Mortality and culture change in Nubia's Batn el Hajar

Abstract

Throughout antiquity, Nubia has existed on the interface between history and prehistory. The first written record from Nubia may date from the fourth millennium B.C. while her last dark age lasted until 1813. Significantly, this last dark age was the time when Nubia made the final transition from Christianity to Islam. The present research represents an analysis of mortality among one of the last known Christian populations of Nubia-a population from a region previously uninvestigated by physical anthropology known as the Batn et Hajar ("belly of rock"). A comparison of earlier and later Christian populations from two cemeteries at the site of Kulubnarti in the Batn et Hajar suggests that the large Christians, isolated in one of the most hostile and forbidding regions of the Nile Valley, experienced lower rates of childhood mortality and morbidity than their ealier Christian forebears. Our data also suggest that population comparison based on cumulative survivorship may be seriously biased by initial differences in childhood mortality. © 1981 Academic Press Inc. (London) Limited.