1The “French Unit” of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museum (Ncam) has been conducting archaeological explorations of the Nile Valley for the past 50 years. This long-lasting tradition of collaboration with the Sudanese antiquity service has produced numerous academic papers and books that have enriched our knowledge of the great civilisations which successively settled in the Middle Nile valley (Cabon et al. 2017). Since the end of the 20th century, the Sfdas has been essentially involved in the excavation of the Meroitic (3rd century bc-4th century ad) remains: two necropolises in Middle Nubia, one at Saï and the other at Sedeinga, and a cultic area at el-Hassa and at Damboya in Central Sudan; additionally the Louvre Museum excavated the Meroitic town of Muweis some 40km south of el-Hassa. Consequently, material studies greatly thrived from the number of artefacts uncovered and helped to draw the outlines of the renewal of Meroitic studies. Among these, ceramic studies represent a particularly developed field of research under the aegis of the Sfdas.

2Since the pioneering work of W.Y. Adams (1986) who presented a sum of his research conducted in Lower Nubia in a comprehensive approach, studies of ceramics from the Meroitic period flourished in Upper Nubia down to the Khartoum region. They highlighted the diversity of the pottery productions as well as the complexity of the chronological frame in which they were produced. Despite decades of research, we are still lacking a generic tool organising the pottery found in the Meroe region by type and chronology to serve as a basis for the development of cultural and economic approaches of the Meroitic ceramic (David 2019). Filling this gap is one of the main purposes of the Sfdas which benefits from the various excavations in which its team is involved.

Meroitic Pottery or Pottery from the Meroitic Period?

3Until now, the definition of what a Meroitic pottery is has not been conclusive. An ambivalence of terminology can be witnessed by ascribing the term Meroitic to productions dated to the Meroitic period even if we do not know if they were really made by people belonging to the Meroitic political and cultural sphere. Ceramic technology (see Section ii.5) is particularly helpful when approaching this topic and its limitation. When applied to the material of the Meroe region, such methodology provides an overview of the variety of techniques used contemporaneously to produce pots (David, Evina 2016). One may assume that these techniques are related to various social groups from different regions of what is today Sudan and who used to meet in the Nile valley. Potters mastering the wheel and producing the famous Fine Ware (fig. 66) probably under political power control (David, Evina 2015) had likely not much in common with the ones moulding their black ceramics in a sub-Saharan tradition or with others manufacturing their pots with a paddle-and-anvil method on a mat (fig. 67 c), except the fact that they were living together. In such case, ceramic study can help to define the cultural features of each production and its link with specific social groups, the origins of which are still to be determined. However, recent exploration of the outskirts of the Meroitic Empire, within the southern region of the Gezira, in the desert reaching Darfur to the West or in the deserts to the east up to the Ethiopian border, is expected to provide a complete reassessment of our knowledge of these populations (e.g. Barnard 2008; Brass 2016; Gratien 2013).

Figure 66. Fine ware bowl from Berber (B-1-1)

Regional Features of the Production and Internal Economy

4Consequently, research tends to focus on the regional features of the ceramic production and leads to a subdivision of the Meroitic Empire and its outskirts into broad cultural areas. Along the Nile, Nubia, the Meroe region, the region south of Khartoum, then the Darfur/ Kordofan to the west and the deserts to the east can be distinguished according to their ceramic traditions (Robertson, Hill 1999). Within the Nile Valley, the typological differences are qualified through an obvious political and economic centralisation of the power involving relays scattered along the Nile valley. For instance, standardised containers or widespread vessels reflect an internal trade and reveal the distribution network of the Meroitic Empire (David 2018). Some types of jars point out the evolution of the ceramic production of the Meroe heartland as well as the continuity of the supply of goods to the out-skirting regions from the Early Meroitic period to its end. Thanks to them, it has been possible to identify the shift from hand-made to wheel-made production of containers which were probably used for shipping goods during the 1st century ad (fig. 67 a-b), replaced at the end of the Meroitic period by hand-made mat impressed jars that became the chronological marker of the post-Meroitic transitional phase (fig. 67 c).

Figure 67. The containers of the Meroitic and post-Meroitic periods

5The regional features of the pottery production appear to be better observed through the scope of funerary archaeology, partly because Sudanese archaeology only turned to urban exploration recently, thus most of the documentation available stems from the multiple cemeteries excavated over the last century. Moreover, local customs are considered to be better evidenced in a grave, with a selected funerary set, than in a town. For instance, the people from the Middle Nubian area were buried along with a long-necked bottle (fig. 68 a) the distribution of which appears quite limited (Leclant 1985). In the Meroe region, black hand-made bottles (fig. 68 b) seem to fulfil the same function within a rather restricted area situated between Khartoum and Meroe (Lenoble 1995).

Figure 68. a) Long-necked bottle from Sedeinga (Middle Nubia); b) Hand-made black bottle from Meroe

6The development of laboratory analyses is also expected to provide more clues to approach these issues. The study undertaken at Musawwarat es-Sufra—the only excavated workshop of the Meroitic period up to now—serves as a model for future research to identify a specific production and to highlight its distribution (Daszkiewick, Wetendorf 2014). However, the homogeneity of the Nile clay, the chemical composition of which does not vary enough to enable to correctly locate the sources, is still an obstacle which needs to be overcome if we want to enlarge these first results to the majority of the productions of the Meroitic period. A scientific programme will shortly be launched to address this topic through precise chemical analyses.

Chronology and Typology

7The growing interest in urban archaeology generated a considerable number of new shapes devoted to daily use. While the ceramic found in funerary contexts supplies valuable information relating to the chronology of any archaeological context dated to the Meroitic period (Bashir, David 2015), a great range of ordinary wares from domestic areas does not find any parallels in the corpus of selected funerary items. Moreover, the variety of the production is such that there is no existing classification representative of the material found. Each site being unique and each ceramic specialist having a personal system of classification despite common methods, comparisons between sites are still based on morphological parallels rather than well-defined productions. A recent attempt has been made to homogenise the classification system of the productions found in the Meroe region based on the ceramic material from 3 sites, namely Muweis, El-Hassa and Hamadab (see David et al. forthcoming). This helps to characterise and compare the appearance of each isolated production from the three abovementioned sites according to their context (cultural, craft or domestic area) and within a broad chronological sequence (from the Early Meroitic to the Early Christian periods). The preliminary results show better appraisal of the evolution of the ceramic production in the Meroe region as well as the identification of chronological markers (David 2019).

Figure 69. Ezzeldin al-Hadj interviewing a potter at Khartoum (Al-Gamair)

Concluding Remarks

8The promising work undertaken over the last decade in the region of Meroe is about to change our perception of the ceramic production during the Meroitic period radically. More focus on the cultural and economic background of the production through both the technological approach and the laboratory analyses led to the renewal of the issues raised by the ceramic material.

9More attention is also paid to the use of the ceramics, for instance through research programmes on the food traditions in Ancient Sudan (see Section v.5). Other prospects such as systematic archaeological exploitation of the production centres could be considered as the next step of the research to explore the organisation of production and the Meroitic industrial network as well as their anchoring within the cultural frame of the Sudanese ancient societies.