The author's remarks

Introduction

The following studies are based on the author’s research on Meroitic and Romano-Egyptian pottery, conducted for his postgraduate dissertation submitted in 2009 at the University of Southampton. His original dissertation was titled “An investigation of ceramic production in Meroitic Lower Nubia during the period of the Roman occupation in Qasr Ibrim”, and it was submitted for the completion of his MA degree in Ceramic and Lithic Analysis for Archaeologists.

Although the author discusses ceramic materials and introduces information originally included in his 2009 dissertation, the following articles do not replicate the dissertation’s structure, and many of the original arguments are now refined and supplemented with additional discussion. Furthermore, the presentation of the study has been modified to suit the needs of small online articles, divided thematically in order to stand on their own as separate entities.

To avoid misunderstandings, the author has decided not to upload his original dissertation on this website due to some specific copyright restrictions. The original 2009 MA dissertation included illustrations and photographs taken from other authors’ books; therefore, they were the intellectual property of third parties and cannot be republished without their permission. In the following articles, such photographs and illustrations have either been replaced or removed. For the intellectual property rights of the archaeological material included in the original 2009 dissertation, which is also used in the following articles, please read the disclaimer below.

Disclaimer

At the time of writing his dissertation, the author received permission from the Department of Archaeology of the University of Southampton to study ceramic material from the Qasr Ibrim excavation and include it in his thesis. The ceramic material was, at that time, part of the Department’s teaching collection. Furthermore, the author received permission to sample specific artefacts and to produce thin sections for his project, which he then returned to the Department.

At the time his dissertation was produced in 2009, there was no written agreement between the author and the Institution prohibiting the publication of his work. Furthermore, there was no formal or informal discussion between the author and the Institution’s representatives, indicating that the author did not have full intellectual property rights over his dissertation, including the illustrations of any material discussed in its text. For the above reasons, any reference to and discussion of the above archaeological material, including the original illustrations, photographs and photo-micrographs, which were produced personally by the author in 2009, are treated as the author’s own intellectual property and are utilised according to the author’s own will.

The author clearly states that publishing his work on this website is not a commercial activity and does not aim to generate economic profit. By contrast, the author wishes his work to be publicly available for free and shared openly with those interested in reading it. Unfortunately, despite the author’s efforts to produce a short article from his original dissertation, it has been over 9 years since his work was made publicly available for the purpose for which it was originally written. The author states that this piece of work, which is the author’s personal intellectual property, is now publicly available for free at the author’s personal website.

Comments

The reader must bear in mind that several areas of this article are already out of date, as it was first written over 9 years ago. Some discussion has been added to highlight these areas, although the author was unable to keep up with the latest developments and bibliography in Meroitic, Romano-Egyptian, and Nubian archaeology due to the different nature of his current work. Furthermore, the author’s dissertation in 2009 did not constitute an original contribution to archaeological knowledge, as was expected of doctoral candidates at the time. The level of work encountered in his original dissertation, which reflects on the arguments of the following articles, matches the aims and objectives of a standard Master’s degree dissertation in Archaeology. Still, the author believes that his work is likely to contain useful information to several postgraduate and undergraduate students, particularly to those studying the archaeology of Egypt and Sudan. The content of the following articles can be used freely for the promotion of knowledge, but cannot be used for any form of profitable activity.

The author apologises for the quality of some of the illustrated material taken from his original dissertation. Back then, it was produced under time pressure, with limited technical resources and support. Such illustrated material, particularly drawings and photographs of pottery and photomicrographs of ceramic thin sections, was produced by the author himself at a time when his professional skills were still under development. Again, the author believes that this illustrated material demonstrates the variety of skills he acquired during his studies at Southampton and deserves to be included in the following articles as originally produced.

What is to follow?

The following articles examine how pottery production patterns can be used to investigate connections between cultural groups historically recorded as enemies. The two cultural groups examined are the Romano-Egyptians and the Meroites, who lived together in the same geographical region of Lower Nubia, between the first and the middle fourth centuries AD. A key point in the following studies will be the investigation of ceramic evidence from the Lower Nubian settlement of Qasr Ibrim.

Acknowledgements

For their access to and study of the Qasr Ibrim material back in 2009, and for their broader support during his project, the author is indebted to Dr A. Gascoigne and Prof D. Williams from the University of Southampton. He is also grateful to Dr P. Rose from the University of Cambridge for her guidance, advice, and useful information regarding the excavations at Qasr Ibrim. Finally, the author would like to thank J. Phillips for her technical support and J. Cooper for her comments and suggestions, which were extremely useful when he started this study several years ago.