The Pre-Kerma Culture and the Beginning of the Kerma Kingdom

Abstract

The Pre-Kerma is an Upper Nubian culture that developed between 3500 and 2500 bce. It preceded the Kerma civilization and was in part contemporaneous with the A-Group from Lower Nubia. It consisted of an agro-pastoral population that maintained contacts with Lower Nubia and produced pottery somewhat similar to that of the A-Group. It is best known from settlements dated between 3000 and 2600 bce, in particular those from Kerma and Sai Island. The settlement sites have yielded a large number of cereal storage pits, which imply that agriculture was practiced on a larger scale than during the preceding periods. At Kerma, an extensive agglomeration of more than fifty huts, animal pens, and an imposing system of fortifications suggests the social complexity of the urban Kerma civilization. The Pre-Kerma culture maintained contacts with the A-Group, while being much less involved in exchanges with the earliest Egyptian dynasties. Its existence bears witness to a certain social dynamism in Upper Nubia that helped give rise to the Kerma kingdom.

Ecological flexibility and adaptation to past climate change in the Middle Nile Valley: A multiproxy investigation of dietary shifts between the Neolithic and Kerma periods at Kadruka 1 and Kadruka 21

“…Situated within a regional context, the results of this study suggest a later economic transition in Upper Nubia postdating the suggested Late Neolithic hiatus on the alluvial plain (Fig 16 and Table 3) [25,27,45]. Although recently published dates from KDK5A and KDK5B indicate some occupation continuity during the early 4 th millennium BCE [75], there is clearly a significant reduction in the number of sites on the alluvial plain at the end of the 5 th millennium BCE [27,241,242]. The limited archaeological evidence for Late Neolithic groups on the alluvial plain during the early-to mid 4 th millennium BCE correlates with the progressive drying up of the desert wadis combined with an episode of reduced Nile flow and floodplain contraction [27,29,163].…”

The name of the game: palaeoproteomics and radiocarbon dates further refine the presence and dispersal of caprines in eastern and southern Africa

“…A hundred and fourteen remains from the 17 Holocene archaeological sites were sampled (electronic supplementary material, table S2). Seventeen specimens come from the sites of Muweis and Kerma in Sudan [60]; 48 from Wakarida [61], Mota Cave [62], Kumali [63], Garu [64], Kurub 7 and the Kurub Bahari plain [65], Asa Koma [66], Wakrita [67], Hedaito le Dora, Laas Geel [68], respectively, in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland; 11 from Prolonged Drift [69] and Vaave Makonge [70] in Kenya for eastern Africa. Southern African sites included fifty-three specimens from Geduld [71] and Leopard Cave [72] in Namibia; Toteng 1 and 3 [73] in Botswana and Melikane in Lesotho [74].…”

Pastoralism, hunting, and coexistence: Domesticated and wild bovids in Neolithic Sudan

“…Understanding the scale, time depth, and cultural ramifications of mobile pastoralists' interactions with semi‐sedentary Nilotic foraging groups in Middle Nile Valley is critical because the meeting of these two economies is associated with drastic social and political changes that underlay the social complexity seen in the ancient African kingdom of Bronze Age Kerma (Chaix et al, 2015; Honegger, 2019, 2021; Honegger & Williams, 2015; Wengrow et al, 2014). The interaction and the struggle for power between herders and foragers preceding the Egyptian Predynastic era has been well‐studied (Hassan, 1988; Hendricks, 2013; Wengrow, 2006; Wengrow et al, 2014); however, details of this same phase in Sudan are much less well known.…”