Survey & Excavations

Tombos Excavation

In 2000, Dr. Smith led an archaeological expedition to Tombos in Sudanese Nubia. Smith and his team uncovered the 3500 year old pyramid tomb of an ancient Egyptian colonial administrator named Siamun and his wife Wernu, along with the remains of contemporary burials of middle class Egyptians or Egyptianized Nubians. The mummified colonists were equipped with coffins, Ushabti figurines, scarabs, amulets and earrings of ivory, faience, glass, jasper and carnelian, ebony tubes and applicators for kohl eye-paint, an ebony boomerang for bird hunting, and numerous pots for food offerings, including two extremely rare Mycenean jars. (To see pictures of all of these items and more, visit the Artifacts page.)

2000 Staff: Michele Buzon, (UCSB), J. Cameron Monroe (UCLA), Elizabeth Klarich, Melissa Chatfield, and Claudia Rumold (UCSB), Antiquities Inspector Al-Hassan Ahmed Mohamed.

Additional excavations were carried out in the winter of 2001-2002. More information on this season will be posted here soon.

In the future we hope to carry out excavations to discover what lies at the bottom of Siamun’s tomb and many others, hopefully providing new insights into this vibrant society and its impact on Nubian civilization.

The UCSB West (Left) Bank Archaeological Survey from el Kab to Mograt

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) expedition began work at the fourth cataract with a reconnaissance survey on the right bank of the Nile from el Kab to the end of Mograt Island in November and December 2003. The new Merowe Dam will flood the entire area.

Our team consisted of Stuart Tyson Smith, George Herbst, Michele Buzon, and Brian Park. Hassan Mohamed Ahmed, our representative from the NCAM, ably assisted us.

The project was primarily supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0341789), with additional resources provided by UCSB.

The entire area of the concession was covered and fifty-one sites were registered. As part of our goals, we wanted to produce a digital map of the archaeological sites that we identified in the area between El Kab and Mograt. We were initially limited by the fact that current topographic maps of our study area were unavailable to us. To overcome this, we relied on the integration of satellite imagery and Global Positioning Systems data in a Geographic Information System-in this case ArcView GIS. We recorded a total of 51 sites. Neolithic and Kerma sites dominate the temporal inventory, accounting for 60% of the sites that could be dated. Meroitic sites were completely absent, and we could identify only a single Post-Meroitic cemetery, although it is likely that some of the undated tumulus cemeteries can be placed this period. Surprisingly, comparatively few Christian and Islamic sites were identified, indicating that the area was more sparsely occupied than the region further downstream, in spite of the existence of saqqia technology that would allow irrigation past the limited floodplain. This may reflect the high riverbanks, rugged terrain and large sand dunes that characterize this reach and continue to limit settlement.

Dongola Reach Survey

From 1996-98, a team led by Stuart Tyson Smith conducted intensive reconnaissance surveys in the Dongola Reach along the West Bank of the Nile running 140 km south to Khandaq. Over a hundred sites were visited, building on and extending the earlier survey of Edwards and Osman from 1992 to 1994. Much of this area had never been systematically investigated. Artifacts found during the survey can be seen in the Survey Artifacts page.

1997 Staff: Bruce Beyer Williams (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago), Julie Renée Anderson (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto), Antiquities Inspector Al Tahir Adam Al Nur.

1998 Staff: Patti Hill Rabbitt (University of California San Diego), Antiquities Inspector Ali Almirghani Mohamed Ahmed