In February 2010, I was crouching down in a subterranean tomb chamber at the archaeological site of Amara West in modern Sudan, excavating the human skeletal remains of people that had lived some 3000 years ago. Suddenly, I came across fragile tubular objects made of a whitish substance arranged almost like a string of beads parallel to the femur of a middle-aged woman (Figure 1.1). The unassuming little tubes were carefully collected, wrapped in scraps of acid-free tissue paper, packed in cardboard boxes used for Sudanese matches and labelled ‘calcified arteries?’. Together with the excavated skeletal remains, they were later – courtesy of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums of Sudan – shipped to the British Museum in London for further scientific analysis within the framework of my PhD research at Durham University under the supervision of Charlotte A. Roberts, the co-editor with myself of this book.