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belt pieces, fibulae, necklaces, bracelets, and pottery) and early Roman provincial objects.
References
Knez T. 1986. Novo mesto I (Halstatski grobovi/Hallstatt Graves). Carniola Archaeologica no. 1.
———. 1992. Novo mesto II (Keltsko-rimsko grobisce Beletov vrt / Celtic-Roman Cemetery at Beletov vrt). Carniola Archaeologica no. 2.
———. 1993. Novo mesto III (Kapiteljska njiva—knezja gomila/Kapiteljska njiva—Princely Barrow). Carniola Archaeologica no. 3.
Nubia is the name that has been given in modern times to a region that was known to ancient Egyptians and their neighbors as Kush (or Cush) and to Greeks and Romans as Aethiopia. Today, it comprises the most southerly part of Egypt and the adjoining northern part of the Republic of Sudan. Historically, however, the region has usually been both culturally and politically autonomous, neither wholly Egyptian nor wholly Sudanese. Its peoples speak languages of the African eastern Sudanic family and exhibit both racial and cultural characteristics that connect them with peoples further to the south in Africa as well as with their Egyptian neighbors. Nubia was the seat of the ancient Empire of Kush and later of medieval Christian kingdoms that successfully resisted the incursion of Islamic Egypt for a thousand years.
The northern boundary of Nubia since time immemorial has been at the First Cataract of the Nile, just upriver from the town of Aswan in Egypt. The peoples to the south of that point have always been and remain ethnically and linguistically different from the Egyptians. The southern limit of Nubia is more difficult to specify, for it has varied at different times in history. However, in the usage of archaeologists and culture historians, the term is generally synonymous with ancient Kush and Aethiopia; it designates that portion of the Nile Valley, upriver from Egypt, that was strongly affected by cultural and political currents from Egypt and the Mediterranean world. In that sense, the historic southern limit of Nubia should be placed somewhere to the south of modern Khartoum at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile Rivers.
The Nubian environment resembles that of Egypt in that the fertile Nile Valley is flanked, for most of its length, by totally lifeless deserts. Instead of a broad and continuous floodplain, however, the valley in Nubia contains only limited and disconnected patches of alluvium while elsewhere, bare granite or sandstone outcrops come right to the water’s edge. In most of the region, moreover, the Nile did not annually overflow its banks, and irrigation required the use of man-made lifting devices. The agricultural potential was, as a result, very much less than that of Egypt, and the population was proportionately smaller. The prosperity of ancient and medieval Nubian civilizations did not depend on agricultural fertility, as in the case of Egypt, but on the country’s position astride one of the world’s oldest and richest trade routes. Before the development of trans-Saharan caravan trade in the first century a.d., the Nile Valley represented the only secure corridor across the Sahara through which gold, ivory, slaves, and other coveted goods from the African interior could reach the Mediterranean Basin.
The late Palaeolithic and early Neolithic cultures of Nubia conformed to a general pattern that has been observed all over the eastern Sahara. Although pottery made its appearance surprisingly early, other aspects of Neolithic cultural development lagged far behind contemporary developments in the Near East. As the Sahara gradually became drier and wild animal and bird life retreated to the Nile corridor, the abundance of aquatic and game resources seems to have actually retarded any heavy reliance on agriculture until near the end of the Neolithic period; similarly, the warm climate retarded the development of permanent housing. It was only during the time of “the copper age,” more or less contemporary with the beginnings of dynastic civilization in Egypt, that advanced Neolithic cultures made their appearance in Nubia.
The distinctive late Neolithic cultures of Nubia were first discovered as a result of excavations near Aswan in 1907. Because the finds corresponded to nothing previously known from Egypt, they were designated by the discoverer
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