Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project

Research Project of the Institute of Archaeology, UCL
and the Sudan Archaeological Research Society

This research, while expedient, also offers the opportunity to carry out a research program aimed at addressing major archaeological issues with regards to demography, subsistence and cultural landscape. The availability of large databases from the previous survey and excavation in Northern Nubia, the Third Cataract (Mahas) region, and parts of the Dongola Reach, means that we are in a position to develop working research foci that sample the Fourth Cataract so as to provide significant comparative data for addressing a wider and long-term research agenda. The research agenda for the 2003-04 season will include:

1. Reconstructing the economic basis of settlements in the Fourth Cataract. Especially since the medieval period, but not exclusively so. This will include systemnatic sampling for plant and animal remains, as well as evidence for craft activities.
2. Modern environmental exploitation and categorization, as can be recorded through ethnobotanical / ethnozoological research.
3. A pilot study on rock art groups in relation to their local environmental and archaeological setting
4. Survey of one desert wadi system to assess the density of prehistoric sites from periods when the Nile level was higher.

This project is based in the small village of El-Terief on the southside of the Nile. This project builds on earlier survey work, the SARS Amri-Kirbekan expedition, and excavations at selected cemeteries and lithic scatters in 2002-03 directed by Derek Welsby of the British Museum. Excavations run by Dorian this year will focus on two medieval island settlements. One of the islands also has surface indication of Neolithic material.

In addition ethnographic survey will continue, focusing in particular on some ethnobotanical and ethnozoological recording.

It is hoped that future seasons may also contribute data in the following ways

1. Larger samples of settlement site distribution, both within the Nile valley and in the desert hinterland that will also be flooded, and related cultural markers in the landscape (i.e. rock art).
2. Larger, demographically representative, samples of burial populations for palaeopathological and palaeodietary analysis.
3. Larger scale study of rock art in its natural and archaeological landscape.

This page last modified 3 August, 2005 by Institute Webmaster