1 2 S UDAN & NUBIA The Sudan Archaeological Research Society Bulletin No. 16 2012 Contents The Archaeological, Ethnographical and Ecological 100 Project of El-Ga’ab Basin in Western Dongola The Kirwan Memorial Lecture Reach: A Report on the First Season 2009 Yahia Fadl Tahir Quarrying for the King - the Sources of Stone 2 A Survey in the Western Bayuda: The Wadi Abu Dom 109 for Kushite Royal Monuments Itinerary Project (W.A.D.I.) Abdelrahman Ali Mohamed Angelika Lohwasser Preliminary report on the exploration of 118 Jebel Sabaloka (West Bank), 2009-2012 Reports Lenka Suková and Ladislav Varadzin Qalaat Shanan: a large Neolithic site in Shendi town 8 Rosieres Dam Heightening Archaeological Salvage 132 Ahmed Hamid Nassr Hamd Project. The Excavations at Azaza Site ROSE 5, Preliminary Report Social Complexity Set in Stone? The A-Group 13 Mahmoud Suliman Bashir, Murtada Bushara Site of Afyeh Mohamed and Mohammed Saad Abdalah Alice Stevenson Aeolian sand landforms in parts of the Sudan and 140 The Kerma Ancien cemetery at site H29 in the 20 Nubia. Origins and impacts on past and present Northern Dongola Reach land use Derek A. Welsby R. Neil Munro, Mohammed Abdel Mahmoud Ibrahim, Merymose and others at Tombos 29 Hussien Abuzied and Babiker el-Hassan Vivian Davies Re-assessing the abandonment of Amara West: 37 Miscellaneous the impact of a changing Nile? Neal Spencer, Mark Macklin and Jamie Woodward Obituaries The round structures of Gala Abu Ahmed fortress 44 Svetlana Bersina (1932-2012) 155 in lower Wadi Howar, Sudan Eleonora Kormysheva Michael Flache Michel Baud (1963-2012) 155 Preparing for the afterlife in the provinces of Meroe 52 Vincent Rondot Vincent Francigny Tomas Hägg (1938-2011) 156 Excavations of the French Archaeological Mission 60 Adam Łajtar in Sedeinga, 2011 season Claude Rilly and Vincent Francigny Khidir Abdelkarim Ahmed (1947-2012) 159 Intisar Soghayroun Elzein Meroitic Building Techniques: a few observations 72 from Dangeil Jean Leclant (1920-2011) 160 Julie Anderson, Salah Mohamed Ahmed and Catherine Berger -el Naggar Tracey Sweek Andre Vila (1923-2011) 162 Gebel Adda Cemeteries 3 and 4 (1963-1964) 80 William Y. Adams Reinhard Huber and David N. Edwards The forts of Hisn al-Bab and the First Cataract 88 Frontier from the 5th to 12th centuries AD Front cover: Excavations in progress in the Kerma Ancien Alison L. Gascoigne and Pamela J. Rose cemetery at site H29 in the Northern Dongola Reach (photo D. A. Welsby). Fortresses of Sudan Project. Abu Sideir case study 96 Mariusz Drzewiecki and Tomasz Stępnik Sudan & Nubia is a peer-reviewed journal 3 sand was removed, the natural soil appeared and no structures Excavations of the French could be found, probably because they were removed long ago by wind and rain erosion which left on the spot only the Archaeological Mission in ceramic material. The situation was similar in Jebel Aswad. Sedeinga, 2011 season Nor did the excavations west of WT1 yield any significant result: the Neolithic cemetery seems to have been limited to Claude Rilly and Vincent Francigny the area sealed later by the Napatan pyramid. Finally, only in the sondage in the NW sector was excavation met with The lastest excavations of the French archaeological mission success. Two 2 x 2m squares were opened, revealing two in Sedeinga (SEDAU) took place from 1st November to 17th pits, empty but for some bones and Pre-Kerma sherds. A December 2011.1 The first two weeks were dedicated to further square was opened north of the pits, in a place where digging sondages in search of Neolithic and Protohistoric some schist slabs were visible. There, another pit was found, remains on the western margins of the site, under the direc- surrounded by stone slabs. In the filling, some Pre-Kerma tion of Hélène Delattre, and to the physical anthropological sherds and an ostrich eggshell bead were discovered. The pit study of the material from the previous season by Agathe had been emptied but rodent droppings and bones found in Chen. The general excavations started with the complete the bottom, mixed with numerous remains of vegetal fibres, team on 18th November and focused on the central part indicate that it probably had contained grain. The sondage will of Sector II of the Meroitic necropolis, in an area contigu- be extended in the next season to uncover the zone between ous with that explored in the last two seasons. The core of the pits, where more granaries can be expected. the second funerary cluster was reached at the end of the season.2 Two additional sondages were dug, one south of Excavations of the Meroitic cemetery in Sector II the Temple of Queen Tiye, and a second in the easternmost The main work was the continuation of the excavations in part of Sector II. the Meroitic cemetery (Plate 1), more precisely in the part of Sector II extending east of the camel track, where two Neolithic and Protohistoric sondages perpendicular rows of pyramids had been discovered in the During the previous season, a general survey in search of 1990s by the previous team under the direction of Catherine Neolithic and Protohistoric material was conducted by Hélène Berger-El Naggar. In the two last seasons, the W/E row of Delattre on the site, especially in the western part, along a pyramids has been completely unearthed and its boundaries small schist outcrop called Jebel Aswad and further south cleared. (Rilly and Francigny 2011, 72). Four sondages were opened This L-shaped ensemble constitutes a single funerary this year in the most promising zones: the SW and NW sec- cluster (Cluster 1), which started with a pair of “patron tors, Jebel Aswad and the western outskirt of Pyramid WT1, pyramids” (Nos 134 and 131) and extended northward until under which a spectacular group of 29 Neolithic graves had the central wadi, and from there eastward along the wadi. The been unearthed by Jacques Reinold in the early 1990s. The inner part of the “L” is occupied by a large sandy area where SW sector, where a Pre-Kerma assemblage was found last no monument was built (the first “sand quarry”). The west- year, did not yield any significant results. Once a thin layer of ern boundary cannot be established with certainty because some monuments might still lie under the camel track. The 1 The French archaeological Mission in Sedeinga (SEDAU) is sup- eastern and southern boundaries are nothing more than the ported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by UMR 8152 junction with a second funerary cluster (Cluster 2), which (Composante Mondes pharaoniques, Paris IV-Sorbonne), a unit of is so intermingled with the first that it was difficult to trace the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and by a clear-cut limit between their respective graves. A second the French Unit in Khartoum (SFDAS). The mission was directed “sand quarry” extends to the east. by Claude Rilly, presently director of the French Unit of NCAM in Khartoum with Vincent Francigny (American Museum of Natural This year, we extended the clearing operations to the south, History, New York) as director of excavations. The team comprised in order to reach the core of the second funerary cluster, Agathe Chen (physical anthropologist), Vincent Colard (surveyor and where the previous team had opened a sondage, 12 years archaeologist), Hélène Delattre (SFDAS, archaeologist), Romain David ago, in the descendary of II T 169. Four 10 x 10m squares (University of Montpellier, ceramologist), Sandra Porez (University of were totally cleared (210/110, 220/120, and 220/130) and Lille III, archaeologist) and Elsa Yvanez (University of Lille, archae- ologist) and was assisted by Awadallah Ali el-Basha (driver, SFDAS), two further squares were opened (210/120 and 210/130). Marcel Attinsoussi and Mohamed Bakhit (cooks). Our inspector on Two factors were responsible for this unexpected speed site, representing NCAM, was Haitham Mohammed Abdelrahman. Our of work. Firstly, the core of the second funerary cluster is rais Abdelrahman Fadl was the head of a gang of 25 workmen from actually located upon a small hill, so that the depth of sand the villages of Qubbat Selim and Nilwa. We extend our thanks to the to clear off was not as much as we expected. Secondly, this staff of the National Corporation of Antiquities and Museums, now part of Sector II was literally packed with monuments: no directed by Dr Abdelrahman Ali Mohammed, for their kind assistance. 2 The results of the previous campaign have been published in Sudan less than 13 pyramids were discovered this year in an area & Nubia 14 and 15: see Rilly and Francigny 2010; 2011. approximately 500 square metres. 60 Sudan & NUBIA Plate 1. Aerial view looking south of Sector II (2012 © B.-N. Chagny/SEDAU/SFDAS). This is one of the puzzling issues of this season. Instead the result that robbers demolished it in order to get access to of extending the burial space or starting a new funerary the funerary chambers. The wall created an exclusive space cluster in another part of this huge necropolis (as the rul- within this particular burial area, entirely dedicated to the ers of Meroe did in Begrawiya), the families of the second new monument 237. Even places unfit for superstructure funerary cluster did their best to bury their deceased in the construction were marginally colonized; Pyramid 234 was same area, generation after generation. Frequently, they just partly erected on the southern sand quarry, into which a reused the funerary chambers after a more or less careful L-shaped brick base was first constructed. The reasons for cleaning. The old pyramids, most of them easily recognized this obstinacy are still unclear, but one may suspect that the by the pinkish hue of their bricks, were left untouched, even families wanted their deceased to be buried in close vicinity to if they were already eroded: as were for example Pyramids prestigious individuals, possibly those for whom the “patron 235, 248 and 250.