It’s been two weeks since our last substantive excavation post, so we have a lot to catch up on!
The first – perhaps most exciting – development for us has been the opening of a new trench, imaginatively titled, ‘Trench 2’. Around 20m away from Trench 1 and orientated north-south, it immediately yielded a *huge* amount of Meroitic pottery…
… As well as lots of bones!
After removing the top layers and sand, we were able to reach a depth of 50cm, revealing even more pottery and bones – and a mud structure!
We expected walls and features to appear at this level, so our plan now is to clarify that it’s not attached to anything bigger before removing it and continuing down.
But what has happened to lovely Trench 1, you ask?
Well, as noted in our previous post, we have been digging an extension to this trench and began, as always by removing the sand and top layers (and working our way around a telephone cable, as you do).
At the lowest layers – around 2.10m – we found Meroitic pottery and possibly some amphorae sherds (denoting imports) but otherwise observed no major changes to what we’d seen before. This has led us to wonder if we’re potentially digging in an ancient wadi.
That’s it for now, but we leave you with two notes to help understand the situation in which this excavation is taking place.
The first is that the team are still operating in a conflict context: at the time all this is going on, the RSF were destroying power transformers in the state, resulting in a continued lack of electricity and water. The team are therefore buying bottled water (at great expense!) or bringing it from the Nile.
The other, happier note, is pictorial, to show you very peaceful scenes of Rehab and Abdul Raouf (top) and Mohammed (below) sorting and photographing pottery at the dig house…
Stay tuned for more!
