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.