The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 17 2013 ASWAN 1St Cataract
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SUDAN & NUBIA The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 17 2013 ASWAN 1st cataract Egypt RED SEA W a d i el- A lla qi 2nd cataract Batn el-Hajar W a d i Akasha G a b g Sedeinga a b Jebel Dosha a Tinare Jawgul 3rd cataract ABU HAMED e Sudan il N El-Ga’ab Kawa Basin Sudan Military KAREIMA 4th cataract Fifth Railway Cataract el-Kurru Dangeil Usli Berber ED-DEBBA ATBARA ar Gala ow i H Wad Abu Ahmed es-Sour A tb el-Metemma a r m a k a li e d M d l- a e adi q W u 6th cataract M i d a W OMDURMAN KHARTOUM KASSALA B lu e Eritrea N i le MODERN TOWNS Ancient sites WAD MEDANI Atbara/Setiet W h it e N i GEDAREF le Aba Island KOSTI SENNAR N Ethiopia South 0 250 km Sudan S UDAN & NUBIA The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 17 2013 Contents Dangeil 2012: Sacred Ram – Avatar of the God Amun 70 Julie Anderson and Salah Mohamed Ahmed Reports Dangeil, A Preliminary Report on the Petrography 78 Lithic Material from the Late Neolithic Site of 2 Meredith Brand es-Sour, Central Sudan A Third Season of Rescue Excavations in the Meroitic 90 Azhari Mustafa Sadig Cemetery at Berber, October 2012: Preliminary Report ‘Pharaonic’ Sites in the Batn el-Hajar – the 8 Mahmoud Suliman Bashir ‘Archaeological Survey of Sudanese Nubia’ Revisited. Jawgul – A Village Between Towers 101 David N. Edwards and A. J. Mills Mariusz Drzewiecki and Piotr Maliński A Note on the Akasha Rock-Inscriptions [21-S-29] 17 The Archaeology of the Medieval and Post-Medieval 109 Vivian Davies Fortress at Tinare in the Northern El-Mahas Creating a Virtual Reconstruction of the Seti I 18 Abdelrahaman Ibrahim Saeed Ali Inscription at Jebel Dosha Upper Atbara Setiet Dam Archaeological Salvage 113 Susie Green Project (ASDASP), the Rescue Excavation Results Archaeobotanical Investigations at the Gala Abu on the Western Bank of the Atbara: Preliminary Report Ahmed Fortress in Lower Wadi Howar, Northern Murtada Bushara Mohamed, Mohammed Saad Abdalah, Sudan Sami Elamien Mohammed and Zaki aldien Mahmoud The Site and the Findings 24 Archaeological, Ethnographical and Ecological 124 Friederike Jesse Project of El-Ga’ab Basin in Western Dongola: A Report on the Second Season 2010 Phytoliths on Grinding Stones and 28 Yahia Fadl Tahir Wood Charcoal Analysis Barbara Eichhorn Surveys at the Fifth Cataract and on the Sudan Military 131 Railway and excavations at Kawa, 2012-13 The Fruit and Seed Remains 33 Derek A. Welsby Stefanie Kahlheber Archaeological Survey in El-Metemma area 137 New Excavations at El-Kurru: Beyond the Napatan Nada Babiker Mohammed Ibrahim Royal Cemetery Archaeological Survey of Aba Island: 142 Introduction 42 Preliminary Report Geoff Emberling and Rachael J. Dann Ahmed Hussein Abdel Rahman Adam Investigating Settlement at El-Kurru 43 From Nubia to Arizona – and back; or, Reisner 149 Geoff Emberling comes Home Geophysical Prospection in the Archaeological 48 William Y. Adams Settlement of El-Kurru Mohamed Abdelwahab Mohamed-Ali Miscellaneous Coring and Soundings in the El-Kurru Settlement 50 Obituary 154 Tim Boaz Bruun Skuldbøl Michel Azim Five-sided Corinthian Capitals in the Mortuary 54 Brigitte Gratian Temple at El-Kurru Review 154 Jack Cheng Giovanni R. Ruffini 2012.Medieval Nubia. A Social Geophysical Survey at the El-Kurru cemetery 56 and Economic History Ed Blinkhorn William Y. Adams Sedeinga 2012: A Season of Unexpected Discoveries 61 Front cover: The descendary of Tomb IV T 1 near Sedeinga Claude Rilly and Vincent Francigny under excavation (© V. Francigny / SEDAU). The Latest Explorations at Usli, Northern Province 66 Miroslav Bárta, Lenka Suková and Vladimír Brůna 1 Sudan & Nubia is a peer-reviewed journal even preliminary reports have been published for the three ‘Pharaonic’ Sites in the Batn further seasons. Of those the 1966-67 season focussed mainly on excavations in the Semna-Attiri area, while the final two el-Hajar – the ‘Archaeological seasons (November 1967 - April 1968 and October 1968 - Survey of Sudanese Nubia’ April 1969) took the survey southwards to Dal. With a total of c. 1000 ‘sites’ of all kinds identifiable in Revisited. published reports and unpublished archives relating to the Gemai-Dal region it was thought at this time that a brief review of the records relating to the 38 sites (Figure 1) regis- David N. Edwards and Anthony J. Mills tered as ‘Pharaonic’ or potentially so might usefully introduce this one component of the archive.1 It is hoped that it will Of the Nubian Archaeological Campaigns (see Adams 1992; be possible within the not too distant future to prepare a full Mills 1992) which took place in response to the construc- publication of this relatively small but interesting body of tion of the Aswan High Dam, the survey and excavation material. With a number of other projects concerned with programmes carried out within Sudanese Nubia represented the Egyptian presence in Nubia now active in the region it perhaps the greatest archaeological achievements of the is hoped that this summary may also prove of some wider larger enterprise. Many components of the larger project interest at this time. As preliminary reports have already ap- have been published, producing a body of often fundamental peared for the areas between Gemai and Semna, only a few studies which have often transformed our knowledge of this additional observations will be made here concerning sites important section of the Nile Valley. However, the results in these more northerly areas and most of this brief paper of one core element, the Archaeological Survey of Sudanese Nubia between the Second Cataract and the Dal Cataract, a distance of c. 130km along the river, remain substantially unpublished. During the first reconnaissance survey which traversed the whole region in 1963-64, c. 240 sites were registered (Mills 1965) in addition to the work of a German Epigraphic Mission led by Professor Fritz Hintze which traversed the region separately, recording the rock art and inscriptions. The following year the Archaeological Survey of Su- danese Nubia (ASSN) survey team began its work in earnest to survey and excavate areas and sites not oth- erwise assigned to other missions, starting at its northern end, in the most imminently threatened area. It completed the survey of areas south of Gemai as far as Saras, investigat- ing 69 sites between November 1964 and April 1965, and was able to publish a preliminary report on that work (Mills and Nordström 1966). The following season (Octo- ber 1965 - March 1966) covered the region between Saras and Semna, recording a further 101 sites; a re- port relating to this was published in the next volume (for 1967-68) of Kush (Mills 1973). Reports on the Figure 1. ‘Pharaonic’ sites in the Batn el-Hajar. subsequent seasons were not however, forthcoming following 1 As will be seen, a number of these ‘Pharaonic’ sites can now be rec- the lapse of the journal Kush (not revived until 1993), so not ognised as dating to the 25th Dynasty/Napatan period. 8 SUDAN & NUBIA will be concerned with sites south of Semna recorded in the 1) associated with one or more mines [11-Q-60] located up to 1960s but as yet unreported. It may be useful here to establish 2km from the east bank, and a group of burials [11-Q-65] on both the overall scale and distribution of sites as well as make the high ground to the north east. These have received some some preliminary comment on some of the more interesting. attention previously, with a brief published description of the While it has recently been recognised that some prominent complex of sites (Mills 1973, 204-207), which were further sites (e.g. Shelfak and Uronarti) survive above water level, note discussed in a paper delivered at the 9th International Nubian will also be made of some other sites which have, or seem Conference at Boston in 1998. These lie within a stretch of likely to have survived flooding. Readily accessible satellite river bank which was clearly one of the more attractive and imagery also makes it possible to identify additional so-far hospitable parts of the region in later prehistory, the location unrecorded sites located in areas (above the 180m contour) of quite a large numbers of C-Group and/or Kerma sites unsurveyed in 1960s. as well as numerous rock drawings. The spatial correlation As made clear in the preliminary reports, away from the between abundant rock drawings and the numerous 3rd-2nd series of Middle Kingdom forts only a few small sites were millennia sites is perhaps a useful indicator that much of this identified, mainly small-scale occupation sites and occasional rock art is also of this date. small groups of burials of New Kingdom date (Mills and Nordström 1966, 11). Of these, two lay within the Finnish concession, at Gemai East and Murshid. Just south of the cataract an occupation site with a small cemetery of c. 15 New Kingdom graves [11-D-5 = FNE 15]2 was investigated, while some further burials in two groups lay just beyond the Mur- shid bend behind the village of Sigaga. These were recorded within two separate sites [11-I-7 = FNE 39] and [11-I-32 = FNE 41], the former consisting mainly of Meroitic burials. Records for these sites have been published by the Finnish Nubia expedition (Donner 1998). Otherwise the Pharaonic presence between Gemai and Semna was concentrated in two main clusters of sites. The first of these was around the Middle Kingdom fort [11-L-1] on Askut island, excavated in the 1960s and studied more recently by Smith (1995; 2012).