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Beyond the Nile: new archaeological research in Sudan and South Sudan

Archaeology in Sudan and has entered an extremely active phase, one which hopefully will continue transforming the way archaeology is conducted in this part of Africa, as well as continuing to break methodological blindfolds strangely hanging over from the past. There are substantial growing pains and it is in this knowledge and against this backdrop that the idea for this special issue was born. With Jane Humphris — who works at Meroe — taking over as Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, it also seemed to us more generally a good moment to highlight new archaeological work in Sudan in the pages of Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa (Humphris et al. 2018). Fourteen years on from David Edwards (2005: x) stating that a ‘new “Sudanese” archaeology is struggling to emerge [as] it has traditionally tended to be quite introspective and isolated from archaeologies elsewhere, not least from other fields of African archaeology’, the situation has marginally improved, but serious deficiencies remain. As before, there has still been little engagement by archaeologists working in the Middle Nile Valley with broader African archaeology, with those few doing so the exception rather than the rule. The potential contribution of Sudan to African archaeology as a whole therefore remains largely ignored and unexplored. The generation of active archaeologists from the generation of the last High Dam campaign in the 1960s has retired and, while a new generation has emerged, familiar problems remain. Employment can be temporary or possible only on short-term contracts and funding is challenging, echoing a wider issue in modern social science academia, while Nubian archaeology remains an adjunct to Egyptology in most universities. However, much archaeological work has been undertaken in the past decade in Sudan and the areas surrounding it beyond the confines of the ‘protohistoric’ Nubian kingdoms (Kerma c. 2500–1500 BC, the Napatan state c. 800–300 BC and the Meroitic state c. 300 BC – AD 350). There has also been a shift in focus from major sites toward encompassing a broader range of themes such as the UCL Qatar metallurgy mission at Meroe (Humphries et al. 2018), the Czech mission at Sabaloka by Khartoum (Suková and Cilek 2012), the El Salha project at Al Khiday south of Khartoum (Salvatori 2012, Usai et al. 2014) and numerous other projects further north, together with Welsby’s (2001) pioneering earlier survey of the desert edge in the Nile’s northern Dongola Reach. Meaningful dialogues have been and are continuing to be established with other disciplines from the so-called hard and soft sciences. Most importantly, local communities are being actively involved in some — though unfortunately not always all — projects and are taking ownership of