Italian Archaeological Research in the Kassala Province, Sudan

Date: 

Friday, February 17, 2017, 5:00pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Barker Center Room 230, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge

The region of Kassala in Eastern Sudan has not been explored by archaeologists until the early 1980s, when the Oriental University, Naples (Italy), started an archaeological project in the Gash Delta as part of an investigation about possible contacts between the Nile Valley and the highlands in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in late prehistoric and early historical time. On the results of these investigations it is now possible to outline the dynamics of peopling in the region from the 6th millennium BCE to the 2nd millennium CE. In particular, the results of the project demonstrated that the region of Kassala was part of the Land of Punt, from where the Egyptians imported aromatic gums and gold in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. In this lecture, the contribution of archaeology to reconstructing the history of Kassala will be presented. The speaker for this lecture is Rodolfo Fattovich, Professor (ret.) ISMEO – International  Society for  Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, Roma, Italy. Please RSVP to Mohamed Khalifa.