Fig. 01: A relaxing evening at home.	Fig. 02: The Fiat Panda 4x4 on the Mesolithic site 10-X-6.

After two weeks of work at the Mesolithic site 10-X-6, located along the White Nile, south of Omdurman, the huge western extension of Khartoum, and two weeks intensively filled by bureaucratic duties and logistic problems, we can finally find some quiet hours to start telling our tale through images and emotions.
The archaeological and geomorphological team arrived in Khartoum November the 7th. This year, apart the director of the project, Donatella Usai, the team consists of Sandro Salvatori, Stefano Tuzzato, Elisabetta Fasson, Lisa Berni, Riccardo Ercolino and, Mortada Boshara Mohammed, archaeologists; Mauro Cremaschi and Andrea Zerboni, geo-archaeologist; Federica Crivellaro, physical anthropologist. Our Sudanese inspector, Amel Hassan Gasmallah, is also an archaeologist plainly integrated in our fieldwork.
At our arrival, this year, we found, waiting for us, two Panda 4x4, gift of our friends and sponsors, the managers of an Arabic gum import company (GASID), seated in Turin. The cars allowed us to put immediately the geo-archaeologists at work. They drove all over the area under concession to study its formation and the river beds that shaped it in the last ten millennia. Their work, illustrated by a map showing the different palaeo-soils and their chronological attribution, contributed deeply to understand the distribution of archaeological sites we located in the past two years.
During their excursions over the territory they also discovered some new archaeological sites of Mesolithic and more recent periods.
Our efforts during the present campaign will be concentrated on the excavation of a huge Mesolithic site located on top of a dune along the western bank of the White Nile. This settlement (10-X-6) is only one of the many sites located along the bank of the river and, as others, it is in a great danger of destruction for the increasing expansion of El Salha village, a southern extension of Omdurman. With our work, mainly oriented toward the study of the most ancient human societies that prospered in this African region, we aim safeguarding the cultural heritage of the country and the most ancient traces of human activities in the area.

Fig. 03: Excursion of geo-archaeologists	Fig. 04: Cultivated fields along the western bank of the White Nile.

There is an ongoing discussion among the local authorities how to protect from an uncontrolled urbanisation this strip of land along the bank of the Nile, where many and large Mesolithic and Neolithic sites are concentrated.
The stratigraphic excavation of a Mesolithic settlement is particularly difficult and slow due to the complexity of the stratigraphic sequence but also for the uneasy reading of the soils that are not, apparently, very much differentiated from a chromatic point of view. Only a very fine trowel and brush-work allow us to recognise these tenuous chromatic variations and, guided also by soil consistency, to distinguish the different levels. This work brought to light the many episodes of anthropic sedimentation or of natural erosion which contributed to built up the archaeological deposit and to give it the standing conformation.
Concentrated particularly on the study of the ancient population and the ideological sphere embedded in burial practices we started in these days the photographic and graphic mapping of a cairn made of Nubian sandstone blocks. The cairn is one out of 20 in a cemetery located two years ago around thirty km in the interior, at the foot of the Jebel Baroka, the highest morphological relief of the area. In these days we will start the excavation of the burial structure from which we expect, with a little bit of lucky and without getting stacked in the sand, precious chronological and cultural information.

Fig. 05: Terrestrial shells in the alluvial plain between the White Nile and the Jebel Baroka.	Fig. 06: Mesolithic site at the foot of Jebel Baroka.

As everybody in a Muslim country we also stop working on Friday. Urged by our curiosity and the desire to know better and better this country and its archaeological treasures, we become tourist travelling for hundred kilometres to visit prestigious and famous archaeological sites. Careless of tiredness, the last Friday we did not hesitate to organise with Italian and Sudanese friends a visit to Musawwarat es Sufra, where a group of German archaeologists is restoring the temple dedicated to the Lion God (Apedemak) of the 3rd century BC.

Fig. 07: Traces of human activities in the alluvial plain.	Fig. 08: Fireplaces of unknown period in the alluvial plain.

The site, of Meroitic period, is also consisting of other excavated but not yet restored temple complexes and still preserves the remains of a great water basin.
The cultural journey continued to reach Meroe, the capital of the Meroitic Kingdom where the pyramids of the Black Pharaohs were erected. An enchanted place in a nowadays completely desert environment. It is not far from the ancient city of Meroe where the British archaeologist J. Garstang excavated, many years ago, among other, a temple dedicated to the Egyptian God Amon. In the next days we will come back to tell you news and progress of our work which just now is entering the most important phase.