We regret to inform you that the DiverseNile Seminar scheduled for today has been cancelled. A new date will be communicated in due course.

We are very excited to announce the start of this year’s DiverseNile Seminar on May 7th with a lecture by Mohamed Bashir (currently Visiting Research Scholar, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, NYU).

The 2024 DiverseNile Seminar Series will focus on current archaeological research on Sudan. We particularly hope to showcase work led by Sudanese colleagues, and to discuss the continuation and possibility of archaeological research despite the ongoing war. More details will be announced soon – but keep Tuesdays, 1 PM (CET) free in your calendar if possible!

We all know that science is also all about failure, mistakes, and unexpected events. I have addressed this topic already on several occasions, especially for outreach activities like podcasts, Science Slams and blog posts (see, e.g. https://on.soundcloud.com/MYkcX). All of us working in Sudan also know that despite of the beauty of the country, the great Sudanese people, and the wonderful archaeology here, it takes a good amount of resilience to work here – and flexibility.

Having said this all, it is not my intention to write a just negative piece here, but nevertheless to share at least a small glimpse of all the frustration I experienced this week.

According to plan, I shifted my focus from site AtW 001 to the Vila site 2-S-54 in Foshu where we have been already working earlier this season (when I had to come up with Plan B with the crash of our totalstation). Despite of severe nimiti attacks, all went well on Saturday, Sunday and Monday and I was getting all prepared to excavate the original occupation deposit of this well-preserved 18th Dynasty building, when one of the most depressing days of my professional life to far occurred on Tuesday.

I arrived at the site, a bit ahead of my co-worker Mohamed Soubho (since he was kindly pushing the wheelbarrow with our equipment), and could not believe my eyes: every single brick, almost every laid stone block of the structure were simply gone, have been destroyed and smashed to pieces! This destruction was so massive that I was simply speechless and felt completely helpless.

Yes, of course we documented everything until the destruction, but the original deposits were now simply gone and the previously complete architecture severely damaged, including a deep hole cut into the bedrock in the center of the site.

By the time Mohamed arrived, I had found my voice again, made some phone calls and informed our inspector Huda and the tourism police in Abri and Wadi Halfa. We gave a complete report also to higher authorities in Dongola – it is clear that the destruction must be seen in connection with the increase in modern gold working in the area. And that this poses a major threat for all the other sites located nearby.

Mohamed and I started then cleaning up the mess these looters left when I received a phone call from Kate Rose, who was nearby busy flying our drone. First, I thought her slightly irritated voice is probably because her workman Samer told her about our disaster at Foshu (Mohamed called him of course). But then I realized what she is telling me: for unknown reasons, our drone crashed, simply fell from the sky, from the height of 70m. When a very bad day is about to get worse… and yes – it really did: once we had finished cleaning our mess and I was about to document everything with my camera, the camera did not work… it’s also broken – like site 2-S-54, like our drone, and all of this within a few hours.

Well, by now, thanks to Kate and our colleague and friend Sami from NCAM at Khartoum, we will probably be able to kindly borrow the drone of NCAM in the next days… but the site is lost (and my camera still not working).

Why do I share this with you all? Well, maybe partly out of selfish feelings, I just needed to get all of this out, this was a real nightmare week and not business as usual. But more importantly, I believe that we do not talk enough about things which go wrong in academia and in science – partly because of a false feeling of embarrassment (even if much like in in our case is due to external factors and not to real human-caused errors; not wanting to say that mistakes do not also happen), but most prominently because we are trained that only success and more precisely in archaeology great discoveries count and receive attention. But there is so much more than that, so much is hidden below the surface, so much energy is sapped by all these things which do not work out as planned.

I am very frank here – I consider myself a resilient person, but it took me two days to recover, it really was a shock, especially in combination with the drone and camera. And I am still sad when I see the damaged site I was about to excavate (of course we went back to check if further destruction happened which is not the case…), but I already have specific ideas about the improvement of the protection of our sites in the next years. Although it was impossible for me to continue at 2-S-54 after this disaster, I am now done with its documentation and description, including the pottery analysis for 2023. Despite of a vague sad feeling, I very much appreciate what we documented this season and how much new material and ideas we gained from this amazing site – even if we lost the most crucial part of it.

Archaeology is not just about progress, discoveries, and success – we should be open about the fact that we also constantly fail in many respects, for a great range of different reasons. This then also allows us to appreciate our positive results and working steps even further – because these are rarely what we call in Viennese “a gmahte Wiesn”.

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 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!

Amid the quiet summer break here in Munich, a new dissemination article on the results of the DiverseNile project in the field was published, of course open access (Budka 2022).

In this article, I highlight the results of our excavations in the Kerma cemetery GiE 003. Among others, the remarkable complete set of a red-burnished Kerma pot with a stone lid found in situ on top of the vessel is emphasised. This intriguing mix of materials in the combination of a stone lid and a pottery vessel was also the topic of one of my last posts.

Another theme of this new dissemination article is the importance of gold working sites that are traceable in the entire MUAFS concession areas, at both the east and the west bank of the Nile. I very briefly summarised our first test excavations at the promising settlement site AtW 001 in Attab West which might be related to gold exploitation in the early 18th Dynasty.

Although the results from our first excavation season are only preliminary and excavations at both sites, the Kerma cemetery and the New Kingdom settlement site, will have to continue, they represent already important steps towards establishing Middle Nile contact space biographies beyond cultural classifications.

Reference:

Budka 2022 = Budka, J., Unearthing unknown archaeological sites in the Attab to Ferka region in Sudan: the 2022 season of the DiverseNile project, The Project Repository Journal 14, July 2022, 80‒83 (https://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?pubname=&edid=095fc716-1ffb-4179-a368-36e3ff6d513b)

It is my pleasure to announce a new enforcement of my DiverseNile team: Starting with June, Chloë Ward will work as PostDoc researcher for the next 3 years here in Munich.  She is now responsible for DiverseNile’s Work Package 1 “The variability of domestic architecture in the Attab to Ferka region” and will be able to include in her assessment new results from ongoing fieldwork in the MUAFS concession area as well as all the data available from Vila’s work in the 1970s.

Holding a PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, Chloë has extensive experience of archaeological fieldwork, in the UK, Egypt and Sudan. Before joining the DiverseNile project, she also worked at Sanam Temple in Sudan. She previously worked at the British Museum and has taught on archaeology and interdisciplinary modules at University College London.

We are all very happy about this new recruitment – Chloë has just arrived in Munich this week and of course needs some time to get settled, but I am sure you will soon be hearing/reading from her here on our blog. Herzlich Willkommen!

It seems already like ages ago that we left Sudan in mid-April! Here in Munich, all is very busy with the start of the summer term and loads of administrative things. Thus it was a bit silent here on the blog.

With the weekend approaching, it’s time for at least a short summary of our successful spring 2022 season. We collected loads of data which will keep us busy in the next months – I am especially delighted that we were able to excavate cemeteries and also a domestic site. This is perfectly in line with our integrated approach combining funerary and domestic archaeology in the study of the contact space biography of the Attab to Ferka region in northern Sudan.

In our first excavation season with local workmen – who did a great job under the supervision of Rais Ramy – we focused on what was classified as Bronze Age sites in the area of Ginis and Attab.

GiE 001 – surface traces of occupation

In the first week of the 2022 season, we worked at GiE 001. Recorded by Vila as 2-T-36B, this domestic site at Ginis East has been assigned to the Egyptian New Kingdom, showing also an intriguing Kerma presence according to the surface finds as well as some Napatan sherds and Christian material. As a follow up to test excavations in 2020, two trenches were excavated to check the sedimentation. Both new trenches in GiE 001 confirm now that there simply is a thin sandy surface layer with much pottery and other finds like stone tools on top of natural alluvial deposits, without any anthropogen remains in the soil. This corresponds to the results from two test trenches in 2020 (Trench 1 and 2, Budka 2020, 66-67). As disappointing as this may sound for something we were hoping to excavate as a New Kingdom settlement site, it is really important for our understanding of site formation processes in the region.

GiE 002 – a small-scale cemetery

Much more successful were the excavations in cemetery GiE 002. Here, the main aim was to check the dating to the New Kingdom as proposed by Vila in the 1970s. We opened a total of eight trenches and one small extension and only discovered two tombs of the pit burial type as described by Vila. All the associated ceramics seem to postdate the New Kingdom respectively start in the very Late New Kingdom.

The most interesting burial was Feature 2 in Trench 4 – I already described in an earlier blog post the intriguing long use-life of this tomb.

In the main pit of Feature 2, remains of seemingly original burials were unearthed below the intrusive Medieval burial which was found wrapped in textiles. A minimum of two individuals were found associated with Pre-Napatan/Napatan pottery, including a complete Marl clay vessel.

Finally, the oldest burial of Feature 2 was discovered in an extended position in the southern niche of the tomb. It was partly moved during the looting in antiquity but is otherwise complete. With remains of mud bricks which were formerly blocking the niche, this tomb finds close parallels in Missimina (Vila 1980), also as far as the material culture is concerned.

In conclusion, GiE 002 proved to be of more complex character than assumed by Vila – not only simple pit burials were executed on this cemetery, but also pits with side chambers and with mud brick blockings. The date as proposed by Vila needs to be corrected: this small cemetery post-dates the New Kingdom and flourished in the 10^th-8^th centuries BCE.

GiE003 – a substantial Kerma cemetery

The richest excavation site of the 2022 season was the Kerma cemetery GiE 003 (Vila’s site 2-T-39). It is a large cemetery with an estimate of 150 tombs in an area of 200x100m. We opened two trenches and were lucky enough to be able to show a chronological development. Despite of ancient looting, some of the Kerma burials were nicely preserved and datable by means of finds. A total of 28 pits was excavated. With our Trench 2 in the southern part of the cemetery, we cleaned part of the cemetery which shows large circular pits of the Middle Kerma period.

In Trench 1 further north, we had mostly rectangular pits, all with depressions on the east and west end for funerary beds, which can be nicely dated to the Classical Kerma period.

In general, GiE 003 finds a very close parallel in the cemetery of Ukma in the Second Cataract region (Vila 1987). At our site, the wooden funerary beds are not as nicely preserved and the burials more disturbed, but the pottery is very similar as are pieces of jewelry like beads and other objects.

The Kerma cemetery GiE 003 will be the subject of several future blog posts – Rennan Lemos was responsible for the find documentation and I processed all the ceramics. The results are interesting on various levels. Overall, the burials suggest a certain wealth of the Kerma communities who were living in Attab and Ginis and chose GiE 003 as their last resting place.

AtW 001 – first glimpses on New Kingdom settlement activities on the west bank

Finally, we had stunning results at Attab West at a domestic site we labelled AtW 001. Domestic rubbish deposits from the early 18^th Dynasty but also the evidence of overfired ceramics, red bricks and at least one kiln highlight the huge potential of this part of our concession for a variety of research questions. Furthermore, the site is located just next to the new line of electricity poles – and was partly disturbed by this modern construction. In general, there is the urgent need for excavations in the area, especially on the west bank.

Altogether, the 2022 excavation season of the DiverseNile project within the framework of the MUAFS project enables us to approach previously little-known cemeteries but also domestic sites with new ideas. Our work resulted in an advanced level of understanding chronological patterns and social implications connected with Kerma and New Kingdom remains in the region and will serve as the basis for future studies.

References

Budka 2020 = J. Budka, Kerma presence at Ginis East: the 2020 season of the Munich University Attab to Ferka Survey Project, Sudan & Nubia 24, 2020, 57-71.

Vila 1980 = A. Vila, La prospection archéologique de la Vallée du Nil, au Sud de la Cataracte de Dal (Nubie Soudanaise). Fascicule 12: La nécropole de Missiminia. I. Les sépultures napatéennes. Paris 1980.

Vila 1987 = A. Vila, Le cimetière Kermaique d’Ukma Ouest. Paris.

I am very happy that from yesterday onwards, Iulia Comşa has joined the ERC DiverseNile project as a new student assistant. She will complement Sawyer Neumann and together they will help us with post-fieldwork processing, image editing, digital drawings, scanning and other tasks.

Iulia is a BA student in Egyptology at LMU and joint our last course in practical fieldwork about which she also wrote a blog post earlier this year. She is much interested in field archaeology in Egypt and Sudan and makes a perfect addition to our team. During the practical class (which was held online due to the pandemic), Iulia turned out to be also a very talented cook baker – her “stratigraphy cake” was very impressive!

Welcome to the team, we are all very much looking forward to our future collaboration!  

Time flies as usual and our DiverseNile Online Seminar Series will commence with a first presentation by Elena Garcea tomorrow.

The Seminar Series under the general topic of “Cultural Diversity in Northeast Africa” has a wide chronological and regional scope and we will start with a view from Prehistoric Sudan. I am more than happy that we have one of the renown experts in this field as our first speaker: my dear friend and colleague Elena Garcea from the Università degli studi di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale.

I first met Elena 10 years ago while we were both working on Sai Island – ever since, she has become a close friend and collaborator to which I owe fruitful comments, advices and plenty of discussion on various occasions. Elena collaborated already with the AcrossBorders project and one of the outcomes is a joint article which appeared in Antiquity in 2017, with Giulia D’Ercole (one of Elena’s former students) as the corresponding author (D’Ercole et al. 2017).

Here, it became very obvious that a shared view from Prehistoric and Bronze Age Sudan can result in interesting insights and pose a number of relevant questions. The long settlement sequence on Sai over millennia provided an excellent opportunity to study continuity and discontinuity in long-term pottery traditions. Thanks to Elena, we presented a preliminary version of this research at the 14th Congress of the Pan African Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies, hosted from July 14-18 2014 by the University of the Witwatersrand at Johannesburg, South Africa. This trip to South Africa was in many respects rewarding and one of my personal highlights of congress experiences.

Elena’s research is mostly focusing on the last hunter-fishers-gatherers and early food producers and users of domestic plants and animals in Sudan. All of her interpretations are always reflecting recent theoretical perspectives, in particular technical knowledge accumulation, storage strategies and optimal foraging theory. She has undertaken fieldwork not only in Sudan but also in Libya and Niger. In Sudan, she has worked in different parts of the country: Khartoum province and Jebel Sabaloka (central Sudan), Karima and Multaga-Abu Dom areas, Sai Island and Amara West district (northern Sudan).

Elena recently published a book on the Prehistory of Sudan (Garcea 2020). In my view this is an excellent piece of work, not only for students but for anyone who wants to understand the early history of Sudan within a wide framework. The book profits from more than thirty years of field experience and brings together this expertise with analyses in laboratories, conference presentations and numerous publications to develop a differentiated picture of Prehistoric Sudan.

I am personally very much looking forward to this kick-off of the DiverseNile Seminar Series! For those of you who I could convince that it will be clearly worth to attend Elena’s lecture: participation is free but registration via email is mandatory. See you all tomorrow!

References

D’Ercole, G., Budka, J., Sterba, J., Garcea, E., & Mader, D. 2017. The successful ‘recipe’ for a long-lasting tradition: Nubian ceramic assemblages from Sai Island (northern Sudan) from prehistory to the New Kingdom. Antiquity, 91(355), 24-42. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.262

Garcea, E. 2020. The Prehistory of Sudan. Berlin.