Beja Nomadic Peoples Burials

The northeast part of Africa fascinates me: the history is so rich, but many places I’d like to go aren’t accessible. Take the Kassala region of eastern Sudan, for instance — the first and second images show breathtaking mountains overlooking an off-planet like desert scene. These images also get at the ancient past of the region, whether the 18th- century Khatmiyah mosque (still in use) on the second slide, or the recently mapped Medieval Islamic tombs faintly bubbling up in the first.

This region has a lot of the Beja nomadic peoples, who have made their living herding various animals for millennia. They speak a language related to ancient Cushitic which goes back thousands of years, and it was likely their ancestors whose tombs have been discovered.

The methodology for analyzing these burials is very new, as the research team’s publication this month (in the journal _PLOS One_) spells out. Due to a lack of material evidence and the sheer number of over 10,000 tombs, archaeologists needed to use a more statistical approach. Using satellite imagery, they employed a method called the “Neyman-Scott cluster process,” which up until now has only been used to look at the spatial patterns of the stars.

Using this cosmologial mapping approach, the archaeologists have determined that the burials were not random, but had “parent” clusters that were “centers of attraction for subsequent burials” — like galaxy clusters. Hopefully more conclusions will be forthcoming. Even more hopefully, conditions may change so I can travel to see them myself one day.