20. Bowls with Incised Decoration

All C-Group pottery is handmade from Nile silt, with round bases that were meant to sit in the sand. A black-topped style resembling A-Group pottery was common. These burnished bowls are a more elaborate, special style. The potters used impressions and incisions to create structured, symmetric patterns that were accentuated with a white fill. Numerous patterns were used: checkers, zig-zags, triangles, lozenges etc. These strongly evoke basketry/matting, as well as elaborate bead patterns discovered sewn on the leather garments of C-Group burials. The geometric aesthetic shared across different types of artifacts may have been meaningful beyond ‘decoration’. The prevalence of incised drinking vessels like these in graves indicates their importance in final rites in C-Group culture. It is particularly interesting in this regard that different types of motifs are attested in distinct clusters in the Adindan cemeteries: for instance, chevrons, triangles and pinwheels were found to be more common in the west part of Cemetery T, while checkers prevailed in the east part of the cemetery with a similar pattern observed in Cemetery K. Possibly the patterns had social meaning that escapes us or represent the ebb and flow of fashionable pottery styles at different times. Scan the brown QR below to see examples of beadwork that resemble these patterns.