Inferring the Social Organization of Medieval Upper Nubia Using Nonmetric Traits of the Skull
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INFERRING THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF MEDIEVAL UPPER NUBIA USING NONMETRIC TRAITS OF THE SKULL By Emily Rose Streetman A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Anthropology – Doctor of Philosophy 2018 ABSTRACT INFERRING THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF MEDIEVAL UPPER NUBIA USING NONMETRIC TRAITS OF THE SKULL By Emily Rose Streetman Medieval Nubia was composed of three kingdoms located along the Middle Nile. Although biological distance (biodistance) research has demonstrated population continuity in this region, little is known about the population structure or social organization in any single era. The Medieval Period (550–1500 CE) was a particularly dynamic one in Nubia, since all three kingdoms converted to Christianity in the mid-sixth century CE, and neighboring polities converted to Islam a century later. The political ramifications of these conversions have been studied at a large scale, but little research has investigated the local processes that comprise social organization during this time. Minimal research has used contemporary populations to analyze regional, local, and family level social organization in Nubia. Biodistances were investigated through nonmetric traits of the skull in six cemeteries from three archaeologically defined sites in modern northern Sudan, using Mahalanobis D2 distance, among other statistical tests. The six cemeteries in this study are from Mis Island (three cemeteries), Kulubnarti (two cemeteries), and Gabati (one cemetery). Mis Island and Kulubnarti were part of the same kingdom (Makuria) from the seventh century on, while Gabati was part of the far Upper Nubian kingdom of Alwa. When cemeteries from the same sites are pooled, results show that the two more northerly sites were more closely related, while the third site, located in a different kingdom, was biologically distant. This suggests that political boundaries may have affected movement of individuals or families among rural villages. These results are highly, though insignificantly, correlated with a previously published three-site craniometric biodistance study of the same samples. When the relationships among all six cemeteries are considered, the two located at Kulubnarti are more distant from each other than expected. One Kulubnarti cemetery appears closely related to the three cemeteries at Mis Island, while the other is biologically distant to that cluster. These findings, along with recently acquired carbon dates, suggest that the two Kulubnarti cemeteries represent two contemporaneous neighboring groups that were relatively genetically isolated from one another and that experienced life, health, and disease quite differently. An attempt to contextualize these regional results with data from across the continent failed to provide meaningful results. The continental analysis integrated novel data with a publicly available global dataset. However, the biodistance analysis primarily demonstrates clustering of the samples by analyst, suggesting problems with inconsistent data collection methods. Biodistance was also studied in depth for Mis Island. This study is the first to include cemetery 3-J-18, which surrounded the Late Medieval (1100–1500 CE) church, in a bioarchaeological analysis of Mis Island. This sample is the most biologically heterogeneous of the Mis Island cemeteries, and preliminary spatial analysis suggests that all ages and sexes are represented in it. Compared to the closer-than-average relationship observed between the other two Mis Island cemeteries, cemetery 3-J-18 is a biological outlier. Still, all three Mis Island cemeteries are more closely related than the Kulubnarti cemeteries are to each other. Results of sex-specific analyses of individual cemeteries, as well as pooled samples for each site, show similar levels of variability among same sex pairs. This suggests the practice of multilocal postmarital residence, where a husband and wife are equally likely to live near the husband’s kin as the wife’s kin, a pattern newly recognized to be common among human groups. In addition, all three cemeteries were spatially analyzed assuming uniform distribution of burials, and one was retested using previously identified spatial groupings. These analyses of the three Mis Island cemeteries are unable to detect the presence of kin groups, despite differing spatial demographic patterns among the cemeteries. This diverges from the patterns observed in pre-medieval cemeteries, where biological affinity is an important factor in burial location. Copyright by EMILY ROSE STREETMAN 2018 To Terry Streetman, for keeping me fed and (relatively) sane. Even when everything is the worst, you are the best around. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A great many people helped me on the path to completing this dissertation. My family has always been supportive of my nerdiness, which ultimately lead to eleven years of college. My mother fostered my curiosity from an early age and is still the best museum buddy, and my father said to follow my dreams and never pressured me to become a “real” doctor. Dr. Todd Fenton was the chair of my dissertation committee but has also been an advisor, a professor, a manager, a collaborator, and a friend. We’ve dined at a Tuscan villa with a view of Chianti, and we’ve whiled away the hours driving across Michigan to distant morgues more times than either of us care to count. He made me a better anthropologist and researcher, a more introspective person, and (I fervently hope) a more pleasant colleague to be around. He is true of heart and provides his students with great and varied opportunities – to teach, to research, to make career-long connections. If it felt like a lot, and it did sometimes, my time at the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab was absolutely worth it, knowing how rare and precious those experiences were. If it was an early morning, or a long drive, or a strongly “multi-sensory” case, what he asked of us was no more than what he offered of himself. Plus, he had to be the driver. My committee members have guided me through readings, research, and writing. I am indebted to Gabe Wrobel, Ethan Watrall, Jon Frey, and Joe Hefner for their patience with my work-in-progress and suggestions for improvement. Thank you Norm Sauer, for letting me sneak in under the wire before you retired. Thank you also to Dr. Jodie O’Gorman who provided a steady hand on the rudder of the Department of Anthropology during my time as a graduate student. Your care and concern for all students’ success and well-being is recognized and appreciated. A sincere thank you is due to Dr. Van Gerven, for graciously allowing me access to the Kulubnarti collections, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has curated the collection well into his retirement, and my dissertation would not be complete without Kulubnarti. Thank you to Dr. Daniel vi Antoine, for welcoming me into the Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department of the British Museum for a short time to collect data on the 3-J-18 and Gabati collections, and also for facilitating the long-term loan of the Mis Island collections to Michigan State University. I am grateful for the partnership between our two institutions. To graduate students who have preceded me into life after graduate school: Angela Soler, who probably feels that I heap too much praise on her, but who has always demonstrated great leadership, professionalism, and produced high-quality integrative research, and who has been a peer mentor to me since the week I arrived at Michigan State in 2010. Dr. Cate Bird, Dr. Jared Beatrice, Dr. Carolyn Isaac, and Dr. Jen Vollner have provided advice and support in many forms over the years, and I admire each of them greatly. I would like to thank my fellow graduate students, still fighting the good fight, who have been elbow-deep in the muck and seen the world from a mountaintop with me: Caitlin Vogelsberg, Mari Isa, Valerie Leah, Elena Watson, Kacie Miner, and Maureen Moffitt. I am grateful to Dr. Rich Smith for fostering my interest in teaching and in physical anthropology with a master class in introductory human evolution. My undergraduate advisor Dr. Tab Rasmussen was also a superlative instructor who wove together comparative biology, evolution, and fragmentary human osteology in a way few primatologists would care to do. The department of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis trusted him as an instructor and trusted us as undergraduates handling real human remains, and I will never be able to properly express my gratitude that they let me hang out in the basement labs of their building for most of my last two years of college. Last, but certainly not least, I have to thank the most patient and loving man I know, my husband, Terry. He centers me when I need to be grounded and celebrates my every success even when I don’t realize I’ve done something worth celebrating. He made dinner, walked the dog, folded the laundry, and generally kept our house standing whenever I abandoned him for the field or the writing desk. This work is dedicated to you, and so am I. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................................. xi LIST OF FIGURES ..........................................................................................................................................xiii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................