{"id":1557,"date":"2020-02-11T10:47:29","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T09:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/?p=1557"},"modified":"2021-04-01T10:42:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T08:42:25","slug":"report_2020_03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/en\/report_2020_03\/","title":{"rendered":"Research in the Rama Valley (northern Tigray)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Project 7:  Routes of Interaction &#8211; Research in the Rama Valley (northern Tigray)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The interdisciplinary research\nproject aims to investigate inner-African contacts between the northern Horn of\nAfrica, the Middle Nile, the northeast Sudanese Gash delta and parts of Egypt.\nThe Rama Valley, located in the Ethiopian-Eritrean border region, is the focus\nof the research question, as it has the potential of a supra-regional contact\ncorridor between the Ethiopian highlands and the Gash delta and the Sudanese\nlowlands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In autumn 2019, field work in the Rama\nValley was continued, with research focusing on archaeological-geographical\nsurveys and a test sounding. The site S40 is located westwards of the city of\nRama on a c. 50 by 50 m large plateau that is partly used for agriculture (Fig.\n1). Numerous pottery finds of rim and body sherds with incised and impressed\ndecorations found on the surface during the 2018 survey suggest connections to\nthe Sudanese lowlands, where these types of decorations were found dating\nbetween the 4<sup>th<\/sup> and 1<sup>st<\/sup> millennium BCE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This finding was followed by means of a 3\nby 3 m large and 1.70 m deep sounding. The sounding yielded different soil and\nsedimentary deposits, which were mixed with decorated and undecorated pottery\nsherds throughout the excavated depth, whereas architectural structures were\nnot found. The dating of the pottery sherds as well as the evaluation of the\nmicromorphological samples from the sections are currently in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><ul class=\"blocks-gallery-grid\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"1558\" data-full-url=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-scaled.jpg\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/?attachment_id=1558\" class=\"wp-image-1558\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_1-1-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\"> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br><br> Fig. 1 \/ \u00a9 C. Breninek \/ University of Leipzig <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"898\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-1024x898.jpg\" alt=\"\" data-id=\"1559\" data-full-url=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-scaled.jpg\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/?attachment_id=1559\" class=\"wp-image-1559\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-1024x898.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-300x263.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-768x673.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-1536x1347.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_2-1-2048x1795.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\"> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Fig. 2 \/ \u00a9 I. Wagner \/ DAI Orient department <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The survey was continued according to\ntopographical aspects and on the basis of remote sensing data in different\nareas south of the city of Rama and yielded more than 100 new archaeological\nsites of different time periods. Besides some obsidian chips and fragments of\ntwo clay animal figures (Fig. 2) the survey revealed pottery sherds with\ndifferent find densities. The majority of the sites showed only very few\nsherds. So far, only sub-recent settlement remains have been detected.\nAccording to the current state of research, the Rama Valley seems to have been\nused as pasture and farm land rather than as a settlement area, as is still the\ncase today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"957\" height=\"712\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_3-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1560\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_3-1.png 957w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_3-1-300x223.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/02\/Fig_3-1-768x571.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 957px) 100vw, 957px\" \/><figcaption>  Fig. 3 \/ \u00a9 J. Hardt \/ Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The geographically oriented part of the survey concentrated on field mapping of erosion landforms that occur mainly in the form of gullies (Fig. 3). Gullies are linear forms of erosion caused by concentrated surface runoff, usually triggered by human activity. Especially the connection of gullies and paths were of interest, because paths can trigger linear surface erosion. The latter can therefore make it possible to find and reconstruct ancient path systems. Another focus was the mapping of hollow ways \u2013 paths that have been used over long periods of time, in some cases until today, and have thus been eroded into the sediment. The research on these pathways is supported by the application of different scientific analysis methods for dating issues and is still in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Figures<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li> <strong>Fig. 1<\/strong> Overview of the plateau with the test sounding at site S40, in the background the southern Rama Valley (Photo: \u00a9 C. Breninek, University of Leipzig). <\/li><li><strong>Fig. 2<\/strong> Fragment of the head of an animal figurine, found at site S42, find number: RS19-15 (Photo: \u00a9 I. Wagner, DAI Orient department).<\/li><li><strong>Fig. 3<\/strong> Exemplary photographs of features mapped during the geographical survey. A: intensely eroded landscape (badlands). B: interconnection of gully and hollow way. C: gullyhead connected to pathway. D: Hollow way eroded into bedrock (Photos: \u00a9 J. Hardt, Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The interdisciplinary research project aims to investigate inner-African contacts between the northern Horn of Africa, the Middle Nile, the northeast Sudanese Gash delta and parts of Egypt. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":1553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,40],"tags":[135,139,138,320,319,321],"class_list":["post-1557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein_en","category-p07_routes_en","tag-archaeology","tag-ethiopia","tag-geo-sciences","tag-horn-of-africa","tag-rama-valley","tag-yeha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3769,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions\/3769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dainst.blog\/entangled-africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}