204 Stuart Tyson Smith
may reflect an instrumental assertion of ethnic ties demonstrating links between the
community and their new Kushite overlords through display during feasting, perhaps
driven by the men who helped manage the lucrative trade in luxuries. This might
correspond to Goody’s (1982: 151–2) notion that the elements of foodways that
connect to larger political systems tend to be more changeable in order to meet political
contingencies.
The pattern of cooking pottery, however, is very different from the serving assemblage.
Nubian cook pots are over-represented at Askut, starting at nearly half of the cooking
sub-assemblage, growing to two-thirds in the Second Intermediate Period, and dominat-
ing during the New Kingdom and Napatan Period. If we suppose, as Egyptian historical
sources indicate, that women did most of the cooking, then Askut reflects a kind of
counter-acculturation, with Nubian women transforming colonial foodways. Goody also
observes that those culinary practices without external entanglements tend to be more
conservative, and the prominence of Nubian cook pots and cuisine at Askut may thus
reflect the less overt influence of Nubian women on the community’s foodways. The
fact that the proportion of Nubian cook pots, and presumably Nubian cuisine, increases
steadily over time implies that this is more than just a passive retention of a Nubian
habitus, but instead an active assertion of Nubian ethnic identity that eventually came to
dominate this particular social context.
Although rooted in thehabitus, foodways play an important role in engendering and
negotiating social identities (Wood 1995). In a similar colonial context, native women
in Spanish Saint Augustine used local pottery and maintained native foodways (Deagan
1983). Lightfoot and Martinez (1995) argue that native women in California’s Rus-
sian colony at Fort Ross used cuisine and the organization of domestic space to assert
their native identity. Foodways and burial practice allowed slaves on southern planta-
tions to maintain a separate ethnic identity, and cuisine continues to play a key role in
African-American ethnicity (McKee 1999: 235). Although Voss (2008) cautions that
this model should be applied carefully, it nevertheless seems appropriate here. Nubian
women within Egyptian colonial communities such as Askut may in a similar way have
used foodways to provide an ethnic counterpoint against Egyptian political and cultural
hegemony.
Burial Practice at New Kingdom Tombos
Located at the headwaters of the third cataract of the Nile, Tombos lay upon an important
border, marked and explicitly indicated by a number of stelae carved to commemorate the
defeat of Kush by King Thutmose I in 1502BC. It lies only 10 kilometers from Kerma,
the former capital of the kingdom of Kush. Preliminary evidence from three seasons
of excavation indicates that the cemeteries there were used from ca. 1400 to 600BC
(Smith 2003, 2007b). Excavation of the nearby Egyptian colonial settlement has thus
far proven problematic, so this section focuses on funerary practices.
Apart from small amounts of Nubian pottery, funerary architecture and grave
goods overwhelmingly reflect Egyptian burial practices during the New Kingdom (ca.
1400–1070BC). An elite area contained 10 or more large pyramid tombs of a type pop-
ular with high-level bureaucrats during the New Kingdom (Badawy 1968; Smith 2003).