Sudan Archaeological Research Society
The Sudan Archaeological Research Society (SARS) is a registered British charity (number 1005966) based in London, UK.
Its constitution states that its primary objective is “to promote and carry out … research, surveys, investigations and excavations… and publish and disseminate the useful results of such work”.
[1] It has carried out numerous surveys and excavation projects at major sites across Sudan, including Gabati, Kawa and Kanisah Kurgus, and remains active in fieldwork and other programmes.
Rock art, ceramics, and human remains from the Fourth Cataract were recovered during the Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project, some of which are on display in the British Museum, Gallery 65.
The main SARS library is housed in the society's office in the Department of Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum in London.
It also maintains a branch library within the office of the Section Française de la Direction des Antiquités du Soudan in the premises of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (Sudan) in Khartoum.
The SARS archive contains the original records from the society's survey and excavation projects, as well as a large number of photographs, negatives and transparencies from numerous scholars and travelers between the 1930s and 1980s.
Undertaken in early 1993, the survey focused on the new road from the pyramid area at Begrawiya (ancient Meroe) up to Atbara, a distance of 90 km.
Within the three-month project, over the winter of 1994–1995, the team excavated a total of 104 graves dating to the later Kushite, Post-Meroitic and Medieval periods.
From the Neolithic, settled communities were present and evidence of land and freshwater molluscs along with fish bones indicates the presence of standing water in the wadi.
Rock drawings of birds, the head of a king, ankhs and a geometric design occupy the very top of the mountain and were carved on both vertical and horizontal slabs.
The society's mission to the Fourth Cataract was one of the first to heed the call first made by the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums Sudan in 1993 to work in the region threatened by the construction of what was then known as the Hamdab Dam.
[3] In October 1999, SARS work began in a concession 40 km in length along the left bank of the Nile and on all the adjacent islands between Amri and Kirbekan - that is between the fortresses of Suweigi at Dar el-Arab upstream to Jebel Musa.
Fieldwork included excavation and survey of a number of sites from across several thousand years of Sudanese history, as well as ethnographic and environmental study, in addition to the identification of numerous examples of rock art.
The first campaign of the joint SARS-British Museum project at Kurgus investigated the Hagr el-Merwa in detail, surveyed archaeological sites in the vicinity, and undertook small-scale excavations within the mud-brick fort on the riverbank and in the associated cemetery.
The fort, which dates to the medieval period, measures c. 72 m2 and is defended by massive walls 5 m thick from which project towers at the angles and midway along each side.
The ancient Egyptian name of Kawa, Gematon, suggests that it was founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century BC, although the earliest structural evidence known from the site is a temple built under Tutankhamun.
With support from the Qatar-Sudan Archaeological Project, work continued at Kawa, as well as funding three years of excavation at H25, a Kerma-New Kingdom settlement site discovered during the society's Northern Dongola Reach Survey.
