AHLAN: Adaptations in Human Landscapes Along the Nile

AHLAN is a multidisciplinary landscape research project focused on understanding how and why people living along the Nile River near modern-day Dongola, Sudan have developed responsive land use and food security strategies since the African Humid Period. Prior research indicates that this landscape infrastructure development occurred around former river channels over the last 5000 years, when agricultural, pastoral, and water management systems shifted in style and position as climate and social change necessitated innovative strategies for sustainability. However, the material traces of these have yet to be explored in detail. AHLAN will investigate these traces using data from new remote sensing technologies, environmental information, novel open-source spatial-analytical approaches, and community partnerships to generate a new level of detail regarding human and environmental development in the region. Together with archival data and information from prior archaeological research, this new information about the spatial development of the landscape will help us to better model the growth and decline of local and regional settlement networks over time. The current war in Sudan has propelled people and heritage resources already at risk into an even greater state of uncertainty. Through its proposed research programme, AHLAN can also help document and monitor the present landscape, and identify threats to the visible remains of past land use using web-based, collaborative, and open-source/low-cost approaches. This information will feed into Site and Monument Records and threat databases currently being developed by the Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM). A series of online workshops developed for NCAM members and other regional partners will provide training in remote sensing documentation and threat management identification procedures. As Sudan returns to stability, this information will be vital for forward heritage policy planning, continued monitoring and future planning for heritage tourism, infrastructure development, and agricultural growth. In addition to the immediate pressures of the war, food security and access to water continue to be issues in many parts of Sudan, including the Dongola Reach. In response, modern communities are rapidly developing the ancient banks of the Nile for agricultural exploitation. This includes mining water via the construction of new ad-hoc wells to tap the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS). These activities have many impacts; in the short term, food can be grown at the cost of destruction of archaeological resources. In the long term, the extensive yet finite water resources of the NSAS may be depleted, leaving past, present, and future populations and landscapes in ruin. Via developing connections with local, national, and global partners, AHLAN also seeks to mitigate this through increasing awareness of the impact of modern agricultural development on archaeological resources in the region. By jointly exploring ways communities can contribute to and benefit from a greater understanding of past land use and helping to develop sustainable approaches for future landscape stewardship, we seek to empower local communities with the tools for a sustainable eco-management of their past, present, and future Nilotic landscapes.