile Seminar by Egyptologist Fatma Keshk next week.
Fatma is an old friend I have meet many years ago during the German excavations in Elephantine; she then also joined me once for our AcrossBorders project on Sai Island in Sudan, a truly enjoyable experience. It was actually 10 years ago – amazing how time flies by (there are photos as evidence that we were both younger back then 😉).
Through our personal encounters, I have been able to follow Fatma’s career over the last years. And it’s just amazing how successful it is!
After obtaining her PhD in 2021 at the Free University of Berlin with a dissertation entitled: “An Ethno-archaeological Study of Streets and Open Courtyards from Modern Nubia and Ancient Egyptian Settlements from the Predynastic Period to the end of the Middle Kingdom”, she was successful in securing two postdoctoral fellowships in Cairo in the past years. She is currently affiliated with the IFAO. Last year, she was the organizer of the fantastic conference “Living in the House”, which Chloë and I had the pleasure to attend (see also Chloë’s report on this event).
Fatma has a strong interest in settlement archaeology and here especially in understanding the use of space – this makes her an ideal person to exchange ideas for our own DiverseNile project. She applies inter-disciplinary methodologies in her research, notably ethno-archaeological approaches. Fatma has also engaged in heritage outreach activities with different local Egyptian communities over the past years. In her upcoming DiverseNile Seminar on Tuesday, September 19, she will focus on her observations for the site of Saqqara – stressing that there are peculiarities for every site in Egypt, not least because of diverse participants, audience, and overall goals.
I am very much looking forward to this presentation and grateful to Fatma for sharing her experience in an important and growing field of studies.
I am very pleased that an article I prepared together with Chloe Ward and Carl Elkins as part of a forthcoming special volume of the journal African Archaeological Review dedicated to “African Archaeology in Support of School Learning” (see Stahl et al. 2023) is now published. This manuscript was shaped over more than one year and was extreme fun to write.
Back in 2022, Ann Stahl asked me whether I would be willing to join this project preparing an unusual publication as a tool for schoolteachers and students rather than a scientific article. I was immediately excited, especially since I had already some experience teaching at schools in Austria and Germany. But this was different – more hands-on, more research-related and a very collaborative process with wonderful colleagues and a fully motivated working group. It was also a real challenge and new experience.
Since some years, I already had the idea to write a children’s book from the perspective of a dog experiencing life in an Egyptian town in Nubia in the Second Millennium BCE. Within the AcrossBorders project, we found in 2015 this cute dog figurine in the New Kingdom town of Sai Island.
We aimed for a different perspective in our article, focusing on object biographies, narratives and story telling. „Wastl“, the dog figurine from Sai Island, was a key figure here.
Well – this was the starting point and inspired me to propose the blending of a fictional narrative with factual archaeological evidence for our contribution to Ann’s volume. Together, we developed and offered an interpretation of what a typical day may have been like living at Sai. We created a small girl letting us have a look into her life and daily routine. Of course, this girl is a proud dog owner – but check out our story for more!
In our contribution, we also offer explanations for how archaeologists work and interpret some of the evidence we discuss, focusing on a range of methods. These include recent advances in virtual 3D reconstruction which offer a unique perspective on our interpretation of the past. Carl created magical photorealistic and interactive 3D models – these are not only a great outcome themselves, but also allowed us to come up with new interpretations and asking new and different questions. The corresponding figures we included in the article were taken directly from within the interactive virtual reconstruction created in real time.
Virtual reconstruction of a house in Sai city from the southern enclosure wall with a serpentine wall shielding the entrance to a narrow lane. Construction material has been added for a hypothetical renovation, which was known to occur regularly in domestic contexts. As research is ongoing, the geometry and texture of the buildings’ façades are simplified. Image: Carl G. Elkins
Although we focus on the past, many of the aspects we discuss in the article are highly relevant today and can be linked to several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (in particular 9, 11, and 12). We encourage readers to think about some of the things we discuss in relation to their own lives and experiences and have provided a number of call-out questions in speech bubbles throughout the article to get some of these discussions started.
As soon as the complete special issue of AAR 40, 3 will be published, there will be the link to some supplementary material which will allow to explore the reconstruction of Sai city in an interactive mode. We are very much looking forward to any responses – from our fellow academics as well as of course schoolteachers, students and other people interested in archaeology and the relevance of the field for us nowadays (and in the future). In the meantime, we will be busy exploring more scientific questions that arose from the photorealistic virtual reconstructions – and there is quite a number of exciting ones.
Stahl, A.B., Balabuch, A., Sanford, K. et al. African Archaeology in Support of School Learning: an Introduction. African Archaeological Review (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-023-09539-4
It’s been a few weeks since our fantastic weekend full of experimental archaeology at Asparn (Austria), at the MAMUZ museum. I have tried to summarise the first part of our experiments, producing Nile clay vessels including the firing process with animal dung, in a previous blog post.
Once again, loads of thanks go to all our dear friends and colleagues who supported us – Vera Albustin, Ludwig Albustin, Michaela Zavadil and Su Gütter – as well as to the Viennese hosts of the event, especially to Mathias Mehofer.
Part of our 2023 team experimenting with Nile clay, animal dung and fire dogs (photo: M. Mehofer).
The second part of our experiments was dedicated to cooking with fire dogs – a topic which keeps us busy ever since our work at Sai Island and the discovery of large amounts of fire dogs in the New Kingdom town. We have produced a number of replicas of fire dogs in the last years – and have tested various settings and arrangements of fire dogs to hold a cooking pot above the fire.
Our 2023 arrangment: two fire dogs (here with handles instead of snouts) holding a Nubian-style cooking pot.
This year, we tested a new arrangement – placing two fire dogs in our pit to hold a Nubian-style cooking pot. Other than normally reconstructed (following a seminal paper by D.A. Aston), we placed the fire dogs upside down – with the “ears” to the top, using these as support for the pot.
Detail of our 2023 arrangement with the cooking pot supported by the „ears“ of the fire dogs.
Well – the preparation of red lentils was absolutely problem-free – we used some wood as fuel as well as cattle dung. The fire dogs held the pot next to the fire, allowing us to reduce or increase the temperatures upon need.
In progress: preparing red lentils in our Nubian-style cooking pot placed on two fire dogs (photo: E. Schuster).
Our replicas of fire dogs include examples with “snouts” as well as with “handles”, just like the Sai originals. For our cooking experiment this year, we used two examples with handles and placed the handle away from the fireplace. And: at the end of the cooking process, we could use the handles to take the fire dogs straight out of the fireplace and use them as a support for the pot while we were eating. Could this maybe be the explanation for these parts of our curious fire dogs?
The end of a sucessful experiment: we all enjoyed our meal and the cooking pot was held by the same fire dogs we has just used in the fireplace.
We will continue to experiment with our fire dog replicas – not least because one of our new settlement sites in the MUAFS concession in Sudan, AtW 001, yielded several fire dogs from 18th Dynasty contexts, providing an excellent fresh parallel for the situation at Sai Island.
Together with a fantastic team of LMU students, including our student assistant Caroline and supported by our PostDoc Giulia D’Ercole and Hans Stadlmann, I spent the last weekend at Asparn (Austria), at the MAMUZ museum and had the pleasure to participate once again in the experimental archaeology class hosted by the University of Vienna (many thanks here to all of the colleagues, especially to Mathias Mehofer).
The LMU team 2023 at Asparn/Zaya (photo: H. Stadlmann).
Our team from LMU was enforced by our dear friends and colleagues Vera Albustin, Ludwig Albustin, Michaela Zavadil and Su Gütter – loads of thanks to all of them! It was not just a very productive weekend but also highly enjoyable.
Following up on our results from the last year, especially on firing pottery with animal dung, we started with producing some replicas of Egyptian and Nubian vessels on Day 1. Most importantly, we could, for the first time, work with real Nile clay. Earlier this year, Giulia had revisited the local potters at Abri (for her last visit in 2014 see the AcrossBorders blog) and they kindly gave us some clay, tempered with sheep/goat dung and ready for use. We exported this Nile clay and brought it to Asparn. This new material was strikingly different to the modern clay we normally use for our replicas! Vera struggled with the very instable paste, making the forming process a real challenge (and a mould necessary at the end). She produced a very nice open bowl and a small beaker which was later red burnished. Giulia also made a small test cup, intended to study the fracture of the vessel after firing.
Vera working on the Nile clay bowl using a mould for the rounded base/lower part.The finishing of the surface of Vera’s bowl resulted in scraping marks which are strikingly similar to those on ancient Nile clay vessels. Giulia is getting ready to produce a small test cup.
On Day 2, we made a test firing of the small vessels produced on Day 1 – we used a circular pit as open fire and sheep and cattle dung as fuel. The results were quite impressive – just after one hour, the main firing process was done and when we opened the “kiln” after 1.5hours, there were only little damages to some clay figurines, the vessels had stay intact. Most of them were nicely fired black, indicating that this way of packing vessels into dung and leaving the kiln unopened allows a firing process in reduced atmosphere – mirroring the appearance of most Nubian style vessels from Sudan!
Our pit we used this year for firing ceramics with animal dung (and some other materials).
On Day 3, the Nile clay vessels (and our new replicas of fire dogs) were fired. We used the same pit, but made a much larger “kiln” out of sheep and cattle dung, including some straw and some bushes on the top (the latter are of course not really comparable to what would have been used in Egypt/Sudan, where also nowadays palm leaves are used).
Preparing our „kiln“ made up of animal dung (photo: C. Elkins).We placed some small branches on top of the dung. A mix of dung and bushes is very likely for firing processes in ancient Egypt and Sudan (photo: C. Elkins).
We started the firing of this kiln from the top, and it took almost 2h until we opened it. Towards the end of the process, we created some air holes since we were aiming for a firing process in oxidised atmosphere.
Our „kiln“ towards the end of the firing process.
Well – what worked perfectly was the creation of the small, burnished beaker in Nile clay as a Black topped vessel. The surface of the larger bowl was very irregularly fired and shows many black spots, presumably because it was quite densely packed in the dung fuel. All the fire dogs came out with a very black surface, considerably different to our previous experiments firing them with wood as the only fuel.
The small Black topped beaker in Nile clay.
The larger bowl in Nile clay showing very irregular colours after firing.
All in all, we again learned a lot during these three days in Asparn – not only about the challenges and details of some working steps when using Nile clay to produce ceramic vessels, but also about the qualities of dung as fuel in open fires. There are several things we would like to repeat and modify next year!
The second part of our experiments was dedicated to cooking with fire dogs – part 2 of Asparn 2023 will follow shortly.
The next lecture in our DiverseNile Seminar Series 2023 is coming up: on Tuesday, July 4, Kate Spence (University of Cambridge) will be talking about her research in the temple town of Sesebi – “Living at Sesebi: investigating the houses of the New Kingdom town”.
Kate is an internationally well-recognised expert on New Kingdom urban sites and especially house architecture in Amarna and Sesebi. She has published seminal works on the topic and, in my opinion, one of her publications on the 3D form of Amarna houses (Spence 2004) is especially remarkable and extremely useful to be discussed with students in classes on Egyptian domestic architecture.
I am especially delighted that Kate will be giving this talk about lived experiences in New Kingdom houses at Sesebi for several reasons. First, because the site of Sesebi is a fantastic parallel for Sai Island and second, it has always struck me as an especially intriguing site with huge potential (especially for understanding settlement patterns in New Kingdom Nubia). Thus, thirdly, it is not only a great topic for the DiverseNile Seminar Series, but also of much relevance for domestic architecture in the Attab to Ferka region and our own research.
Kate’s recent fieldwork project at Sesebi (co-directed with Pamela Rose) reflects the new boom in urban archaeology in Upper Nubia since the 2000s, with an increase in archaeological fieldwork at sites like Amara West,Tombos, Sai, Dukki Gel and of course Sesebi.
The new work at Sesebi started in 2008 and concentrates on a re-assessment of the work by the Egypt Exploration Society in the 1930s. The most important result of this new mission is that structures and material remains, especially pottery, have been found which pre-date the reign of Akhenaten – the king who is normally associated with the site. It is very likely that Sesebi was already founded at the very beginning of the 18th Dynasty (Spence and Rose 2009, 39, 42; Rose 2017; Spence 2017) – maybe as early as Sai Island.
Join us next Tuesday at the DiverseNile Seminar and learn more about living at New Kingdom Sesebi through Kate Spence’s promising lecture!
References
Rose 2017 = Rose, P., Sesebi: Ceramics, chronology and society, in: Neal Spencer, Anna Stevens and Michaela Binder (eds.), Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions, British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3, Leuven 2017, 465–473.
Spence 2004 = Spence K., The three-dimensional form of the Amarna house, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 90, 2004, 123-152.
Spence 2017 = Spence, K., Sesebi before Akhenaten, in: Neal Spencer, Anna Stevens and Michaela Binder (eds.), Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions, British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3, Leuven 2017, 449–463.
Spence and Rose 2009 = Spence, K. and Rose, P., New fieldwork at Sesebi, Egyptian Archaeology 35, 2009, 21–24.
As announced last week, the first preliminary report about Kerma cemetery GiE 003 in Attab/Ginis East has just been published (Budka 2022).
Today, I would like to discuss one of the highlights from this cemetery which was published in the EVO paper: a glazed steatite royal scarab with the name of a Hyksos king.
Found in Feature 4, the name of Pharaoh Y’amu is given on the bottom of this piece, MUAFS 005. Already on the day of its discovery, Manfred Bietak kindly helped remotely with the initial reading of the royal name of this scarab – many thanks for this! I am also particularly grateful to Karin Kopetzky, who provided detailed information about the dating criteria of this piece. The design of its back, head, legs, and sides all directly correspond to other known attestations of Y’amu (Tufnell 1984, 32, 35, 37, pl. 61: 3416, 3417, 3418, 3419; Ward 1984, 164) whose exact position within the sequence of 15th Dynasty rulers is unfortunately not clear (see Ben-Tor 2007, 107-108).
Scarabs are in general rare in cemetery GiE 003 and only two pieces have been found in our excavations. The context of scarab MUAFS 005, Feature 4, appears to belong to the later part of the Classic Kerma period, possibly contemporaneous with the Theban 17th Dynasty. As is known from other marginal regions of the Kerma empire like the Fourth Cataract area, our Hyksos scarab might have been circulating in Nubia for some time before ending up in GiE 003’s Feature 4.
The Hyksos king Y’amu has not been attested to in Nubia before the discovery of his scarab MUAFS 005 in GiE 003. Interestingly, in Ward’s sequence he would postdate the other Hyksos rulers attested to at Sai and Kerma as well as at the northern sites. Ward (1984, 164) placed Y’amu in the second half of the 15th Dynasty, but this sequence has been discussed and is not archaeologically confirmed (Ben-Tor 2007, 108 with references).
The textual evidence for contact between Kerma rulers and Hyksos kings has already been addressed from a variety of perspectives. In this context, the appearance of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware in Nubia and of Kerma wares in Egypt, especially at the Hyksos capital Avaris, were also noted as possible indicators of exchange. Alexander Ahrens and Karin Kopetzky recently examined the appearance of Hyksos scarabs in the context of Kerma burials (Ahrens, Kopetzky 2021). Royal Hyksos scarabs are known from Ukma, Akasha, Sai, and Kerma, as well as several Lower Nubian sites (Aniba, Dakka, Sayala, Masmas, Faras, Mirgissa, Uronarti and Debeira). All of the kings mentioned on these sealings ruled during the early Hyksos period, and it is logical to assume that this was when the Hyksos engaged in direct trade with the Kerma kingdom (Ahrens, Kopetzky 2021, 295 with references and discussion). During the early Second Intermediate Period, the fortresses in Lower Nubia were under Kerma control, and the Hyksos were probably keen to establish trade and direct contact to achieve “continued access to resources and particularly to the Nubian gold essential for trade in the Eastern Mediterranean” (Ahrens, Kopetzky 2021, 295). The Lower Nubian fortresses have always been linked to gold mines and access to gold – recent work has stressed also the importance of Kerma gold working sites in Batn el-Haggar (Edwards 2020, 406-407; 415), and the same is likely for the Attab to Ferka region, especially for Ginis and Kosha. Could the Hyksos scarabs found at Ukma, Akasha, and Sai reflect not only international trade but also, indirectly, gold exploitation between the Second and Third Cataracts during Kerman rule? And could the same apply for the newly found scarab in Ginis?
It is tempting to assume that this new Hyksos scarab can be seen in connection to an intense period of Kerman exchange with the Hyksos kingdom, which sought gold from not only former Egyptian fortresses in Lower Nubia but also sites further south under Kerma rule. Sai’s importance during the Kerma Period might be linked to both the island’s strategic position and its location in a gold-rich region, making it ideal for supervising gold exploitation as we know it from the New Kingdom. Maybe the halting of trade with the Hyksos in the second part of the 15th Dynasty was one of the reasons why the character of Sai as a Kerman stronghold changed during Classic Kerma times (for this change see Gratien 2014; Manzo 2016). It remains to establish possible changes towards the end of the Classic Kerma period in marginal regions like Ginis – and cemetery GiE 003 with its use from Middle Kerma to Classic Kerma times and its close proximity to gold exploitation sites (as well as its connection to desert nomads presumably involved in the gold trade) has here lots of potential for future analysis.
References:
Ahrens, Kopetzky 2021 = A. Ahrens, K. Kopetzky, “Difficult times and drastic solutions: the diffusion of looted Middle Kingdom objects found in the northern Levant, Egypt and Nubia”, in M. Bietak, S. Prell (eds), The enigma of the Hyksos, volume IV: Changing clusters and migration in the Near Eastern Bronze Age. Collected papers of a workshop held in Vienna 4th-6th of December 2019, Wiesbaden 2021, 253-313.
Ben-Tor 2007 = D. Ben-Tor, Scarabs, Chronology, and Interconnections: Egypt and Palestine in the Second Intermediate Period, Fribourg, Göttingen 2007.
Budka 2022 = J. Budka, Investigating Nubian funerary practices of marginal communities: new evidence from a Kerma cemetery at Ginis, Egitto e Vicino Oriente 45, 2022, 37-62.
Edwards 2020 = D.N. Edwards (ed.), The archaeological survey of Sudanese Nubia, 1963-69: the pharaonic sites, Oxford 2020.
Gratien 2014 = B. Gratien, Saï I. La nécropole Kerma, Paris 1986.
Manzo 2016 = A. Manzo, “Weapons, ideology and identity at Kerma (Upper Nubia, 2500-1500 BC)”, Annali Sezione Orientale 76 (1-2) (2016), 3-29.
Tufnell 1984 = O. Tufnell, Scarab Seals and their Contribution to the History in the Early Second Millennium BC, Warminster 1984.
Ward 1984 = W.A. Ward, “Royal-name scarabs”, in O. Tufnell, Scarab Seals and their Contribution to the History in the Early Second Millennium BC, Warminster 1984, 151-192.
The aim of this paper was to present the preliminary excavation results of this large Kerma cemetery on the outskirts of Sai. Based on our excavation results from 2022, we know that it was continuously used from Middle Kerma to Classic Kerma times and has close parallels to cemeteries in Batn el-Haggar (especially at Ukma). Our excavations allow a better understanding of rural Kerman funerary practices and the types of imported objects that are present or missing within these communities (such as scarabs, pottery vessels), demonstrating local prosperity and the superregional interconnectedness of these groups.
The Kerma cemetery, which Vila documented as 2-T-39, was labelled GiE 003 by the MUAFS project. It comprises an estimated 150 tombs in an area of c. 200 x 100m. The actual extent of the cemetery requires further investigation; in the northern part, the site partially overlaps with the Medieval habitation 2-T-43.
Estimated outline of cemetery GiE 003 (Map: C. Geiger, courtesy of the DiverseNile project).
In March 2022, two trenches were opened in GiE 003 and are discussed in the EVO paper. Both trenches had eroded circular tumuli structures on their surfaces, which were covered with pottery sherds and human bones, clearly indicating ancient looting. Despite the age of the looting, some of the Kerma burials unearthed were well preserved and could be dated through the finds. The finds include fly pendants, a scarab with the name of a Hyksos king, a dagger, remains of funerary beds and plenty of beads as well as pottery.
A total of 27 pits were excavated in 2022. Through stratigraphic and pottery analysis it is also possible to make suggestions on the spatial and chronological development of the site. The EVO article is a preliminary assessment based on fieldwork results from 2022, including my detailed study of all the ceramics, but excluding bioarchaeological studies of human and animal bones, as well as the botanical remains.
The most important result of the 2022 excavation is the dating of the southern trench, Trench 2, to the Middle Kerma Period (c. 2000-1750 BCE) and of the northern trench, Trench 1, to the Classic Kerma Period (c. 1750-1500 BCE). This is especially significant, given that there were no notable differences in the surface structures.
In the EVO article, I proposed a possible relation of the Kerma community using GiE 003 to gold exploitation. First, in the MUAFS concession area, gold-rich quartz-veins have been found in Attab, Ginis, and Kosha, and some archaeological sites point to gold exploitation throughout the centuries, starting well before the Egyptian New Kingdom. Moreover, recent surveys in the Eastern Desert suggest that both control of gold mines and trade relationships with desert nomads played a major role in Kerman access to gold before Egyptian colonisation in the New Kingdom (see Cooper 2021). The affiliation of some of the pottery from GiE 003 with the Pan-Grave horizon seemed to illustrate in 2022 connections to nomadic people, possibly in relation to gold mining. This thesis could now be partly confirmed in 2023: in Trench 5 several Pan-Grave style burials were found (see my short summary of the 2023 season).
Here, I would like to follow Claudia Näser and her appeal for an “archaeology of interaction” (Näser 2012) – during the Kerma period, there were a number of Pan-Grave people present in the Nile Valley and for sure also in the Attab and Ginis area. They were community members (at least seasonally) interacting in various ways with other members – and our focus should be on understanding these interactions and reconstructing them as best we can. This is one of the core interests of the DiverseNile project and will keep us busy in the next years.
Our work in GiE 003 in the 2023 season resulted in many important new insights, supporting and strengthening ideas raised in the EVO article based on the 2022 season.
Coming back to cemetery GiE 003: one of the results of our excavation work is clearly that funerary practices reflecting social practices in the periphery of the Kerma kingdom must be considered in a more complex light than previously thought. Cultural diversity in the Middle Nile is well traceable during the Middle and Classic Kerma age in terms of architecture, location, burial types and grave goods. However, this requires further material assistance, with a focus on the social impact of cultural contact and the emerging patterns of globalisation during the Kerma kingdom’s heyday. The proximity of Kerma cemeteries (and thus also of possible settlements), especially also of dome grave assemblages well attested in the Attab to Ferka region, to potential gold working sites is clearly an interesting research question to be investigated in the future.
All in all, it seems likely that there was no single Kerman cultural input to interactions with the Hyksos, Egyptians and nomadic people like the Pan-Grave horizon. Rather, we must consider various hierarchical local responses determined by different communities’ ability to consume, shaping what can be called marginal communities in the Kerma state (see also Walsh 2022).
To concluse, the rich finds in GiE 003 enable us to compare this newly excavated Kerma cemetery to the well-known cemeteries of Ukma and Akasha further north. There are very close parallels, as well as notable differences and what appears to be local variations (for details see Budka 2022). This opens new avenues for future research on Kerma communities outside of the Third Cataract region, shifting the focus away from cultural and chronological classification and toward aspects of the social relationships among Middle Nile groups (and their neighbours).
References:
Budka 2022 = J. Budka, Investigating Nubian funerary practices of marginal communities: new evidence from a Kerma cemetery at Ginis, Egitto e Vicino Oriente 45, 2022, 37-62.
Cooper 2021 = J. Cooper, Between the Nile and the Red Sea: Medjay desert polities in the third to first millennium BCE. Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Eurasia 1 (1), 2021, 1-22.
Näser 2012 = C. Näser, Nomads at the Nile: towards an archaeology of interaction, in: H. Barnard and K. Duistermaat (eds), The history of the peoples of the Eastern Desert, Los Angeles: University of California 2012, 80-89.
Walsh 2022 = C. Walsh, Marginal Communities and Cooperative Strategies in the Kerma Pastoral State. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, 9/2, 2022, 195-220.
It’s almost June and the next DiverseNile Seminar Series is approaching. We are delighted that the next lecture will be given by Carl Walsh on June 6. The very promising title is: “Monsters in the Bed: Hybrid Furniture and Composite Creatures in Kerman Cross-Cultural Interactions”.
Carl is an archaeologists who has received his PhD in 2016 from the University College London. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Barnes Foundation, USA. He is an expert on the Kerma culture and has successfully placed Kerma and Nubia in his publications within wider theoretical and archaeological discussions of the eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze and Iron Ages.Carl kindly provided us with an abstract of his talk – this nicely illustrates why you really should not miss it!
The Kerma state in Upper Nubia (modern Sudan) was a major cultural, political, and economic power in northeast Africa, especially in its later phase during the Classic Kerma period (1700-1550 BCE). While originally viewed as an isolated periphery of Egypt, this kingdom is now understood as heavily interconnected with other Nile Valley and desert groups in northeast Africa—and perhaps even further afield in the Mediterranean and western Asia. This paper builds on recent approaches on Kerman cross cultural interactions through examining the evidence for Egyptian influences in furniture forms and styles during the Classic Kerma period. The distribution and forms of furniture—bedframes, beds, and stools—are examined across Kerma sites and periods and are argued to be indigenous Kerman status objects. At the start of the Classic Kerma period, however, new hybrid furniture types incorporated Egyptian furniture designs alongside fantastical imagery of composite creatures and fauna. The incorporation of these foreign styles and development of composite creatures is argued to be part of a concerted effort by the Kerman court to construct inter-regional identities through shared “international” visual vocabularies and courtly habitus. Diplomacy provided a social and embodied framework for these engagements, which connected different court and elite groups in a wider diplomatic system within northeastern Africa, the Mediterranean, and western Asia during the later second millennium BCE (Abstract by Carl Walsh).
Summer term has started at LMU today and we are happy to announce the start of the online DiverseNile Seminar Series 2023, organised by Chloe Ward. The theme of this year’s DiverseNile Seminar Series will focus on interdisciplinary approaches to archaeological research in the Nile Valley. A detailed programme will follow soon.
Our very own Kate Rose (PostDoc of the DiverseNile project) will give the first talk on Tuesday 25th of April (13-14 CET) with the title “Inscribing the Landscape: Continuity and Change in Napatan Royal Cemeteries”.
A must for anyone interested in landscape archaeology! See you next week!
P.S.: I would like to stress that also here in quiet Germany, nothing has been routine since Saturday and the outbreak of fighting in Sudan. My thoughts are with all friends, colleagues and the civilian population at large who are once again paying such a heavy price, suffering in this political fight for power. In the hope that peace will soon return to our beloved Sudan.
