Archaeology of Dress along the Middle Nile

ongoing

100 years of archaeological research along the Middle Nile has yielded partial knowledge of the history of Sudan and Nubia. To date, the focus has been on the public life of the sedentary elite. Other identities remain invisible and cultural frameworks tend to be restricted to binary oppositions (e.g. sedentary vs. nomads, Pharaonic vs. African influences). Going beyond the monumental remains, the Fashioning Sudan project will focus on a long-neglected and much more intimate aspect of the Sudanese material world: dress practices. This pioneering approach will merge different academic fields such as archaeology, textile and animal skin research, palaeoproteomics, and socio-cultural theory. Thanks to its arid climate, Sudan is one of the rare places on Earth where archaeological textiles and skins are well preserved and in remarkably high numbers; but despite its potential, this treasure trove of information is seldom exploited by historians or archaeologists. Fashioning Sudan will use garments as a privileged medium to reveal past identities, bringing new and more representative knowledge about the populations of ancient Sudan and highlighting the entanglement of dress practices in the fabric of society. The project will encompass the high-resolution analysis of textile and animal skin garments from the Bronze Age to the Late Medieval period, in close connection with their archaeological context. The results will reveal which animal and plant species were exploited, as well as skills and craft dynamics. It will then question how to use clothing and socio-cultural theories to reveal previously unknown aspects of past Sudanese lives. Fashioning Sudan will renew our academic approach to past identities along the Nile thanks to interdisciplinary research uniting under-exploited material sources (dress & craft) to innovative methods at the forefront of natural sciences and cultural studies.