Archiv der Kategorie: Archaeology

Ups and downs of archaeological fieldwork

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

Our second MUAFS season started very promising and successful – we arrived as planned last Wednesday in Ginis East and moved into a beautiful house we have rented for this season.

On Thursday, we set out our test trenches at the site of Ginis East 004, a Kerma camp which was already recorded by Vila in the 1970s and where we made a magnetometer survey last year.

The aim for this season is to check the stratigraphy of the site and especially to test whether the results of the magnetometry correspond to the actual archaeology.

The general site of GiE 004, a Kerma village.

Three test trenches were laid out on Thursday and I started already surface cleaning in Trench 1 while the rest of the team was busy mapping and taking survey points. And here some of our problems started – our total station sent error messages and a big drawback was when we discovered on Friday that some of our benchmarks we set last year have been destroyed and are no longer usable… And our printer did not work anymore… To make things worse, I caught a food poisoning and had to go to the clinic in Abri for treatment. Thus, fieldwork at GiE 004 was stopped for the last 2 days. We hope to continue this afternoon since after hours and hours Cajetan seems to have solved the problem with the total station and I am more or less recovered.

Well – sometimes life as an archaeologist is really like a box of chocolate, full of surprises and not always of the sweet kind. As difficult as it is, we will try to stick with our schedule – hoping that we are now done with all the major problems of this season!

News about proper fieldwork will therefore hopefully follow shortly…

2020 season all set to begin

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

We safely arrived in Khartoum Sunday night and we were really lucky this time, as we just left Munich before storm “Sabine” caused big problems for flights and other transportation. In the last two days here in Sudan, we were busy preparing everything for the second MUAFS seasons.

Quite a number of things have changed with the new government, with new regulations – there are still some pending Tasks for tonight but all in all, everything went well and we can stick to our time schedule and leave Khartoum tomorrow morning as planned.

Many thanks go already to the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM) in Sudan for all their support. Our NCAM inspector will be again our dear old friend and colleague, Huda Magzoub, who worked with us already in the first MUAFS season.

Looking very much forward to our travel to the beautiful area of northern Sudan and starting fieldwork in Ginis at a Kerma settlement site on Thursday! Given that our mobile connection allows it, we will of course keep you updated about our progress.

Preparing the 2020 field season

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

Time flies by, the winter term at LMU is in its final stage with exams approaching – and thus the next field season in the Attab to Ferka region in northern Sudan is getting closer.

We will work 4 weeks in February/March with new headquarters in Ginis East, where there are multiple Bronze Age sites and a stunning landscape.

Landscape at Ginis East, looking northwest.

Today, we had a team meeting in the office, discussing the main aims and logistics for this season. As kind of prelude for the new ERC project DiverseNile, we will test a very promising Kerma site at Ginis East.

The principal goal of our first season is a test excavation at the site GiE 004. This site was documented by Andrè Vila in the 1970s (as site NF-36-M/2-T-5) and his work included some test trenches. We made a successful magneometry survey of this very intriguing Kerma village in 2019 and would now like to check the validity of our own results (created by Marion Scheiblecker). This Kerma settlement system comprises rounded huts and additional walls or fences; the southern part of the site, consisting of Kerma graves, is very recently destroyed. Rectangular as well as circular features are visible in the northern part of the investigated area showing negative magnetic anomalies. They could be caused by mudbrick with less magnetisable content than in the southern part, where the magnetic anomalies show high positive values indicating different building materials and/or sources. The borders of the wadi systems are clearly visible in the magnetogram of GiE 004; an excavation could proof if there was a kind of fortification along the wadi. This is the main aim for the 2020 excavation season.

Looking much forward to our first season of excavation in the MUAFS concession – and of course we will keep you posted!

In focus: Kushite Thebes in Munich

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

The winter term of LMU Munich is already quite advanced and there a number of lectures coming up, introducing special topics to experts, students and also the interested public.

Today, the MUAFS team member Veronica Hinterhuber will present her ongoing research on Kushite festival architecture in Thebes which is the subject of her PhD thesis at Humboldt-University Berlin.

As usual we offer free entry in order to advertise Sudan archaeology here in Munich, the venue is the Egyptian Museum as our cooperation partner in the lecture series „The South Gate to the Ancient World“.

Do not miss this chance to get an introduction into the intriguing building activities by Kushites kings like Taharqa at Karnak and Luxor, the centre of the Egyptian cult of Amun. Veronica will focus in particual on the function of the architecture built by the Twenty-fifth Dynasty in Thebes – important aspects which are both relevant for Egyptian and Kushite temple architecture.

New media coverage for the MUAFS project

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

Perfect timing – summer term at LMU Munich has just ended, I am currently in Vienna, busy with preparing the next AcrossBorders volume to be published with the Austrian Science press, and a new dissemination article about the MUAFS project just appeared in the latest issue of The Project Repository Journal (July 2019, pp. 50-51) and is now live.

In this short article, freely available for download, I tried to stress that the MUAFS research concession is primary a geological boundary zone being located next to a cataract region – the Second Cataract and especially the Dal Cataract – , and secondly a frontier in terms of cultures. During millennia, the region was on one hand the northernmost area of an archaeological culture, and on the other hand the southernmost area of influence by other cultural groups. The Attab to Ferka region is therefore a perfect case study for a contact space which is shaped by diverse encounters of human actors as a complex social space.

We could confirm this rich potential with the results of our first field season back in December and January. The new approach of the MUAFS project to focus on cultural encounters and peripheral sites in a border region over several millennia will result in important new insights of this region of the Middle Nile Valley. With this new research concession, my team and I have the means to fill the considerable gap of investigations at sites in the periphery of major settlements in the Nile Valley. Within the MUAFS project’s long durée approach, the focus of the next years will be on Bronze Age and Iron Age sites. The distribution of these sites within the concession area already poses several questions which need to be addressed by means of excavations and detailed data analysis.

An update on our plans for the next field season in Sudan will follow shortly.

In focus: Meroitic Sudan in Munich

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

Within the MUAFS concession, sites datable to the Meroitic Empire are rare and comprise primarily tombs and cemeteries. Settlement sites in the region between Attab and Ferka fall into other periods of Sudan’s history, including the Napatan Empire.

Towns and cities of the Kingdom of Meroe are well known from regions of the country further south – in particular within the island of Meroe, a semi-desert landscape between the Nile and Atbara rivers.

I am delighted that one of the major Meroitic sites, Mouweis, will be the focus of this week’s Sudan archaeology in Munich. Marie Millet from the Louvre Museum will present the recent French excavations at this important city with temples, a palace and production areas. Her research ties in perfectly with the archaeological project of my neighbours here in Munich, the Staatliches Museum für Ägyptische Kunst, and their excavations at the Meroitic site of Naga.

Come and join us on June 27 for Marie Millet’s lecture highlightening recent advances on the archaeology and history of Meroitic Sudan!

Beyond Indiana Jones: Soapbox Science in Munich

Veröffentlicht am von
1

You think of archaeology and the picture of Indiana Jones pops up? Well, there is much more to know about people like me digging old things up – just come to the Soapbox Science event in Munich this Saturday and get some first-hand information what real archaeologists do in Egypt and Sudan and why this is fascinating!

The programme of Soapbox Science in Munich at Odeonsplatz

Soapbox Science is a public outreach platform aiming to promote women scientists and the science they do.

The main goal of Soapbox Science – in 2019 very active with 42 events planned across 13 countries! – is to bring cutting edge science conducted by females to the public, in an accessible, fun and non-intimidating way.

The Soapbox Science idea is to inspire all kinds of people, young and old, to recognize the value of science and especially the image that scientist come from every background and gender. Without a commitment to diversity, scientific excellence is not possible, but it is still a long way to go before we reach proper equal treatment of all scientists, independent of age, sex, gender, ethnicity or origin.

Looking much forward to the Munich Soapbox Science event, standing up for archaeology, women in science and diversity in science!

Communicating the huge attractiveness of Egyptian and Nubian archaeology

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

Two weeks ago, I had the great chance to participate at the Austrian Science Slam in Vienna. This evening was not only fun – I hope that I could also show some of the wonderful sides of my “dream job”, working as an archaeologist in Egypt and Sudan.

For those who are interested: all videos of the evening are now online, check out my performance on youtube.

I tried to explain the huge attractiveness of my field with my good old “friend” Nehi, viceroy of Kush under Thutmose III, and our recent finds related to him from Sai Island and Elephantine. In particular, I stressed why sealings like the one of Nehi we found at Sai are really worth as much as gold for us archaeologists.

My next opportunity to engage with the public – other than this blog! – will be the Munich SoapboxScience event in 2 weeks. This will be quite something different than standing on the stage in a theater like in Vienna and I am much looking forward to this! After all – it’s all about telling people what archaeologist really do, other than romantic phantasies and pictures created by Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. And: feedback from non-scientists is always really interesting and often surprising.

Processing data from MUAFS first field season

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

The last months were really busy with work in Egypt and administrative tasks in Munich. Although the teaching term is ongoing and preparing classes keeps me occupied, there is also some time to process the data we collected in December and January between Attab and Ferka.

The annual one-day international colloquium on “Recent Archaeological Fieldwork in Sudan” at the British Museum London is approaching – and I am delighted that I will have the chance to talk about the most important results from our first field season.

I will try to summarise the distribution of the Vila sites we re-located and discuss some aspects of their dating and cultural classification.

Within the 119 sites we documented, the majority are Christian sites (28,6%). Kerma sites are with 21% also very numerous. The strong presence of Late Bronze Age/Iron Age (New Kingdom, Pre-Napatan and Napatan) sites is with 18,5% also noteworthy. Especially in the northern part of our concession, large tumuli cemetery from the Post-Meroitic period were noted and Post-Meroitic sites comprise 11,8% of our total. The early periods, in particular Abkan and Khartoum Variant sites, are also well presented in the MUAFS concession area (Neo- and Mesolithic sites with 9,2%).

Looking much forward to process these data further until next Monday and in particular to meet all the colleagues working in Sudan on this occasion in London – for scientific and social updates!

One small click, one huge jump for MUAFS

Veröffentlicht am von
Antworten

Probably everybody has already experienced something similar: working very hard on something, finishing just in time and then getting slightly lost in a sudden emptiness!

Well – I personally enjoyed such emptiness tremendously yesterday at 5pm… The call for the ERC Consolidator grants 2019 just ended, the online participant portal just closed, my proposal being submitted in time! Of course this proposal concerns an archaeological project in Sudan – all the data we collected in our first season in the Attab to Ferka region were reviewed and included in the new idea. Although it was much work and all of us involved had to go to the limit, it was also much fun and exciting to write for the following reasons:

  • Fresh appreciation of my new research concession: the MUAFS concession is such a rich area in northern Sudan, so full of possibilities and potential – the perfect area to answer some of the pressing questions I currently have, especially about Bronze Age Nubia… Very very grateful to NCAM for giving me this possibility – I will make the most out of this!
  • Gratitude for all my team members and supporters – ERC proposals are only possible to write (and to sell…) if you can build on the perfect team as I am fortunate to have! Many thanks go especially to Veronica, Cajetan, Marion and Giulia – their input and feedback was crucial and is much appreciated!
  • Thankfulness to all my friends, colleagues and family – for reading parts of the proposal as “outsiders”, and especially for much patience, support, small things and nice words to push my motivation and also the right amount of diversion with real life matters over the last weeks…
  • Last but definitely not least, I am also very grateful to the LMU – for the financial and administrative support enabling us to prepare a competitive proposal, especially the very useful advice by the team of Division VIII.3 of Research Services.
Munich, Feb 7, 5.05 pm

We celebrated a bit yesterday – to fill the emptiness, but especially to realise that we’ve made important progress and to let all the things described above settle a little bit.

After a short break (because of upcoming fieldwork in Egypt), we will be busy working on the MUAFS data again – keeping all fingers and toes crossed during the long reviewing process, but with the certainty that our research in Sudan is going to have a bright future and will continue.