Elena A.A. Garcea – författare

This volume addresses the Out-of-Africa dispersals of the earliest hominins and early anatomically modern humans, the last semi-sedentary, pottery-bearing hunters-fishers-gatherers, the early food producers and users of domestic plants and animals either local or imported from the Near East, and the presuppositions of the rise of the kingdoms of Kerma, Pharaonic Egypt, and Axum on the basis of the latest available data.Sudan played a crucial role in the development of ancient human behavior and societies and was part of an extensive network encompassing faraway areas of Africa, such as Chad, the Sahara, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Kenya, as well as Asia, namely the Levant, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and India. The archaeology of this country has been explored and appreciated since the 1700s and more than 30 national and international research teams are currently active. New remarkable discoveries are unearthed every year, which are analyzed with the most up-to-date scientific techniques, and offer a prominent contribution to the general theoretical and methodological panorama of world archaeology. Beside the Nile Valley, the various geographical regions of Sudan – the deserts, savannas, and other watercourses to the west and east of the main river – are attentively taken into consideration as they formed a regional synergy that equally contributed to the far-reaching influence of Sudan’s inhabitants.This book is particularly addressed to Africanist archaeologists who study other parts of Africa; to prehistorians investigating other parts of the world; to archaeology students and teachers interested in having a global view on human adaptation and behavior in ancient Sudan; to science journalists, and to antiquity admirers and learned tourists who travel to Sudan and Nubia.

This brief provides a unique overview that weaves a thread across the deep history of the management and symbolism of wild aurochs and domestic cattle in Sudan, where these practices are attested for over 15,000 to 20,000 years. It highlights the central preoccupation with these bovids by societies of the region, from the time of the earliest funerary rituals involving wild aurochs in the late Pleistocene, to the introduction of domestic cattle in the Neolithic, to pre-state societies through the historical period into the present day. It recounts the relationship between humans and the African aurochs, the processes of wild animal management, the prey pathway that provides a possible model for domestication, the introduction of Bos taurus to the African continent, and then the establishment of widespread herding practices, including the introgression of the African aurochs into domesticated cattle populations. Finally, it emphasises the economic and symbolic value of cattle seen through social cults and even a human ‘infatuation’ with cattle by observing the roles and representations of these animals from different disciplinary perspectives. Its geographic scope covers modern Sudan's territory, extending from Nubia, in the Middle Nile Valley, to the wider Nile Basin, as well as to eastern and western Sudan.The herding of domestic animals came to shape the societies of North-Eastern Africa during a period of over 10,000 years, up to the present. With focus on cattle, this volume examines the deep history of the origins of pastoralism in Africa and the economic, political, and religious role they came to play over time. Animal herding is the subsistence economy that is best adapted to arid and semi-arid environments, such as those in North-Eastern Africa, with cattle herding playing a prominent role in providing economic needs by serving as a ‘walking larder’ and ‘storage on the hoof’ and in ritual through its symbolic role, including the practice of sacrifice. From an economic point of view, cattle can provide meat, milk, blood, skin, sinew, manure, fuel, and labor, and can serve as a currency of exchange and a store of value. From a symbolic point of view, their physical presence in tombs and in movable (figurines) and immovable art (rock engravings and paintings) represents a material demonstration of ostentatious wealth and/or social status that can be converted into political support by building a clientele by means of exchange and redistribution, as well as a manifestation of divinity. Finally, from a ritual point of view, ceremonies related to a cattle cult fix and consolidate social bonds between members of a community.