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Dying to serve: the mass burials at Kerma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Margaret Judd  and
Joel Irish
Margaret Judd
Affiliation:
1Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA (Email: [email protected])
Joel Irish
Affiliation:
2University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Department of Anthropology, 310 Eielson Building, PO Box 757720, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7720, USA (Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

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High ranking burial mounds in Bronze Age Sudan featured burials in a corridor leading to the central burial – supposedly of a king. Were the ‘corridor people’ prisoners captured during periodic raids on Egypt, or local retainers who followed their king in death? The authors use the skeletal material to argue the second hypothesis – coincidentally that advanced by George Reisner, the original excavator.

Keywords

SudanNubiaKermasacrificeethnicity
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 83 , Issue 321 , September 2009 , pp. 709 - 722
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2009

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