Archaeology, Development and Conflict: A Case Study from the African Continent

Apart from wars, other contexts of social conflict have recently become a setting in which archaeologists are faced with acute, sometimes armed, violence. On the African continent, a region often overlooked in discussions of "archaeology in conflict", rapid economic development has led to several such scenes. The paper discusses a particularly poignant example from the Middle Nile valley in Sudan, where large dam projects have been met with various levels of opposition by affected populations. Local communities opposing the construction of further planned dams on the Nile are increasingly stressing 'cultural survival' and fear of 'developmental genocide' as two of their major motivations for fighting these projects. Assuming a close link between the developer and archaeological salvage missions, affected people have started to use the expulsion of salvage teams from their territory as a strategy of resistance-posing an ethical dilemma for the archaeologists who struggle to find a position in the increasingly violent controversies accompanying these contested development projects. © 2013 World Archaeological Congress

Musawwarat es-Sufra, Sudan. Developing a Collaborative Archaeology of Pastoralism in the Hinterland of the Nile. Research between 2021 and 2023

The valley of Musawwarat es-Sufra, with its numerous temples and other built structures, was one of the primary ceremonial centres of the Kingdom of Kush. Today, it is a major national heritage site in Sudan and part of the »Archaeological Sites of the Island of Meroe« UNESCO World Heritage site. While research and preservation efforts have long focused on the monumental built structures as part of the (Early) Meroitic state’s symbolic landscape, a new collaborative archaeology project aims to complement and counter this perspective by focusing on the lifeways of past and present pastoralist populations in the drylands of the Musawwarat region. Based on a research partnership with members of the local pastoralist communities, who have long been involved in the study and preservation of Musawwarat as workmen and guards, we explore materialities of pastoralism between archaeology, heritage and development.The valley of Musawwarat es-Sufra, with its numerous temples and other built structures, was one of the primary ceremonial centres of the Kingdom of Kush. Today, it is a major national heritage site in Sudan and part of the »Archaeological Sites of the Island of Meroe« UNESCO World Heritage site. While research and preservation efforts have long focused on the monumental built structures as part of the (Early) Meroitic state’s symbolic landscape, a new collaborative archaeology project aims to complement and counter this perspective by focusing on the lifeways of past and present pastoralist populations in the drylands of the Musawwarat region. Based on a research partnership with members of the local pastoralist communities, who have long been involved in the study and preservation of Musawwarat as workmen and guards, we explore materialities of pastoralism between archaeology, heritage and development