Archiv des Autors: Julia Budka

First impressions from GiE 001, 2022 fieldwork season

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Time flies by, especially in the field. We have been really busy since our arrival at Ginis on Thursday. Apart from logistics and last constructions in the new digging house, we prepared the start of fieldwork at the New Kingdom site of GiE 001. I am delighted that new team members have arrived at Ginis: This season, the LMU DiverseNile team is strengthened by two employees of Novetus (Vienna). Maximilian Bergner and Fabian Spitaler are both experienced field archaeologists and responsible for the excavation work and field documentation in this 2022 season.

On Saturday, we opened a large new trench and started excavations with a team of local workmen. We placed the trench based on the results from the magnetometer survey in 2018/2019 and of course the local topography.

Start of work at Trench 3 on Saturday.

On our second day, we are currently still removing surface layers of sand and soft mud levels – the area used to be a favourite resting place for one of the sheep herds of Ginis (and the animals still have plenty opportunities just a bit further to the east and fortunately quickly adapted to this change in their daily routine). This is evident by many droppings and darkened spots on the surface.

Most of the trench is covered by loose sand below the uppermost surface (photo: I. Comsa).
Imaged based documentation of the individual stratigraphical units in the new trench.

Nevertheless, already in the uppermost layers we are finding plenty of New Kingdom pottery. I processed the first baskets from these layers this afternoon. Interestingly, some contexts produced more Nubian style pottery than Egyptian style pottery – maybe this is just accidental, but the occurrence of Black-Topped Kerma style wares as well as impressed and incised decorated Nubian wares and basketry impressed cooking pots are intriguing. As documented earlier, I am also stunned by the fact that both 18th Dynasty and Ramesside pottery is present, suggesting a long period of use of this settlement.

Work will continue tomorrow and we will try to keep you posted – internet connection is very unstable at our digging house in Ginis, but the connection in the town of Abri allows me to upload small data like this blog post.

Back in Sudan, ready to start fieldwork in Ginis

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After some really busy and intense weeks, I finally made it back to Sudan. Iulia and I arrived yesterday night. Everything is sorted and we are ready to leave Khartoum to the north tomorrow morning with our friend and colleague Huda as our NCAM inspector – to start our first proper excavation season for the ERC DiverseNile project.

This spring season is super exciting: we will excavate several New Kingdom sites at Ginis East, hopefully also on the West bank. Other than in our test excavations in 2020, we will open large areas and conduct our excavation work with the help of local workmen. Starting on Saturday with site GiE 001, we will test once more the results of the magnetometry from 2018/2019.

Fig. 1: results of magnetometry of GiE 001 2018/2019 and its sourroundings (M. Scheiblecker).

This season is also exciting because we will live for the first time in the new digging house in Ginis East. Construction work started in January and has been finished just in time, allowing us to settle down in our new home away from home during these weeks in northern Sudan. I am very much looking forward to this!

Excavations are scheduled for 4 weeks, with an extra week for processing and/or survey, depending on our results. Of course I will keep you updated – hoping that internet connection will allow to do so.

Upcoming DiverseNile Seminar: The significance of black ritual liquids

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I am excited to announce the next DiverseNile Seminar which will take place tomorrow. Kate Fulcher is going to speak about the mysterious ‘black goo’ – black ritual liquids applied to coffins and cartonnage.

This topic is extremely exciting and in recent years, the use of bitumen in funerary contexts in the Middle Nile has received some new attention. For example, one of the contents from a vessel found in Tomb 26 was analysed by Kate using a GC-MS method and was shown to be bitumen. Where are the local sources for bitumen in ancient Sudan? Or was it imported? And more importantly, how was bitumen and other black substances used in rituals with coffins and cartonnage?

Be sure to join us tomorrow as Kate will address these important questions – as usual, last-minute registration via email is still possible.

Survey results 2021/2022 at Ginis East: an important Abkan site

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During our short season in December 2021/January 2022, we were able to record 14 sites on the East bank of the district of Ginis. These are 12 sites previously recorded by Vila as well as two new MUAFS sites (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Recorded sites in Ginis East, Dec. 2021/Jan. 2022. Map: C. Geiger.

One particularly noteworthy site is the Abkan occupation site 2-T-21 at Ginis East, on a hill above the modern asphalt road (Fig. 2). According to the current chronologies, the Abkan period is dated to between c. 5500 and 3700 cal BCE (see D’Ercole 2021 with discussion and references).

Fig. 2: Overview of site 2-T-21. Photo: J. Budka.

We could note that the meticulous documentation by Vila (1977) for 2-T-21 was correct (Fig. 3). Many diagnostic pottery sherds are still scattered on the surface. This site is clearly worth a more detailed investigation, although it has recently suffered from modern destruction like car tracks running through the site.

Vila’s sketch map of site 2-T-21 (Vila 1977, 60, Fig. 23).

Significant traces of Abkan occupation were recently documented by Elena Garcea on the island of Sai (Garcea 2020, 50 and 94 with references). The contemporaneous sites in our concession, of which several were documented on both riverbanks in Attab and Ginis, hold much potential and have received until now only little attention. Especially the relations of the Neolithic Abkan sites to Khartoum Variant sites in the region between the Dal Cataract and Sai Island needs to be explored in detail, not only regarding the chronology and possible overlaps but also in terms of subsistence strategies of these prehistoric communities as semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers and/or herding groups. This ties in with general questions about changes in the settlement strategies by Mesolithic groups compared to Neolithic communities (see D’Ercole 2021). Furthermore, until today, no cemeteries of the Abkan cultural complex have been identified – a highly unusual feature for a Neolithic culture in Sudan and something worth investigating in the future. Maybe the region between Attab and Ferka will provide some answers in this respect.

References

D’Ercole, G. 2021. Seventy Years of Pottery Studies in the Archaeology of Mesolithic and Neolithic Sudan. Afr Archaeol Rev 38, 345–372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-021-09432-y

Garcea, E. 2020. The Prehistory of the Sudan. Springers Briefs in Archaeology. Cham.

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.

The Church of Mograkka East

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Fig. 1: Location of the Church of Mograkka East (map: C. Geiger).

The well-preserved church of Mograkka East (3-L-2, Fig. 1) is one of the most remarkable monuments datable to Medieval times in the MUAFS concession. This mudbrick church is also an exemplary case to study church architecture south of the Dal cataract. I am delighted that a new study on this important monument has just been published (Budka, Distefano & Geiger 2021), the result of our 2020 field season.

Based on a revised assessment of the ground plan (Fig. 2), the installations and the remaining traces of wall paintings, the church 3-L-2 can be dated to the 10th century CE. The church of Mograkka can be described as Type 3b according to William Adams (2009) due to the lack of a tribune within the apse. Regarding the ground plan, some small details as well as the dimensions and proportions can be specified compared to the preliminary version published by Vila (1976).

Fig. 2: New ground plan of the Church of Mograkka East, based on the orthophoto & digital elevation model (illustration: C. Geiger).

Besides this improved dating, our article presents the current state of preservation and new architectural observations based on a photogrammetric documentation of the church and the created 3D model (Fig. 3). One exciting new feature, not noted by any other scholars before, is the possible existence of intramural graves at 3-L-2. However, this would need to be confirmed by means of excavations.

Fig. 3: View of the Church of Mograkka East (3D model), from southsoutwest (illustration: C. Geiger).

All in all, the well-preserved mudbrick church of Mograkka provides important evidence of local variants of ​​Nubian church building in Nobadia, parallels for which can be found south of the Second Cataract from the 9th century CE onwards. A future task will be to analyse these local forms in more detail and to embed these variants in a larger historical, cultural, social, and religious context.

References

Adams, W. Y. The churches of Nobadia. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2009.

Budka, J., Distefano, J. & Geiger, C. 2021. Kirchenarchitektur südlich des Dal-Kataraktes: Das Fallbeispiel der Kirche 3-L-2 in Mograkka Ost. MittSAG – Der Antike Sudan 32, 109‒121.

Vila, A. La prospection archéologique de la vallée du Nil, au sud de la cataracte de Dal (Nubie soudanaise). 4. District de Mograkka (est et ouest). District de Kosha (est et ouest). Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1976.

DiverseNile Seminar Series 2022: Full programme now available

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As anounced earlier, our DiverseNile Seminar Series 2022 will focus on material culture and society in Bronze Age Nubia and respective perspectives from landscape and resource management. I am delighted that the final programme is now available and includes a great line-up of international speakers:

I am very grateful to all speakers and especially to Rennan Lemos for organising this exciting online seminar. Registration is open and possible via email. If you registered already last year, we will just send you the 2022 Zoom link hoping that you will join us again! See you at our kick-off on January 25!

Surveying between Attab and Ferka: the 2021/2022 season

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We have returned safely from Sudan and our short preparation season of the Munich University Attab to Ferka Survey Project (MUAFS) in its research concession between Attab and Ferka from Dec. 29 to January 9 was very successful.

Huda, our driver Saif and I getting ready to leave for another day of surveying the area (photo: C. Geiger).

Huda and I conducted a foot survey in areas of Attab East, Attab West, Ginis East, Ginis West and Ferka West. The focus was on the identification of sites already recorded by Vila. We were able to document a total of 79 sites, comprising 21 new MUAFS sites. The sites range in date from Palaeolithic times to the Medieval and Ottoman eras. The types of sites are mostly camp sites, habitations, and tombs/cemeteries, but also include rock art and stone wadi walls.

Surveyed area of the 2021/2022 season (map: C. Geiger).

Whenever possible, we collected diagnostic pottery and lithics from the sites for dating purposes. I was able to document most of them by photography and also managed to draw 35 Kerma and New Kingdom sherds. Most interesting are some newly documented New Kingdom sites, attesting to both a use in the 18th Dynasty and a Ramesside presence in the periphery of Amara West.

One example of a newly documented site, unfortunatly recently plundered (photo: J. Budka).

One particularly striking site, a cluster of cleft tombs at Ginis East, has never been documented before but was unfortunately lately plundered. And this is not an isolated example! Recent plundering, modern gold working, new electricity lines and damaged caused by car tracks, roads and new buildings are unfortunately very frequent, have increased since 2020 and stress how urgently we need to document this rich area in the Middle Nile.

The surveying campaign carried out by Cajetan resulted in the setup of new benchmarks using a GPS Antenna and a totalstation in Attab East, Ginis East and Ginis West. We will use these benchmarks as basis for future measurements during our planned excavations. Drone aerial photography was successfully conducted in Ginis East, Ginis West and Ferka West.

All in all, I am very grateful to the support of our Sudanese friends and colleagues – without them our work at site would not have been possible in these very difficult times of political changes. We collected a large amount of new data and will now be very busy processing these here in Munich – and of course we will keep you updated.

A short update from the field in Ginis

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We have safely arrived at Ginis last Wednesday and it is time for a short update – because of an extremely slow connection here in the north, Rennan is kindly posting this from Khartoum where he is busy with our work in the museum. “We” is a very small team this season – due to the covid-19 pandemic and because it is a very short preparation season for our planned 2022 spring campaign. Our team comprises our inspector Huda Magzoub, our driver Saif and myself. Cajetan will join us in the next days.

I am mostly occupied with logistics at the site, getting much support by our friend Magzoub from Abri. On Sunday, construction work for our new excavation house in Ginis will start. This is all very exciting and will be a great achievement for the mission – can’t wait to see the final result of our new home.

Cajetan will conduct necessary measurements in preparation for the excavation work and drone arial photography. An update about these crucial working tasks will follow as soon as he joins us!

Besides the preparation work, Huda and I are conducting a foot survey at selected parts of my concession. In some cases, it remained unclear in our last seasons whether documented sites really represent ones previously documented by Andre Vila, or rather new sites. We carefully revisit these sites and could already solve the question in several cases. For now, we work in the area of Ginis on the east bank, but in the next days we will shift our focus to the west bank.

Furthermore, I spend the afternoons documenting finds from our previous season – there is plenty of pottery from our Kerma and New Kingdom sites in Ginis that keeps me busy. Such a joy, working again with objects!

Although this is just such a short season, I am very grateful that we made it – it has been already much too long and it is such a joy to see all of our Sudanese friends and colleagues again. However, our season is much more than just trying to continue with our work despite of the corona pandemic. In these difficult times in Sudan, I believe it is also a promising sign of a hopefully prosperous future.

Getting ready to fly to Sudan

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The Christmas weekend is just about to end, and I am currently packing my last suitcase – despite of omicron & the pandemic, but of course with much caution and aware of the most recent political developments in Sudan, we are getting ready to fly to Khartoum tomorrow.

It will be a very brief season with a tiny team – just Rennan, Cajetan and I will travel. One focus of our planned work is on the study & documentation of object’s stored in the Sudan National Museum, coming from Vila’s survey in the 1970s in the present MUAFS concession. Rennan will focus in particular on ceramics and small finds from some of the New Kingdom tombs. Especially Ramesside material is highly interesting and raises many questions concerning the continuity of sites in the pre-Napatan era.

Up in the north, at our excavation house in Ginis East, I will focus on some logistics, preparing the upcoming excavation season planned for spring 2022. I also plan some survey work with our inspector and Cajetan will concentrate on setting survey points and taking measurements.

Of course, we will keep you updated – maybe not during the season, depending on the quality of the internet and connection.

Hoping that most of our plans will work out, but also very much prepared for surprises and the need to improvise, I am just really very happy to be soon back in Sudan, after almost 2 years!

DiverseNile Seminar Series 2022: Perspectives from landscape and resource management

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We are very pleased to announce the DiverseNile Seminar Series for 2022. As a follow up of this year’s event, we will now focus on material culture and society in Bronze Age Nubia and respective perspectives from landscape and resource management.

It is my pleasure to open the Seminar Series on January 25 with an introduction and some ideas about global networks and local agents in the Middle Nile. Middle Nile contact space biographies we are currently reconstructing for the Attab to Ferka region provide a complex picture of a social space as a home to diverse groups and actors, rather than a static landscape and the periphery of centre-oriented narratives of New Kingdom Nubia. Our aim within the DiverseNile project is to decode, through our interdisciplinary studies, the economic role of the Attab to Ferka region for the principal centres, as a production area, and as land for animal husbandry and agriculture as well as for mining activities and gold production.

Rennan Lemos managed to gather a splendid group of speakers for the talks, covering a large set of topics from pottery technology to animal husbandry, gold extraction and much more.

We are looking much forward to this event and registration for the online DiverseNile Seminar Series 2022 is already open! Hoping to see many of you there – we will keep you updated about the specific schedule of the talks (always Tuesday, 1pm CET)!