Pastoralisin in the Wadi Abu Dom Sudan non-sedentary economical strategies in the central Bayuda

Abstract EN

Since 2009, the Wadi Abu Dom Itinerary survey documented several archaeological records connected to mobile and pastoral lifestyle concepts.

At least since the regional ‘terrace tumuli period’ (which corresponds to the Meroitic era of the Nile valley), pastoralism seems to have played a major role for the economy of the Bayuda.

At the fringe between late antiquity and the local variant of the medieval culture, cattle as the most prestigious livestock were replaced by camels.

On a short as well as a middle range level, the pastoral economies of the Bayuda might have been parts of integrated economical systems with multifold interactions with desert oasis cultures, and probably even the Nile valley.

Despite these economic exchange mechanisms, by cultural and political means the pastoralists of the Bayuda seem to have been only loosely connected to the Nile valley based states of antiquity and medieval times, forming a more or less independent ‘Bayuda culture’.