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 community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's 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 often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.

Geoff Emberling is Associate Research Scientist at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan.
Bruce Williams is Research Associate at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw.

Introduction (Geoff Emberling and Bruce Beyer Williams)

1. History of Archaeological Work in the Middle Nile Region (Salah M. Ahmed)

2. Past, Present, Future: The Archaeology of Nubia (Claudia N?ser)

3. Geology of Nubia and Surrounding Regions (James A. Harrell)

4. Holocene Environments in Northeast Africa (Martin Williams)


Nubia: A Deep History
5. Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers of Nubia (Miroslaw Masojc)

6. From Foraging to Food Producing: The Mesolithic and Neolithic of the Middle Nile Valley (Donatella Usai)

7. The A-Group and Fourth Millennium BCE Nubia (Maria Carmela Gatto)

8. The Pre-Kerma Culture and the Beginning of the Kerma Kingdom (Matthieu Honegger)

9. The C-Group People in Lower Nubia: Cattle Pastoralists on the Frontier between Egypt and Kush (Henriette Hafsaas)

10. Kush in the Wider World during the Kerma Period (Bruce Beyer Williams)

11. The Cities of Kerma and Pnubs-Dokki Gel (Charles Bonnet)

12. The Eastern Cemetery of Kerma (Charles Bonnet and Matthieu Honegger)

13. Pan-Grave and Medjay: At the Intersection of Archaeology and History (Kate Liszka and Aaron de Souza)

14. From Hunters to Herders: The Libyan Desert in Prehistoric Times (Friederike Jesse)

15. Egyptian Fortresses and the Colonization of Lower Nubia in the Middle Kingdom (Laurel Bestock)

16. Nubians in Egypt from the Early Dynastic Period to the New Kingdom (Georg K. Meurer)

17. Human Adaptation to Environmental Change in the Northern Dongola Reach (Derek A. Welsby)

18. Egyptian Conquest and Administration of Nubia (Dominique Valbelle)

19. The Amun Cult and its Development in Nubia (Luc Gabolde)

20. The Nubian Experience of Egyptian Domination during the New Kingdom (Stuart Tyson Smith)

21. History and the Kushite Royal Inscriptions (Jeremy Pope)

22. The Napatan Neo-Kushite State 1: The Intermediate Period and Second Empire (Bruce Beyer Williams)

23. The Napatan Neo-Kushite State 2: Eclipse and Revival in the Later Napatan Period; Conditions in the State (Bruce Beyer Williams)

24. Jebel Barkal: "Karnak" of Kush (Timothy Kendall and El-Hassan Ahmed Mohamed)

25. Nubians in Egypt during the 25th Dynasty (Julia Budka)

26. Kushites in Egypt, 664 BCE-14 CE: Egypt and Kush in the Borderlands of Lower Nubia (Kathryn Howley)

27. The Meroitic Heartland (Pawel Wolf and Ulrike Nowotnick)

28. The City of Meroe (Krzysztof Grzymski)

29. The Royal and Elite Cemeteries at Meroe (Janice W. Yellin)

30. Death and Burial in the Kingdom of Meroe (Vincent Francigny)

31. Prolegomena to the Study of Meroitic Art (Janice W. Yellin)

32. Language and Writing in the Kingdom of Meroe (Claude Rilly)

33. The Eastern Desert in the 1st Millennium BCE and 1st Millennium CE (Andrea Manzo)

34. Greek and Roman Views of Ancient Nubia (Stanley M. Burstein)

35. The X-Group Period in Lower Nubia (Rachael J. Dann)

36. Post-Meroe in Upper Nubia (Mahmoud El-Tayeb)

37. The History of Medieval Nubia (Giovanni R. Ruffini)

38. Nubian Texts, Nubian Lives (Giovanni R. Ruffini)

39. Language Use and Literacy in Late Antique and Medieval Nubia (Adam Lajtar and Grzegorz Ochala)

40. The Topography of Power in Medieval Nubia (Bogdan Zurawski)

41. The Archaeology of Medieval Nubian Kingdoms (Artur Obluski)

42. Arts and Crafts of the Christian Kingdoms of Nubia (Mid-6th to 14th Century) (Dobrochna Zielinska)

43. Islam in the Funj and Ottoman Periods in Sudan: A Historical and Archaeological Approach (Intisar Soghayroun)

44. Islamic Nubian Kingdoms (Jay Spaulding)


Perspectives on Nubia
45. Cattle Cultures in Ancient Nubia (J?r?me Dubosson)

46. Savanna on the Nile:
Long-term Agricultural Diversification and Intensification in Nubia (Dorian Q. Fuller and Leilani Lucas)

47. Exploitation of Geological Resources: Ancient Mines and Quarries in Nubia (James A. Harrell and Abdelrahman Ali Mohamed)

48. Iron Production at Meroe (Jane Humphris)

49. Trade in Ancient Nubia: Routes, Goods, and Structures (Mahmoud Suliman Bashir and Geoff Emberling)

50. Women in Ancient Kush (Angelika Lohwasser and Jacke Phillips)

51. Perspectives on the Body in Ancient Nubia (Rachael J. Dann)

52. Bioarchaeology of Nubia (Michele R. Buzon)

53. Landscape Archaeologies in Nubia and the Middle Nile (David N. Edwards)

54. Nubian Rock Art (Henryk Paner)

55. Archaeological Practice in the 21st Century: Reflecting on Archaeologist-Community Relationships in Sudan's Nile Valley (Jane Humphris, Rebecca Bradshaw, and Geoff Emberling)