Africa

Julien Cooper et al./The Conversation We have been on a years-long campaign of satellite remote sensing of the vast desert landscapes in Eastern Sudan. This involved using satellite aerial imagery to systematically and painstakingly search for archaeological features in Atbai Desert of Eastern Sudan, a small part of the much larger Sahara. Our team – which includes archaeologists from Macquarie University, France’s HiSoMA research unit, and the Polish Academy of Sciences – wanted to tell the story of this desert region between the Nile and the Red Sea, without having to excavate. One mysterious archaeological feature stood out. We kept finding large, circular mass graves filled with the bones of people and animals, often carefully arranged around a key person