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content/issue/dotawo8.md

@@ -6,6 +6,146 @@ has_articles: ["HafsaasWar.md", "honegger.md", "urosmatic.md", "tsakos.md", "rok
 
 # Preface by the Editor
 
-Preface
+War has been a recurring form of violent interaction between communities
+in the Sudan since the Stone Age, and many chronological divisions in
+the history of the country are set at events such as wars, battles,
+conquests, and peace treaties. Still, warfare has often been an
+overlooked topic among researchers working in Sudan and Nubia. An
+explanation is possibly that periods of stability or evolving complexity
+are usually longer than episodes of war, which occur during relatively
+short timespans at irregular intervals. Another reason may be that
+contemporary Sudan has been a violent place, and this has possibly made
+war in the country a sensitive topic and restrained researchers from
+making warfare their research object.
+
+The modern borders of the Sudan are a construct of war. First through
+the conquests by the Ottoman rulers of Egypt between the 1820s and the
+1870s. Then the Anglo-Egyptian conquest in 1898, which also incorporated
+the independent sultanate of Darfur in 1916.[^1] The borders of the
+Anglo-Egyptian condominium were maintained when Sudan became independent
+in 1956, but the northern and southern parts of the independent country
+thereafter fought on and off in the longest civil war in Africa. The war
+was terminated with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, which
+culminated with a referendum where the southern part of the country
+voted for secession. The country was split in two in 2011. Nevertheless,
+violent conflict and war continued as the new states of South Sudan and
+Sudan were fighting over territory and oil fields in the border regions.
+Since late 2013, South Sudan has become deeply split in a civil war that
+is dividing the country along ethnic boundaries with great human
+sufferings. In the north, Sudan had a central government at war with
+systematically marginalized peripheries and a suppressed population.
+Increasing resistance from the inhabitants resulted in the toppling of
+the old regime in 2019. The transitional government failed to install
+civilian rule in Sudan, and the military took full control of the
+government in a coup in October 2021. The Sudanese people have taken to
+the streets numerous times since 2019 demanding civilian rule, and their
+persistence brings hope for a civilian government and democratic state
+in Sudan.
+
+War has deep roots in Sudan. An Upper Paleolithic cemetery at Jebel
+Sahaba in the far north of the country is often quoted as the earliest
+evidence of war in world history.[^2] Around 25 victims at Jebel Sahaba
+exhibited injuries from attacks with bows and arrows.[^3] The
+extremities of the earliest war and the violent conflicts in modern
+times demonstrate that war in the Sudan covers a great time span and
+various levels of organization -- from violent clashes between ethnic
+groups to warfare between states and civil wars. However, exact evidence
+for violent conflict and war in Nubia and Sudan is limited for all
+periods. Iconography and texts are often our only indications for
+warfare, but these data are indirect sources and not always reliable
+information. Although historians have researched the wars that have
+ridden the country in modern times, the time is ripe to study wars in
+the Sudan from a broader academic perspective. I hope the articles in
+this volume of Dotawo will stimulate to provide more attention to
+warfare in scholarship on the Sudan, as this will increase our
+understanding of interaction between people in this land.
+
+# About the Issue
+
+Despite being delayed by the pandemic and its consequences for research,
+we are delighted to finally publish this *Dotawo* volume on "War in
+Sudan". Five articles are included after some contributors were
+prevented from completing their articles. The aim of this thematic issue
+is to offer new insights on wars and violent conflict in the Sudan
+either as case-studies or as broader historical patterns.
+
+The volume is chronologically structured, beginning with the editor's
+contribution on the mid-4^th^ millennium BCE border war between peoples
+in Nubia and Egypt. Then follows Matthieu Honegger's presentation of the
+famous archers from Kerma during the latter half of the 3^rd^ millennium
+BCE. The bows and arrows in these earliest Kerma graves have never been
+presented in such detail before, and the appearance of the archers are
+linked to the emergence of the kingdom of Kerma. Next, Uroš Matić offers
+a fresh perspective on warfare and gender in textual and visual media
+during the Napatan and Meroitic periods (8^th^ century BCE to 4^th^
+century CE), followed by Alexandros Tsakos\' article on warfare terms in
+medieval sources (ca. 5^th^ century CE to 15^th^ century CE). The volume
+concludes with Roksana Hajduga\'s presentation of the art of the
+2018/2019 revolution in Sudan. She explores how the war between
+non-violent protesters and a brutal regime caused a change in the
+freedom of expressions and greater creativity in Fine Arts, Street art,
+and online art. The volume thus covers some major chronological phases
+of Nubia and Sudan from the earliest Bronze Age until today.
+
+The articles in this issue also cover a wide geographical area along the
+Nile. The first article by Hafsaas focus on the First Cataract region in
+the northernmost part of Nubia and outside the borders of today's Sudan.
+Honegger's article on the archers is set at Kerma above the Third
+Cataract. In the article by Matić, we move further south to Napata below
+the Fourth Cataract and Merowe between the Fifth and the Sixth
+Cataracts. The article on the medieval era by Tsakos covers all of
+Nubia, while the last article by Hajduga considers the southernmost
+region in the volume by focusing on the capital Khartoum.
+
+**Dotawo's Open Access Commitment**
+
+*Dotawo: A Journal of Nubian Studies* has been a journal with open
+access to both readers and authors since its launch in 2014. Since the
+previous volume, *Dotawo* has been even more committed to open
+scholarship by linking the references in the journal to records with
+open access, as far as possible. The aim is to give access to research
+to those without privileged access to institutional libraries.[^4] This
+great work to make the research openly available has largely been
+undertaken by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, managing editor from 2014 to
+2022. I am grateful to managing editor Alexandros Tsakos for the
+typesetting in an open-source infrastructure. Personally, publishing
+openly in this way is incredible despite the additional efforts. I hope
+the readers find the result accessible and appealing.
+
+**Acknowledgements**
+
+I wish to thank the peer-reviewers who spent their time and used their
+knowledge to improve the quality of the articles in this issue of
+*Dotawo*.
+
+**References**
+
+Crevecoeur, Isabelle, Marie‑Hélène Dias‑Meirinho, Antoine ZAZZO, Daniel
+ANTOINE, and François BON. \"New Insights on Interpersonal Violence in
+the Late Pleistocene Based on the Nile Valley Cemetery of Jebel
+Sahaba.\" *Scientific Reports* 11/9991 (2021): 1-13.
+
+GAT, Azar. *War in Human Civilization*. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
+2008.
+
+van Gerven Oei, Vincent W.J. "Preface by the Editor." *Dotawo: A Journal
+of Nubian Studies* 7 (2020): 1-10.
+
+HAFSAAS-TSAKOS, Henriette. *War on the Southern Frontier of the Emerging
+State of Ancient Egypt. A Warfare Perspective on the History of the
+A-Group People in Lower Nubia during the 4^th^ millennium BCE*.
+Ph.D-thesis. Bergen: University of Bergen, 2015.
+
+Otterbein, Keith F. *How War Began*. Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
+
+[^1]: Hafsaas-Tsakos, *War on the Southern Frontier of the Emerging
+    State of Ancient Egypt*, p. 3.
+
+[^2]: E.g., Otterbein, *How War Began*, pp. 74-75; Gat, *War in Human
+    Civilization*, p. 15.
+
+[^3]: Crevecoeur et al., "New Insights on Interpersonal Violence in the
+    Late Pleistocene Based on the Nile Valley Cemetery of Jebel Sahaba."
+
+[^4]: Van Gerven Oei, "Preface by the Editor," pp. 1-3.
 
-# Bibliography