Jul 3, 2013

ArcheoNews

Article
Coming soon in the 2013 issue of the journal Sahara (due out this month) if anyone is interested:
"Revisiting a hoary chestnut: The nature of early cattle domestication in North-East Africa
By; Michael Brass 
 

Jun 1, 2013

ArcheoTube

Watch "BBC Walking with Beasts - Mammoth journey" on YouTube

ArcheoNews

Scientists Debate the Prospects for Bringing Woolly Mammoth Back to Life http://www.theworld.org/2013/05/scientists-debate-the-prospects-for-bringing-woolly-mammoth-back-to-life/

May 19, 2013

نشاطات محلية

عبر الفيسبوك
طلاب جامعة النيلين في موسم آثاري في منطقة رخصة الجامعة بين السبلوقة وحجر العسل بقيادة الشاب المثابر احمد كبوشية.. بالتوفيق للشباب

Apr 21, 2013

Stonehenge may have Mesolithic roots

Via Archaeology Magazine

Mesolithic settlement dating to 7500 B.C. has been found about a mile away from Stonehenge. Archaeologist David Jacques of Open University began examining the area, which has a freshwater spring, thinking that hunter-gatherers would gather near water, where they could find animals. The people who lived in this settlement may have been responsible for erecting the first wooden posts at Stonehenge between 8500 and 7000 B.C. “The whole landscape is full of prehistoric monuments and it is extraordinary in a way that this has been such a blind spot for so long archaeologically,” he said.

Apr 19, 2013

ArcheoNews

Link: Kushite royal palace found in Sonijat |

The largest ever located according to the Polish mission excavating it  by Archaeology newsroom - Friday, 5 April 2013
The largest known royal palace of Kush  (namely 5000 square meters) has been found according to Polish news reports. The excavation campaign was led by Dr Bogdan Zurawski; the team had already found a temple at the site in 1998.
The discovery was made on the rightside bank of the Nile between the third and fourth cataracts in Sonijat, in the Sudanese region of Tergis. The name of the region Tergis derives from the ancient city Tergedus, mentioned in the description of Nero’s expedition of 60 AD (see Pliny the Elder, “Natural History”, book 6).
Zurawski suggests that Tergis / Tergedus is to be equated with the city Trgb which is known from the expedition to Nubia by Pharaoh Psamtek II in 593 BC, and with an unnamed location (in the “Krtn” nome) mentioned in the 5th c. BC stela of Kushite king Irike Amannote.
These texts (or one of them?) mention a ruined royal palace, so the present discovey of such a royal palace, combined with the geography (located halfway between Napata and Kawa), now proves these equations.

Mar 31, 2013

35 Ancient Pyramids Discovered in Sudan Necropolis


35 Ancient Pyramids Discovered in Sudan Necropolis



Source: LiveScience
At least 35 small pyramids, along with graves, have been discovered clustered closely together at a site called Sedeinga in Sudan.
Discovered between 2009 and 2012, researchers are surprised at how densely the pyramids are concentrated. In one field season alone, in 2011, the research team discovered 13 pyramids packed into  roughly 5,381 square feet (500 square meters), or  slightly larger than an NBA basketball court.
They date back around 2,000 years to a time when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan. Kush shared a border with Egypt and, later on, the Roman Empire. The desire of the kingdom's people to build pyramids was apparently influenced by Egyptian funerary architecture.
Among the discoveries are pyramids with a circle built inside them, cross-braces connecting the circle to the corners of the pyramid. Outside of Sedeinga only one pyramid is known to have been built in this way. 
CREDIT: Photo copyright Vincent Francigny/SEDAU 
At Sedeinga, researchers say, pyramid building continued for centuries. "The density of the pyramids is huge," said researcher Vincent Francigny, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an interview with LiveScience. "Because it lasted for hundreds of years they built more, more, more pyramids and after centuries they started to fill all the spaces that were still available in the necropolis." [See Photos of the Newly Discovered Pyramids]

The biggest pyramids they discovered are about 22 feet (7 meters) wide at their base with the smallest example, likely constructed for the burial of a child, being only 30 inches (750 millimeters) long. The tops of the pyramids are not attached, as the passage of time and the presence of a camel caravan route resulted in damage to the monuments. Francigny said that the tops would have been decorated with a capstone depicting either a bird or a lotus flower on top of a solar orb.
The building continued until, eventually, they ran out of room to build pyramids. "They reached a point where it was so filled with people and graves that they had to reuse the oldest one," Francigny said.
Francigny is excavation director of the French Archaeological Mission to Sedeinga, the team that made the discoveries. He and team leader Claude Rilly published an article detailing the results of their 2011 field season in the most recent edition of the journal Sudan and Nubia.
The inner circle
Among the discoveries were several pyramids designed with an inner cupola (circular structure) connected to the pyramid corners through cross-braces. Rilly and Francigny noted in their paper that the pyramid design resembles a "French Formal Garden."
Only one pyramid, outside of Sedeinga, is known to have been constructed this way, and it's a mystery why the people of Sedeinga were fond of the design. It "did not add either to the solidity or to the external aspect [appearance] of the monument," Rilly and Francigny write.
A discovery made in 2012 may provide a clue, Francigny said in the interview. "What we found this year is very intriguing," he said. "A grave of a child and it was covered by only a kind of circle, almost complete, of brick." It's possible, he said, that when pyramid building came into fashion at Sedeinga it was combined with a local circle-building tradition called tumulus construction, resulting in pyramids with circles within them.


An offering for grandma?
The graves beside the pyramids had largely been plundered, possibly in antiquity, by the time archaeologists excavated them. Researchers did find skeletal remains and, in some cases, artifacts. 
One of the most interesting new finds was an offering table found by the remains of a pyramid. . It appears to depict the goddess Isis and the jackal-headed god Anubis and includes an inscription, written in Meroitic language, dedicated to a woman named "Aba-la," which may be a nickname for "grandmother," Rilly writes.
It reads in translation:
Oh Isis! Oh Osiris!
It is Aba-la.
Make her drink plentiful water;
Make her eat plentiful bread;
Make her be served a good meal.
The offering table with inscription was a final send-off for a woman, possibly a grandmother, given a pyramid burial nearly 2,000 years ago.


Mar 2, 2013


 قسم الآثار : الفائز بكأس وميدالية المعرض الأول من بين 20 معرضا مشاركا 
في فعاليات مؤتمر الدراسات الانسانية والتربوية الذي نظمته كلية الدراسات العليا








Feb 25, 2013

مؤتمر الدراسات الانسانية والتربوية للكليات والمعاهد .. جامعة الخرطوم

المصدر: اخبار جامعة الخرطوم

شهد صباح اليوم الإثنين الموافق 25 فبراير للعام 2013م إفتتاح المعارض المصاحبة لمؤتمر الدراسات الإنسانية والتربوية للكليات ومعاهد ومراكز الجامعة ، وذلك بحضور السيد رئيس مجلس الجامعة ومدير الجامعة وعمداء الكليات والمعاهد والمراكز ورؤساء الأقسام ، و أفاد البروفسير عبد الملك محمد عبد الرحمن المدير الاسبق للجامعة بأنه ( سعيد جداً فى هذه اللحظات أشعر أننى فى جامعة وهذا ما يتوافق مع الرسالة الجامعية ) ، وقد عبر د.مصطفى البله عميد شوؤن الطلاب أن هذه المعارض نشاط مقدر من قبل الكليات والمعاهد حيث تعكس المجهودات التى قد بذلت رغم الظروف وتوقف العمل ، أما البروفسير عبدالرحيم السيد كرار أن هذه المعارض تدل على مدى موهبة وذكاء وتميز طلاب جامعة الخرطوم .

Feb 24, 2013

صدور كتاب (الإنسان والبيئة في الوطن العربي في ضوء الاكتشافات الآثارية) عن مجلة أدوماتو

صدور كتاب (الإنسان والبيئة في الوطن العربي في ضوء الاكتشافات الآثارية) عن مجلة أدوماتو

Jan 14, 2013

ArcheoPosters

جامعة كولون. مشروع اكاشيا . مشروع قلعة ابو احمد . عرض فريدريكا جسي وانجليكا لوواسير . ترجمة ازهري مصطفى صادق
University of Cologne. SFB 389 ACACIA and. »Project »Gala Abu Ahmed. Poster by Friederike Jesse and Angelika Lohwasser.
Translation by Azhari Sadig .

http://www.fstafrika.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/fileadmin/fstafrika/GAA/GAA_pdf/poster_GAA_arab_20210.pdf

Jan 8, 2013

Archaeonews

New fossil found in Africa
Photo: The skull of the young male Australopithecus sediba rests near the spot where he died, amid rocks he may have walked on in life.
More photos:
Malapa Fossils - Photo Gallery - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine