Odontometrics and Biological Continuity in the Meroitic, X-Group, and Christian Phases of Nubia

Abstract

by JAMES M. CALCAGNO Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, III. 60626, U.S.A. 26 VI 85 Interpretive viewpoints of Nubian culture history may be categorized under two basic paradigms, one focusing on migration and the second on biocultural continuity (see Adams 1977, Carlson and Van Gerven 1979, Calcagno 1984). The migrationist approach purports to distinguish racial differences between and assess amounts of admixture within various cultural horizons. In accordance with this orientation, invasions by outside groups, often resulting in wholesale replacements of populations, constitute the major mechanism underlying any biological and cultural changes (see Adams, Van Gerven, and Levy 1978). This theoretical framework greatly influenced the conclusions drawn in early skeletal biological analyses of Nubian archaeological populations (e.g., Reisner 1909, ElliotSmith and Wood-Jones 1910) and occasionally plays a dominant role in more recent studies (e.g., Strouhal and Jungwirth 1980). Generally speaking, any indication of relatively large browridges, facial flattening in the nasal and orbital regions, alveolar prognathism, occipital protrusion, and/or large teeth was treated as evidence of Negroid intrusions, while less pronounced, gracile features were attributed to an influx of Caucasoid genes. In opposition to the migrationist paradigm, the perspective of Nubian culture history as a continuum of biocultural evolution lacks, as an explanatory mechanism of change, massive infusions of alien peoples that either totally replace or greatly alter the genetic composition of the original population. Rather than typologically defining groups and estimating degrees of admixture, this approach examines possible selective factors or secular trends which may account for skeletal changes observed through time. Equally important, the nature and degree of human variation within a population are more fully recognized, with little import placed upon trying to determine the race of each specimen. Of all the post-Mesolithic Nubian horizons, the Meroitic (A.D. 0-350), X-Group (A.D. 350-550), and Christian (A.D. 550-1400) periods have recently been given the most attention in this regard (Greene 1982, Van Gerven 1982, Rudney 1983). This is partly because of a focus upon the additional skeletal material recovered from the Christian site of Kulubnarti in 1979 and partly, as Greene (1982) has noted, because the validity of various research endeavors in paleopathology, paleodemography, paleoepidemiology, and microevolution has hinged upon continuity among these populations. Within this threesome, the X-Group phase has repeatedly been portrayed as a prime example of an invasion of Lower Nubia by more primitive peoples (Reisner 1909; Elliot-Smith and Wood-Jones 1910; Firth 1927; Emery and Kirwan 1935; Batrawi 1935, 1946; Kirwan 1937, 1939; Arkell 1940; Emery 1965; Strouhal 1971). According to this argument, alien Negroes reversed the trend of increasing cultural sophistication in this region by replacing the inhabitants of the Meroitic kingdom. If this is indeed what happened, one might expect significant changes in the skeletal biology of the populations in