Everyone I talk to about our excavation asks whether it’s safe to be in Sudan. There’s sometimes a veiled look as people suggest that we should “stay safe”, and I’m sure what some are really thinking is that we’re just crazy to be going to a place that many people know only for its wars…

  It turns out to take about 30 hours to get from my house in Ann Arbor, Michigan to the Acropole Hotel in Khartoum. My colleague Carola Stearns and I flew together to Frankfurt, waited 7 hours, then flew to Cairo (where we met another member of our team, Martin Uildriks. We waited 5 hours…