Survey on the anthropological collection of the Finnish Nubia Expedition.

Thanks to the activity of two field anthropologists the Finnish Nubia Expedition working in the Batn el Hagar area south of the Second Cataract in Upper (Sudanese) Nubia collected human cranial and postcranial remains representing a total of 115 individuals. Two chronological series could be built up, viz. Meroitic/X-Group and Christian Period. Most of the remaining material was chronologically and partly also geographically heterogeneous and covered Mesolithic to New Kingdom times. It was tentatively put together so as to represent the old "Prae-Meroitic" Nubian stock. The material was generally too sparse and too selected to allow a demographic study. However it allowed a comparative anthropometric analysis, focusing on the Meroitic/X-Group and Christian periods. Other aspects of the physical build of the individuals studied could be reconstructed by analysis of descriptive features. The differences observed between the series could be explained by determination of the relative shares of the White and Black anthropological varieties and their blend. The ample collection of pathological findings included rare instances such as two cases of vertebral tuberculosis and one case probably representing fungal osteomyelitis. Detailed data will be published in a monograph under preparation.