スーダンにおける古代製鉄の歴史的意義 : 第15回ヌビア国際学会口頭発表を中心として

This paper is based on an oral presentation given at the 15th ISNS, 2022, held at the University of Warsaw, Poland. In the same presentation, the author reviewed the historical significance of iron making techniques and iron artifacts in ancient Sudan. The goal was to introduce the author’s Japanese research and efforts to foreign researchers and to integrate them into the international scientific literature at the request of Sudanese colleagues. The presentation is based on previous publications in Japanese: “A Preliminary Study of Ancient Iron Working at Meroe in Sudan” (hereafter “A Preliminary Study”) in the Journal of Historical Iron and Steel Vol. 52 (2013) and “The Iron Making Method in Meroe of Ancient Sudan: The Historical Significance Reconstructed by the Research History of Iron Making Method and Chemical Analysis” (hereafter “Iron Making”) in the Bulletin of the Society for the Near Eastern Studies in Japan Vol. 57 No. 2 (2014).
The two previous studies by the author previously referred to the research and research history of A. H. Sayce, P. Shinne, R. Tylecote, T. Rehren, B. Abdu, R. Gordon, and M. S. Bashir. This paper provides an overview of the investigation in Darfur and a comparison with Muhammed’s research, which includes Darfur, Kordofan, and Chad as neighboring countries. An overview of the UCL Qatar excavation and smelting festival under the direction of J. Humphries and the French excavation under the direction of Dieudonné-Glad was also presented. As a result, there are no significant differences between the author’s two Japanese studies and the results of subsequent foreign research.
Of course, studies based on excavations will continue to be essential, but two aspects from my studies should be further investigated: first, the conceptualization of workshops and consumption sites, and second, the presentation of the individuality and independence of Sudanese history and culture from the perspective of iron studies. It is through these two aspects that the cultural context of Sudan can be separated from the Egyptocentric perspective and the essential understanding of Sudanese history and culture can begin to deepen. In order to promote and establish a historical study of trade and technological exchange based on the conceptualization of workshops and consumption sites, it is important to break through the preconceived notions of historical research and to put in place a new perspective as soon as possible.