El Kurru Blog 2013

About the Autor

My name is Geoff Emberling, and I’m the director of the University of Michigan Nubian Expedition. I’m a 47-year-old archaeologist with a PhD in Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. I was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and museum director at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, before arriving at my current position as a research scientist at the Kelsey Museum at the University of Michigan. My earlier career focused on ancient Mesopotamia, including an excavation in eastern Syria that I directed until 2004.

I began working on ancient Nubia in 2005 while preparing an exhibit at the Oriental Institute and found it fascinating in many ways—beautiful objects, interesting culture and history, still much too little known, and remarkable opportunities for research. I’m writing here about my current (2013) field project in Sudan.