The Meroitic Heartland

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the heartland of the Kushite kingdom focusing on the Meroitic period between the 3rd century bce and the mid-4th century ce. An introduction defines the region’s natural borders and illustrates the environmental setting of the Meroitic heartland on the so-called Island of Meroe. In order to draw a general picture, the most important findings from archaeology, including settlements, architecture, and funeral rites, are related to the few known historical events of this period.

The dahliagram: An interdisciplinary tool for investigation, visualization, and communication of past human-environmental interaction

“…In the Horn of Africa, the same processes were in play during the pre-and Aksumite periods. While throughout the pre-Aksumite period, there was demographic continuity with populations that preceded, Sabaean elements from the Daʿmat polity intermixed with local innovations, eventually leading to a Semitic writing system (Ge'ez), a pantheon, and architecture, that echoed those of the kingdoms in Yemen (49,50). This period was key for the development of terraced agriculture in the highlands (51,52), as well as the formalization of trade with the interior of the continent, and with Arabia and northeast Africa, via the ports of the Red Sea (53).…”