Sudan Archaeological Research Society Publication – serie

The first season of survey work in 1993 was undertaken in advance of the construction of the North Challenge Road initially between Geili and Atbara. This work was carried out in the SARS concession area from BM98, opposite the Pyramids of Meroe, to Atbara. A total of 170 sites were recorded and this was published in the first volume of Road Archaeology in the Middle Nile (Mallinson et al. 96). In addition, a report was prepared advising the Sudan National Committee for Roads and Bridges of areas which were likely to be damaged by the road construction. The following year it was indicated that due to the advanced development of the road design no rerouting would be possible. In response to this a rescue season was proposed to excavate the sites clearly at risk in the remaining few months before construction and grading began. A limited amount of funds was provided by the Haycock Fund and within this resource a project was assembled with SARS directed by Laurence Smith and Michael Mallinson. As a total of eight sites with 30 archaeological structures appeared directly on the road line a methodology was needed that would permit these to be properly excavated and recorded in the available time of three weeks that the funds would accommodate.

This volume is the final report on the excavations of a Kerma Ancien cemetery discovered by the Sudan Archaeological Research Society during its Northern Dongola Reach Survey conducted between 1993 and 1997. It is one of the very few cemeteries of this date to have been fully excavated and provides interesting data on funerary culture as practised in a rural environment, to be compared with the extensive information available from investigations of the cemetery associated with the metropolis of Kerma 100km to the north. It includes a range of specialist reports on all categories of artefacts recovered as well as on the physical anthropology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology.

Of the Nubian Archaeological Campaigns responding to the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the survey and excavations carried out within Sudanese Nubia represent the most substantial achievement of the larger enterprise. Many components of the larger project of the UNESCO – Sudan Antiquities Service Survey have been published, in addition to the reports of a number of other major projects assigned separate concessions within the region. However, the results of one major element, the Archaeological Survey of Sudanese Nubia (ASSN) between the Second Cataract and the Dal Cataract remain largely unpublished. This volume, focusing on the pharaonic sites, is the first of a series which aims to bring to publication the records of the ASSN. These records represent a major body of data relating to a region largely now lost to flooding. This is also a region of very considerable importance for understanding the archaeology and history of Nubia more generally, not least in relation to the still often poorly understood relationships between Lower Nubia to the north and the surviving areas of Middle and Upper Nubia, to the south.The ASSN project fieldwork was undertaken over six years between 1963 and 1969, investigating c.130km of the river valley between Gemai, at the south end of the Second Cataract, and Dal.

Down to Earth Archaeology collects sixteen archaeological papers by Professor William Y. Adams chosen by the author, who added introductory commentary to each. These articles were written at various times during his lengthy and productive academic career for different purposes and for different audiences. Most of those selected had been previously published only in a limited way, either as conference proceedings or contributions to various Festschriften, and as such he wanted to enable them to reach a wider readership than they had originally. He described this collection as his ‘dernières pensées’.The essays encompass a wide range of topics, from reflections upon the successes, failures and lessons learned from the UNESCO International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia in the 1960s, in which Bill was very much a leading figure and which he was uniquely positioned to critique, to discussions and criticisms of the theoretical framework of ‘New’ or ‘Processual Archaeology’ and its application of ‘scientific’ methods. Other papers included here are seminal works discussing the ideological concepts of typology and classification and their practical application to archaeological excavations, notably his own major excavations conducted at the large Nubian cityscapes of Meinarti, Kulubnarti and Qasr Ibrim, and the ceramic kilns at Faras.