Affad 3.0/Cattle+. Field seasons 2017 and 2018 of the PalaeoAffad Project

Abstract

The first Affad was the one we saw when the archaeological sites there were first investigated at the beginning of the century. The second Affad, which is the region that we have been exploring in the past 15 years, bore many signs of modern Sudanese culture encroaching upon the desert. In 2009, an asphalt road cut through the desert and shortly thereafter, the Debba bridge and power lines were constructed, the latter coming from a hydroelectric power station on the Fourth Cataract. Affad 3.0 is what the location looks like today—extensive industrial-scale farms on terraces too far away for traditional agriculture. The investment has already caused irreversible destruction to the archaeological heritage. Cattle+ in the title of this article refers to new data on large ruminants. The discovery of auroch remains and the Neolithic cattle data are both extremely important proxies for the adaptation strategies of people inhabiting the Southern Dongola Reach in prehistory.