Data copyright © Prof Peter Rowley-Conwy unless otherwise stated
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Prof
Peter
Rowley-Conwy
Department of Archaeology
Durham University
South Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
England
Tel: 0191 3341155
This project, undertaken by Dr. Peter Rowley-Conwy and ably assisted by Dr. Alan Clapham (Worcester University) and supported by the Natural Environmental Research Council, has analysed the huge sample of botanical remains from Qasr Ibrim in Nubia, dating from 1000 BC to AD 1800. Three main phases of agricultural plants are identified. First, in the 1st millennium BC the crop plants were those characteristic of ancient Egyptian cultivation in the receding Nile floods: barley, emmer wheat, linseed and lentils. Second, in the period AD 0-350, many new crop plants appear: sorghum, pearl millet, termis and lablab beans, sesame, cotton, and a hexaploid wheat. These are summer crops, and their presence indicates the use of irrigation - the saqia ox-driven water wheel. Third, after AD 350 the pace of change slows, and agriculture continued largely unchanged until abandonment in AD 1800. The major agricultural change, the 'Nubian agricultural revolution', occurs several centuries earlier than previously thought.
The samples within the dataset are numbered sequentially, e.g. 86/149 is season 1986, sample no. 149. The initials 'QI', used throughout the dataset, refer to the site Qasr Ibrim. House, room and context numbers are all labelled as such and are those allocated by the archaeologists excavating the site.
Shortened codes are used to refer to periods throughout and are expanded below: