The first PCMA Seminar in June will host a talk by Dr. Julien Cooper from Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia). His presentation is entitled “East of Nubia: Results of the Atbai Survey Project”. It is part of a series of presentations on the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea organized by Dr. Mariusz Gwiazda.
Abstract: The Sudanese Eastern Desert, “the Atbai”, is a largely unexplored archaeological landscape, surprisingly so given its strategic location between the Nile and the Red Sea and its rich archaeological heritage. Littered with goldmines, nomadic camps, and rock art sites, the archaeology of this desert is only beginning to be characterized thanks to various survey efforts over the last decades. Basic chronologies and material horizons are now known, as are general patterns of land-use and nomadic habitation. As part of this general effort, the Atbai Survey Project has uncovered many new sites dating from the palaeolithic until the medieval era, demonstrating the huge potential for further archaeological research, while also outlining persistent threats to this heritage from goldmining. This presentation will highlight some of the results from prior seasons, while focusing on the archaeological record of the desert’s indigenous inhabitants, the Blemmyes and Beja of late antiquity.
The seminar will be held in online form on Thursday, 1st June at 10.00 am UTC+2 on Zoom. To obtain a link, please write to the PCMA UW office: pcma@uw.edu.pl