On 12 December, the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology made an extremely exciting announcement: they have received an astonishingly generous $1.15M gift from the prominent businessman and U-M alumnus, Steve Klinsky.
This extraordinary donation will fund five of Michigan’s archaeological missions across Africa, Asia, and North America – and excitingly for us, includes our project at Jebel Barkal!
This fresh funding has the potential to exponentially boost our mission at the site in 2025-26.
As we’ve documented in this very blog, and in upcoming publications (watch this space for links!), we already have a very ambitious multi-pronged project, based on sophisticated archaeological enquiries, sustainable conservation and community engagement.
Now we can really ramp up our game. We can conduct satellite remote sensing with multispectral and radar analysis and maybe even thermal imaging; we can also invest in archaeobotany, which provides a rich window into the daily lives of Jebel Barkal’s residents, both elite and non-elite. Put together, these methods will help us to create detailed reconstructions and visualisations of the whole site for the very first time.
As readers will know from being long-term supporters of JBAP and of Sudan, this funding couldn’t come at a more crucial time. The war in Sudan sadly drags on into its second year, affecting every person and aspect of life in the country.
Continuing work at Jebel Barkal – consistently investing in Sudan’s heritage despite very real difficulties thrown up by the conflict – sends an important message to our Sudanese colleagues and to Sudanese residents that our team won’t be deterred. It is heartening that donors such as Mr Klinsky, and indeed our long-time funder the US State Department, have not been deterred either.
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For a new and important update on the war and its effect on Sudanese heritage in Jebel Barkal and elsewhere, we encourage readers to sign up for a talk, “Archaeology and Heritage During the Civil War in Sudan: What Can We Do?”, given by our director Geoff Emberling on January 8 for the American Society for Overseas Research (ASOR).