Dr Neal Spencer

Director of Research, Deputy Director, Collections

Director of Research

Deputy Director, Collections

Neal plays a leading role in shaping the future of collections-based research across the University of Cambridge, as co-chair of the Collections-Connections-Communities Strategic Research Initiative. The Initiative activates collections to address the big questions relevant for the future, specifically around health, wellbeing, the climate crisis and researching the legacies of colonialism. Neal oversees major programmes around African and Caribbean collections in the University, and an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Programme. Focused on developing and supporting research-led networks across the museum sector, Neal is academic lead for the University Academic Programme run by CSMVS in Mumbai, bringing together international faculty to work with 40 Indian universities on object-based teaching methodologies.

As Director of Research at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Neal is strategic lead for the Museum’s research, impact and collections development programmes, and is responsible for the departments of Curatorial, Research & Impact and Collections Management & Documentation. As co-chair of the University’s submission to the REF Unit of Assessment 32 (Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory) and co-director of Cambridge Visual Culture, Neal works closely with the Department of History of Art , and Kettle’s Yard, to shape research culture, outputs and impact pathways.

Holding a PhD in Egyptology (University of Cambridge, 2000), Neal’s research focuses the archaeological and visual culture of the Nile Valley, from the late Bronze Age to the present day. He is presently writing a book on photographic culture in Sudanese Nubia, encompassing the photography of British colonial administrators, foreign and Sudanese archaeologists, and Nubian families, and collaborates with Sudanese colleagues on a project to document family photographic practices in the pre-digital era.

Neal coordinates the interpretation and publication of fieldwork of the British Museum Amara West Research Project, which he directed, exploring the cultural entanglement and lived experience within pharaonic imperialism in late second millennium BCE Nubia. An open-access open-source platform, Amara West ResearchSpace, was developed to provide a different model of scholarly publication and knowledge production. Other research and publications have focused on Late Period Egypt, 30^th dynasty temples, the role of elite individuals in sustaining pharaonic culture and urbanism in the Nile Delta.

Neal has directed archaeological projects in Egypt (Samanud, Kom Firin), with community archaeology, educational, scientific and environmental research strands. This work was funded through significant grants from The Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, AHRC, the Qatar-Sudan Archaeological Project and the Egypt Exploration Society.

Previously based at the British Museum, Neal was as curator (2000-2011), Keeper of Egypt and Sudan (2012-2019) and Keeper of Nile Valley & Mediterranean Collections (2019-2021: Departments of Greece & Rome, and Egypt & Sudan), where he led and managed curators, collections management staff, archive and library staff and administrative/project staff. Neal conceived and directed the British Museum’s International Training Programme (2006-2020), which brought together 300 curators from 41 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Americas for sills-sharing and network building. Neal led other capacity building programmes in Egypt (Egyptian Museum, Aswan Museum, Center for Documentation of Egyptian Antiquities) and Sudan (Sudan National Museum), co-led the creation of Sudan’s first Bioarchaeology Laboratory (2019), and edited the online journal British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt & Sudan (2007-2012).

Social Profiles:

academia

Publications

Digital resource

Amara West ResearchSpace https://amara-west.researchspace.org/

Monographs and edited volumes

(forthcoming) Photographic culture in 20th century Sudanese Nubia

(edited with A. Stevens and M. Binder) 2017. Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, Paris, Bristol CT.

(with A. Stevens and M. Binder) (eds). 2014. Amara West. Living in Egyptian Nubia. London. www.britishmuseum.org/pdf/Amara_West_Living_in_Egyptian_Nubia.pdf

Kom Firin II: The urban fabric and landscape (British Museum Research Publications 192, in 2014). https://britishmuseum.iro.bl.uk/concern/books/64b350f6-3b06-4306-8dad-c008f35e50b4?locale=en

(edited with Claire Messenger and Shezza Edris) The International Training Programme. Towards a global network. London, British Museum, 2011.

Kom Firin I: The Ramesside temple and the site survey (British Museum Research Publication 170, 2008). https://britishmuseum.iro.bl.uk/concern/books/0107179b-c0c5-4f16-8b5b-aefd0f9176fc

The Gayer Anderson Cat (British Museum Objects in Focus, 2007)

A Naos of Nekhthorheb from Bubastis (British Museum Research Publications 156, 2006) https://britishmuseum.iro.bl.uk/concern/books/2023d947-0f82-4887-9e2e-34603a63ca30

Selected papers: Photography & Sudan

(forthcoming) “Triangular colonialism, photography, and a trembled archive: Sudanese and Egyptian labour at Amara West (1938–1950)”, in Wendy Doyon and Marleen De Meyer (eds), Bodies of Knowledge: Arabic Language, Egyptian Labor, and Communities of Practice in the History of Archaeology & Egyptology. Dossiers de CEDEJ, 2027

(forthcoming) “Recentring modern Nubia(ns): European archaeological archives and family photographs. A case study from the Amara West/Abri region, Sudan”. In Image of Nubia (eds David Bindman, Rita Freed & Henry Louis Gate Jr (Harvard University Press, 2026)

Selected papers: Amara West

(forthcoming, with Matthew Dalton, Philippa Ryan, Manuela Lehmann) “Food storage at Amara West: centralised facilities and household strategies” in Storage in Ancient Egypt and Nubia II. Les garde-manger de l’Antiquité (eds Adeline Bats, Nadia Licitra, Marie Millet). Sidestone Press, 2027

(with M. Binder, M. Buzon, J. Woodward, M. Macklin and A. Simonetti) ”Maintaining the Ramesside empire: isotopic evidence for elite migration to Upper Nubia under pharaonic rule”. Journal of African Archaeology (2024) https://doi.org/10.1163/21915784-bja10033.

(with T. Fushiya, P. Ryan, S. Abd Rabo and M. Saad) “Towards local agency: critical reflections on community engagement programmes at Abkanisa/Amara West, northern Sudan”. Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage (2024) https://doi.org/10.1080/20518196.2024.2326752

(with F. Rademakers, J. Auenmüller, K. Fulcher, M. Lehmann, F. Vanhaecke and P. Degryse). “Metals and pigments at Amara West: Cross-craft perspectives on practices and provisioning in New Kingdom Nubia”. Journal of Archaeological Science 153 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2023.105766

(with P. Ryan, M. Kordofani, M. Saad, M. Hassan, M. Dalton, C Cartwright). “Nubian Agricultural Practices, Crops and Foods: Changes in Living Memory on Ernetta Island, Northern Sudan”. Economic Botany 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12231-022-09545-8

(with K. Fulcher, R. Siddall, T.F. Emmett) “Multi-Scale Characterization of Unusual Green and Blue Pigments from the Pharaonic Town of Amara West, Nubia”. Heritage 2021, 4, 2563–2579. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage4030145

(with K. Fulcher and R. Stacey) “Bitumen from the Dead Sea in early Iron Age Nubia”. Nature Scientific Reports 2020: 10: 8309. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64209-8

(with M. Spataro, A. Garnett, A. Shapland, and H. Mommsen). “Mycenaean pottery from Amara West (Nubia, Sudan)”. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11 (2019), 683–697. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0552-z

“Building on new ground: the foundation of a colonial town at Amara West”. In Spencer, N., A. Stevens and M. Binder (eds). Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, Paris, Bristol CT (2017), 323–55.

(with A. Stevens and M. Binder). “Introduction: History and historiography of a colonial entanglement, and the shaping of new archaeologies for Nubia in the New Kingdom.” In Spencer, N., A. Stevens and M. Binder (eds). Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, Paris, Bristol CT (2017), 1–61.

(with J. Woodward, M. Macklin, M. Binder, M. Dalton, S. Hay and A. Hardy) “Living with a changing river and desert landscape at Amara West”. In Spencer, N., A. Stevens and M. Binder (eds). Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, Paris, Bristol CT (2017), 227–57.

(with R. Parkinson) “The Teaching of Amenemhat I at Amara West: Egyptian literary culture in Upper Nubia”. In Spencer, N., A. Stevens and M. Binder (eds). Nubia in the New Kingdom. Lived experience, pharaonic control and indigenous traditions. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 3. Leuven, Paris, Bristol CT (2017), 213–23.

(with Woodward, J., Macklin, M. Fielding, L., Millar, I., Welsby, D. and Williams, M. “Shifting sediment sources in the world's longest river: A strontium isotope record for the Holocene Nile”, Quaternary Science Reviews 130 (2015): 124–40.

“Amara West: House and neighbourhood in Egyptian Nubia”. In M. Müller (ed.), Household studies in complex societies: (Micro)archaeological and textual approaches. Oriental Institute Seminars 10. Chicago (2015), 169–210.

"Amara West: considerations on urban life in occupied Kush", in D. A. Welsby and J. R. Anderson (eds), Proceedings of the 12th International Conference for Nubian Studies. Leuven. British Museum Publications on Egypt and Sudan 1. Leuven (2014), 457–85.

(with Michela Spataro and Marie Millet) “The New Kingdom settlement of Amara West (Nubia, Sudan): mineralogical and chemical investigation of the ceramics”, Archaeological and Anthropological Science. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12520-014-0199-y

(with Binder, M., Roberts, C., Antoine, D. & Cartwright, C). 2014. “On the Antiquity of Cancer: Evidence for Metastatic Carcinoma in a Young Man from Ancient Nubia (c. 1200BC)”. PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0090924

“Creating and re-shaping Egypt in Kush: responses at Amara West”, in Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 6/1 (2014), 42–61. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/jaei/article/view/18030/0

(with Michaela Binder) “The bioarchaeology of Amara West in Nubia: Investigating the impacts of political, cultural and environmental change on health and diet in D. Antoine & A. Fletcher, Regarding the Dead: the research and display of human remains (British Museum Research Publications 197), 123–36. https://britishmuseum.iro.bl.uk/concern/books/d02dbeea-78a2-4fb1-ba41-3497e4970147

(with Philippa Ryan and Caroline Cartwright) “Archaeobotanical research in a pharaonic town in ancient Nubia”, British Museum Technical Research Bulletin 6 (2012), 97-106

(with Jamie Woodward and Mark Macklin) “Re-assessing the abandonment of Amara West: the impact of a changing Nile?”, Sudan & Nubia 16 (2012): 37–43. http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/resources/publications/?attachment_id=927

“Nubian architecture in an Egyptian town? Building E12.11 at Amara West”, Sudan & Nubia 14 (2010), 15–24. http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/resources/publications/?attachment_id=895

(with Michaela Binder and Marie Millet), “Cemetery D at Amara West: the Ramesside Period and its aftermath”, Sudan & Nubia 14 (2010), 25–44 http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/resources/publications/?attachment_id=886

“Cemeteries and a late Ramesside suburb at Amara West“, Sudan & Nubia 13 (2009), 47-61 http://www.sudarchrs.org.uk/resources/publications/?attachment_id=895

Selected papers: other

“Kom Firin: witnessing the transformation of the Egyptian urban fabric in the 6^th-5^th centuries BC”. In S. Marchi (ed), Les Maisons-Tours en Égypte durant la Basse Époque, les Périodes Ptolémaïque et Romaine. NeHeT 2 (2014), 157–79. http://sfe-egyptologie.fr/NEHET/NeHeT%202-09-SPENCER.pdf

“Ancient Egyptian sources” in Edwards, J., Spencer, N. and Laurenson, P. “The Singer and Applause by Edward Onslow Ford”, Tate In Focus (2013) http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/edward-onslow-ford

“Sustaining Egyptian culture? Non-royal initiatives in Late Period temple building”, in L. Bareš, F. Coppens and K. Smoláriková (eds), Egypt in transition. Social and religious development of Egypt in the first millennium BCE (Prague, 2011), 441–90.

“Ramesside rodomontade and a usurpation on the western Delta frontier’, in M. Collier and S. Snape (eds), Ramesside Studies in Honour of Kenneth Kitchen (Bolton, 2009), 307–18.

“Kom Firin after the New Kingdom”, in Ikram, S. and Dodson, A. (eds), Beyond the Horizon:

Studies in Egyptian Art, Archaeology and History in Honour of Barry J. Kemp, I (Cairo, 2008), 505–34.

“Samanud: the urban context”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 87 (2001), 23−31.

“The Epigraphic Survey of Samanud”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 85 (1999): 55–83.

“The temple of Onuris-Shu in Samanud”, Egyptian Archaeology 14 (1999): 7–9.