Human Sacrifice and Power in the Kerma Kingdom

Dr. Elizabeth Miner is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Anthropology at Wellesley College. She earned her PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, focusing on cultural connections between ancient Egypt and Sudan. Her research reinterprets historically connected archaeological data using the lenses of post-colonial and feminist theory to bring ancient Africa into larger discussions of world history. Some of her recent publications include, I love these titles, One More for the Road, Beer, Sacrifice, and Commemoration in Ancient Nubian Burials of the Classic Kerma Period, that's in Current Research in Egyptology, 2017, and an even better title, Decolonizing Reisner, the Case Study of a Classic Kerma Female Burial for Reinterpreting Early Nubian Archaeological Collections Through Digital Archival Resources. This was in Nubian archaeology in the 21st century, proceedings of a conference on Nubian studies in 2018. She's excavated in Egypt, Sudan, and California. Do you sense a sunshine theme developing here? But she is currently digging the burnt remains of a turn-of-the-last-century women's dormitory on the Wellesley campus. Her 18 years of museum work include educational outreach, registration, development, and digital imaging projects. She tells me she first visited a museum basement as a child and wanted to stay there forever. I can relate to that feeling. She loves sharing the fascinating stories that can be told through global collections and hearing new perspectives from museum visitors. But tonight we get a new perspective from her on the amazing Nubian kingdom of Kerma. Please welcome Dr. Elizabeth Miner. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation to speak here tonight. So tonight I'll be speaking about my research on evidence for mass human sacrifice in the royal burials at the ancient Nubian kingdom of Kerma. First I'll give a short background on ancient Nubia and the Kerma kingdom in general, as I know that it's an area of the world that everyone is not entirely familiar with, and then we'll look at one ancient burial community as a case study on the practice of human sacrifice. I'll look at different funerary equipment with the goal of suggesting which community groups were coerced into death with the Nubian king. The evidence suggests that when key actors in the community were selected for sacrifice, they in turn brought along their own sacrifices, giving us insight into a changing internal community relationship as the Kerma kingdom grew and socio-political complexity. And more importantly, by looking at the practice of sacrifice in its cultural context, we can move beyond seeing this solely as an overtly violent act and instead bring out new information about this how this ancient African community built social relationships in life and then commemorated them in death. And just a brief note that this lecture will include the discussion of human remains. I use line drawings of burials for most illustrations, and a limited number of slides will include black and white images of human remains when necessary to demonstrate key examples. And Sudanese antiquities regulations do not restrict the display of human remains. And by way of introduction, I specialize in Sudanese archaeology as well as Egyptian archaeology, and especially looking at the Kerma kingdom. I do a lot of museum based research, including digital humanities and 3D modeling, and also archaeo-gaming. Here I am yelling at a statue of Heracles to please hold still while we're trying to photograph it. And we also do field archaeology in Sudan as well as at Wellesley, where I run the Wellesley College Hall Archaeology Project. Spoiler alert, we found ancient ceramics in Massachusetts thanks to a natural history museum that burnt down about 100 years ago. It's a surprise. So the question I'm asked the most is why I study human sacrifice. And there are few practices in the ancient world that conjure more dramatic responses than the intentional killing of a person for the appeasement of deities, or to accompany others to the afterlife. And the violence of the act, or the disturbing circumstances of the death, often overwhelm the understandings of a complex set of social interactions that underlie the event. So for example, depictions of Aztec sacrifice, like this one, focus on the bloody pageantry of cutting out the hearts and rolling the body down the steps of the temple. Or similarly, in this early 20th century newspaper article, there's a dramatic reenactment of the sacrifices found at Cahokia in Illinois. And these depictions were created in context designed to project these acts as barbaric, part of a justification for the destruction of the people who undertook them. And then in the case of Ur in Mesopotamia, the archaeologists depict the sacrifices as patiently waiting to show their devotion to the king, about to drink poison and become a tableau of death in his honor. But if we step back and evaluate the social dynamics taking place, themes of social control, commemoration, and how violence works hands-in-hand with other forms of political legitimization come into focus instead. In the case of mass inhumation that I study in ancient Nubia, this violence seems to fold into international relationships and also internal relationships at the time. So this vessel, unfortunately the paint has faded now, but in this original excavation photo we can see a man who's in the process of being torn apart by two lions. And this does not seem to be kind of reflecting on the case of sacrifice at Kerma. As we'll see, they were not public spectacles of overt violence, and instead this is probably in relationship to the way the Kermans are posing themselves as fighting against the Egyptians in this particular case, in the many stages of interactions between Egypt and Nubia. Kerman kings were in the process of extending their territorial control against weakened Egyptian pharaohs, which is likely the type of conflict that this painting refers to. And as the Kerman kings gained an external political control, the effects rippled through their internal community back in Sudan. The early development of Nubia can only be understood through archaeological remains. If we do look for outside textual sources, it is from Egypt, and they have a long history of posing Nubia as their wretched neighbors who are meant for destruction. So this is a panel from one of Tutankhamen's chests where you can see the pharaoh is triumphantly running his chariot over the jumbled mass of Nubians and overcoming them. And in fact, the Kerma kingdom in the time directly before this came close to defeating their northern neighbors of Egypt, getting about a day's march away from the Egyptian capital. And if they had been successful, we would have never have had King Tut. Instead we would have had a Nubian king who symbolized his power through lions, rams, and giraffes, hippopotami, and other dangerous animals. One of the other questions as to why study Nubia is to look at the way that it has been engaged with historically in scholarship. I don't know if you're familiar with the Google Ngrams, but this is a search of all books in English from 1800 to 2000. And you can see that the leaderboard is held by Alexander the Great, then any of the Ramses, followed by Tutankhamen with an obvious huge blip around the time that his tomb was discovered. And here is Taharqa, and an alternate spelling, who's by far the best known of the ancient Nubian pharaohs. He's mentioned in the Bible, and you can see is a tiny blip compared to these. And in fact, if we extend that to understanding how classical scholarship fits into this, here's Augustus Caesar, which puts everything else very much off the chart. And to this, to me, this demonstrates the imperative need to add the complexities of ancient Sudan to our wider narratives of world history. Sudanese archaeology has provided the foundation of our understanding of the main periods of history through major capital and religious sites. And the Harvard professor and Museum of Fine Arts Boston curator George Reisner excavated these major sites, the capitals of the Kushite kingdom, Kerma, Kuru, and Nuri, Jebel Barkal, and Meroe. His methodology was detailed, comprehensive, and helped set modern standards from archaeology. But he was also working within early 20th century theoretical frameworks that had colonialist and racist biases. His interpretations severely underestimated the importance of indigenous Nubian cultures and magnified ancient Egyptian influences. In the case of Kerma, he explained all cultural developments as the result of Egyptian colonial officials marrying into the Nubian community, of which we have little to no evidence archaeologically. And after acknowledging this problematic past of archaeology in Sudan, and indeed all of Africa and globally, we are left with a task to mindfully address this biased legacy and to find new ways to understand archaeology that build inclusive dialogues, in part to make amends to the past and also to create new best potentials for the discipline. So tonight I will speak about my research that aims to reinterpret the archive and collection from his excavations at the Cemetery of Kerma, and in the future I hope I will be able to return and report on the results of my new community-based archaeological project in Sudan. Okay, to help orient you, don't worry you're not taking a class from me, there will not be a quiz. This is showing the complex history of interaction between Egypt, lower Nubia, and upper Nubia over time. We often hear about sort of bits and pieces of Nubian history, but seeing those very long developments, both in the north and south of the country. Today we're going to be looking at the classic Kerma in particular, so the same as the second intermediate period in Egypt. An important clarification should be made, in other historical contexts there are close ties between Egyptian and Nubian religious and political structures, and these two areas that are often approached as separate cultural entities were engaged in periods of prosperous cooperation, or even as a single religious and political polity, for example during Dynasty 25 and the rulership of King Taharqa. In the classic Kerma period, however, the archaeological and textual evidence demonstrates competition over territory and natural resources, and this antagonistic relationship was likely complex. There is some evidence for Kermans living and working within Egypt for Egyptian rulers and in the Egyptian delta. So during this time period, Egypt was fragmented between the north of the country, which was controlled by the Hyksos pharaohs based in Avaris, a Theban dynasty here in the middle of Egypt, and then Kerma based down here around the third cataract of the Nile. The king Kamosa, who was based in Thebes, lamented the fact that he only had control of the Theban area, and he cited evidence of a desert route messenger who carried a letter from the Hyksos king down to the Kerman leader proposing a military alliance, which would have stuck the Egyptians in between in a dual attacks. Subsequent Dynasty 18 pharaohs and their officials chronicle their military campaigns against the Kermans, which included sailing home triumphantly with the bodies of defeated Nubians hanging from the prows of their ships. And we see evidence at the city of Kerma, major protective walls were built and then destroyed and burnt during the end of this time period. Okay, so looking at the site of Kerma by the third cataract of the Nile, it's composed of two main elements. There's the city of Kerma, this is the Defufa, which is a religious center that included industrial and kind of artistic production areas, and then the Kerma cemetery slightly off into the desert, where pretty much the whole cross-section of the Kerma community was buried. Both from the city, but especially in the cemetery, we have examples of creative and complex Kerma royal art. A lot of it you'll see focuses on dangerous types of animals. This lion, both in glazed quartz in the round and in faience tile form, are both on display now at the Ancient Nubia Now exhibition at the MFA Boston, as well as there's wall paintings of hippopotami, and this is a large glazed quartz scorpion. So you can see there's sort of hints from the art of how the king was trying to ally himself and be understood as powerful, akin to these dangerous animals. The kings never portrayed themselves in human form, at least that's preserved to us today. And then outside of the royal funerary cults, funerary religion drew on a more diverse set of animal imagery. There are some of the same dangerous animals, like lions and hyenas, but others that are much less so. Again, these are on display at the Ancient Nubia Now exhibition, includes vultures, hawks, hippopotamus in the form of the god Tawaret, giraffes with wings, bustards, lions, striped hyenas, more ostriches, goats, anything you could think of. There's a huge variety, both in the form of inlaid beds, which the deceased would be placed on, and the form of hats that had the very thin sheets of the mineral mica that were applicated on, much like the sequins, they're very iridescent. Altogether, four animals really stick out in the Kerma religion, rams and lions, especially in the context for kings, and then winged fantastical animals, including winged hippopotami that you can see here, and winged giraffes. There's a complexity and creativity in Kerma religion, but without supporting texts, it's extremely difficult to know the deeper meanings of these deities, but we can learn about other religious practices through examining burial practices. The classic Kerma royal tumuli give the best testimony to the king's growing wealth and independence. These four massive tumuli are the most elaborate examples of the indigenous Kerman burial form, as developed over a thousand years. A tumulus is a round earthen structure, which can be quite small for a single burial, but for the Kerman kings, they get to a hundred meters in length. So this is the example we'll be looking at today, the classic Kerma royal tumulus 10. So again, the whole diameter of the structure is about the length of an American football field, and if you start dissecting it, you can see these sort of layers of a social hierarchy in the way that people are buried and their practices. So at the center, this is where the royal burial was contained in a single chamber. They're all unfortunately looted and completely robbed out. When you bury someone in the center of a structure, robbers know where to look. And then the corridor, this was, it can be quite wide, and this is where we find the sacrifices that were interred at the same time as the king's death. So this particular example contained at least 322 individuals. And then later on, and so in the disk or the mound of the tumulus, all of these smaller rectangles, these are individual graves of elite Kermans who are buried at a later time, who either had a real or desired relationship with the king. They wanted to be close to him in death. So imagine, if we think back to Egypt, if the great pyramid of Giza had tombs that were kind of carved directly inside of it, which it's not, but these people are trying to get a close association with the king. And as we will see, these elite Kermans also had sacrifices of them for themselves. So looking at the corridor, this is a mix of human sacrifices and also deposits of Egyptian statues, which help us kind of contextualize again the external political relationships of the time. So here, again, you can see the layout of the individuals who are buried at the time of this king. And then here is the statue of Lady Senewi, who's one of the highlights of the current MFA exhibition, who's laid out in that same corridor. So the same way that the individuals who are, they are Kerman, there has been bioarchaeological research done that establishes that these sacrificed individuals are not, for example, Egyptian prisoners of war. They are from the local community. So they are in charge with the king alongside these markers of the Kerman king's ability to reach into Egyptian territory and collect and bring and display these markers of their political power. So here's the view of the sacrificial corridor looking towards the east. And so you can see individuals arranged, headed towards the king's burial chamber. These bare areas, in this case, are from later disturbances. And then looking back to the west, in this case, there is a pathway that is leading out for access, probably for the burial of the king. So again, in this example, there are 322 individuals who were interred with the king. And once we start looking at them in detail, we can get an understanding of how they present a cross section of the Kerman community and kind of understand how these relationships are built together. So this is an example of one of the bodies with really the minimal amount of decoration. You can see there is actually quite a lot of soft tissue that is preserved due to desiccation. So if there had been, say, a violent type of killing, it would be evident on the body. Instead, it's most likely that they were poisoned or suffocated as the means of death. In particular, the bioarchaeologist Margaret Judd and also Michelle Buzan have done extensive research on these physical remains and show that they overall have a very high health index that's comparable to non-sacrificed Kermans. So in other terms, they did not supply heavy labor or had kind of a social status that led them to have a lesser degree of health of other elite Kermans in the community. So in other words, they're not servants that were sacrificed to do labor for the king in the afterlife. Instead, they seem to be individuals with their own important roles in the community who were brought along with him. And this is another example, kind of on this the spectrum. This individual body PB stands out with the highest level of personal adornment found among these, in a way that definitely rivals any of the elite Kermans who had their own graves from a later date. So this is the body here in the upper part of the slides, and these are just some of the items that she was decorated with. So on the far upper left, these are bracelets made out of giraffe hair that were on her arms, then a stone for sharpening daggers. She wore a complex beaded tunic that included, sewn into it, these Egyptian amulets. And they're not scarabs, they're actually animal form scarabs. So they are hedgehogs. She seemed to have particularly liked the hedgehogs. And then these two pieces are made out of faience, and they have holes for being sewn onto this tunic, and they are scorpions. And you can see they're sort of mirror images of each other. They were found close to her stomach, but it's most likely that they were breastplates or breast covers that had kind of slid down as she decayed. So with this, she also has an ostrich feather fan, that's the kind of mask that's over her face. So this one woman, you can see it was incredibly decorated, and kind of shows the coming together of these important markers of status within the community. So in my research, I've gone through to see if there are patterns in what types of items people brought along with them as sacrifices, and to see if we can kind of get insights as to what sections of the community were represented. And so when they're analyzed as a group, these patterns do suggest that there's this cross-section of the whole Kerman community who was buried with the king. The three types of artifacts that really give us the best understanding of these roles are bronze daggers, which would have been used in for either as warriors or as some sort of defensive role in the community. They're not only found with men, they are found with men about twice as common as with women. And then also beaded leather skirts. This one you can see is amazing preservation in the MFA Boston, when you realize this is a four and a half thousand year old piece of cattle hide. And it has little bits of silver beads that are still existing from around the waistband. And one of the things that Kermans did in their very creative artwork is take icons that come from Egypt. So in this case, this is the Egyptian hippopotamus goddess named Tawaret. And they've brought her also into the Kerma community. So she is wearing one of these same skirts. And that's, you can see there's sort of these triangles along the waist and down the front. Those are the decorated beads. And then also scarabs. The scarab is also on display at the MFA currently, which in some cases are sewn into garments, as we just saw. But they're actually most often found by the hand of the deceased, emphasizing their use for a stamp for economic tracking of objects within Kerma. Okay, so first looking at the distribution of bodies with this typical classic Kerma dagger. There are 20 individuals. They're relatively equally distributed around the corridor with a little bit of possible clustering. This is in distinction to say at the burials of Ur, where warriors included like a set of armor, like a helmet and their weapons, they were stationed at the entrance or close to the royal burial. So this is not like a battalion of warriors that are waiting right outside the king's tomb to protect him. Instead, they're spread out. Alright, so then if we look at, oh yeah, so here's an example of one of the daggers. They can be quite large and actually more like a sword. Alright, and then in yellow, this is where burials with skirts. In the cases where the bones have been preserved and they've been able to be re-evaluated, any time that we can determine the biological sex of the individual and they had a skirt, they were female. And again, here's another example of one of the Tawarets, who's been brought into the Kerma community and is wearing a skirt. In this case, there are no overlap between people who had daggers and people who had skirts, and I believe I have not yet found an individual who had both of those, which strongly suggests these are two different markers of roles in the community. And then finally in red, these are people who were buried with scarabs. There's a few cases, I think there's two, where they both had a scarab and a dagger. And what's interesting is we have impressions of how the scarabs were used at Kerma. They can be used in an economic sense, but usually at a temple, so tracking the movement of goods in and out of the state-controlled economy. But this is actually the seal from the king's burial chamber in this tomb. It is so frustrating because you can tell what that scarab would have looked like. So if you found that scarab buried with a person, you would know that was the person who sealed the king's tomb. And there is a scarab that's remarkably similar, but not exactly the same. The constant lament of an archaeologist. So we've not pinpointed who did the sealing, but again we know it's not one of the people who was buried in the corridor. They did not seal it and then get left with the king. But so far you can see there's sort of a general equal distribution between these three main object types. And then finally I looked at circlets. So a circlet is one of the simplest and kind of basic pieces of personal adornment that a Kerman could be buried with from pretty much any time period. And here's one that is in the National Museum of Sudan. And you can see some of the original string is actually still preserved. So these thin strings of beads would be worn around the head. And you can see it's a much more common type of adornment. Okay, so by looking at them overlaid, at first the slide is definitely confusing, which I think helps highlight the complexity of the situation. But if we look at clusters of less adorned bodies around those with specialized equipment, a pattern does start to emerge. So here's kind of a cluster of people buried with daggers, but you can see there's sort of like a buffer zone of less decorated individuals. And as we go further and further, these sort of cells appear. And this clustered burial pattern is similar to elite subsidiary burial layouts, suggesting that these key royal sacrifices may have been determined by the king to be taken with him into the afterlife. And they in turn coerced their own set of sacrifices to be buried with them in the corridor as well. So the elite Kermans who are selected for burial with the Kerman king were still afforded the ability to equip themselves for the afterlife, acting within this hierarchical social structure of the community. If we want to get really technical about this and actually look at a graph of the social relationship, this is a social network map of the corridor sacrifices. So with the king at the center, and then the green dots are people who either had scarabs, skirts, or daggers. And then the cluster of the light dots are the sort of less individually specialized people who were brought along with them. And so if we start thinking about this mass of people, of human life that was lost and brought along with the Kerman king, if we look at it almost like a pyramid or hierarchy with the royal burial, and then a set of key sacrifices, and then their own sacrifices, it starts adding up and in a way is almost like a Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme of deaths. So looking at this royal context and the mass inhumations, we can see that corridor sacrifices have a huge range of personal adornment from minimal to complex. And there's a homogenous distribution of bodies with daggers, skirts, or scarabs, which represent these different community actors. And then clusters of less adorned sacrifices mirror elite subsidiary graves, which we'll look at in a second. So this pyramid scheme, or kind of ascending hierarchy of sacrifices, increases the numbers. And it helps outline this hierarchy of social coercion during early state development. Okay, so the king almost by definition could muster this amount of social control in order to sacrifice people at the time of this death. But we also know that sacrifices were brought along with elite Kermans. This is another one of my social network maps. So again, with the idea of the king at the center, and then the darker green circles are elite Kermans who were buried at a later time, and had their own sort of social capital to bring people with them into the afterlife. And there's a huge range. Some people were buried completely by themselves with just one or two sacrifices, and other people seem to be kind of competing for control. This person I think has 12 that they brought along with them. But if we look into some of these individual graves, and kind of see how they're laid out, and we can begin to understand these social relationships, not just as force and violent killing of people to bring with them, but instead we can see the types of relationships that would have been formed during life. So this grave here, K1065, the individual is laid out on the bed, and then they have one person underneath it. One, two, three, four, five, six people, and one sacrificed ram that was brought into them for the afterlife. And here is the photo of that. So again, this person would have died of natural causes most likely, and so they're the primary deceased. And then here are the individuals kind of laid out almost in a circle around the center, where you can see there's a large pot, and there's other vessels around as well. And we do know this is a single event. Everyone was buried at the same time, and in this case there was an ox hide, actually several ox hides that covered it. So this isn't, say, in Egypt we find family tombs where one person was buried, but it was able to be opened and kind of buried in stages. This is one and done if they were buried together. So if we start to look at the center, the set of vessels tell us about the type of feasting that happened at the time of death. So especially in the center, there's this large pot, and if we look at other graves, unfortunately that grave, it's not preserved, but in others, that same type of large beer jar actually still has the organic contents inside of it. So this is, again, four and a half thousand year old evidence of what people were eating and drinking. So there's grain husks from wheat, and then this kind of mash. So this is the material that beer would have been brewed from, and in this case it was not separated out as part of the brewing process, and we'll see a little bit more about that in a second. There are other organic contents from Kerma, and I'm very curious to continue with the residue testing that we're undertaking at Wellesley to find out what it is. This particular vessel, you can see this big drip coming down off the side. Whatever was inside of this is so incredibly sticky that when you handle it in the museum with gloves, your gloves stick to it. It's very easy to take residue analysis, and I thank the MFA for letting me do this, but I mean just by touching it, you get it. It has this very mysterious white thing inside of it that is sort of waxy, and we don't know if it's an ancient infestation of some sort of insect material, or if it's actually part of the original recipe. And in our curiosity and frustration to find out what this material is, I've sniffed it quite a few times. It has a very pleasant sweet smell, and it actually smells rather a lot like coconuts. Coconuts are not existent in Africa at that time period, so stay tuned. There's also this strange greasy and spongy material. So there is some sort of delicious funerary feast, we just don't exactly know what the ingredients are at this point. But it is important to distinguish that scholars such of Holland have shown that there's an ancient African food way of porridge and pot, so cooked grains in water, that's distinctly different than Near Eastern bread and oven cuisine like we would find in Egypt. And the organics at Kerma certainly fall into this category of grain-based liquids of porridge. Okay, and then also if we start looking at the variety of vessels that were used in the funerary feast, it's quite notable. So here are the examples overlaid. So again with the central beer pots, and then there's stacks of serving beakers that are around. And a beaker is just about the right size to hold in both hands and drink out of. And there's this one item right in the middle that's especially intriguing. It's not made out of pottery, and it's again amazing that any of these examples are preserved from so long ago. So it's giraffe hair, and it's woven. This is a beautiful example on the left that's in the Sudan National Museum, and this is one from the original archive photos. If it is still present in either collection, it seems to have lost this long part. What that is is a cane, a hollow cane. So what you could do is use the cane with this basketry sphere at the end of it to drink that beer, the beer that still has the mash in it. And what's very interesting is that we have ethnographic examples from East Africa that are similar to this practice. And I definitely don't want to make the argument that there's a direct line just from Kerma to these East African continuing kind of culinary traditions, but that they're part of a larger East African kind of food way and way of brewing and consuming beer, especially in a communal fashion. So this is a basketry example. It's currently in the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, but it was collected in the 1960s. And here is another example. So imagine, okay, and then this one is, it's the full length of it. So you have a central pot of beer that people would be able to drink and share the straw around. So it's not just the instruments themselves. We do have ancient depictions of this type of communal beer drinking. So on the left from Musawarra da Sofra in Sudan, there's a graffito of two men drinking from one of the same type of pot. And then there's many, many historical and contemporary practices. This one example happens to come from Tanzania, but also from Uganda. Again, not as a direct connection just from Kerma to kind of contemporary or historical practices, but as part of a larger East African food way. And it's important to use these kind of comparative examples to understand how the relationships would be built through this kind of communal beer drinking. So scholars such as Edwards have shown that there was a labor beer label, a labor circle, excuse me, in traditional Sudanese societies in historical times. So when somebody needed work done, such as building a house that necessitated a large group of people coming together, they would brew beer for the occasion. And as a thank you and kind of compensation for the favors that were done to them, there would be a feast afterwards. But then you're indebted to the other person and kind of passing along over and over again and building up of communal relationships and indebtedness. Food is very interesting in kind of the anthropological world because it's something that we consume. It is a thing, but it gets embodied and taken into us. And by giving it away, a connection is built on kind of a physical and body level. And social expectations are created, but then can dictate how the receiver must reciprocate. So this could be something that's going on with the communal consumption of beer and Kerma. It's a way to create and negotiate social relationships and life that then gets followed into death. It should be noted that Egyptians also loved to drink beer and they wanted to take it with them into the afterlife, but in a very kind of specific way. So again, removed in time and place, but I love this example from the Old Kingdom from Giza. So one of these offering areas in front of a false door, where people, the family of the deceased, would come to leave offerings to sustain the person in the afterlife. But they have, it's almost like a TV tray dinner. They have the specific little areas that are all labeled as to what you're supposed to put where. It's very much a single serving for one person. Whereas in Distinction at Kerma, this is a whole feasting set and everyone is surrounded around it and participating in it. The feast instead is set up for the group. And so the primary deceased individual is laid on the funerary bed and then sacrifices arranged around them with diverse levels of personal adornments. And then the offering ware is not compartmentalized for one individual. Instead it's arranged in a set in the center or the corner. So the individual's connections that occurred in life were cemented for them in the afterlife by literally bringing the others with them in death. And as I mentioned above, poisoning is one of the most likely means of killing the sacrifices. So my students in my Human Sacrifice course immediately at this point ask, is the beer poisonous? I think it's extremely unlikely, but it's another question that could be answered through residue analysis. So here's another example of the feasting set along the side of the grave, in this case including a sacrificed ram and stacks of beakers. So it's ready to be used for serving the funerary feast. And what's interesting is that over time Kerman Potters adapted a shortcut. The stacks were imitated instead by modeling ridges on the sides of the vessels, moving away from a usable version to a kind of stand-in or prop for funerary purposes. And not every Kerman had the social capital or connections to coerce others to be sacrificed. It's unusual, but in some cases the individual was buried in a single grave with no personal adornment, but still always equipped with a beer jar and a serving vessel, showing it was essential for the afterlife. Okay, so by looking at the kind of other side of the community in Kerman versus the royal, we see this social nature of imbibing alcohol and beer filter straws were shared among the group to drink from one large jar. So there's this commensal politics of drinking and feasting, where relationships were negotiated in life and then were manifested in death. So the commemoration of the deceased included the death and burial of those connected to them. So we see sacrifices, social coercion, but again something that's very deeply embedded in the many kind of complex ways that relationships were built within the community. Okay, so by way of conclusion, as I mentioned in the beginning of my talk, we must always consider the impacts of studying the past. And because of the inherent political nature of archaeology, we should ask how do conceptions of the past affect descendants today, and how do archaeologists acknowledge their impact in local communities and on diverse audiences. So I wanted to end with an acknowledgement of the endlessly warm hospitality and support of the Sudanese communities that I've had the privilege of working with, and their enthusiasm for learning about the past. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.