There is so much that we don’t know about the ancient city at Jebel Barkal, and one fundamental group of questions concerns what plants they grew for food (and other uses) and how their agriculture might have changed over time because of changing local environment, climate, and even cultural preferences. We asked Dorian Fuller at the Institute of Archaeology at UCL (London), who has done the fundamental work in “archaeobotany” in Sudan, to join the Jebel Barkal project in 2020. He was not able to come to Sudan during our field season but his student Anna den Hollander was able to join us. With lab closures in London during the pandemic, their analysis was delayed but they have just sent us a very interesting report—here are some of the highlights.
GE
Archaeobotanical finds from Jebel Barkal, 2020
Anna den Hollander
Plant remains are usually preserved in archaeological sites through charring in or near a fire, before being dispersed by different activities, deposited in pit fills, or trampled on floors and streets. Through a study of these macrobotanical materials, we can learn about cropping regimes and resource use at Jebel Barkal and in Sudan in general.
During the 2020 field season, I went to Sudan to do on-site flotation. Across several Sudanese sites it has been observed that the preservation is generally poor, with charred remains getting damaged in the flotation process. The samples from Jebel Barkal were no exception to this. Simple bucket flotation tends to be the most resource efficient flotation method and the least damaging to the charred remains. In bucket flotation, a small subset of the sample is broken up with water and poured over a 250μm mesh, a process that was repeated five times for each flotation sample to ensure the most charred fragments were recovered (see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbkfe0B4zBg).
During flotation the less dense charred remains will float to the top and are thus separated from the heavy residue, pouring over a sieve will then separate them out. The heavy residue is later processed through 2mm sieves for further analysis. The loci sampled ranged from floor surfaces, to hearths, and fills of pots. The samples were left to dry, and taken to our laboratories, where they were further analysed, and the macrobotanical remains identified using the university’s reference collection. Please bear in mind that only a few samples have been analysed so far and that preservation was generally poor: more research is needed to confirm or contest any patterns thus far observed in the data.
Among the identified seeds were the remains of several food crops, most commonly six-row hulled barley and wheat. There were a few lentils, one piece of sorghum, and six fragments of date stones. In addition, one cotton seed (Gossypium sp.) has been recovered. Potentially, the seeds of alfalfa (Trifoliae: cf. Medicago sativa) have been identified (N=5) across three different loci, which could indicate the cultivation of fodder for animals. In addition to the food crops, some small weeds were found. These include the small pulses Vicia cf. sativa, and Trifolieae tribe, the millet-grasses Echinochloa sp. and Setaria sp. which are likely weeds, as well as additional Poaceae fragments – not further identifiable. In addition, a large quantity of the carpetweed Zaleya petandra (N=18) has been identified, which grows as a weed in crop fields and fallows but is also used as cattle fodder. One locus (259) produced a seed of the umbrella thorn (Vachellia [previously Acacia] cf. tortilis), a tree whose pods and foliage are used as animal fodder, whose gum is edible and whose bark is a source for tanning animal skins. One specific type of seed (TYPE A) has not been noted from Sudanese sites before but was found in abundance at Jebel Barkal across three different loci. While it is perhaps the seed from a fleshy fruit, it remains unidentified. Lastly, some loci have returned evidence for food preparations in the form of charred food residue, which was found on those locations that generally also returned the richest and most varied assemblages.
Here are some photos taken through the microscope of some of these seeds and fragments.
Representative samples of each of the seed types identified. 1. Hordeum vulgare sensu lato (Trench A18, Locus 259), 2. Triticum sp. fragment (Trench A18 Locus 208), 3. Hordeum hexastichum (six row, hulled) (Trench A18 Locus 208), 4. Sorghum bicolor (Trench A18, Locus 239A), 5. Echinochloa sp. (Trench A18, Locus 239A), 6. Setaria sp. (Trench A18, Locus 238), 7. Immature Sorghum (Trench A18, Locus 238), 8a. Lens culinaris (Trench A18 Locus 259), 8b Lens culinaris (Trench A18 Locus 259), 9. Vicia cf. sativa. (Trench A18 Locus 239A), 10. Trifoliae cf. Medigaco sativa (Trench A18, Locus 206.2), 11. Zaleya petandra (Trench A18, Locus 206.2), 12. Phoenix dactylifera. (Trench A18, Locus 239A), 13. Unidentified seed remains (Trench A18, Locus 259), 14. Vachellia/Acacia cf. tortilis (Trench A18 Locus 259). Pictures: AMH den Hollander.
The agricultural assemblage retrieved from Jebel Barkal shows a focus on winter cereals (emmer wheat, barley) and associated pulses (lentil, pea, grasspea). The lesser presence of summer crops such as millets corresponds with the idea that millets and sorghum are likely to have been more important further south. Jebel Barkal would have been at or near the intersection between the northern savannah agricultural traditions (wheat, barley) and southern rainy season (summer) farming traditions (sorghum, millet). The small presence of millets so far in our analysis may indicate a predominant reliance on winter flood-retreat farming, but since our sample size is still very small, further sampling is necessary to confirm this. Date palms and cotton have been reported from various sites across Meroitic Sudan, with the cottons being either a local domesticate (Gossypium herbaceum) or the imported tree-cotton (Gossypium arboreum) from the Indian subcontinent. The cultivation of both date palms and cotton, which are thirsty crops, requires water management, which could be achieved either by managing the flood plains along the Nile or by growing the crops in groves similar to the modern date, grape, and fig groves found along the river. The introduction of the cattle-powered saqia (Persian waterwheel) during the 3rd century CE would have prompted the expansion of these kind of cultivation systems beyond the Nile banks, as well as facilitating agricultural production across the two seasons.
Based on these early results, what would be next? Taking the data gathered so far as a starting point, it would be ideal to undertake more targeted sampling. Since it is as of yet unclear what each of the sampled spaces were used for, including more samples from across different site areas would be crucial to establish the representativeness of the patterns observed in the data thus far. We hope to include targeted phytolith sampling in next season’s analysis to test the viability of this analysis at Jebel Barkal, and to potentially establish whether the lack of millets in the macrobotanical samples is due to preservation bias, or due a general reliance on flood irrigated winter cereals in Meroitic Jebel Barkal. We will also aim to study the preserved food remains to identify cooking preferences of the urban population.
