Weekly Websites

Some more treasures from my Bookmarks, which look as though they are going to provide me with material for weeks to come! Apologies for the emphasis on the Sahara and prehistory.

The Climate-Environment-Society Nexus in the Sahara from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day
By NICK BROOKS, ISABELLE CHIAPELLO, SAVINO DI LERNIA, NICK DRAKE, MICHEL LEGRAND, CYRIL MOULIN AND JOSEPH PROSPERO
Climatic Research Unit

Abstract:

The Sahara is a key region for studies of archaeology, human-environment interaction, global biogeochemical cycles, and global climate change. With a few notable exceptions, the region is the subject of very little international scientific research, a fact that is remarkable given the Sahara’s proximity to Europe, the developmental issues facing its growing population, the region’s sensitivity to climate change and the Sahara’s potential for influencing global climate through the export of airborne mineral dust. This article seeks to address human environment interaction in the Sahara from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on the implications of Saharan environmental variability and change for human populations both within and outside of the region on timescales ranging from decades to millennia. The article starts by addressing past climatic changes and their impacts on human populations, before moving on to consider present day water resources and rainfall variability in their longer-term context; the possibility of a ‘greening’ of the southern Sahara as suggested by some climate models is also discussed. The role of the Sahara as the world’s largest source of airborne mineral dust is addressed in some detail, as are the impacts of dust on climate, ecosystems and human health, as well as the implications of future changes in climate for dust production and the role of the Sahara in the Earth system. The article ends with a discussion and synthesis that explores the lessons that may be learnt from a study of the physical and social sciences in the Sahara, in particular focusing on what the signature of past environmental and socio-cultural changes can tell us about human responses and adaptations to climatic and environmental change – a matter of great relevance to researchers and policy makers alike in the context of anthropogenic climate change or ‘global warming’.

Abstracts for a Symposium on Mobile People in Archaeology (2004)
http://www.archbase.org/nomads/montreal.html

This session will discuss how nomadism can be defined, characterized and recognized in the archaeological record of both the Old World and the Americas. The participants will explore the relation of (pre)historic nomadic populations with their environment and the settled population, based on archaeological, historical and/or ethnoarchaeological sources (some practical information for the participants can be found here).

Steve Rosen (Department of Archaeology, Ben-Gurion University, Israel) will be discussant during this panel which will be chaired by Hans Barnard and Willeke Wendrich (University of California, Los Angeles).

Society for American Archaeology, Montreal (Canada), Friday 2 April 2004

Pharaohs Notes
http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/pharaoh/pharaohs.html

Egyptian history is broken down into xx kingdoms, or periods. These are logical breaks in the dynasties based on archeological periods, architecture, etc. Each kingdom contains dynasties, and each dynasty contains the chronology of pharaohs. The listing below is an index to the pharaohs covered in this section of the site, by kingdom, then dynasty, then by name.

From each page, you can walk through the chronology, kingdome by kingdom, dynasty by dynasty or pharaoh by pharaoh, or jump around to see who you are interested in. For a complete list of pharaohs by name, check out the alphabetical list of pharoahs.

The Sahara - Past, Present and Future (2004 conference at UEA)
University of East Anglia
Printable programmes in PDF and Word format, as well as full programme details on the above page in HTML, with abstracts.

Senenmut - A Handsome Man of Egypt?
By Marianne Luban
http://www.geocities.com/scribelist/Senenmut.html

How does a man of humble origins rise to the position of the greatest commoner in ancient Egypt during the reign of a woman-king? Well, it certainly wouldn't hurt for him to be the tallest and handsomest person around, the one who beat out all the competition for the ruler's attention by virtue of his splendid appearance. Senenmut, the chief servant of Hatshepsut, had numerous titles--too many to mention here--and among them was "guardian" of the queen's daughter, the Princess Neferura. It is suspected that he was also the lover of Hatshepsut, the widow of King Thutmose II, but that tantalizing possibility has not been proved.

Some years ago, in an "End Paper" in Kmt Magazine, Katalin Kreszthelyi of Hungary suggested that a mummy found in the Deir el Bahri Cache could be none other than Senenmut, himself, based upon a perceived facial resemblance. At that time, I was skeptical but, after doing an artistic facial reconstruction of Unknown Man C, it seemed to me that the artists of the period may have, indeed, been struggling to approximate the streamlined features of this mummy. There now remains little doubt in my mind that Unknown Man C can very well be Senenmut. Since the mummies of the parents of Hatshepsut's favorite have been found, he is, at least theoretically, able to be confirmed or rejected as being their son.

Systems of prehistoric land use in the Gilf Kebir
By Jörg Linstädter (Cologne, Germany)
In: HAWASS, Z. (ed.) Egyptology at the dawn of the Twenty-first century. Proceedings of the Eigth International Congress of Egyptologists, Cairo 2000, American University of Cairo Press. Cairo 2002.
University of Cologne

The Gilf Kebir is a sandstone plateau situated in the margin of south-western Egypt. On its south-eastern fringes broad Wadis flow into the plains. Over the period of the past 20 years their upper reaches have been subject to archaeological research of scientists of the University of Cologne (KUPER 1995, SCHÖN 1994).

Considering the history of ancient Egypt and especially its pharaonic period, the Gilf Kebir seems to be completely marginal. There are up to now no confirmed data available on the existence of direct or indirect relations between the Gilf Kebir area and the Nile valley in prehistoric times. But not only historical events can connect egyptology and prehistoric archaeology, but also shared methodological approaches. Modern archaeology is more than a descriptive historical science. Scientific branches have been developed such as economical, sociological and ecological archaeology in order to reconstruct systems of land use, of mobility, and cognition. The term landscape archaeology has been coined to summarise the scope of these different branches, which are relevant for all archaeological and cultural anthropological disciplines (LÜNING 1997:277). This paper will try to show the potential impact of this approach on the understanding of archaeological sites in the study area.