Adindan: a C-Group Community in Colonial Nubia

Adindan, south of Qustul, is one of many known C-Group communities in the region. Positioned along the ‘Ivory Road’, it came under Egyptian control in the Middle Kingdom. Nevertheless the community continued to practice traditional customs, for example using shaft tombs with stone mounds (10-15 ft in diameter) and placing pottery and cattle bucrania outside the mounds. The dead were wrapped in leather patchwork garments decorated with beaded geometric patterns. They were provisioned with C-Group goods, such leather and fur items, carnelian, bone and seashell accessories (anklets, girdles, hair rings), palettes with mineral pigments, as well as some Egyptian objects. The absence of weapons at this site is thought to indicate disarmament of the local population during Egyptian colonial occupation. After the Egyptian state started to disintegrate and colonial control of Nubia waned (from 1685 BCE), C-Group, Kerma, and Pan-Grave and Egyptian customs were combined, indicating the inhabitants of Adindan were free to adopt a variety of cultural practices as they saw fit.