Archiv des Autors: Julia Budka

Week 3 – much progress on the West bank, start of work on the East bank

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Our week 3 of the 2023 season was dominated by another drop in temperatures and very windy weather – there were only three days when we could work all day, on the other days too much sand in the air forced us to stop work early and continue with documentation and processing in the digging house.

Most importantly, our totalstation was fixed and is back to its normal daily routine. The wind prevented Kate to do much drone aerial photography, but thanks to the new Trimble Catalyst Antenna she was very busy documenting the landscape and many dry-stone walls in the area of Attab West and Ginis West.

While we were waiting for our totalstation, Chloe, Jose and I continued at the intriguing site 2-S-54, the 18th Dynasty building made of mud bricks and stones located on a steep slope of a rocky outcrop within the district of Foshu. A stunning view to work!

Chloe working at site 2-S-54.
Photographing the dense mud brick collapse in the northern part of the structure. We also took 3D models of all surfaces exposed so far.

We exposed more of the surface around the structure and worked on the dense mud brick debris on its interior – more early 18th Dynasty ceramics, including Nubian style pots and also one hybrid cooking pot were unearthed – extremely exciting! A good number of large fragments of sandstone grindstones came to light and these were already documented by Sofia. This could already be a small hint that also this site is associated with goldmining. Modern gold working is carried out in large scale just next to us – in general a nice continuation illustrating the long-lasting impact of the natural resources for this part of the Middle Nile. However, since some of these modern pits and diggings also threaten the archaeological sites, I am rather concerned about this new development at Attab West.

Much progress was made exposing the 18th Dynasty structure at site 2-S-54.

Work at 2-S-54 will continue in week 4, since we moved back to the domestic site AtW 001 with our gang of local workmen during week 3. Here, the dense mud brick debris revealed further complete pottery vessels as well as a very well preserved animal skull, most probably of a donkey.

Well-preserved animal skull in the mud brick debris layer at AtW 001. It was found at the bottom of a slight slope, sourrounded by brick debris and pottery fragments.

There are plenty of other animal jaws and bones in the collapse and it really seems as if most of this debris is partly rubbish. In addition, we have exposed more circular pits, presumably fire pits or storage structures.

More complete pottery vessels were found in week 3 at ATW 001. Especially exciting is the complete zir in the pit on the right of the picture.

Since we have reached a level where the contexts are now quite delicate and also space for work is limited, we moved our team of local workmen to the East bank (this is the “better” bank regarding wind and was thus received with much enthusiasm by the workmen). Jose and Huda started yesterday at the Kerma cemetery GiE 003 with two new trenches, aiming for a better understanding of the distribution patterns of burials at the site. Chloe and Sofia were busy setting up the new fix points and conducting measurements with the totalstation. The first burial pits are already visible in the new Trench 3 and I am sure I will be able to report interesting finds on the next update coming Friday.

Much progress despite of external challenges – week 2 of the 2023 season

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Our week 2 of the 2023 season has just ended – having been an intense week with several challenges. First, our totalstation suddenly did not work like it should and we needed to send it to Khartoum – it will be fixed, but of course this meant a stop for excavations at AtW 001. On the positive side, two of our DiverseNile team members joined us this week – Jose and Kate have arrived and are now supporting us in multiple ways. Kate had to fix technical issues with our drone and the new Trimble Catalyst Antenna, but is now all set and started her work focusing on documenting the landscape.

Before we stopped at AtW 001, the results were really impressive. We found several circular or oval-shaped fire pits and excavated more of the mud brick debris on top of the mound in Trench 2. More animal bones and complete vessels showed up. One particularly nice context was an area adjacent to the solid mud brick debris, where one deep bowl, one beer jar, one small pot stand and a lower part of the beer jar were found smashed below mud bricks (Fig. 1). Interestingly, the mud brick debris comprised both red bricks and ordinary mud bricks. The current hypothesis is that the red bricks are simply burnt from a use close to a fire place or possibly kiln.

Fig. 1: Deposit of early 18th Dynasty smashed pottery vessels at AtW 001.

The stop of fieldwork had the advantage that I could invest much needed time for the pottery processing – we have not only large amounts of sherds, but especially a considerable number of complete or almost complete vessels. These all need to be first washed and then reconstructed. Jose kindly helps with the task of reconstruction (Fig. 2) and he also started drawing the first pieces from the uppermost layers.

Fig. 2: Jose doing a great job reconstructing pottery vessels from AtW 001.

Apart from pottery, we mostly have stone tools and re-used sherds and clay weights (including net weights) among the finds. Sofia is updating our find list and also describing the stone tools in our Filemaker database.

Until our totalstation is back from Khartoum, we will focus both on find processing and on drone aerial photography as well as taking measurements with the new Trimble Catalyst Antenna. In order to combine the latter also with some surface cleaning of Bronze Age structures, I chose an area in the district of Attab West in Foshu – this is a densely used area during Kerma times adjacent to the major paleochannel.

While Kate is taking drone photos, Chloe, Jose and I were cleaning the intriguing site 2-S-54, described by Vila as a New Kingdom house with mud bricks supported by schist stones, from wind blown sand (Fig. 3). This building, measuring 6.5 x 3.5m, is located on the south side of a rocky outcrop within the paleochannel on a quite steep slope.

Fig. 3: Much windblown sand covered the structure at 2-S-54.

The task of removing 80cm of windblown sand was extremely rewarding – we revealed in the interior of the building a dense mud brick debris layer as well as occupation deposits and several internal mud brick walls. We documented everything in 3D using photogrammetry (Fig. 4) and will continue excavating this domestic structure. The pottery found so far associates the use of this site with the early 18th Dynasty.

Fig. 4: 3D documentation of cleaned structure at 2-S-54 (photo: JMA Gomez).

Thus, despite of all the technical challenges and modified working plans, we managed to get much work done in week 2. Hoping we will soon return to site AtW 001 with our workmen (and the totalstation), I am for now very much looking forward to investigating 2-S-54 in more detail.

Bones, pots and mud bricks – preliminary results from AtW 001

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Our first week with workmen excavating at Attab West in site AtW 001 was very productive, despite of some windy days when we had to stop early.

Fig. 1: Work in progress earlier this week.

The mound of AtW 001 which was covered by schist stones and pottery sherds on the surface yielded substantial mud brick debris layers. These layers contained much pottery – a total of more than 6300 sherds was processed already – including many complete vessels. The most common shapes are Egyptian-style zir vessels, bowls and dishes, beer jars and Nubian-style cooking pots with basketry impressions. One almost complete Nubian cooking pot was still found in place, partly below a very large mud brick.

Fig. 2: Large fragment of Nubian cooking pot in its finding place.

A large Nile clay bowl was found in a sandy filling south of the mound with mud bricks (Fig. 3). All in all, the pottery corpus very closely resembles the ceramics from the New Kingdom town of Sai Island, especially of the Levels 4 and 3 in SAV1 North, suggesting a date from the early 18th Dynasty to the mid-18th Dynasty. Interestingly, some of the vessels seems to belong to the Second Intermediate Period tradition – whether these are old pieces or imply a use of AtW 001 already during Classic Kerma times needs to be checked.

Fig. 3: Vessels like this Egyptian-style bowl illustrate the splendid state of preservation of ceramics at our site.

Similar to our findings from last year, we had plenty of charcoal, ashy spots and some burnt doum nuts as well as date seeds. Doubtlessly, people were eating and cooking here during the 18th Dynasty. This is further supported by many animal bones – seemingly mostly cattle but also some caprids. The details remain to be checked by our zooarchaeologist.

Fig. 4: Overview of some of the deposits of animal bones.

Finally, there is much evidence for quartz working at the site and many stone tools (especially pounders, whetstones, grindstones, and hand mills) – Sofia is documenting these and we will double-check if my previous interpretation of the site as being connected to gold working can be supported (or modified) by our new findings.

All in all, I am very happy with both the progress of work in week 1 and the great team of this season – together with our wonderful local workmen, Huda, Chloe, Matei, Sofia and I will continue on Saturday and an update will follow shortly.

All set for the official start of the excavation season 2023

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It has been a busy week – arriving in Khartoum, finishing the paperwork, travelling to the north, arriving in Ginis, settling in our digging house, sorting the material and equipment and organizing the gang of workmen for our excavations as well as the boat transport to the west bank. All went very smoothly thanks to great support from our Sudanese friends and colleagues, especially the help of our inspector Huda, our friends Waleed in Khartoum and Magzoub here in Abri as well as our driver Imad and cook Ali.

Just great to be back in oir digging house in Ginis!

We will start with extended excavation in the small settlement AtW 001 – in 2022, a first test trench provided interesting results, suggesting that there was a use at the site from Classic Kerma times through the Thutmoside period (for details see Budka 2022).

We managed to prepare everything for our first day of excavation tomorrow: Chloe and Sofia set up the new grid and took all necessary measurements, I was busy with taking micromorphological soil samples from the section of our 2022 trench – Huda was a great help here, not only in taking working pictures.

Taking our first micromorphological samples at AtW 001.

It was the first time I took these samples using plaster of paris, quick-setting gypsum plaster – and although the sediment is partly very soft and challenging to sample, it worked really well. We hope that the analysis of these samples will allow us a more detailed understanding whether our excavated area was an open space or a roofed space, what kind of activities apart from the visible fire places and the dumping of food waste are traceable and much more! Very exciting, especially since we did not yet find standing architecture although loose mud bricks are present at the site.

Today is our day off and tomorrow we will start week 1 of excavations at AtW 001 with our local workmen – stay tuned, this site is really full of potential!

Reference

Budka 2022 = J. Budka, Early New Kingdom settlement activities in the periphery of Sai Island: towards a contextualisation of fresh evidence from Attab West, MittSAG – Der Antike Sudan 33, 2022, 45‒61.

Arrival in Sudan: getting the 2023 field season prepared

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While winter is back in Munich, Chloe, Sofia and I have safely arrived in Khartoum this night. It’s wonderful to be back in Sudan and we cannot wait to be heading to the north on Monday insha’allah. Paperwork and shopping still need to be done, but then all is set.

In the field in the Attab to Ferka region we will be busy with several tasks:

  • Excavations at Ginish East and Attab West, especially the continuation of work at the Kerma cemetery GiE 003 and at the intriguing settlement site AtW 001
  • Survey in various areas, especially on the west bank and into the desert
  • Drone Aerial Photography in all of the concession area, but especially on the west bank.

Furthermore, we plan some ethnoarchaeological research about pottery making and goldworking/goldsmithing and metal working.

The 2023 team comprises all our ERC DiverseNile staff – Chloe, José, Kate, Giulia and Sofia. I am delighted that our team will be strengthened by two students of Al-Neelain University (Tasabeh Obaid Hassan and Mohamed Abdeldaim Khairi Ibrahim) and one PhD Candidate from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles (Matei Tichindelean). Our NCAM inspector will be our old friend and colleague Huda Magzoub who has been supporting us in the last years.

We have a very promising 2-month season ahead of us and we will keep you updated (if the connection in the north allows it ;-)).

DiverseNile Seminar Series 2023

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It’s been a busy start to the year here in Munich with our upcoming field season in Sudan. However, the organisation for this year’s DiverseNile Seminar Series by Chloe Ward is well under way and we hope to have a full programme for you soon. For now, we are delighted to announce that the first talk will be given by our very own Kate Rose (PostDoc of the DiverseNile project) on Tuesday 25th of April (13-14 CET).

The theme of this year’s DiverseNile Seminar Series will focus on interdisciplinary approaches to archaeological research in the Nile Valley. This ties in well with the aims of the DiverseNile project and will allow us to reflect on the wide range of methods and theories that can be used in archaeological research. Other speakers for the series will include Fatma Keshk (IFAO/PCMA), Carl Walsh (Barnes Foundation), and Frederik Rademakers (British Museum).

We are very much looking forward to see you all at these online seminars – stay tuned for the detailed programme!

New year, new team member: a warm welcome to José

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Last year I spent the turn of the year in Sudan. This year our field work is a little later, but there are other very happy events on the occasion of the new year. It is my great pleasure to welcome our new PostDoc of the DiverseNile project in Munich today.

Jose arrived on January 1, 2023 in Munich and started his employment at LMU today.

Jose Manuel Alba Gomez is an archaeologists and Egyptologists with a wide range of interests and much fieldwork expterise in funerary archaeology. From 2009 onwards, he was a team member of the Proyecto Qubbet el-Hawa of the University of Jaén, Spain; for several years he acted as the co-director of this important archaeological mission in Aswan, Egypt.

Jose shares my interest in pottery and I am delighted that he is now strengthening our DiverseNile team. His prime focus will be Work Package 2, the variability of funerary monuments in the Attab to Ferka region.

Our objective to illustrate on the level of funerary practices the cultural diversity in the MUAFS concession in northern Sudan by disentangling burial grounds from previous cultural categorisations, will be addressed later in January with new excavations at Ginis. The Kerma cemetery GiE 003 (Vila’s site 2-T-39) comprises approximately 150 tombs – our excavations in 2022 yielded already 28 burial pits, but more data from this key site in our concession are needed. GiE 003 clearly promises an exciting start for Jose – welcome again to Munich and to our team!

Rock art from the MUAFS concession – preliminary thoughts on cattle depictions

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Rock art in Sudan has become one of my favourite topics ever since I worked in the Fourth Cataract region in the 2000s. Within the MUAFS concession between Attab and Ferka, there are not many sites with rock drawings. Unsurprisingly, rock art is restricted to certain areas with fitting geology and large boulders – in our concession these are the districts of Ferka, Mograkka and Kosha (Fig. 1). Close to Mograkka, one particularly handsome engraving was chosen as the basis for the MUAFS logo.

Fig. 1: Map with rock art sites located in the MUAFS concession (status 2020).

Some of these sites are located in close proximity to Kerma funerary sites. This holds especially true for 3-P-14 (Kosha West), 3-G-18 (Ferka East) and 3-P-5 (Kosha East).

3-G-18 is located on rocky outcrops within the large plain of Ferka and directly adjacent to the Kerma cemetery 3-G-16 (Fig. 2). Kerma cemetery 3-G-19 is also not far away. These sites are of particular interest because they are the northernmost Kerma sites in our concession.

Fig. 2: Map showing the close relations between Kerma cemetery 3-G-16 and rock art site 3-G-18.

The largest rock art site is located at the border between Mograkka and Kosha East, site 3-P-5, with more than 400 individual rock art pictures (Vila 1976, 79‒87). The motifs comprise mostly cattle, antelopes, some human depictions, birds, dogs and other animals (Figs. 3-4).

Fig. 3: Example of rock engravings in 3-P-5. Cattle is the most frequent motif.
Fig. 4: Example of rock engravings in 3-P-5. This boulder shows cattle, but also birds, humans and possibly a dog.

While Vila left the dating as unclear, most of the rock art pictures at 3-P-5 seem to belong to the Kerma period (Budka 2020). Similar to 3-G-18 in Ferka, there are Kerma sites in the close proximity to 3-P-5 which support this dating.

In all phases of the Kerma culture, the dominant motif of rock art is cattle. Of course this reflects the importance of cattle herding to Kerma people – some aspects of which were recently addressed by Jérôme Dubosson at one of our DiverseNile Seminar Series 2022. In the words by Louis Chaix: “Cattle are a key constituent element of the civilization of Kerma. They played a major role in the diet of the population and as a source of secondary products such as milk, hides, and raw materials for making tools. They also contributed to agriculture as traction animals.” (Chaix 2017). Within the DiverseNile project, we aim to address the local role of cattle for the Kerma people by means of a multidisciplinary approach, combining landscape archaeology with bioarchaeology and of course analysing all kinds of archaeological findings like animal bones, animal figurines and engraved figures of cattle in rock art.

Coming back to the question of rock art, the spatial proximity of rock art panels depicting cattle and Kerma funerary sites was already noted by Cornelia Kleinitz in the Fourth Cataract region (Kleinitz 2007). As tempting as it is to link these rock drawings with Kerma funerary cult, at the Fourth Cataract and also in the MUAFS concession, a precise dating of cattle depictions in rock art often remains impossible.

Nevertheless, we will soon be back in the field in Sudan – one of the goals for the 2023 season is to expand the documentation of rock art in our concession, with a special focus on possible Kerma sites. Contextualising rock art sites clearly has much potential for a closer understanding of their date and function.

References

Budka, Julia 2020. Kerma presence at Ginis East: the 2020 season of the Munich University Attab to Ferka survey project. Sudan & Nubia 24, 57-71.

Chaix, Louis 2017. Cattle: a major component of the Kerma culture (Sudan). Edited by Umberto Albarella, Mauro Rizzetto, Hannah Russ, Kim Vickers, and Sarah Viner-Daniels. Oxford Handbooks Online 2017 (April), 15 p.; 4 figs. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199686476.013.2

Kleinitz, Cornelia 2007. Rock art and archaeology: the Hadiab survey. Sudan & Nubia 11, 34-42

Vila, André 1976. La prospection archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise). Fascicule 4: District de Mograkka (Est et Ouest), District de Kosha (Est et Ouest). Paris.

Conference hopping from Germany to Egypt

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November is usually one of the busiest months of the year. This holds especially true when one has just returned from fieldwork in Egypt and even more since some conferences are now organised as hybrid events, allowing in person attendance.

Though it will be quite a challenge, I am extremy grateful to have been invited to two events in the next days of which the topics are very close to my special fields and also to WP 3 Material culture of the DiverseNile project.

Today, I will be heading towards Mainz in Germany. Tomorrow and on Saturday the international workshop „Excavating the extra-ordinary 2. Challenges & merits of working with small finds“ will take place.

My own presentation on Saturday has the title: „What makes a pottery sherd a small find? Processing re-used pottery from settlement contexts“.

Re-cut pot sherds are among my favourite small finds and they occur in great numbers at domestic sites in both Egypt and Sudan (e.g. Qantir, Elephantine, Amarna and Sai Island). As multi-functional tools they attest to material-saving recycling processes.

Re-used pottery sherds offer many intriguing lines of research, first because of the recycling process and questions related to objects biographies. Second, the multiple function of tools created from re-cut sherds allows to investigate diverse sets of tasks and practises in settlement contexts. Third, lids and covers created from pottery sherds illustrate the blurred boundaries between categories of finds in the archaeological documentation, especially between ceramic small finds and pottery. Lids are also commonly part of ceramic typologies when produced as individual vessels. Can we determine if it made a difference to the ancient users whether a lid was made from a re-used sherd or as a new vessel? I will use the nice example of a complete Kerma vessel found with a stone lid in situ in one of our tombs in cemetery GiE 003 as case study to discuss these points.

My lecture in Mainz mainly aims to address some terminological and methodological issues arising from processing re-used pottery sherds as small finds as well as dating problems. I will outline the recording procedure established in the framework of the ERC AcrossBorders project for New Kingdom Sai and how we have adapted this workflow for the ERC DiverseNile project.

On Sunday, I will be heading to Cairo for the next event, the conference “Living in the house: researching the domestic life in ancient Egypt and Sudan”. The conference is organized by Dr. Fatma Keshk on behalf of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale and the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Research Center in Cairo. The main focus of this event is settlement archaeology in its multi- and interdisciplinary aspects in ancient Egypt and Sudan. Chloe will also join the conference and we are expecting much input for the DiverseNile project, especially WP 1, settlements.

At the “Living in the house” conference, my lecture on Monday will again focus on ceramics, but this time on cooking ware.

I will present some results from the ERC Project AcrossBorders comparing cooking practices in two contemporaneous sites of the New Kingdom, Elephantine in Egypt and Sai Island in Nubia. I will also show a few examples from the MUAFS concession and how they fit to the other evidence. Preliminary results from organic residue analysis from Egyptian-style and Nubian-style cooking pots allow us to ask questions about diet and culinary traditions. My aim is to illustrate that dynamic and diverse choices within the New Kingdom reflect a high degree of cultural entanglement and challenge previous assumptions, for example of the role of Nubian cooking pots as cultural markers.

I am very much looking forward to these two workshops and especially the exchange and discussion with many colleagues.

Lived experiences at Es-Selim R4 – upcoming DiverseNile Seminar by Elizabeth Minor

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It’s hard to believe – but tomorrow the last DiverseNile seminar of this year will take place. Chloë works already on the programme for next year, so we will continue with this successful online format discussing important aspects of the archaeology of the Middle Nile.

Tomorrow, Elizabeth Minor (Wellesley College), will be speaking about „Social Complexity and Community Resilience Strategies under a Changing Climate on the Middle Nile: Life at Es-Selim R4“.

The site of Es-Selim R4 (Minor et al. 2020) is an intriguing Kerma Period settlement located in the Northern Dongola Reach. Preliminary results suggest that Es-Selim R4 represents an opportunity to determine a cultural sequence for rural Kerma settlement sites, being inhabited from at least the Kerma Ancien period through to the Kerma Moyen period. Most interestingly, the site also allows to shift perspectives and to investigate the nature of socio-economic interactions between Kermans and Egyptians on a regional level.

Elizabeth is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Wellesley College. She received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from UC Berkeley, and her research focuses on the Kingdom of Kerma and cultural connections between ancient Egypt and Sudan. She has a special interest in understanding interregional and local social relationships – and we will hear more about this in her lecture.

For those interested in Kerma art, I highly recommend Elizabeth’s most recent article on key elements of Classic Kerma religious imagery (Minor 2022). In this though-provoking analysis she traces possible echoes of Kerman animal representations in later Kushite religion.

I am delighted that Elizabeth is joining us tomorrow! In case you cannot attend, be sure to check out the recording of her lecture – it will be available soon on LMU Cast.

References

Minor 2022 = Minor, Elizabeth 2022. Afterlives of Kerma religion: rams, lions, and fantastical winged animals (hippopotami and giraffes) in Classic Kerma and later Kush contexts. Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 35, 141-154.

Minor et al. 2020 = Minor, Elizabeth, Sarah M. Schellinger, Christopher Severa, Ahmed el-Ameen Ahmed el-Hassan, and Sajda Adam Omer Ahmed 2020. Laying the groundwork: the 2020 survey season and community outreach programme at the Kerma Period settlement site es-Selim R4 in the Northern Dongola Reach. Sudan & Nubia 24, 100-111.