Nubian and Egyptian Ethnicity 209group to the individual, thinking in terms of how ethnic identities are generated through
individual practice in specific social contexts—in our case, households and burials. Think-
ing in these terms can bring us closer to understanding the complexity of ancient ethnic
dynamics. As Knapp (Chapter 3 in this volume) notes for Cyprus (cf. Chapter 12 in this
volume, by Jennifer Gates-Foster), Bhabha’s notion of a “third space,” where identi-
ties are renegotiated, applies to Nubia and Egypt, but I favor Dietler’s (2010) model of
entanglement to hybridity (see Chapter 8 in this volume, by Gary Reger). We can only
understand the social and political dimensions of ethnicity by recognizing that individ-
uals fundamentally have choices in consumption and practice, even in situations where
social and political constraints may limit their options. In our case, Nubian and Egyptian
individuals interwove different cultural threads, producing new ethnic configurations as
a result of their long history of interaction and colonization. Even in the context of the
dramatic shift toward Egyptianization that characterizes the New Kingdom Empire and
the Napatan kingdom that succeeded it, the material record reflects a complex mosaic of
ethnic point and counterpoint. Individual men and women played a role in cultural and
ethnic dynamics that transformed colonial society into a dynamic social field for nego-
tiating cultural differences, not just producing a cultural hybrid. Even in a situation of
apparent ethnic polarization coinciding with political borders and ideological boundaries,
we can see the permeability of putative ethnic boundaries, and the socially contingent
nature of both ethnic identities and cultural interaction.
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