Nubian Desert

First published in Buzzle on 16th August 2006

Republished on the same day here:
http://sudaneseonline.com/en2/publish/Articles_and_Analysies_12/Sudan_s_Beja_Blemmyes_and_their_Right_to_Freedom_a_929.shtml

Republished on 23rd August 2006 and discussed in the forum below:
http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=62793
At the moment the misinformed international community plans to spend so easily US $ 3 billion for Lebanon's reconstruction, it is essential to highlight that much less money would be enough to bring peace in the strategically crucial area of Eastern Sudan where the Blemmyes / Beja have started their struggle for self-determination and independence. Support to historically indigenous Beja would bring the Khartoum tyrants at the brink of collapse, opening the path of independence for the oppressed peoples of Sudan, and at the same time it would reshape the entire area of the Red Sea where historical nations demand international recognition.

Le texte traite des résultats de recherches ethnologiques sur le terrain, ménées par l’auteur dans les années 2005-2011 au Soudan. Ces recherches ont été consacrées aux méthodes traditionnelles et modernes d’extraction d’or dans la région de la vallée du Nil moyen, désert de Bayouda, désert de Nubie et du Kordofan septentrional. L’auteur présente avant tout le phénomène, appélé par les médias la «ruée vers l’or» qui consiste à la recherche massive des pépites d’or avec les détecteurs de métaux. La formation d’un nouveau groupe professionnel au Soudan, à savoir dahaba était l’une des conséquences de ce phénomène. Dans ce texte on décrit aussi bien le fonctionnement, les méthodes et l’organisation du travail que le système de répartitions des profits au sein du groupe. L’auteur aborde également la question du danger potenciel du patrimoine archéologique du désert de Nubie par des fouilles visant l’exploration et l’extraction de pépites d’or.

When describing people with a mobile background especially in nomadic pastoralism who settle in the Nile valley archaeologists talk about sedentarization and ultimately assimilation into sedentary society as a one-way process. Yet, the people settling at the fringes of sedentary society not only seem to stay connected to their mobile kin groups in the Eastern desert and provide access to resources in the Nile Valley. Moreover, by strategic networking they also reconnect to the Eastern desert and provide means to expand the local outreach of their kin groups there. According to my research this is not only a feature of the modern contacts between mobile Eastern Desert groups with the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan but can be traced back during the 18th century, the medieval period and the Byzantine era as well as possibly the Bronze Age. I therefore argue that the settled subgroups of mobile groups even though seemingly immobile should not be excluded from theories on mobility but in contrast need to thought of as forming an integral part of mobility in this area.

Linking the Eastern Desert and the Nile Valley within social landscapes
Archaeological investigations in the Egyptian and Nubian Nile valley revealed how nomadic peoples of the Eastern Desert moved there, settled and assimilated step by step into the settled cultures.  Archaeological records reflecting these dynamics seldom show evidences for a further involvement of these formerly nomadic peoples in the nomadic lifestyle. However, comparisons to the Bedja peoples – the groups that currently inhabit the Eastern Desert – show that nomadic life ways may not easily be distinguished as either nomadic or settled. Instead nomadism as a way of life appears to be of more flexible nature there. This flexibility is supported by the segmentary lineage system. That system forms the base of kinship affiliation but also of social and political interactions within and between the Bedja groups. Bedja groups are for example the Ababda who live in the Egyptian part of the Eastern Desert or the Bisharin living in the northern part of the Sudanese Eastern Desert. Via the segmentary lineage system these groups are divided – segmented – into subgroups which in turn are further subdivided. The unity of subgroups is created by reference to a shared history of its members via common ancestors and maintained by social bonds such as marriage. Individual members are thereby related to each other by family ties and interrelated by the mutual obligations that bond family members. If some Ababda or Bisharin individuals or even sections of subgroups move into the Nile valley for a certain time this is not only their individual decision but is considered by other members of their segment as well. Family ties and obligations maintain even if the individual or the subgroup section settles permanently. Thereby settled Ababda or Bisharin subgroups remain connected to nomadic Ababda or Bisharin subgroups.
This paper analyzes different ways of interaction between Bedja individuals and Bedja subgroups established in the Nile valley with nomadic Bedja subgroups living in the Eastern Desert. Examples of social, political and economic interaction will be extracted from travel accounts of the 18th and 19th century and geographical and cultural anthropological investigation of the 20th century. This paper illustrates how settled subgroups of such groups classified as nomadic can form an important and integral part of the nomadic way of life. Interactions of such subgroups create social landscapes that link the Eastern Desert and the Nile valley. This paper thereby demonstrates how interactions within such landscapes hold a strong potential for the reconstruction of past social and political landscapes from the archaeological record.

In the last years Northeast African archaeologists have become increasingly interested in the desert area east of the Nile. Recent excavations have contributed significantly to our knowledge on Eastern Desert dwellers from an archaeological point of view. However, the rich corpus of ethnohistorical data existing on the contemporary peoples of the Eastern Desert - the various Bedja groups – has not hitherto received much attention, although possible interconnections of the modern and ancient Eastern Desert dwellers have been proposed. 

Ethnohistorical sources on peoples of the Eastern Desert include cultural anthropological accounts of the 1980ies and ‘70ies, detailed descriptions of British government administrators from the beginning of the 20th century, accounts by European travellers of the 19th and 18th centuries as well as descriptions by Arab writers back in the Middle Ages. They provide not only vivid descriptions of Bedja life, but also include information on the settlement areas of the various Bedja groups, on routes taken during transhumance cycles and on tracks used for trading purposes. As the sources also point to various political and environmental shifts in the region they may allow following the history of the Bedja peoples back in to the past. The written accounts can thus be of great interest to archaeologists as their critical use may provide a more solid foundation for the interpretation of various archaeological data in the region and as they may even point to areas that could prove to be of great interest for new archaeological projects.

In my paper I will follow some of the pathways forged by preceding scholars. By focusing one specific geographical area of the Eastern Desert I will present a range of sources concerned with Bedja nomadic life. Step by step I will show how these sources contribute to the (ethno)history of this region and which potential they hold for archaeological research in the Eastern Desert.

The spread of domesticated cereals and animals out of the Levant to both Europe and Africa has been a subject of much debate. In Egypt the earliest evidence of farming practices are at present found in the Faiyum and Merimde Beni Salame ca. 7,000 cal BP  (5,000 BC), some 3,000 years after the beginning of agricultural practices in the Levantine PPNB. Recent research has shown that there was a time delay in mixed economy farming receahing the Southern Levant. Whereas in the Negev and Sinai rather than taking up mixed economy farming, the Timnian herder-gatherer tradition based on goat herding supplemented by hunting developed just before 7,950 cal BP (6,000 BC). It appears that it was this group that transmitted goat herding practices to Egypt at 7,850 cal BP (5,800 BC), whereas the full farming package was transmitted to Egypt ca. 5,350 BC by Late Neolithic Levantine migrants. The people of this Timnian culture acted as the middlemen in an interaction zone that connected the Levant with Egypt, and were the conduit for various products and ideas between the two regions. The uptake of farming practices by communities in the Nile Valley only occurred because they already had a predilection to manage wild animals, manipulate wild grasses and had a technology that was ready for the process of Neolithisation. In Nubia and the southern part of the Western Desert pottery had begun to be produced at 8,600 BC by semi-sedentary hunter-fisher-gatherers, and by 7,000 BC indigenously domesticated cattle were not only present at Nabta Playa, but in Upper Nubia. The choices taken and adaptations made to the new environment and different ecological zones that developed after the Last Glacial Maximum laid the foundations for the distinctly different cultures of Egypt and the Sudan to those of the Levant. These heterogeneous regions took separate paths to food production, and it was the path that was chosen by the communities in the Nile Valley that formed the basis of many of their cultural and religious traits even after farming practices had been introduced from the Fertile Crescent. Documenting the changing socioeconomic processes in the Early to Mid-Holocene in the various regions is essential in understanding the beginnings of the Predynastic and rise of the first nation state in Egypt. Egypt was both a gift of the Nile and a result of climatically induced migrations from the Western Desert and the Levant. Within 500 years of the end of the Neolithic, a relatively short timespan, the agrarian communities of Egypt had formed into proto-states and by 3,060 BC had formed one of the first pristine states, while the societies of the Southern Levant remained much less centralised, partially due to ecological constraints.