ARKAMANI Sudan Electronic Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology

February 2002

Ėtudes Nubiennes, vol.II: Actes du VIIe Congrès international d'études nubiennes, ed. Charles Bonnet, Genève 1994: 13-18

During the month of March, 1990, the Spanish Archaeological Mission in Sudan set about the surface survey of the east bank of the Blue Nile from Khartoum southwards; the project is intended to continue in the next field seasons. Our ultimate objective is to record all the archaeological evidence in the area, available from surface observations; limited surface digging or sondages will only be carried out in very special cases. In this way, we try to follow recent theoretical and methodological trends affecting archaeology, which primarily emphasize the need for a large amount of data before any general inference about behavioural patterns in the past (socio-economic organization, regional networks, demography, subsistence activities, etc.) can be made. At the same time, we hope to spread the present knowledge of the rich archaeological heritage in Central Sudan, in order to make its preservation feasible in the near future.

Several overall questions needed to be settled before the beginning of field work: survey methodology, chronological control and cultural problem orientation.

For the initial contact with the area, two simple survey strategies were observed: an intensive, all-embracing pedestrian inspection in elongated quadrats over the alluvial area, and several extensively inspected, narrow transects perpendicular to the river. The supposed greater accuracy and efficiency of the random quadrats sampling technique, especially where the sites follow a random or regular distribution Plog,1976, as has been recently established after a set of computer simulations Fernández,1985a, needs confirmation in this area, where surveys have been generally conducted in a very unsystematic way Caneva and Marks,1990.

The need for reasonably secure chronological control over the cultural sequence is to be met, hopefully, by using cross-cultural information and by applying statistical seriation techniques Fernández,1985b. This task will be facilitated by the fact that multi-stage stratified sites are rare in the area, or usually easy to identify since they conform to generally well known patterns (e,g, Late Neolithic or Meroitic burials over earlier settlements). In some cases, however, the possibility of a "horizontal" stratigraphy or general intra-site variability cannot be ruled out (e.g. it was clearly noticed in the digging of the Neolithic site of Haj Yusif; Fernández et al.,1989,p.266. Therefore the surface collection of finds over the sites will be made by differentiating several areas, randomly or systematically sampled Redman and Watson, 1970.

Although our primary interest in the area focuses on the prehistoric remains (the Palaeolithic sequence; the transition between Mesolithic and Neolithic)- we consider it rather an unrealistic task to aim at complete study of the area by a single archaeological team - all the sites discovered in the survey will be adequately documented, and the records delivered in due time to the Sudan Antiquities Service for further study.

A total of seven find spots were recorded in the survey, all of them roughly following a perpendicular line to the river in the Wadi Soba direction. Most sites are located on the western slopes of small elevations, supposedly the remains of ancient river terraces. The concentrations were fairly small, the maximum dimension being usually less than one hundred meters, and the artifact densities on surface being generally low. Apparently at least, no features, faunal remains or stratigraphical conditions were appreciated on surface. In every site a significant sample of tools and debitage was collected.

At Gala el Haddadia, at about 20 km from the Nile, two sites were recorded to belong to the early or Middle Palaeolithic. At both places the most abundant find was a special type of flake, short and wide, the distal end (often with cortex) being characteristically bigger than the platform (mostly flat, of obtuse angle) and perpendicular to the striking direction. The only indication of tool-making was the presence of uneven denticulate or notch retouching on about a third of the flakes, but it could have been caused by natural chance. The raw material was dark Nubian sandstone in G.H.-1 and in one group of flakes of G.H.2; a second group of flakes (bigger, more intensively eroded and with no retouch, thus suggesting an earlier dating was made up of a lighter coloured sandstone. Neither bifaces nor cleavers (as in the nearby Acheulian site of Khor Abu Anga: Arkell,1949 were found, and the generally atypical appearance of the industry (because of both sites being lithic workshops?) makes its cultural and chronological attribution very difficult.

Several sites of Middle Palaeolithic appearance were found closer to the river: Sambra and Umm Aushush. The industry is made of fine yellow chert from local outcrops, and consists of denticulates, notches and some side scrapers; both the overall character of the technology and the tool percentages remind us of the Denticulate Mousterian of Lower Nubia Marks,1968, pp.205-215, as yet unrecorded in the Central Sudan. This evidence looked at first convincing to us, but there are some important caveats: the sites and tool samples are fairly small, the chert outcrops naturally in flake forms, and the retouch was always - suspiciously - irregular. Even though we carefully sorted out the "good" flakes - distinguished from the purely thermal by a clear bulb of percussion at one of the ends - the cultural characterization of these products needs further confirmation.

Spatially located between the aforementioned find spots, but nearer to the earlier group, at about 14 km from the river, was the only supposedly Late or Epi-Palaeolithic site discovered in the survey, located near the village of Arrehana. The raw material had radically changed to small white quartz pebbles, in spite of the abundant Nubian sandstone found in the vicinity of the site. The assemblage was rather poor in tools, and consisted mainly of crescents, perforators, backed and denticulated blades, and retouched flakes, all of them of very small dimension. The poor microlithic technology, based more on small flakes than on blades, together with the kind of rock used, is somewhat reminiscent of the "flake" group of the Epi-Palaeolithic in the Upper Atbara river, unfortunately unpublished except for some preliminary descriptions Elamin,1987, pp.41-42; Marks et al.,1987, pp.141, 159. A few, highly eroded sherds were also found - one of them with double-stamp impressed lines- together with two fragmented perforated discs in sandstone, but the appearance of the site is clearly different to the Mesolithic sites, which are typically covered by sherds (but see Caneva and Marks,1990.

Only two sites dating back to the Neolithic were found in the survey; they were badly destroyed by modern quarrying activities. No Mesolithic sites at all were discovered in this field season. Interestingly enough, both sites aligned parallel to the modern river together with the Neolithic site of Haj Yusif, of the Shaheinab phase, which was discovered by Arkell in 1942, and thus has been recently excavated by the Spanish Mission Fernández et al.,1989.

The site of Umm Dom is just beside a big and deep, recent quarry hole, and merely consisted of a few rocker impressed sherds scattered on the surface. The site of Soba, some several hundred meters from the Medieval ruins and the modern village, is located on a very small elevation of sand and gravel (the same kind of deposit as in Haj Yusif and Umm Dom). Although, after an intensive inspection, only some fifty sherds could be gathered, they proved to be very interesting. Most of them were impressed with the rocker technique (in one case with dotted wavy lines) typical of the Shaheinab phase, but a few showed other types of decoration: simple impression of dots forming triangles, a combination of impressed dots and incised lines, and one single sherd with a thick overted rim decorated with incision and impression. This compound of old and new decoration attributes seems to be typical of the Late Neolithic phase, as yet only known in an area 200 km south of Khartoum (mainly in the site of Rabak: Haaland,1987a,pp.45-47, Fig. 14; Haaland,1987b,pp,57-59, Figs. 8-9.

Even though the survey undertaken by the Spanish Mission in 1990 field season was very brief, its main objective being to get acquainted with the area and begin geological and archaeological study of the east bank of the river, the outcome appears to be very attractive and promising for future research work. In short, we have been lucky enough to discover a group of sites which, albeit structurally unimportant in appearance or damaged by subsequent erosion, seem to fill some of the previously existing archaeological gaps in the region for the Palaeolithic and Late Neolithic periods.

Some evidence has been found of the human presence in the area during the Old Stone Age, including probable Middle and Late Palaeolithic remains that could seriously weaken the often quoted thesis that this part of Central Sudan was unihabited during a great part of that time span, especially in the terminal Pleistocene Clark,1980, pp.560-561; Caneva and Marks,1990.

The site of Soba is the first discovered in the area-related to the more southern Jebel Moya group and apparently belongs to the final stages of the Neolithic when - as it has been repeatedly proposed - there was a partial desertion of the Khartoum Nile environment between 5000 and 3000 B,P, Haaland,1987a, pp.224-227; Haaland,1987b, pp. 56-59. The unstructured character of the site, not totally explained by erosion and/or modern damage, is possibly due to the essentially nomadic way of life that the riverrine population adopted from the Early Neolithic onwards Caneva,1988,pp.370.

Some corrections of this paper have been possible before its final publication, according to the more extensive data from the 1992 survey. We were greatly surprised in the first survey by the absence of Mesolithic sites, which sharply contrasted with the great amount of remains found north of Khartoum by the Italian Mission Caneva,1988, p. 37. This now holds good only for the area between Khartoum North and Soba, but immediately at south of this locality following the river and to the northeast at both banks of Wadi Soba, continuous alignments of Mesolithic sites (both of the Wavy Line and the Dotted Wavy Line pottery types) have been recorded in the last field season. As for the Palaeolithic remains, a thorough research of the desert area did not confirm the previously supposed importance of the evidence; no new sites for any period were discovered, and the Gala el Haddadia surface assemblages probably correspond to temporary workshops of mobile groups.

Arkell,A.J. 1949, The Old Stone Age in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, in: Sudan Antiquities Service Occasional Papers, 1, Khartoum

Caneva,I. (ed.) 1988, El Geili: The History of a Middle Nile Environment 7000 B.C.- A.D. 1500. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 29, BAR Int.Series 424, Oxford.

Caneva,I. and A.E.Marks 1990, Prehistoric Surveys in the Upper Nile Valley: From Site to Region, in: 7th Int, Conference for Nubian Studies, Prepublications of Main Papers, Geneva (cf. Et.Nub. Geneve I, 1993,pp.61-78)

Clark,J.D., 1980, Human Populations and Cultural Adaptations in the Sahara and Nile during Prehistoric Times, in: M.A.J.Williams and H.Faure (eds.), The Sahara and the Nile (Quaternary Environments and Prehistoric Occupation in Norther Africa), Rotterdam (Balkema),pp. 527-582.

Elamin,Y.M. 1987, The Later Palaeolithic in Sudan in the Light of New Data from the Atbara, In: Nubian Culture, pp. 33-46.

Fernández,V.M. 1985a, Las técnicas de muestreo en prospección arqueológica. in: Revista de Investgación (C.U.Soria)9(3),pp.7-47.

Fernández,V.M. 1985b, La seriación automática en arqueología: introducctión histórica y aplicaciones, in: Trabajos de Prehistoria 42, pp.9-49.

Haaland,R. 1987a, Socio-Economic Differentiation in the Neolithic Sudan, Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 20, BAR Int.Series 350, Oxford.

Haaland,R. 1987b, Problems in the Mesolithic and Neolithic Culture-History in the Central Nile Valley, Sudan, in: Nubian Culture, pp. 47-74.

Marks,A.E. 1968, The Mousterian Industries of Nubia, in: Wendorf,F.(ed.), The Prehistory of Nubia, Fort Burgwin Research Center and SMU, Dallas, pp. 194-314.

Marks,A.E. Peters J, VanNeer W. 1987, Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Occupations in the Upper Atbara River Valley, Sudan, in: A.E.Close(ed.), Prehistory of Arid North Africa (Essays in Honor of Fred Wendorf), Dallas (Southern Methodist University Press), pp. 137-161

Plog S. 1976, Relative Efficiencies of Sampling Techniques for Archaeological Survey, in: K.V.Flannery(ed.), The Early Mesoamerican Village, New York (Academic Press), pp. 136-158.

Translated into Arabic by Osama Elnur

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