“Archaeology is always a race against the clock,”
August 13, 2018 7:41 AM   Subscribe

A research team from the British Museum is excavating and recording a site at Amara West in Sudan, along the Nile, in what was ancient Nubia. But can people save and Rediscover Ancient Nubia Before It Is Too Late? posted by the man of twists and turns (2 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
In a slightly serendipitous moment, I was learning about the Nubian language earlier, which still continues. I like to think of myself as educated, but there is so much rich history - especially non-Western or non-Mediterranean - that I have yet to discover.

Rescue archaeology is so very important. It would be wonderful if we never had to build or develop on any significant sites, but I also recognize that the needs of the current people living in a place outweigh my fascination with the past. (Okay, one of the posts makes a point that locals don't always benefit from development projects - but other times they do.) We have to do what we can to balance the needs of the region with the interest of scholarly study.
posted by jb at 10:11 AM on August 13, 2018 [2 favorites]


Man, this seems so terribly romantic: gather a team, collect gear, and jump on a plane flying into a danger zone!

Are there considerations of whether a "digital-only" approach of purely documenting the site, but not taking out artifacts, is more likely to be approved by the host country? Is it as valuable, on a "better than nothing" basis?

My first world intuition is that poorer societies would favor development activity over archaeology, but there are lessons from their own past that could inform current life (e.g., where water used to run versus where it is found now). How do they convince host countries to stop everything while they work?
posted by wenestvedt at 12:53 PM on August 14, 2018


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