Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-xjl2h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-26T11:15:31.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dying to serve: the mass burials at Kerma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Margaret Judd  and
Joel Irish
Margaret Judd
Affiliation:
1Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA (Email: mjudd@pitt.edu)
Joel Irish
Affiliation:
2University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Department of Anthropology, 310 Eielson Building, PO Box 757720, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7720, USA (Email: ffjdi@uaf.edu)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

High ranking burial mounds in Bronze Age Sudan featured burials in a corridor leading to the central burial – supposedly of a king. Were the ‘corridor people’ prisoners captured during periodic raids on Egypt, or local retainers who followed their king in death? The authors use the skeletal material to argue the second hypothesis – coincidentally that advanced by George Reisner, the original excavator.

Keywords

SudanNubiaKermasacrificeethnicity

Information

Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 83 , Issue 321 , September 2009 , pp. 709 - 722
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2009

References

Arkell, A. J. 1939. Throw sticks? Sudan Notes and Records Part 2: 251.Google Scholar
Adams, W. Y. 1977. Nubia: corridor to Africa. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Alvrus, A. 1999. Fracture patterns among the Nubians of Semna South, Sudanese Nubia. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 9: 417–29.3.0.CO;2-4>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonnet, C. 1990a. Limites et defenses de la ville, in Bonnet, C.. (ed.) Kerma Royaume de Nubie: L'Antiquité Africaine au Temps des Pharaons: 43–6. Genève: Mission archéologique de L'Université De Genève Au Soudan.Google Scholar
Bonnet, C. 1990b. Sépultures et coutumes funéraires, in Bonnet, C.. (ed.) Kerma Royaume de Nubie: L'Antiquité Africaine au Temps des Pharaons: 69–86. Genève: Mission archéologique de l'Université de Genève au Soudan.Google Scholar
Bonnet, C. 2000. Edifices et rites funéraires à Kerma. Paris: Éditions Errance.Google Scholar
Brace, C. L., Nelson, A. R., Seguchi, N., Oe, H., Sering, L., Qifeng, P., Yongyi, L. & Tumen, D.. 2001. Old World sources of the first New World human inhabitants: a comparative craniofacial view. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 10017–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breasted, J. H. 1962. Ancient records of Egypt. Volume 1. The First to the Seventeenth Dynasties. New York (NY): Russell and Russell.Google Scholar
Buikstra, J. E. & Ubelaker, D. H. (ed.). 1994. Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains (Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series 44). Fayetteville (AR): Arkansas Archaeological Survey.Google Scholar
Buzon, M.R. & Judd, M. A.. 2008. Investigating health at Kerma: sacrificial versus nonsacrificial individuals. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 136: 93–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ceruti, C. 2004. Human bodies as objects of dedication at Inca mountain shrines north-western Argentina. World Archaeology 36: 103–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaix, L. 1993. The archaeozoology of Kerma Sudan, in Davies, W. V. & Walker, R. (ed.) Biological anthropology and the study of ancient Egypt: 175–85. London: British Museum Press.Google Scholar
Collett, M. 1933. A study of Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasty skulls from Kerma, Nubia. Biometrical 25: 254–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, W. V. 2003. Kush in Egypt: a new historical inscription. Sudan & Nubia 7: 52–4.Google Scholar
Dunham, D. 1982. Excavations at Kerma. Part VI. Boston (MA): Boston Museum of Fine Arts.Google Scholar
Edwards, D. N. 2004. The Nubian past. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, H. G. 1961. The Nubian mercenaries of Gebelein during the First Intermediate Period. Kush 9: 44–80.Google Scholar
Fischer, H. G. 1962. The archer as represented in the First Intermediate Period. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 21: 50–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Froment, A. 1992. La différenciation morphologique de l'Homme moderne: congruence entre forme du crâne et répartition géographique du peuplement. Comptes-Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences 315(III): 323–9.Google Scholar
Geus, F. 1991. Burial customs in the upper main Nile: an overview, in Davies, W. V. & Walker, R. (ed.) Biological anthropology and the study of ancient Egypt: 57–73. London: British Museum Press.Google Scholar
Grant, A. 2001. The animal remains, in Welsby, D. A. (ed.) Life on the desert edge: seven thousand years of settlement in the Northern Dongola Reach, Sudan (Sudan Archaeological Research Society 7): 544–55. London: Sudan Archaeological Research Society.Google Scholar
Hanihara, T. 1992. Dental and cranial affinities among populations of East Asia and the Pacific: the basic populations in East Asia, IV. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 88: 163–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hanihara, T. 1996. Comparison of craniofacial features of major human groups. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 99: 389–412.3.0.CO;2-S>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hanihara, T. 2000. Frontal and facial flatness of major human populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 111: 105–34.3.0.CO;2-O>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howells, W. W. 1966. The Jomon population of Japan: a study by discriminant analysis of Japanese and Ainu crania (Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 57). Cambridge (MA): Harvard University.Google Scholar
Howells, W. W. 1989. Skull shapes and the map: craniometric analyses in the dispersion of modern Homo (Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 79). Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Irish, J. D. 2005. Population continuity versus discontinuity revisited: dental affinities among Late Paleolithic through Christian era Nubians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128: 520–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judd, M. A. 2002. Ancient injury recidivism: an example from the Kerma period of ancient Nubia. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 12: 89–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judd, M. A. 2004. Trauma in the city of Kerma: ancient versus modern injury patterns. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 14: 34–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judd, M. A. 2008. The parry problem. Journal of Archaeological Science 35: 1658–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jurmain, R. 1999. Stories from the skeleton. Behavioral reconstruction in human osteology. Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach.Google Scholar
Kendall, T. 1988. Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic studies. Merotica 10: 625–745.Google Scholar
Kendall, T. 1997. Kerma and the Kingdom of Kush 2500-1500 BC: the archaeological discovery of an ancient Nubian empire. Washington (DC): National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Loebl, W. & Nunn, J.. 1997. Staffs as walking aids in ancient Egypt and Palestine. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 90: 450–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lovell, N. C. 1997. Trauma analysis in paleopathology. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 40: 139–70.3.0.CO;2-#>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, R. & Saller, K.. 1959. Lehrbuch der Anthropologie in systematischer Darstellung. Stuttgart: Fischer Verlag.Google Scholar
Novak, S. A. 2006. Beneath the facade: a skeletal model of domestic violence, in Gowland, R. & Knusel, C. (ed.) Social archaeology and funerary remains: 239–52. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
O'Connor, D. 1993. Ancient Nubia: Egypt's rival in Africa. Philadelphia (PA): University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Pietrusewsky, M. 2004. Multivariate comparisons of female cranial series from the Ryukyu Islands and Japan. Anthropological Science 112(3): 199–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reisner, G. A. 1923a. Excavations at Kerma. Parts I-III. Cambridge (MA): Harvard African Studies.Google Scholar
Reisner, G. A. 1923b. Excavations at Kerma. Parts IV-V. Cambridge (MA): Harvard African Studies.Google Scholar
Roseman, C. C. & Weaver, T.D.. 2003. Multivariate apportionment of global human craniometric diversity. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 125: 257–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. T. 2003. Wretched Kush. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sutter, R. C. & Verano, J. W.. 2007. Biodistance analysis of Moche sacrificial victims from Huaca de la Luna Plaza 3C: matrix method test of their origins. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132: 193–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ucko, P. J. 1969. Ethnography and archaeological interpretation of funerary remains. World Archaeology 1: 262–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woolley, C. L. 1934. Ur excavations. Volume 2: The Royal Cemetery. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar