The Nubian Past

This volume presents a new synthesis of the archaeology of Nubia and Sudan, a region which for millennia has been where the Eurasian and sub-Saharan worlds met, and which has produced the earliest states and some of the most spectacular archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa. The first major synthesis for over 30 years, the book provides a thoroughly up-to-date review, drawing on the results of the latest research, as well as developing new interpretative frameworks. The book breaks new ground in a number of ways, especially in moving beyond often Egyptocentric and traditional existing culture-histories of ‘Nubia’, isolated from other areas of Africanist research. One particular concern has been to re-locate the early civilizations of the region and their archaeology within their Sudanic African context – the geographical range of the book extending far beyond the Nubian north, to include wide areas of the Middle Nile Basin and what has come to be the modern Sudan. Through the period-based chapters, the distinctiveness, or otherwise, of the region’s long-term history can be traced both in relation to the Sudanic world and the Egyptian Lower Nile.
New ground is also broken in exploring the potential for a more broadly framed and inclusive ‘historical archaeology’, dealing with the Sudan’s more recent past.

Author Biography

David N. Edwards is a Visiting Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, Leicester University, with extensive research experience in Sudan and Nubia since 1985. He has worked extensively as a field archaeologist in Britain as well as Libya, Egypt and Jordan.