Cities in the Shadow of the God Amun: New Lidar Data from Jebel Barkal

Author(s): Katherine Rose

Year: 2025

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

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This paper explores urbanism in Northern Sudan through remote sensing methods. The site of Jebel Barkal is located 400 km from Khartoum, near the Nile. The site served as the royal capital of Kush from the 8<sup>th</sup> century BCE and remained a major urban and religious center throughout the Meroitic Period. Since 2018 the Jebel Barkal Archaeological Project, in collaboration with the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums of Sudan, has been excavating and surveying areas of the East Mound where a dense settlement was identified. We present the preliminary results of new LiDAR and thermal imagery data. The LiDAR and the thermal imagery extend beyond the East Mound into the modern dense and lush agricultural fields. The data allows us to more accurately map the settlement’s spatial extent and situate it within its broader landscape context. We also identify additional features such as architecture, activity areas, and paleochannels. This work contributes to our understanding of how major Kushite cities grow, evolve, and respond to environmental factors throughout their life histories. Lastly, this paper ruminates on the impact of archaeological inquiry in Sudan, which is currently experiencing a civil war after years of political unrest, while centering Sudanese voices.

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Cite this Record

Cities in the Shadow of the God Amun: New Lidar Data from Jebel Barkal. Katherine Rose. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 510699)

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Keywords

General
Africa: Sudan • Digital Archaeology: GIS • Landscape Archaeology • Urbanism

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52017