Natural Landscape Studies (Geomorphology) at Barkal
Knowledge of the local environment is critical to understanding site formation at Jebel Barkal and the ancient city’s relationship with the Nile River and its surrounding natural landscape. In 2023, our geomorphological field research by Dr. Jan Peeters, Tim Winkels and our superb team of local workman, mainly focused on the East Mound settlement area of Jebel Barkal. This followed up on our initial field research in 2022, which aimed to map the natural subsurface of the Nile’s present floodplain just south of the East Mound. A smaller part of our work in 2023 took place on the Nile’s East Bank, across the River Nile.
Information about the subsurface was collected by means of coring, this year mainly with the use of a gasoline-powered percussion drill (many thanks to our colleague Dr. Pawel Wolf for lending us the equipment). The sediment was sampled at 10 cm intervals, and its main characteristics like sedimentary texture, modal grain-size, color, and degree of sorting, were studied and logged on-site. The borehole depth and spacing varied depending on the sequence of sediments and their heterogeneity, but typically reached an average depth of 7.5 m, with some boreholes penetrating up to 10 m.
This season we drilled a total of 13 boreholes, divided over 2 transects, with 2 separate cores in archaeological contexts. One transect, containing 7 boreholes, runs across the East Mound settlement area on the Nile’s West Bank and is oriented perpendicular to the main axis of the Nile valley and the current river (parallel to our 2022 transect). The other transect, containing 4 boreholes, is located on the East Bank of the Nile, extending our 2022 transect at the eastern side of the river. Now this important cross-section spans the entire Nile Valley near Jebel Barkal, which enables us to study the fluvial behavior of the River Nile in this area in its totality.
To better understand the complex deposits below the East Mound settlement area, and to better tie their relation to the existing archaeology, samples for Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating were collected. This OSL dating will be conducted at the Netherlands Centre for Luminescence dating at Wageningen University and Research, where Prof. Jakob Wallinga and colleagues will conduct all necessary analyses to determine the age of the sediments. Ceramic sherd fragments were also collected whenever they were found in the cultural layer and in the natural sediments and were presented to our project ceramicist Saskia Buechner-Matthews for further study. This hopefully will give us minimum age indications for our sedimentary units.
Now, after returning from the field, all geomorphologic field data will be further analyzed and interpreted, and complemented by historical maps and satellite imagery in an integrated Geographical Information System during post-seasonal desk-study.
