The Archaeology of the Meroitic State

Description

This study aims to develop new and alternative perspectives on the Meroitic state which explicitly acknowledge its broader environmental and historical context within sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than starting from a consideration of higher-level interactions with its northern neighbour, Egypt, developing an understanding of the some of the underlying general patterns of social and political development within Sudanic Africa seems a more appropriate and indeed essential way of grounding research. To do this, the author draws on an extensive range of both general and comparative studies of social, economic and political development within Sudanic Africa. As well as adopting a more ‘African’-oriented approach to the study of Meroe, a concern of the volume is to develop a more specifically archaeological study. Adopting often wide-ranging comparative approaches, it seeks to develop a theoretical framework suitable for the analysis of the social and especially political structure and organisation of the Meroitic state.