Crafting power in Kush: faience production and state control in the Napatan region

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Sanam Temple lies in the heart of Napata, the capital of the Kushite Empire in the first millennium BCE. Excavations at the temple (2018–2020) have revealed the remains of a mid-seventh-century BCE faience-production workshop, comprising three firing pits, two mudbrick basins and various faience objects, numerous beads, small shells and wasters found in compacted ashy layers. Here, the authors argue that this evidence provides insight not only into manufacturing techniques and restricted access to goods, but also into aspects of state control in Napatan Nubia, expanding our understanding of the Kushite state in Iron Age north-east Africa.