Wadi Abu Dom Investigations – El Rum Oasis

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Angelika Lohwasser
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies ; African, American and Oceania Studies ; Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 425862242

The oasis of El Rum is located in the lower Wadi Abu Dom in the Bayuda desert in Sudan, about 330 km northwest of Khartoum. There are at least four important ancient building complexes which, according to our current knowledge, date to Late Antiquity, several necropoleis mainly of the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD, as well as various other archaeological sites of different periods (e.g. settlement sites and pastoralist camp sites). Irrigation agriculture in the oasis was (and still is) enabled by a tight network of wells. Although the lower Wadi Abu Dom - only a day's journey from the Nile - can be seen as the hinterland of the Kushite religious centre around Napata and Jebel Barkal, the applicant's survey project "Wadi Abu Dom Itinerary" and the first project phase of the current research project "Wadi Abu Dom Investigations - El Rum Oasis" have so far found little evidence implying a closer cultural, political and economic integration of El Rum oasis into the Kushite or Makurian state. The second phase of the project continues the excavations and landscape archaeological research at El Rum Oasis from the first project phase. The core scientific questions are the ecological and socio-economic development of the oasis in the Iron Age and the early Medieval period, its adaptation to fluctuating climatic and ecological conditions (i.e. the early Medieval Climate Anomaly), as well as its cultural, political-administrative and economic relationship to the core areas of the Meroitic and Nubian medieval states along the Nile valley. In particular, the focus will be on further archaeological research at the building complex Umm Ruweim 1 as well as geo-archaeological excavations and soil analysis around the historical wells in the oasis. This will be closely augmented by a broader investigation of the historical hydrology, landscape ecology and land use development of its catchment area. To meet these research objectives, close transdisciplinary cooperation is necessary between researchers from the fields of archaeology, geology, geoinformatics, landscape ecology, zoology and botany.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants