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Landmark archaeological excavations that radically revise the early history of Africa. For the past fifty years, Charles Bonnet has been excavating sites in present-day Sudan and Egypt that point to the existence of a sophisticated ancient black African civilization thriving alongside the Egyptians. In The Black Kingdom of the Nile, he gathers the results of these excavations to reveal the distinctively indigenous culture of the black Nubian city of Kerma, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush. This powerful and complex political state organized trade to the Mediterranean basin and built up a military strong enough to resist Egyptian forces. Further explorations at Dukki Gel, north of Kerma, reveal a major Nubian fortified city of the mid-second millennium BCE featuring complex round and oval structures. Bonnet also found evidence of the revival of another powerful black Nubian society, seven centuries after Egypt conquered Kush around 1500 BCE, when he unearthed seven life-size granite statues of Black Pharaohs (ca. 744–656 BCE). Bonnet’s discoveries have shaken our understanding of the origins and sophistication of early civilization in the heart of black Africa. Until Bonnet began his work, no one knew the extent and power of the Nubian state or the existence of the Black Pharaohs who presided successfully over their lands. The political, military, and commercial achievements revealed in these Nubian sites challenge our long-held belief that the Egyptians were far more advanced than their southern neighbors and that black kingdoms were effectively vassal states. Charles Bonnet’s discovery of this lost black kingdom forces us to rewrite the early history of the African continent.
The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.
Animals have played a fundamental role in shaping human history, and the study of their remains from archaeological sites - zooarchaeology - has gradually been emerging as a powerful discipline and crucible for forging an understanding of our past. This Handbook offers a cutting-edge, global compendium of zooarchaeology that seeks to provide a holistic view of the role played by animals in past human cultures. Case studies from across five continents explore ahuge range of human-animal interactions from an array of geographical, historical, and cultural contexts, and also illuminate the many approaches and methods adopted by different schools and traditions instudying these relationships.
As reflected in the title From Microcosm to Macrocosm: Individual households and cities in Ancient Egypt and Nubia, both a micro-approach introducing microhistories of individual sites according to recent archaeological fieldwork incorporating interdisciplinary methods as well as general patterns and regional developments in Northeast Africa are discussed. This combination of research questions on the micro-level with the macro-level provides new information about cities and households in Ancient Egypt and Nubia and makes the book unique. Architectural studies as well as analyses of material culture and the new application of microarchaeology, here especially of micromorphology and archaeometric applications, are presented as case studies from sites primarily dating to the New Kingdom (Second Millennium BC). The rich potential of well-preserved but still not completely explored sites in modern Sudan, especially as direct comparison for already excavated sites located in Egypt, is in particular emphasised in the book. Settlement archaeology in Egypt and Nubia has recently moved away from a strong textual approach and generalised studies to a more site-specific approach and household studies. This new bottom-up approach applied by current fieldwork projects is demonstrated in the book. The volume is intended for all specialists at settlements sites in Northeast Africa, for students of Egyptology and Nubian Studies, but it will be of interest to anyone working in the field of settlement archaeology. It is the result of a conference on the same subject held in 2017 as the closing event of the European Research Council funded project AcrossBorders at Munich.
In the 12th Dynasty (ca. 1985-1773 BC) the Egyptian state sent a number of seafaring expeditions to the land of Punt, located somewhere in the southern Red Sea region, in order to bypass control of the upper Nile by the Kerma kingdom. Excavations at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis on the Red Sea coast of Egypt from 2001 to 2011 have uncovered evidence of the ancient harbor (Saww) used for these expeditions, including parts of ancient ships, expedition equipment and food – all transported ca. 150 km across the desert from Qift in Upper Egypt to the harbor. This book summarizes the results of these excavations for the organization of these logistically complex expeditions, and evidence at the harbor for the location of Punt. “[There] is no shortage of analysis relating to the Punt expeditions, much of which is likely to become the new ‘standard’ account of these voyages and of the huge logistical and ideological undertaking they represented. The volume will therefore be of immense value to scholars and students of ancient Egypt, and of ancient seafaring more generally.” - Julian Whitewright, University of Southampton, in: The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 48.2 (2019)
The Encyclopedia opens with a general map of the region and a chronology of periods and dynasties, providing a context for the entries. The first section of the volume then comprises 14 overviews which explore the history and significance of each period. The main body of the text offers more than 300 alphabetically organized entries, written by some of the most eminent scholars in this field. Areas covered include: artefacts - glass, jewellery, sculpture archaeological practices - dating techniques, representational evidence, textual sources biographies - Howard Carter, Gertrude Caton Thompson, Gaston Maspero buildings - cult temples, private tombs, pyramid complexes geographical features - agriculture, climate, irrigation sites - Abydos, Dakhla Oasis, Thebes social organization - kingship, law, taxation The text is extensively illustrated with over 120 images. Each entry is followed by a selected further reading section which includes foreign language sources to supplement the available works in English.