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the survival and state of the human remains were also affected by the damp conditions, but the excavators (Emery, Kirwan, and Farid) and the anatomist, El-Batrawi, make little mention of this. Although a number of the tombs had been robbed, a sizeable number also survived intact. These problems with the data must be borne in mind, but they do not preclude an analysis.
When the X-Group tombs of Qustul and Ballana were first excavated by Emery and Kirwan, the excavators planned the remains in situ so that the human and animal bodies would be sketched with any associated artefacts in place. In a number of cases, the skeletons were found still wearing certain items, such as crowns or sandals, and in other cases the wearing of jewellery was inferred by the nature of the remains: in the cases where, for example, beads were found amongst the clavicle, sternum, and vertebrae, it is considered likely that the individual was wearing a necklace. There were no substantial textile remains found in the “royal” tombs, but a large corpus survived in the graves excavated by the OINE (Mayer Thurman and Williams 1979). It is only through the careful and precise drawings and descriptions of the excavators that such information is known. From the archaeological remains, which demonstrate the close proximity of items of clothing (broadly defined) on or near the bodies, some of the people at Qustul and Ballana seem to have been buried fully clothed. It is due to this fortunate coincidence between the levels of preservation at the site, and the excavators’ foresight in recording all that they found, that one may attempt a detailed analysis and interpretation of the remains.
Terminology
It was Reisner who first introduced the term X-Group to denote the cultural group existing in Lower Nubia between the fall of the Meroitic state and the rise of the Christian kingdoms. Subsequently, much intellectual effort has been expended in trying to identify this cultural group by using fragmentary historical sources. It has become a common assumption that the people buried at Qustul and Ballana were