Archaeobotany – Jebel Barkal Archaeological Project

Tiny Traces, Careful Thinking – How Broken Pots Tell Human Stories

Archaeobotany, Ceramics / Rebecca Bradshaw / January 30, 2026

by Saskia Buechner-Matthews and Anna den Hollander Broken pottery sherds may look ordinary, but in archaeology they can open doors to entire past worlds—if we ask the right questions and listen carefully. Through organic residue analysis, archaeologists study traces of organic molecules such as lipids, proteins, DNA, and carbohydrates that become embedded in the ceramic […]

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We’re back on site!

Archaeobotany, Community Engagement, Excavation, Geomorphology, News, Small Finds / Rebecca Bradshaw / April 10, 2025

We know it’s been a mixed bag of news from us recently, what with one round of funding won and another lost; the release of new publications celebrating the results of years of work contrasting with the ongoing reports of cultural catastrophe at the National Museum. But we can’t help but relish being back doing

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Check out our new published research!

Archaeobotany, Conservation, Events, Excavation, Ground Penetrating Radar, News, Publications / Rebecca Bradshaw / March 26, 2025

A quick note to alert JBAP website subscribers to newly published research produced by our busy team! In the latest issue of the Sudan & Nubia journal, we present the results of *five years* of investigation, excavation and conservation at Jebel Barkal. Key findings from our 2018-23 seasons include: · The existence of dense urban architecture all

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Plant remains from Jebel Barkal

Archaeobotany / Geoff Emberling / February 22, 2023

Here is a post from Anna den Hollander, PhD student at University College London, on archaeobotanical and environmental analysis at Jebel Barkal: The excavation at Jebel Barkal focusses on non-elite contexts, and an important question we want to answer about daily life in these residences is the relation between the people who lived there and

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Agriculture and plants at Jebel Barkal

Archaeobotany, Excavation / Geoff Emberling / September 25, 2022

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

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