The Exploitation of cultivated and wild plants in Post-Medieval Nubia: Archaeobotanical Evidence from Old Dongola (16th-19th Centuries AD)

Résumé En

Sudanese history of the 16th and 19th centuries is poorly understood due to the lack of written and archaeological evidence. This investigation gap resulted in very scarce and patchy archaeobotanical evidence. Nevertheless, few systematic archaeobotanical investigations have been conducted in Sudanese Nubia regarding plant consumption and agricultural production. We present the newly identified archaeobotanical remains from the administrative townsite of Old Dongola, the northern province's capital of the Funj Kingdom (AD 1504-1821). Since 2018 onwards, we carried out large-scale systematic archaeobotanical sampling at the citadel of Old Dongola. This strategy enabled us to reveal a huge variety of wild and cultivated plants, comprising more than 36.000 seeds belonging to 17 plant families and 36 genera from 17 occupational contexts. These new results provide a cornerstone for understanding post-medieval and early Islamic Sudanese subsistence regimes and the historic use of economic and medicinal plants. Furthermore, we discovered several imported plants in Old Dongola that represented important commodities in the trading networks of the old world.