Mortuary theory, pottery and social complexity at Jebel Moya cemetery, South-Central Sudan
Michael Brass (Author), Muzeum Archeologiczne w Poznaniu (Issuing body)
The excavations at the Jebel Moya cemetery were initiated in 1911 and continued until the onset of the First World War in 1914. The majority of the excavated artefacts and all of the physical anthropological remains and the excavation records were shipped to the United Kingdom where they were examined in the late 1930s and post-1945. While the original fieldwork yielded important materials, no attempt has previously made to elucidate the nature of social organisation as reflected in the mortuary assemblages. There is a necessity to develop more sophisticated hypotheses about the development of the site, the elucidation of the changing nature of socio-political order in the southern Gezira Plain, and the processes affecting its cultural evolution. This paper looks in brief first at issues of social complexity and mortuary archaeology in Africa today and secondly at how using these perspectives re-examination of the extant materials allow for informed social analysis of change at Jebel Moya
Downloadable Article, English, 2015
Poznań Archaeological Museum, Poznań (PL), 2015