The UNESCO-sponsored International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia was launched in 1960 to document as much as possible of the archaeological landscape of Lower Nubia (partly in modern Sudan, partly in Egypt) before the lake rising behind the Aswan High Dam obliterated all traces of the past. Publication of the data produced by the many teams that undertook work as part of the campaign has been ongoing since the 1960s. The volume under review is the last of three documenting the sites surveyed from 1960–1964 under agreement between the Sudan Antiquities Service and UNESCO on the west bank of the Nile along the 40km stretch between Faras and Gemai, northern Sudan. The two previously published volumes present sites of the Meroitic and Ballaña Age (Adams Reference Adams2004) and the Christian Age (Adams Reference Adams2005); this final volume deals with earlier sites of Nubian and Pharaonic date. The fieldwork was directed by William Adams; Nordström, the author of the present volume, was a principal member of the team.

The volume is divided into seven chapters: an introduction; a description of terminology and classifications of ceramic fabrics and vessel forms (with references to fuller descriptions in previous publications); catalogues of Early Nubian, Middle Nubian and Pharaonic New Kingdom sites; a catalogue of miscellaneous (essentially undated) sites; and a very brief discussion of wider context. There are also appendices listing catalogued objects, organised by date, and an extensive although not comprehensive set of black and white plates. An Arabic abstract is also provided.

The meat of this book is the presentation of the data, arranged by site, in the three period-based chapters. No absolute chronology is provided, and some previous knowledge of the Abkhan, A-Group, C-Group, and pharaonic cultures is necessary to understand the mixture of cultural and chronological designations used, as well as the full significance of the data presented. Within each chapter, sites are divided into habitation and mortuary groups; all the details of architecture, assemblages and skeletal remains originally documented are supplied and, in a few cases, some further data subsequently acquired through analysis of samples. There are 28 Early Nubian sites, including long-lived habitation sites and cemeteries with large amounts of Egyptian pottery as grave goods. Sites of this period are evenly split between occupation and mortuary functions. The 40 sites of the Middle Nubian Period, however, are predominantly cemeteries. Some of these cemeteries had previously been used in the Early Nubian period, and it would have been interesting to have had some discussion of this reuse of earlier sites as there is an apparent hiatus of at least several centuries between the Early and Middle Nubian Periods, during which there is no evidence of any regional occupation. Some of the Middle Nubian C-Group cemeteries were quite extensive, including 24-E-3. The graves (nearly 500) at this site had circular superstructures of notable size, varying between 1.9 and 6.5 m, and relatively intensive mapping and excavation were undertaken in the hope of establishing its chronological development. This cemetery has been partly published elsewhere so not all graves are included in the present volume.

The 31 recorded Pharaonic sites largely date to the New Kingdom. The types of sites recorded here are more diverse, and include a small sandstone quarry, sentinel huts probably associated with the Egyptian fortresses in the region, and cemeteries, none larger than about 20 graves. The data in this section are, however, not representative of the totality of Pharaonic remains in this region, as several sites, including large ones, were excavated by other missions. References are given in the text to those sites and their publications.

As noted in the concluding chapter, the material documented by this survey largely fits with patterns already observed about settlement and burial in this region during these periods. Our understanding of what these patterns mean, however, has shifted in the last two decades, with an increasing awareness of the importance of interactions, fluidity and hybridity in a region that was always a border zone. We need new investigations of such issues, and these will require the collation of a large amount of data from a range of publications. While the volume under review does not and cannot undertake such a synthesis, it will nonetheless be a vital part of such studies.

Most of the shortcomings of this book are due to the very difficult circumstances under which the data were collected, and the time in which the fieldwork was done. One constantly wants more information: pottery drawings, osteological analysis, faunal bone analysis, the additional graves that were dug by another team at the same site and so on. But this does not diminish the importance of what is published here. Almost all of these sites are now under water. We should be grateful to Nordström, both for the work he did in the early 1960s in the Sudan and for his perseverance in seeing the present volume through to publication.