Through the Sahara, Across the Red Sea: Trade Networks of Meroitic Finewares and their Impact on Modern Museum Collections

This dissertation is a tripartite and interdisciplinary analysis that incorporates Egyptian archaeology, Nubian archaeology, and Museum Studies in order to investigate object biographies through the archaeological record and how these biographies influence the understanding of objects in museum collections. Within Egyptian archaeology and Nubian archaeology, this project aims to dismantle the problematic construction of studying Egypt and Nubia in a specific microcosm that often strictly includes the regions of the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia by expanding the study of regional connection through the re-analysis of trade routes, the re-analysis of museum displays, and using pottery as a material case study. Meroitic pottery is a distinctive marker for Nubian artistic expression during the late 1st millennium BCE to the early centuries CE. Not only did it mark a political shift in Nubia from Napatan to Meroitic, but it also reinforced imperial and religious ideals through the diffusion of motifs on the vessels throughout the kingdom. These material aspects emphasize how active Meroitic Nubia was on the global arena through the identification of foreign and local motifs that indicate inter-regional contact. A comprehensive analysis of the decorative program, morphology, and fabric of Meroitic vessels in relation to the same variables of pottery at contemporaneous, late antique, and early medieval sites in Ghana, Nigeria, Libya, and Mali revealed very specific equivalencies from each region and contemporaneous Nile Valley pottery types that may suggest ideological confluence. Ancient and contemporary routes are highlighted and expanded upon that align with the production of pottery and the movement of items in an interconnected trade system. Through these investigations, this dissertation draws parallels between pottery types and elucidates a complex understanding of particular biographies that demonstrate connection between regions not previously explored in comparable depth to this project. Through the study of the archaeological realities of the ceramic and relevant data (beads, etc.), this dissertation researches the institutional realities of these data with a focus on four North American museums (Royal Ontario Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Penn Museum, and Brooklyn Museum). Nubian material is often combined with Egyptian material in museum departmental organization as well as separated from the Arts of Africa, and in both instances often perpetuates problematic interpretations of the Nile Valley and “sub-Saharan” Africa, an intellectual reasoning inherited by museums through a decades-long instilling of the foundational practices of early scholars and the early institutionalization of collecting, cataloguing, and presenting artifacts. The results of this research contributes to connecting these two collections in a more profound manner.

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