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🇬🇧 Damboya

The Damboya archaeological site, first identified in 1975 and surveyed in 2002 by Patrice Lenoble and Vincent Rondot, is located 270 km north of Khartoum near Shendi, close to the el-Hassa concession (1.7 km away), of which it forms part. In 2019, the Musée du Louvre incorporated the concession into its Department of Egyptian Antiquities and recently renewed its partnership with NCAM through a formal agreement. Marc Maillot, the mission’s current director, expressed a desire to initiate archaeological excavations at Damboya as part of his responsibilities as director of the SFDAS (French Section of the Sudan Antiquities Authority). Consequently, a scientific cooperation agreement was signed between the Musée du Louvre and the SFDAS, enabling the Damboya excavation to begin in 2020 under the aegis of the SFDAS.

The Damboya site has long been recognized for its potential to provide valuable insights. The results from a magnetometric survey conducted in 2008 on the central part of the site were promising for a detailed study of urban settlements along the Nile in central Sudan, particularly in relation to one of the major Meroitic period sites, el-Hassa. This partial survey covered an area of 2.35 hectares, divided into eight 50 x 50 m square modules, a 40 x 50 m rectangular module, and a 40 x 40 m square module. Within this prospecting area, two buildings were identified. The first, situated on the largest hill of the site, measures at least 80 by 60 meters and contains several large internal subdivisions ranging from 10 to 20 meters on each side. South of this central hill, a smaller building measuring 18 by 20 meters was clearly visible, also featuring small internal partitions. Additional magnetic anomalies were detected across the surveyed area, though these were irregular and likely created by tracks rather than structures.

These findings allowed the SFDAS archaeological team to identify the most promising sectors for a long-term study of the Damboya settlement, following a final two-day on-site survey.

The archaeological team is made up of the following members: Marc Maillot, director of the SFDAS, in charge of sector A and head of the mission; Romain David, SFDAS researcher, ceramologist; Gabrielle Choimet, doctoral student at Sorbonne Universités, in charge of sectors B, C, D and E; Coralie Prenat, SFDAS international volunteer; Emma Maines, anthropologist, Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne and Musée de l’Homme, in charge of the medieval necropolis; Giorgio Nogara, archaeologist, Université Lille 3 and associate member of the SFDAS; Sébastien Poudroux, topographer; Wafa Sharif Dawod Hussein, student at Nileein University, ceramologist.

Four sectors were opened, three of which (B, C, and D) revealed only residual remains and virgin soil close to the surface, at around 40 cm depth. In contrast, the two main sectors, A and E, proved to be very rich in archaeological material. These were selected due to their strategic positions flanking the site’s main hill, which itself is too extensive to be fully explored within the scope and resources of the SFDAS’s five-year archaeological plan.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
sfdas (4 novembre 2024). 🇬🇧 Damboya. SFDAS Khartoum. Consulté le 14 janvier 2026 à l’adresse https://sfdas.hypotheses.org/5624


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