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Nubia: It’s a real place! - Ep 83
598 Plays9 months ago
On today’s episode, Jessica chats with Dr. Shayla Monroe (Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University) and Debora Heard (Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Chicago). The three talk about Nubia and its people (both ancient and modern), why they have been overshadowed, and why they are important. We also talked about what got them interested in this topic, what they are studying now in Nubia, and how the war in Sudan has affected their work and their colleagues. Finally, we talk about where they would like to see the study of Nubia go, including their efforts to co-found the William Leo Hansberry Society.
Links
- Heritage Voices on the APN
- William Leo Hansberry Society
- Hansberry Society Statement on the current situation in Sudan
- Ancient Nubia curriculum and youtube videos through Archaeology in the community
- Sudanese American Physicians Association
- Scholars at Risk
- Scholar Rescue Fund
- American Sudanese Archaeological Research Center
Contact
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Transcript
Introduction and Context Setting
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to Heritage Voices, episode 83. I'm Jessica Uquinto, and I'm your host. And today, we are talking about Nubia. It's a real place. Before we begin, I'd like to honor and acknowledge that the lands I'm recording on today are part of the Nooch or Ute Peoples Treaty Lands, the Dneita, and the ancestral Puebloan homeland.
Guest Introductions and Academic Journeys
00:00:25
Speaker
And today, we have Dr. Shayla Monroe and Deborah Heard on the show.
00:00:30
Speaker
Dr. Sheila Monroe is an assistant professor of anthropology at Harvard University. She is an anthropological archaeologist studying the long-term relationship between people, animals, and climate in northeastern and sahalian Africa, and currently investigates how ancient peoples navigated changing weather patterns in the long term.
00:00:49
Speaker
Since 2013, she has worked as an archaeologist at the third cataract of the Nile River in Sudan, first at the Egyptian colonial site at Tombos, and then at the Kerma hinterland site Abu Fatima, also in northern Sudan. Monroe began her career at Howard University, where she earned degrees in anthropology and English. She also spent two seasons working at Laramatage Plantation with the National Park Service in Frederick, Maryland. So welcome to the show, Sheila. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
00:01:19
Speaker
All right, and we also have Debra Hurd. Debra Hurd is a PhD candidate in anthropology specializing in the archaeology, history, and language of ancient Nubia and Egypt at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation compares inscriptions and iconography of upper Nubian temples dedicated to the gods Amun and Apetimac.
00:01:39
Speaker
a member of several archaeological and ancient studies organizations. She is the organizer and a founding member of the William Leo Hansberry Society, which is committed to providing African-descended people with access, opportunity, and professional training for careers in the fields of ancient Nile Valley and Northeast African studies. So welcome to the show, Deborah. Thank you, Jessica.
00:02:03
Speaker
All right. Well, I am super excited to have you both on and to talk more about Nubia, which as we discussed before we came on the air, it's a real place. So first,
00:02:19
Speaker
Let's talk about what got you into this kind of work in general. Like what maybe, I don't know. I mean, in this case, usually it's like people are interested in archeology first or they're interested in, you know, Pompeii or whatever. So I don't know if you got into like the Nile area first or you got into archeology first, but basically what got you into whichever one came first?
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, can I say ass backwards? I normally tell people I feel ass backwards in the archaeology. I was in an anthropology program, a four fields anthropology program, and I wanted to be a linguist. And I was really interested in historical linguistics, and I was interested in a script called the Merowitic script.
00:03:08
Speaker
So the alphabet of the Nubian Kingdom of Meroe is one of the oldest alphabets on the African continent. And they have a language in the script has only been partially translated. So I was really all about that mystery, this mysterious language. Wait, wait, wait. How'd you even hear about this language, though? Oh, in class at Howard.
00:03:31
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. Keep going. Sorry. Yes. And so in our program, we had to do an internship in order to graduate and the linguistics internships were so competitive. I couldn't get into any linguistics internships and I was running out of time.
00:03:50
Speaker
So the Park Service was heavily recruiting archeological interns. And so I ended up taking an archeology internship with the Park Service just to fulfill my requirement. And I was so mad because I, and I've said this before, I thought, oh my God, it's gonna be hot and stanky and dirty, and there's gonna be bugs out there. And I just thought I was gonna have this terrible experience, but I ended up falling in love
00:04:19
Speaker
with archaeology and so I still wanted to study ancient Sudan but I pivoted and I wanted to study it from an archaeological perspective rather than doing historical linguistic reconstructions and so I ended up going to graduate school for that purpose and here I am.
00:04:40
Speaker
So, okay. I mean, it's kind of funny because Deborah, you are more focused on language now, but Shayla, like, so how come, you know, obviously like in that region, you could have easily done both. How come you switched your interest? Well, okay. So there were different languages. The Marowitic language at the time, there were really only like two or three linguists studying it. One was in Germany and the other one was in France.
00:05:09
Speaker
So it really is something that needs, that particular language is something that needs a specialized training. And, okay. Well, I also, I fell in love with archaeology. So it really seduced me. I got bitten by that bug. And so that's the other reason why I
Nubia's Historical and Cultural Significance
00:05:27
Speaker
decided to study Nubia from the archaeological perspective. And I ended up not even working in the Merowitic time period. So
00:05:37
Speaker
And then, but like, what got you into more of the, like, Zoarch? Is that how you say it? Zoarch, right? So there are several different pronunciations. I say zoarchology. Some people say it really depends on who trained you. Okay. But I originally, before I wanted to be an anthropologist, I originally went to school to be a zoologist. I wanted to study living animals. So that part just kind of came around full circle and I ended up studying dead animals instead of living ones.
00:06:07
Speaker
in the context of, you know, human settlements and ancient economies. Okay. All right. So let's go back to the language part and I'll ask, Deborah, I'll ask you the same question. What got you into, I don't know, which came first for you? Was it archeology or Nubia? So let me do a little bit of correction. So actually I do archeology and language. So I'm not just focused on language.
00:06:36
Speaker
But so I had to laugh at Shaela because her route was a lot more straightforward than mine. So mine, I call a circuitous route. So my undergraduate degree is in political science. And so I attended Tennessee State University, which is a HBCU. Howard had, no longer has, the distinction of being one of the few HBCUs that actually had anthropology.
00:07:04
Speaker
I never had an anthropology class until I started graduate school, but I did use my political science degree to go to law school.
00:07:14
Speaker
And I graduated from law school and I practiced law for a few years. And I decided that law was not my lifelong obsession, career obsession, that I would not be doing that for many years to come. But while I was in law school, I discovered that Temple University was starting the first PhD program in African-American studies. So I left.
00:07:41
Speaker
the practice of law to go back to grad school. And I finished the master's in African-American studies. And I decided that I was going to do a second master's in anthropology. So I started studying anthropology and ended up just staying in anthropology. But I had to decide, you know, what did I want to study? Because again, this is my first opportunity to take any courses in anthropology.
00:08:10
Speaker
And I decided that I wanted to do archaeology because I didn't see people that looked like me doing archaeology in Africa. And so then I left Temple to go to the University of Chicago. And when I first got there, I did not know exactly where in Africa I wanted to work. But while I was there, I decided that I wanted to take a few classes in Egyptology. So I was taking
00:08:37
Speaker
the first year classes in Middle Egyptian. And we were translating texts. We first started translating texts. And that's the first time I'd heard about the Nubians. And I was like, who are these Nubians? And then I found out that they actually ruled Egypt. And I was like, wait, why don't I know this?
00:08:56
Speaker
This is going to be my research area because I don't know this and there are a lot of people that don't know this. So at the time, you know, there was nobody teaching Nubia at the University of Chicago. We had one person there, Bruce Williams, who's a very noted
00:09:12
Speaker
figure in Nubian studies, but he wasn't teaching. So I ended up taking classes in Egyptology, but I'm also in anthropology department, so I'm straddling two departments. But every class that I'm taking, I'm using as an opportunity to learn something about Nubia. So because I was
00:09:35
Speaker
going back and forth between the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, which is where Egyptology is located, I got to start working with people that were in the museum.
00:09:49
Speaker
And that got me to be a research, I was able to become a research associate when the Royal Institute, which is now the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, reinstalled this Nubian Gallery. So I got to be a research assistant for that. And then the next year, the Royal Institute sponsored an excavation.
Challenges in Nubian Studies and Egyptology
00:10:12
Speaker
to the fourth cataract in Sudan. That was 2007, so I got to participate at an excavation in Sudan 2007 and 2008. So that's kind of where my trajectory kind of started. When the museum opened, I got to do a presentation on the Nubian Queens.
00:10:34
Speaker
And that was something that was very kind of new, well, not new, but novel in Chicago. So it hit a lot of diverse communities in Chicago. So we were able to really do a lot of work in Nubia
00:10:55
Speaker
in Chicago, but you know, it was pre YouTube. So a lot of this, a lot of the things that were being done in Chicago was just, it was localized in the area of Chicago. Whereas, you know, now really with the pandemic that allowed Nubia to just kind of like be exposed to this global audience. But yeah, so that's,
00:11:21
Speaker
In a nutshell, that's how I got started working in Sudan. Yeah, and a little bit of how you got an intro to some of these different fields that all tie into your current work.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I think before we go too far, you brought up an important point. And I know this is an insane question because there's entire courses and dissertations and all the things on Nubia. But could you give a
00:11:54
Speaker
You know, super brief intro, the two of you, cause you mentioned this is something that like hadn't really come up to you before. So like for people that are listening that maybe don't know anything about Nubia, could you give the like quick and dirty intro?
00:12:11
Speaker
OK, so the name Nubia actually comes, really comes into play like in late antiquity and closer to medieval times. But what we refer to when we refer to Nubia, we're essentially referring to the southern part of modern Egypt and the northern part of modern day Sudan. And generally it's a catch all term for the succession of
00:12:36
Speaker
cultures and communities that have lived there pretty much since the dawn of the Holocene. So you have the pre-dynastic cultures and then you have the Neolithic cultures before that and then you have after the pre-dynastic or concurrent you have pre-karma, karma and you have a series of
00:13:01
Speaker
states and political cultures that kind of rise and fall throughout the centuries. And so when we talk about Nubiologists and studying Nubia, that really kind of includes people who study many of those cultures because a lot of people don't study all of them all the way through.
00:13:20
Speaker
But it kind of is a catch-all term for people who study at least one or several of these successive cultures and political entities that have occupied that region of the Middle and Upper Nile Valley. Well said.
00:13:35
Speaker
Well, and also you have Nubian languages. So you have the Nubian people who still exist today. So there's also Nubian studies and journals like the WATO that talk about the issues of modern Nubians. And that was why we kind of tongue in cheek said, you know, Nubia, it's a real place because the word Nubia is sometimes mystified.
00:13:55
Speaker
right? It's sometimes kind of shrouded in mystery. And that's actually a little bit dangerous for people who speak Nubian languages and have Nubian identities today. So it's always important for us to acknowledge that even though this is something that kind of looms larger than life, and it's something that fascinates people from ancient times,
00:14:17
Speaker
that the descendants of these various cultures still live in their homelands throughout the Nile Valley. And they still face issues of dispossession and sometimes political marginalization, but they still are there. They are still there. And no matter how fascinated people are,
00:14:40
Speaker
with kind of the glory and the splendor of the ancient past. We can never forget the living, breathing,
00:14:48
Speaker
Nubian people that are real and they're here. So that's a good point because I guess for me, I was never particularly clear. So it sounds like it's more you're Nubian if you're part of that geographic region as opposed to one particular ethnic group, or how would you define Nubians today, I guess?
00:15:11
Speaker
Well, modern Nubians are self-identified largely in their ethnic groups, but it's largely according to their languages. So the Nubian language family, I think, has about 13 extant dialects. Many of the dialects have either been endangered or died out.
00:15:28
Speaker
Wow. But really, people call themselves Nubian. Generally, if they speak one of those 13 languages that are part of that larger Nubian language family. So the Nubian language, the language that goes by the term Nubian, there's four dialects in the Nile Valley.
00:15:46
Speaker
But there are other dialects that are spoken in Kordofan, Darfur, that are still a part of a larger Nubian language family. And I've interacted with Nubians who speak those other languages who also call themselves Nubians. So there are also some people we know are descended from Nubians.
00:16:07
Speaker
but they no longer speak the language. And sometimes they are less inclined to refer to themselves as Nubians. So we respect what people call themselves, right? So the ones who identify as Nubians, we refer to them as Nubians, but there are other people like the Shagya who are most certainly Nubian descended, but they refer to themselves by their tribe name or by their
Pioneering Work and Representation in Nubian Studies
00:16:32
Speaker
ethnic name. And so that's how we refer to them.
00:16:34
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. I know again, like that's, I'm sure you have whole intro courses that you teach on new. Well, yes. So recommendation we're putting out into the world. All right. Well, we are already at our first break point, but I'm super excited to come back and continue this discussion.
00:17:02
Speaker
Okay. So we're back from our break. And I just want to dive right back into that conversation we were just having and ask, you guys mentioned that there really isn't intro classes, for example, on Nubia. Why is it so overshadowed compared to Egypt? And when we don't get that perspective of Nubia, what are we missing? Well, I think the main problem or the main issue is that Nubian studies
00:17:31
Speaker
grew out of Egyptology. So when Egyptology first started as a discipline, people were fascinated with Egypt. But when they looked down to look at what was in Nubia, they just disregarded it as being a cheap copy of what was happening in Egypt. You know, they looked at the people depicted in
00:17:58
Speaker
dark brown skin and equated that with the disrespect that they were showing people that looked like that at that time. So the racism kind of got overlaid on the historical aspect of it. So
00:18:19
Speaker
Egyptologists, they just felt like, well, Nubias, this backwater, they were just trying to copy the Egyptians. These cultures are not worth studying.
00:18:29
Speaker
So it wasn't until they started constructing the Aswan High Dam in the 70s, well, it started in the late 60s, but when the UNESCO made the call, this international call for all of these archaeologists to come to help salvage these monuments that were in Nubia that were at risk of being flooded, you had these archaeologists that had no connection with Egyptology coming in.
00:18:59
Speaker
And they began to see Nubia, these different cultures that they were encountering in a different way. So they were bringing in that Egyptological bias. And you also had, you know, it's the 70s, so we've gone through the civil rights movement.
00:19:16
Speaker
So
Personal Experiences and Community Impact in Sudan
00:19:17
Speaker
the younger archaeologists that were coming were coming with a different mindset. And you can see that as you're reading some of the reports, you know, they're coming with a more open mind. So they're looking at Nubia as these cultures that have their own cultural logic.
00:19:37
Speaker
And so I think that that's what started that change of looking at Nubia and Nubian cultures on their own terms. We're still in the process of pushing, looking at it in different terms, but also looking at both the Nile Valley cultures as being part of Africa.
00:19:59
Speaker
because part of what happened, Egyptology was founded, was Egypt was taken out of Africa. And so when you look at the dynamism, the origins, how people came to be in the Nile Valley, there is total disregard for what's going on around Egypt and Nubia, as if people were just there.
00:20:24
Speaker
And one of the things that I find fascinating over the past few years of my study and my thinking about it is looking at the migrations of people.
00:20:35
Speaker
So people have been migrating across the African landscape for millennia, starting with the first people to actually be Homo sapiens, 300,000 years ago. People have been moving across the landscape and they've been bringing their ideas, their cultures, they've been meeting other people, forming different groupings of societies, different ideas are coming into being.
00:21:04
Speaker
So we have to continue to look at these ancient cultures and not be so rigid about how they were founded, that the narrative of a foundation
00:21:23
Speaker
has to be re-examined, but re-examined looking at what's going on around the Nile Valley and looking at the climate, the environment, things were changing. So people were moving. So those are some of the things that are coming to the fore now and really makes, you know, looking at Nubia and Egypt exciting at this point.
00:21:50
Speaker
And just to add to that, I mean, because that is very important. The role of race in the early studies of Nubia really does have to be acknowledged, right? Because it was the politics of the early 20th century that set the tone for that.
00:22:11
Speaker
And it's also true that, one, the Academy really has not made space for Nubia because you have African studies, which is kind of born out of political science and has kind of a very modernist emphasis, right? And then you have Egyptology.
00:22:32
Speaker
And even amongst like Africanist archaeology,
Current Projects and Academic Challenges
00:22:36
Speaker
they always, not always, there is a tendency to kind of look at Nubia, like, what are you doing here? You know what I'm saying? So there are these pockets, or there are these kind of clicks within the academy. And sometimes it does feel like the study of Nubia doesn't fit cleanly into any of them.
00:22:57
Speaker
Early African-American thinkers were fascinated by Nubia. You know, Du Bois, all of these people were fascinated by Nubia. So this idea that Nubia is not important, people might be ignorant, but I also kind of feel like sometimes people be playing in our faces.
00:23:15
Speaker
You know Nubia's fly. Like, quit lying. Stop lying. You know, that's just my opinion. I think folks be lying sometimes. But you know, I wanted to get back to the disciplinary boundaries because that is very, very true. You know, African studies,
Impact of Conflict on Nubian Heritage
00:23:36
Speaker
it's like we don't deal with the ancient. But the question is, why not? It's part of Africa. Why not?
00:23:44
Speaker
And then Egyptology does not deal with any other parts of Africa. Why not? You're in Africa. Does that have an effect on?
00:23:55
Speaker
what it is that you're studying. So it's almost like these really rigid boundaries have kept, you know, the study of Nubia as well as Egypt in this place where it can't fully develop, it's malformed because it's not taking in all of the information that it needs. But another aspect of that is that, you know, Sheila brought up W.B. Du Bois,
00:24:24
Speaker
But we should bring up William Leo Hansberry because William Leo Hansberry was the nation's, he was the first Africanist. He was the first person in this country to study, to have a whole curriculum of African studies.
00:24:42
Speaker
And people don't know his name, but he started that, he had developed the whole curriculum and introduced it in January of 1923. And if you do the math, that was a hundred years ago, this year. His curriculum started with what he called the early stone
Future Aspirations for Nubian Studies
00:25:05
Speaker
tool users.
00:25:07
Speaker
and went all the way through to his modern time. So he understood. So African-American scholars who were relegated to HBCUs that could not participate in the larger institutions, they had a different approach to ancient African studies that was holistic. And
00:25:35
Speaker
you get the disciplinary boundaries in the predominantly white institutions. And we have to ask the question, you know, if they had not sidelined people like W.B. Du Bois and William Leo Hansberry and others who were trying to develop and who did develop curricula that looked at
00:25:58
Speaker
Africa over the long dure, if they had included them in their discussions, in their associations, in their organizations, our understanding of ancient societies would be so much fuller and more complete than it is now. We're only now getting to the point where we're understanding where we need to look more expansively and we need to break down boundaries and look. So when I think about
00:26:27
Speaker
the, you know, Nubia and Egypt didn't start talking about the origins. You know, I talk about a Nile Valley continuum, you know, because people were living in the Nile Valley before there was the Nubia or Wawat or Kush, before there was a Kemet. People were just living on the Nile Valley and they were moving, you know, north to south to north, the way the river flows, they were moving east to west. So if we just break down these boundaries,
00:26:54
Speaker
these false boundaries, we can really understand things a lot deeper and we have a lot richer understanding of what was going on in those ancient African societies.
00:27:11
Speaker
He is the namesake for the society that you co-founded. Can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what that society does and why you chose him? Though I think based on what you just said, it's probably pretty obvious, but to be the namesake. Yes. So there was a group of five of us and Shayle was one of them during the pandemic. So most of this comes out of the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd.
00:27:38
Speaker
The pandemic, everybody's at home. We're on Zoom. So we're getting to see people and being able to watch webinars that you normally wouldn't have time to watch. People are online doing things that they normally would do in their own institution, as opposed to it being something that's strained.
00:28:05
Speaker
So during this time, we were beginning to see, you know, there are other people doing this work, but the roots of it really is, you know, one of the organizations that a few of us are a part of had not released a statement after
00:28:25
Speaker
the George Floyd killing and Black Lives Matters. And so one of the young ladies had written a letter, she had emailed to ask if this organization was going to release some kind of statement. And so we got together and we wrote an open letter and we had some kind of demands that included
00:28:53
Speaker
increasing diversity because they're only a handful of people that look like me and they look like Shayla. They're doing this work in the Nile Valley. And so we wanted to see what we could do to increase those numbers. So
00:29:13
Speaker
as we were seeing people on these different webinars and we're like, oh, get that person's email. Ooh, let's email them. So by the end, we had like over 20 people and we were having conversations about, you know, how do we move this forward? Because the thing that everybody that we contacted, because I knew Shayla, I had gone to school with Solange Ashby,
00:29:41
Speaker
So we knew each other. We had met slave Faraji going to the Nubian Studies Conference. But there was still just a very small number of us. You could number us probably like on one hand. And so we're seeing these other people. We draw them in and they're like so excited. Like I thought I was the only one. I'm the only person in my department. I'm the only person in my area that's doing this work.
00:30:05
Speaker
And so we're bringing people together to create this organization, this fellowship of people that are studying this similar thing. But it was something more. There was a drive that we need to expose younger students to this. Like I said, I came through this. I came to this point.
00:30:35
Speaker
from a route that was winding. Like there was no straight route from me from high school starting undergrad to where I am now. I didn't know any black archeologists. That's part of the reason why I wanted to study archeology. I was like, I fascinated with natural geographic and all of the stuff that I see on television growing up, but I never saw anybody that looked like me.
00:31:01
Speaker
So I thought it would be a part of my own personal responsibility. And I think we all take it as a part of our personal responsibility to be visible.
00:31:13
Speaker
to show young people that this is an opportunity, this is something that you can aspire to. Because if you've never seen it, it's hard for you to imagine it. So we want to open the imaginations of young people, whether they are children or even in college. Like I said, my university, I went to HBCU, we did not have anthropology courses. I could not have imagined being an archeologist.
00:31:42
Speaker
because that wasn't an option for me. So opening that up, and especially to students that don't have that option, those are the things that kind of drive us. And that's, you know, that William L. Hansberry, his thing was that Black students in this country, and this is during the time of segregation, that they needed to know African history.
00:32:11
Speaker
because African history was a part of their history. So he was totally invested. He invested his whole life doing this work. He has a relationship to Nubia because he heard about Professor Francis Luell Griffith, who was at Oxford.
00:32:33
Speaker
was going to launch an excavation at Kawa, which is one of the temples that I'm studying for my dissertation. This was his first excavation at that site. And I guess he had published it, I saw the ad. And so Professor Hansberry actually wanted to participate in that excavation. And so he asked the assistant curator at the Museum of Fine Arts
00:33:02
Speaker
because he was Harvard educated. So he wasn't a slouch. Professor Hansberry had gotten his bachelor's and his master's from Harvard in anthropology, and at a time when nobody was studying Africa, which is another significant point. So he asked Dallas Dunham, who was the assistant curator, if he felt that
00:33:25
Speaker
he could approach Dr. Griffith to ask him to go in the excavation. And he wrote in the letter. And so Dallas Dunham responded to him and he gave him a lot of reasons. Well, you don't have any archeological experience, but with little hands, there was that person, well, you tell me where I'm deficient and I will go rectify that deficiency. So he had taken classes at the oral institute of the University of Chicago in Egyptology.
00:33:55
Speaker
So then, but he gets down to the final reason and his final reason is that, you know, he's a black man. And he says, you know, if it were me, if I was in charge of the excavation, I think long and hard before I would, you know, bring a Negro, you know, that would bring dishonor on the rest of the team and the people would not respect
00:34:23
Speaker
you know, you or respect us, which I find totally absurd after going to Sudan because the people were so happy to see somebody that looked like them participating. So, you know, so
00:34:40
Speaker
Aside from his work in African studies, that Nubian connection, he was just like the obvious choice. And Shayla has stories about William Leo Hansberry because he taught at Howard. I mean, she doesn't have direct stories. She didn't take classroom because he had already died. But she could tell you about the legacy of William Leo Hansberry at Howard. She was talking about the lab.
00:35:04
Speaker
Well, OK, I want to talk about the lab, but I also want to talk about the experience of being Black and digging in Sudan. One of the things that fascinates me, especially about that story, you know, saying that the expedition would lose prestige if there was the presence of an American Negro.
00:35:26
Speaker
And this is so ironic because my first time in Sudan, I went to the National Museum and I was just kind of puttering around while we were waiting to kind of get our paperwork together so we could go up to our site. And a school bus came and there were a bunch of girls on the school bus. It was like a high school for girls. And they saw me and they took off from that bus and they surrounded me in that museum.
00:35:56
Speaker
And they said, are you Sudani? And I had to tell them, no, I'm Ricky, right? And they were only a little bit disappointed, but not that much. Because they knew I was an archeologist. And that bus load full of high school girls and cartoon were so excited to see a black woman archeologist that they ran from the bus into the museum.
00:36:24
Speaker
So you think about that. That's the legacy of William Leo Hansberry. And I did my anthropological training in the Cobb Laboratory, which is named after one of Hansberry's students, William Montague Cobb. And he had quotes from Hansberry that were up, his teacher up in the lab.
00:36:49
Speaker
that were essentially saying what Deb said that, you know, the descendants of Africa could not know themselves until they actually understood the history of Africa. And finally, just one thing, because I know that Deb won't mention it when we talk about this experience. When I got to Sudan, and I mentioned Deb's name,
00:37:13
Speaker
One of our OGs, Bruce Williams, he was like, oh, Debra Hurd, the belle of Karima. So Karima is a town that is situated between several royal cemeteries. So if you hear about cemeteries like El Kuru and Jumbo Parkle and Temple of Jumbo Parkle,
00:37:31
Speaker
So Karima's kind of situated amongst a series of very important archaeological sites. And this town is a town full of people who know archaeology, who've worked on, you know, there are certain towns in Sudan where everybody kind of is in on the archaeology of the region. And they never forgot Debra Heard. And so that's what Bruce Williams, he was just like, she had everybody going crazy. Therefore it was still Karima.
00:38:02
Speaker
Well, you know, Jessica, it's one of those situations where you in hindsight realize the significance of being in a place. So, you know, when I was there, it wasn't until like I left, and I think maybe even after I came back the second time that I realized that the people in this village, in this area have not ever seen
00:38:30
Speaker
an African-American in person. And she's part of archeological tea. I mean, so again, going back to William Little Hansberry, you know that excitement that I think is a form of pride because it's like, that person looks like me.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, we went to one of the workman's houses the first time. And so the women, you know, go to one part, the men go to another, and they send one of the younger women out to, you know, to entertain while, you know, not to entertain, but, you know, to sit and talk while, you know, they prepare the food.
00:39:13
Speaker
And so it was, I think, his daughter-in-law, and she was a very, very dark, beautiful woman, wrapped with, you know, this very colorful scarf around her. And so there was another woman that went with us, like, I'm the only Black person, okay, so.
00:39:32
Speaker
So Lisa sits in between us because she could speak a little Arabic. I didn't know Arabic at the time. So she is just sitting there on the other side of Lisa and just smiling. And then all of a sudden she pulls her sleeve up, reaches across Lisa and puts her arm next to mine.
00:39:53
Speaker
And I say, yes, we're the same. And then five minutes later, she does it again. And it's just like she was just so excited. And I was like, I would love to be able to know
00:40:10
Speaker
what she's thinking, you know, to verbalize what this means to her to have a Black woman doing this work. So, you know, representation is important, not just, you know, in the place, you know, academically, but it can be
00:40:30
Speaker
important for the place where you go, the place where you're doing the work. It can be very important for them, too. So I just wanted to mention that because that was that's one of the things that one of the memories that I treasure most of my first trip to Sudan was that that whole interaction with that woman. It was just it was just remarkable. This is one of those moments where I'm sad that we don't have like the video going because it's like I'm just sitting here like smiling. That seems like
00:41:00
Speaker
But sadly I have to make us take a break, but you will come back and we will keep talking about this.
00:41:10
Speaker
Okay. So we're back and we've talked a lot about Nubia in general. And I really wanted to get a little bit into your current work for both of you to make sure we cover that. So could each of you maybe talk about like the particular things that you're studying in Nubia? Well, I'll go first. Cause I really want you to hear what Shayla's working on. I think that I tell people that Shayla's work is going to transform
00:41:40
Speaker
how we view what's going on in the Nile Valley, not just in Nubia, but also in Egypt. No pressure, man. But we'll get to that. I mean, it's that missing piece that, you know, breaking down that boundary between African studies and Egyptology and so, but we'll get to that. But so my never ending dissertation project, it seems,
00:42:05
Speaker
I'm analyzing or comparing temples dedicated to the Egyptian god, Amun, to the temples dedicated to the indigenous Nubian god, Apedamec, who was a lion-headed god. So I'm looking at the iconography and the inscription. So the iconography, of course, is the drawings and the carvings. But what I'm looking for is
00:42:36
Speaker
What did it mean for the king or the queen because we had ruling queens? What did it mean for the ruler to be a good ruler? What were the responsibilities that they had to carry out to the gods as well as to the people?
00:42:54
Speaker
but also what responsibilities were there for the royal family. So on a lot of the temples that I'm looking at, we see not only the king or the queen, but we also see other people, other royal family members, particularly apprentices, participating. So those are some of the things that I'm looking at for my dissertation. But outside of that,
00:43:23
Speaker
I am keenly interested in origins. So what are the origins of some of the ideas that we see in the religious sphere? Some of the origins of some of the deities that we see?
00:43:42
Speaker
And that is, I think, probably a lifelong project, looking at origins. So that means not looking just statically in one place. Again, breaking down those boundaries, looking at people, how they were moving around the landscape, what was going on in that critical housing period. And we keep mentioning the housing, so it was a period where the Sahara was actually green and lush.
00:44:13
Speaker
There was a change in climate, so people were moving from the south, people were moving from the west, people were moving all over, and they were bringing different ideas about, you know, how they, different cultural ideas. So we see things start to emerge.
00:44:31
Speaker
during the drying phase when the Sahara started to dry up again and people started moving to permanent water sources. So people are moving into the Nile Valley and settling there. People are moving west.
00:44:46
Speaker
And I think that's something that we have to start looking at. It's like people are settling along in the Niger area, looking at the people that are creating these settlements around these permanent water sources. But they would have gathered, some of these people would have gathered in the Sahara region, in the Sahel,
00:45:06
Speaker
and exchange some cultural ideas. So just looking at how some of these things emerge and looking at connections across space and time are things that I'm interested in and doing. And I'm still looking at some aspects of the Royal Women because that's been something that, like I said, that was my very first public lecture back in 2006 was about the Nubian Queens.
00:45:34
Speaker
And so there's a lot of things that are still fascinating about not just the queens, but the queen mothers and the princess priestesses that I think we still have to unpack. And our colleagues, Solange Ashby has been doing some of that work as well. So there's, yeah, there's a lot of interesting work that's being done.
00:45:55
Speaker
in Nubia. But I'll let Shayla talk about her groundbreaking future work. I don't know about breaking any ground. So I am, as archeologists, I'm interested in how people use animals to navigate their world.
00:46:18
Speaker
I mean, I work in the Nile Valley, I work in Nubia, but I also broadly study pastoralism in dry lands and the resilience that pastoralists have during climate change. So my present project, I mean, I just finished a book. I'm finishing up a book along with some colleagues about the history of cattle in Sudan. But my present project really looks at how we can measure
00:46:43
Speaker
social networks that were maintained by cattle pastoralists. We see a little bit about what this looks like in the present, but when we look at it in the past, we're looking at a certain set of material measures like burial places, trade items,
00:47:04
Speaker
We can look at the animal bones that we find and we can study them isotopically so we can look at their biochemistry to see where the animals were being taken. There's also more information now about the types of hydrological networks and the extent of these hydrological networks that pastoralists would have traveled along in ancient times. So the idea is that we put all of these things together
00:47:31
Speaker
Kind of in into one big conversation to see if we can measure
00:47:39
Speaker
what's happening in the social networks during environmental duress. And this is really starting around like 4,500 BC. And my big question is, do people cooperate or is there conflict or cooperation during the worst times when people, the climate is changing, the rain is gone. I wanna know how people work through that. And I'm interested in this because I think that
00:48:09
Speaker
how people work through the desiccation of the Sahara has a lot of implications for what people are capable of working through and surviving today.
00:48:25
Speaker
interesting segue into one of my next questions, which was looking at Sudan today in 2023, because this is being recorded in 2023. Obviously, there's a lot happening there. There's the war in Sudan, and how is that
00:48:42
Speaker
affecting the work that the two of you are trying to do and everyone at the Hansberry Society? Well, I will say that this is a question I get a lot, but the interesting thing about not even just being at Harvard. So during these salvage campaigns, during the building of the Aswan High Dam and other dam projects that required salvage archaeology,
00:49:13
Speaker
There is a lot of material that was excavated in the Nile Valley that has not been analyzed. It's been in storage in a variety of universities throughout the United States and Europe. I began my appointment in July. So in July, I started a fellowship appointment
00:49:32
Speaker
at Harvard, my assistant professor appointment technically starts next July, or this coming up July. But at this university where I work, there are tons of materials from the Nile Valley that have not been analyzed. So even though we, of course, cannot go into the field, we still have an archaeological obligation
00:49:56
Speaker
To we should really be looking at these legacy collections even before we plan. Research like these these collections should not be neglected and so on the flip side, even though we have tons of material to work with.
00:50:13
Speaker
The flip side of that is that I do worry about losing a generation of archeologists in Sudan. While we're not there, that means that Sudanese students who are, you know, for a lot of the students, they're hunkered down. They're in their ancestral villages away from the fighting. Their educations have been disrupted. And so to me, that's the biggest irritation is not for myself.
00:50:44
Speaker
But there was this movement that was gaining momentum for Sudanese people to take a much more active and central role in their cultural heritage. And this series of conflicts that has now culminated in this civil war, I think it really threatens our progress in producing Sudanese archaeologists to kind of take the reins
00:51:13
Speaker
of this, and that's something we're actively trying to strategize to work on. We're actively trying to figure out how to not lose that next generation of Sudanese archaeologists.
00:51:31
Speaker
And also, I would suggest that your listeners go over to the Hansberry website because we have put up a statement about Sudan on our website. For us, it's more than just the archaeology and the work. It's the people. When you go and you spend time in these villages,
00:51:55
Speaker
with these beautiful people inside and out. You just can't imagine the terror that they're being subjected to. And so for us, it's extremely saddening because we feel helpless to end this nightmare for the people that we know are just innocent and helpless to stop any of this.
00:52:26
Speaker
So it's, for us, it's deeper than just the work. There's an emotional part of it that goes along with it, you know, being able to contact your colleagues to know that they're okay.
00:52:40
Speaker
is, you know, something that we all, you know, we struggle with from time to time. It's like, I haven't heard from such so and so, you know, are they okay? So it's something that's distressing on so many levels, other than just, you know, we won't be in the field, you know, nobody will be able to go in the field, you know, the next year. You know, we also have to consider what happens in the aftermath.
00:53:09
Speaker
And with the cultural heritage, yes, but with the country. I mean, there's major infrastructure that has been destroyed. How is that going to be replaced?
00:53:25
Speaker
I don't want anybody, any corporation or government trying to profit off of the hardship that these people have experienced, and it wasn't their fault. Nothing that happened was the will of these people, but they're suffering the loss.
00:53:47
Speaker
So just having, you know, how do we help them even with the aftermath is something that we have to consider. And you know what? I mean, everything that Deb is saying is true. I pray that people keep their eyes on Sudan because I don't really trust anybody. Like, you know, like as far as
00:54:12
Speaker
governments and the international community doing right by Sudan, I feel like they had the chance to do right by Sudan and they didn't. So I don't necessarily know why I would expect it now, you know, like, I mean, we can keep our eyes on Sudan and I hope that the international community demands better.
00:54:36
Speaker
But I feel like, for me, I just want to build up those networks. And this is something that every person I know who works in Sudan has been working on. It's just trying to build networks made out of people, right? Because we know the corporations are going to do their thing. We know that the State Department is going to do their thing. And I'm talking about in the midst of rebuilding. In the midst of rebuilding, capital is going to capital.
00:55:08
Speaker
Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. Oh, let me. OK, I said I was not going to say nothing to get me fired. Look, the best thing is to build relationships between people. We have to have direct relationships between people so that when all that other stuff falls apart,
00:55:31
Speaker
It is the personal relationships that hold us together and allow us to move resources to wherever they need to go. And I'm going to say that, and that's good. That's innocuous. After Bashir was ousted, that year I went to Sudan. I went into the grocery store in cartoons so that we can get our little snacks and everything for going up to our field sites.
00:56:00
Speaker
And it was a stereotypical Sudanese grocery store with stereotypical Sudanese items. You know, I come back eight weeks later and the whole grocery store is full, like chock full of American products. It was like Kraft and Proctor and Gamble threw up in there.
00:56:21
Speaker
You know what I'm saying? And so I was like, what is this? You know, like, in the space of like, I was only in the field for like eight weeks. But when I came back, the largest grocery store and cartoon was full of Doritos and everything you could think of. So for me,
00:56:43
Speaker
That gives me a heads up to what rebuilding and I'm doing the sarcastic air quotes with my fingers. That gives me a heads up about what rebuilding is going to look like.
00:56:56
Speaker
Rebuild is going to look like Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. So knowing that, knowing that that's just how it is, rebuild is going to look like McDonald's everywhere, right? So I am with the student and these people. I want to be with them in the rebuilding, but we also have to make sure, like Deb said, that the rebuilding is about people and not Big Macs and Coke. And I'm just going to leave it at that. I don't think I said anything to get me put on the list.
00:57:30
Speaker
It's not even just the Big Macs and the Cokes. What's even more, I think, insidious is the like 99-year leases from agricultural land. That's what I don't want to see more of because it already exists. But I don't want them basically taking more land.
00:57:57
Speaker
whether it's a government or it's a corporation. And so I think the thing is to foreground Nubian voices, excuse me foreground Sudanese voices because Nubians are one group incident. And so that's the principle has to guide us.
00:58:14
Speaker
You know, the principle has to be that we do what we can to keep Sudanese voices front and center, that we listen to them, that we believe them, and that we absolutely follow their lead in rebuilding that future. And that's a principle I can stand on like 10 toes down.
00:58:40
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that ties into the last question that I had for the two of you, which is basically, where do you want to see this work go in the future? I want to replace myself with a Sudanese archaeologist.
00:58:57
Speaker
All right. And so I have obligations. My personal obligations are to two communities. I'm obligated to my community, the African-American community. I'm obligated to the Nubian community, the Nubian communities in the towns where I work. And so for me, I would love to build pathways.
00:59:20
Speaker
And one of the concerns is, A, making this work accessible for people who look like me, both in the United States and across the continent, but two, building pathways so that Sudanese people don't become bystanders in their own history. Because right now, the pathways that exist were few and far between
00:59:46
Speaker
They were perilous to begin with, and now those pathways have been destroyed temporarily. So I'm working with organizations like Scholar Rescue, like AMSARC, American Sudanese Archaeological Research Center. There are several organizations that are working to try to keep those pathways open.
01:00:08
Speaker
But I just essentially want the opportunity to train students who, because one of the things we haven't mentioned is that Nile Valley excavations are expensive. It's expensive to participate in them.
01:00:22
Speaker
And sometimes it's hard to even get placed on a project without having a really without being tapped into elite networks. So part of what we're trying to do with William Leo Hansberry is to make sure that people are not excluded from this work because they don't have the money or because they don't have like some sort of elite half-elute network where they have somebody who can put them on.
01:00:49
Speaker
I want to open those doors up so that other deserving students can participate. That was exactly what I was going to say, so echoing what Shayla is saying. Just that access, we have students that have an interest, but the financial part of it is just overwhelming.
01:01:15
Speaker
So being able to fund students so that they can go, so that they can do their research, but also seeing the possibilities for other types of research. So, you know, having students in conservation,
01:01:36
Speaker
or going into geology. All of those things are important for archaeological excavation, but also the work that gets done once you're back in the States or in the lab.
01:01:54
Speaker
So opening those doors and making it so that, like Shayla was saying, that it's not just, you know, certain departments have the access to sites. And if you're not a part of that department or if you're not a part of that university, then you're basically locked out. We have students that
01:02:17
Speaker
are outside of those networks. So how do they get in? So that's what we're asking for. That's what we're pushing for, just to have those opportunities and the funding that goes along so that they can take advantage of those opportunities.
01:02:35
Speaker
Well, I really appreciate the two of you coming on and sharing everything today. And I mean, that's an amazing vision that the two of you shared. So I hope that the field does head that way. And yeah, just again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. And I know I learned a lot today, so I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. I know this is outside of your normal, so we appreciate the opportunity to even bring Nubia into this setting.
01:03:05
Speaker
I mean, it's always amazing though. Like you hit on so many of the same themes that come up and, you know, in slightly different ways that really like make you think about it. So I think it's perfect. Right. I mean, and these are some of the discussions we were having, you know, in our archaeology section, just more in general, like if we want to talk about increasing diversity, what does that mean? And what does that look like? You can't be just, oh, we're going to open, you know, spaces on teams.
01:03:34
Speaker
You have to understand that the students that you're trying to attract, they have different needs. So a student that's working class, which a lot of these students will be, and it doesn't even have to be a racial thing, white working class students have those same issues too.
01:03:55
Speaker
that funding is a critical key piece that needs to be addressed. So yeah, so a lot of those issues don't just affect Nubian archaeology, but it's where we work. So we want to make sure that we have those resources available for our students so that we can continue to move forward in this area.
01:04:18
Speaker
Yeah, so if anybody, you know, has lots of cash laying around and wants to make a donation to the Hands of our Society. Exactly. We want to be able to field our own excavation team. So yes. Awesome. I love it. Cool. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you so much.
01:04:50
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Heritage Voices podcast. You can find show notes at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com slash Heritage Voices. Please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or the Google Play Music Store. Also, please share with your friends or write us a review. Sharing and reviewing helps more people find the show and gets the perspectives of Heritage Voices amazing guests out there into the world.
01:05:13
Speaker
No, we just need more of that in anthropology and land management. If you have any more questions, comments, or show suggestions, please reach out to me at Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org. If you'd like to volunteer to be on the show as a guest or even a co-host, reach out to me as well, Jessica at livingheritageanthropology.org.
01:05:31
Speaker
You can also follow more of what I'm doing on Facebook at Living Heritage Anthropology and the nonprofit Living Heritage Research Council, or on Twitter at LivingHeritageA. As always, huge thank you to Liable Enqua and Jason Nez for their collaboration on our incredible logo.
01:05:56
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.