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Those remains are the best starting point from which to build an understanding of X-Group identity.
From a theoretical perspective (see especially chapter 3), the very question of the nature of identity—how it might be created, maintained, altered, and expressed—is a further guiding frame for this research. I do not intend, indeed do not wish, to finally settle a debate by identifying the individuals in the graves as either Blemmyes or Nobadae. As Adams has rightly argued (1965), such designation brings nothing to the debate, and a name will not advance our understanding of life and death at Qustul and Ballana. A name is not an identity (Dann forthcoming). Instead, we need to formulate an interpretation of identities as they were expressed via the material remains themselves. In dealing with this question at Qustul and Ballana, we are considering at least three interrelated forms of expression which revolve around the human, the animal, and the artefactual. Within this research, these three aspects are considered in a fundamentally imbricated manner, interacting with one another in the production of individual and group identities. Although this premise is important, it is the artefacts and their relationships with each other as a group, and their relationship with humans and with animals, that are central. As such, I argue that it is the very nature of those artefacts that is of consequence—their material, their colour, their manufacture, their decoration—all of these facets that inhere in the artefacts contribute to the expression of identities, especially a kind of aesthetic identity.
My ultimate aim, then, is to offer an interpretation of the X-Group-period royal cemeteries at Qustul and Ballana that is based on a quantitative analysis of the remains, and that integrates an explicitly theoretical approach. More specifically, the sites of Qustul and Ballana and the material from them can be evaluated in order to elucidate aspects of material culture and practice that were important in the creation and negotiation of X-Group identity. To do so, I aim to identify the aspects of material culture and related practices that characterised activities at Qustul and Ballana. The reasons for the move from Qustul to Ballana are little known. Consequently, the clarification of aspects of continuity or change between the cemeteries in material terms may be suggestive of