Death, deposition, and divide: Exploring inequality through an examination of social status and health at Kerma, a Bronze Age Nubian Capital (1750-1550 BC)

As a distinctive feature of contemporary society, inequality and its effects on human life are seen and felt omnipresently. Being deeply rooted in the past, scholarly investigations of its emergence and development contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon, a pursuit in which archaeological research has played an essential role. Although archaeological contributions have been of immense value, they have traditionally been one-dimensional and materialistic in their approaches, often solely relying on the identification of disparities in the material record to infer inequality and social structure in past contexts. In recent years, approaches have moved beyond hypermaterialist paradigms, increasingly recognising the value in considering both material and embodied wealth. However, while such multi-method approaches have shown much promise, numerous archaeological contexts have yet to be reinterpreted. Initially excavated in the 1910s by G. Reisner, Kerma was the capital city...Show moreAs a distinctive feature of contemporary society, inequality and its effects on human life are seen and felt omnipresently. Being deeply rooted in the past, scholarly investigations of its emergence and development contribute to our understanding of this phenomenon, a pursuit in which archaeological research has played an essential role. Although archaeological contributions have been of immense value, they have traditionally been one-dimensional and materialistic in their approaches, often solely relying on the identification of disparities in the material record to infer inequality and social structure in past contexts. In recent years, approaches have moved beyond hypermaterialist paradigms, increasingly recognising the value in considering both material and embodied wealth. However, while such multi-method approaches have shown much promise, numerous archaeological contexts have yet to be reinterpreted. Initially excavated in the 1910s by G. Reisner, Kerma was the capital city of the Kingdom of Kush, a Bronze Age civilisation that flourished along the banks of the Nile. Interpreted through a traditional materialist lens, its inhabitants have long been viewed as a highly stratified and unequal society, a conclusion largely founded on the monumentality of a number of its burial mounds from the Classic Kerma period (1750–1550 BCE), as well as disparities observed in the materials they hold. This thesis aimed to contribute to the growing body of work that reexamines early scholarship at Kerma, investigating the relationship between embodied and performed inequalities. It integrates osteoarchaeological and funerary analysis to assess the extent to which the skeletal embodiment of inequality, as reflected by differences in diet and oral health, relates to funerary expressions of social status for a sample of 133 individuals. Mortuary analysis included tomb architecture (size, shape), the placement of the body (position, orientation, facing direction), material accompaniments (grave good raw material, functional class), as well as spatial and chronological comparisons. Osteoarchaeological analysis consisted of macroscopic examinations of carious lesions, dental wear, calculus, periapical lesions, periodontal disease, antemortem tooth loss (and ablation) and osteoarthritis of the temporomandibular joint. The results demonstrated a notable degree of dissonance between these two lines of evidence. While the funerary context displayed heterogeneity, with significant differences being observed between groups, diet and oral health showed considerable homogeneity. This suggests that individuals may have consumed similar foods and experienced comparable oral health-related burdens irrespective of burial treatment. While the dissonance between the mortuary and skeletal data can be interpreted in various ways, these results demonstrate that health status does not necessarily have to reflect social status (or burial status), a modern reality that is not inherent to all human societies.Show less

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Death, deposition, and divide: Exploring inequality through an examination of social status and health at Kerma, a Bronze Age Nubian Capital (1750-1550 BC)