Nubia Bibliography 2001 - 2012

In: Emberling, Geoff and Bruce Beyer Williams. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia. New York 2021, 29-47., 2020

The objects and research fields of the archaeology of Nubia, i.e. the topics we pursue, the sources we consult, and the approaches we use in making sense of them, are historically and socially contingent constructs. Present-day knowledge about the Nubian past and the frame within which archaeological practice in the Middle Nile valley operates derive from a history of archaeological interest and work that spans almost 200 years. They resonate manifold influences, among which the colonial and imperial aspirations of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries are the strongest. Other dominant themes that permeate the archaeology of Nubia—indeed the construction of the entity “Nubia” as it is used today, also in the present publication—include Egyptocentrism, the divorce from a wider African archaeology, the concept and the practices of archaeological salvage and the idea of universal heritage. After looking into these aspects, the chapter will also deal with the transposition of the archaeology of the Middle Nile valley into the postcolonial present and the potentials and challenges it faces today.

2019

Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia, 2021

The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the com-munity of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. e earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by its role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and overwhelmingly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Middle East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, as well as of neighboring areas. Although the archaeology and history of Nubia remains incompletely known, the pace of research on Nubia has increased significantly in the last fifteen years. It is partly because of new dam construction and resulting salvage excavation, partly because other areas of the Middle East and North Africa have become less accessible to research, and partly because of generous funding from the Qatar-Sudan Archaeological Project for about forty archaeological projects in Sudan from 2014 to 2020. The most recent survey of ancient and medieval Nubia—David Edwards’s The Nubian Past (2004)—remains a thought-provoking and insightful overview, but does not take account of more recent research. This volume therefore gathers new research and analytical perspectives on these cultures in the hope that it will make them more accessible to scholars and the broader public. Edited by Emberling and Williams

article about Post Medieval settlement in the third cataract region written by David N Edwards and Intisar Soghayroun elzein, published in a book titled The archaeology of Nubian Frontier