Fuelled with inspiration: back from SAfA 2025

Conferences often provide plenty of new ideas and social and scientific encounters, as well as fresh input. This was exactly the case last week when the DiverseNile team participated in the SAfA 2025 conference.

The 27th biennial meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (SAfA 2025) took place at the University of the Algarve in Faro, Portugal, from 21 to 26 July 2025. The venue was lovely, Faro is a beautiful place to visit in the summer. The meeting was a great success thanks to the excellent organisation and rich programme, which included excellent keynote speakers and a highly inspiring plenary event.

Alongside Elena Garcea and Giulia D’Ercole, I organised a session titled „Investigating settlements versus cemeteries. Competing or complementing interests? A View from Sudan“.

We considered this session to be relevant for the following reasons:

Firstly, there are some general aspects to consider. Throughout history, research in Sudan has clearly focused more on burials than on settlements. Cemeteries are considered the most significant social units, providing vital insights for archaeological interpretation and the reconstruction of social, economic, and gender patterns. Ideal case studies are those that include both settlements and cemeteries, although these are often not contemporary with each other.

Furthermore, there are also some personal reasons for organising this session. The three of us have worked on Sai Island and developed a longue durée approach that considers both settlements and tombs. My current DiverseNile project clearly links to this, combining an assessment of domestic and mortuary sites (building on what we have already done during the AcrossBorders project on Sai Island).

Me introducing the theme of the session (photo: H. Aglan).

During our session, an impressive line-up of speakers (including our Sudanese friends and colleagues Ahmed Nassr and Mohamed Bashir) presented the various methodological and theoretical aspects, as well as the challenges and opportunities, of this field of study. Drawing on case studies from different regions of ancient Sudan, particularly the Middle Nile Valley, the Jezira plain and the hinterlands, the subject was explored in depth.

Case studies from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Meroitic, Post-Meroitic and Medieval periods were presented. We also discussed social patterns and cultural behaviours throughout history. This allowed us to link the assessment of settlement patterns with burial customs.

I am particularly pleased that Hassan Aglan discussed the relevance of the Kerma cemeteries within the MUAFS concession (highlightening our work at GiE 003), and that Chloe Ward presented innovative ideas regarding settlement patterns within the same area.

To conclude, our perspective on the topic is informed by observations from various periods and regions of Sudan. The session addressed the past, present and future of investigating settlements and cemeteries, an area in which much remains to be done.

We would like to thank all of our speakers, all participants and the organisers of SAfA 2025 again for now. Personally, I am already looking forward to the next meeting in 2027.

Processing data from MUAFS first field season

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!

Closing the first MUAFS season

Wow – it has been an amazing first season in my new concession up north between Attab and Ferka! Today, we left our house at Attab East and arrived safely in Khartoum – in just a few hours, we will board the plane back to Munich via Istanbul.

A proper summary of our results will follow as soon as I got some sleep. But for now, my amazing team deserved loads of thanks – for making a great season full of important new data possible and for all the individual commitment in many respects!

Many thanks goes as always to our dear friend and NCAM inspector Huda who was a great support, helping with surveying in the desert and on the east bank, with ceramics and with the geophysical survey. Our two Mohammeds – the cook and the driver – enabled us to focus on our scientific work, taking care of all logistics in challenging times and providing us with plenty of delicious food.

Looking already now very much forward to the second season of the MUAFS project and coming back to the beautiful landscape full of archaeology covering several millennia of history just downstream of the Dal cataract.