The Archaeology of Island of Meroe as seen from the recent discoveries north of the Royal City

Abstract

The cultural sequence of ancient Sudan has been formulated according to many aspects, depending mainly on the work of pioneer archaeologists on the first decades of the 20th century. The cultural and chronological orders known today are not far different from what has been structured by Reisner, Arkell and other early archaeologists, despite the attempts to fill the gaps here and there .This chronological order is always control the nature of the archaeological studies in Sudan archaeology, especially for the new generation, regardless the region or approaches used to analyze the cultural evidences. This is true also when new sites discovered, and attributed basically according to that cultural and chronological orders. Sites with new unknown cultural aspects may occur in many situations, but they finally dated to the same order. The island of Meroe is one of those regions, which are known with its Meroitic legacy, pyramids, temples and towns. The chronological order is well known only when taking to the account the Meroitic one, as well as very rare late Neolithic evidences from Kadada and es-Sour. The current study is a chronological and cultural survey of the east part of the Island of Meroe north of the Royal City. New sites has been discovered which will help a lot on our understanding of prehistoric as well as historic and medieval evidences on this part of the Island. The work is a part of Dept. of Archaeology, University of Khartoum survey north of Royal City of Meroe.