What Nubian Remains Show Us

Hi everyone!



It's seemed that this week has gone by so quickly! I thought the meme was appropriate since I got back from a large Greek gathering. For those who wanted to know what happened at FDF the Greek Folk Dance Competition in San Diego, my group, Voanerges, won a Founder's Achievement Award which was awesome. What is really cool about FDF though is that dance groups come from all over the country from Arizona, California, Oregon, and even Hawaii!

Now, as to my research at the BONE lab, I have been learning more about the kingdom of Nubia as well as examining the remains I have been cleaning and labeling. Below will be photos of bones I have been cleaning so I will give another warning that if you don't like seeing human skeletal remains, this may be considered graphic. The first photo is of vertebrae I have been cleaning and the other one is of a pretty intact pelvis.

Now below will be a photo of two clavicles and a mandible. The bigger clavicle is from burial 09-01( excavated in 2009 in burial site 1) which seems huge in contrast to the smaller clavicle from burial 09-30( excavated in 2009 in burial site 30). This is really interesting because the pattern that Annie sees is that people from burial 09-01 seem to be larger in stature and have more muscle than people from 09-30. From the photo of the mandible, we can see signs of ante-mortem tooth loss which you can see from the filled space between two holes( where teeth previously were). Ante-mortem tooth loss is tooth loss that occurred before the person died.

Other interesting facts I learned from Annie this week are about reactive bones and the accuracy of getting data from children's skeletal remains. Bones that are indicative of pathologies are reactive so there is either bone growth where there shouldn't be or bone loss in other cases. Looking at ribs is a good indication of whether someone had any respiratory problems. Annie was telling me that from the skeletal remains, she has found that there were many respiratory problems in Nubia which includes the prevalence of Tuberculosis. As for the accuracy of children's remains, it is impossible to tell what sex a child is. Unless the skeletal remain is in their late teen years, sex remains a mystery because the major changes that indicate the differences between male and female occur at puberty. However, bioarchaeologists are working on finding an accurate model to discover whether a child's remain is male or female.

As for more about Nubian background and history, the two articles that Dr. Baker had us read for this week were "The History of Nubia" by Marjorie Fisher and "Burial Customs in Ancient Nubia" by Peter Lacovora and Christian Knoblauch. "The History of Nubia" discussed the different periods of Nubia which chronologically falls into this order: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic; Bronze Age Nubia; the Kerma Kingdom; the New Kingdom; the Napatan and Meroitic periods; the post-Meroitic periods; the medieval Christian Kingdom; and the Islamic Period. It was really interesting to read how burials have evolved from having no grave goods( Paleolithic period) to a lot of grave goods( based on social class) to very little grave goods( during the Christian period). Also, it seemed that Egypt had a love/hate relationship with Nubia where at times trade was prominent since Nubia had rare goods such as ivory and gold. Also, some pottery indicates that Nubian princesses were married off to Egyptian pharaohs. However, some written documents in Egyptian suggest that Nubians were viewed as dangerous enemies.



Anyways, I hope all that history didn't bore you and you find bioarchaeology to be an interesting subject. I thank you all for reading my posts and see you next time!