Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (11.1999(2000))

DONGOLA REACH

SUDAN

DONGOLA REACH
THE SOUTHERN DONGOLA REACH
SURVEY, 1998/1999
Bogdan Zurawski

The Southern Dongola Reach Survey (SDRS) is a joint project of the Research Centre for
Mediterranean Archaeology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the National Corporation
of Antiquities and Museums of the Sudan, and is supported by the Polish Center of
Archaeology of Warsaw University and the Poznan Archaeological Museum.1'1 The second
field season was effected during the winter of 1998/1999 (December 12, 1998-February
1999). It was intended as a high intensity, wide-ranging survey with integral GPS/GIS
mapping of the right bank of the river from Old Dongola to Ed-Diffar (Fig. 1). Its pri-
mary aim was to record and assess the significance of a broad range of archaeological and
historical sites, as well as to reconstruct the variations in settlement patterns within the
southern part of the survey area.
The survey and excavations lasted until the end of February 1999. Apart from reconnoiter-
ing the right bank of the Nile, trial trenches and excavations on a limited scale were con-
ducted on a Neolithic site near Argi (field no. MG 4), in the northern part of the Napatan
temple in Soniyat, and on the post-Meroitic tumuli field north of Abkur village:2)

First season results were reported by the author in PAM X, Reports 1998 (1999), 149-160.
2> The mission was directed by the author assisted by Dr. Mahmoud El-Tayeb and Ms Malgorzata Siadkowska, and includ-
ed Mr. Piotr Osypinski, Ms Marta Gauza, Mr. Pawel Rurka, archaeologists; Mr. Tadeusz Kucharek, technical assistant. The
following students of archaeology from Warsaw University volunteered, as before, for the project: Mr. Kazimierz Kotlewski,
Ms Anna Btaszczyk, Ms Edyta Klimaszewska, Ms Paulina Terendy, Mr. Sebastian Drabot, Ms Urszula Wincenciak. Their
reconnoitering on foot, as well as drawing of the pottery and lithics was an inestimable contribution to the project. Assisted
by Gauza, Kotlewski also photographed the 1897 collected artifacts. As in the previous season, the National Corporation
for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM) provided for efficient help and competent assistance in the person of senior inspec-
tor, Mr. Amel Awad Mokhtar, who was assigned to the project.

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