ANTH EXAM
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ANTHREADANDWATCH.docx1. Videos to watch :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQzf_XIohYs&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FE8JCThD2A&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7Z7HVB4BQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aml7zenH4e0&feature=youtu.be
2. Readings:
Learning Outcome #1- Texts greatly expand our knowledge of Ancient Egypt, but these records are actually rare and incomplete. The archaeological record allows us to access past events and phenomena even in the absence of written information.
The combined information from both written and archaeological information from ancient Egypt provides a rich insight into the formative years of the mighty ancient Egyptian culture.
Our collective popular imagination about field work in Egypt tends to emphasize the discovery of lost tombs and hieroglyphic texts. From this, we imagine we know great details about this amazing past civilization.
However, as Bard notes in your assigned text (p. 37) “Surviving textual information from Egypt is only a small percentage of what actually existed at any one period in the past.” This is particularly true of Egypt’s earliest historical periods.
So what kind of information exists about Egypt’s earliest history? The first person to compile a history of Egypt was a scholar named Manetho.
Manetho was an Egyptian scribe living under Greek Rule who wrote the earliest comprehensive history of Ancient Egypt called Aegyptiaca, written during the 3rd century BC (300 BC).
In this work, Manetho grouped all of Egypt’s rulers into Dynasties, groups of rulers presumed to be related on some level, though not necessarily by blood. Because Manetho was an Egyptian scribe, he had access to ancient archives kept by Egyptian scribes for thousands of years prior to the time of Manetho (Bard, p. 38). This compilation is the first historical outline of Egypt, written by an Egyptian.
No complete copies of this document exist, however, it is known from references in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. Josephus’s history was written in the 1st century AD, more than 100 years after the death of Manetho.
When writing about Egypt’s earliest kings, Manetho was writing about a time in the past at least 2000 years before his own time. For perspective on that timeline, Manetho lived 2300 years or so before our present day. Thus Manetho was writing about a period as remote in history to him, as Manetho is to us in the present day.
Yet Manetho’s work underlies most of our historic understanding of Ancient Egypt. Some of his information was taken from five partial documents called “king lists,” that provide information about the regnal lengths and events during the lives of particular Pharaohs.
Egyptian King Lists and the latest approximate time represented on each:
- The Palermo Stone ca. 2400 BC
- The Royal List of Abydos ca. 1300 BC
- The Royal List of Saqqara ca. 1250 BC
- The Royal List of Karnak ca. 1450 BC
- The Turin Papyrus ca. 1250 BC
While providing compelling information, all of these lists are partial, yet they are the most informative documents recovered from Dynastic times. Furthermore, sometime after the time of Manetho and Josephus, and before the late 18th century, the meaning of the mysterious hieroglyphic writing of the Ancient Egyptians was lost to the sands of time.
In 1799, the Rosetta Stone was translated, and scholars were once again able to understand some of what has been written about Egypt’s past.
Translating the Rosetta Stone
Bard, p. 35, Box 2-B “Decipherment of Egyptian” provides a brief overview of the translation of the Rosetta Stone and how this lead to the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Knowledge of the script was lost after the population of Egypt was converted to Christianity after AD 296. The last known hieroglyphic script was carved in AD 394, because of the prevailing religious beliefs of the time, the Egyptian language was considered a pagan script and its usage was banned. After AD 394, the Egyptian language was written in the Greek alphabet, creating a new script known as Coptic.
During the following 1400 years knowledge of the Pharaonic and the Egyptian language era was lost (Bard pp. 5-7, Quirke and Spencer 1992:124-125).
European tourists began to revisit Egypt in the mid 1600’s. This time ushered in an era of visitations from all corners of Europe. Egypt inspired artists of the 18th Century, including Mozart, whose opera, The Magic Flute, was a celebration of Isis and Osiris (Bard p. 8, Quirke and Spencer 1992:125).
The new attention focused on Ancient Egypt eventually lead to Napoleon's 1797 expedition to conquer Egypt. The British, with the aid of the Ottoman Turks, defeated the French. The scholarly side of the French expedition, however, generated maps and records of the landscape, plants and animals of the country (see Bard, p. 8 for more information). As Bard notes, 24 volumes entitled Description de l’Egypt were published as a result.
The Rosetta Stone was recovered by a team of French soldiers in 1799 during the course of restoring a medieval fortress at Rashid (or Rosetta, as Europeans referred to it)(Bard, p. 33, Quirke and Spencer 1992:127). This granite slab was engraved with three scripts, hieroglyphic, demotic (a kind of cursive hieroglyphic) and Greek. The Greek text revealed the document contained the annals of the boy king Ptolemy V; within the Greek text it was noted that the Greek information was repeated in the demotic and hieroglyphic scripts (Quirke and Spencer 1992:127).
The translation of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone was the work of several scholars (summarized from Quirke and Spencer 1992:129, see also Bard, Box-2B).
A. I. Silvestre de Sacy, a French Orientalist, laid down guidelines for deciphering demotic from Greek.
Thomas Young, a British physicist made further progress in the decipherment of demotic in 1819. He was able to establish the phonetic sounds for several hieroglyphic signs by comparing the names of Ptolemy, Berenice and Cleopatra isolated in hieroglyphs in cartouches.
In 1822 Jean-Francois Champollion , armed with a knowledge of Coptic (derived from Ancient Egyptian), determined the duality of Egyptian script.
In some cases the hieroglyphic sign actually represented what it was illustrating, such as the disk representing the sun god Ra, meant “Ra” (the orange disk in the linked image). He also determined that the sign in conjunction with other signs was more phonetic, such that ra-?-s-s (Champollion could recognize the “s” sound in hieroglyphs because it was similar to the “s” employed in Coptic script), probably meant the name Ramses ; the name of several great Egyptian kings, and correctly guessed the sound of the intervening missing letter as being m.
Therefore, using a combination of Coptic and Greek translation, along with the recognition that sometimes the sign simply symbolized the concept, Champollion was able to translate the hieroglyphic script on the Rosetta Stone, eventually allowing the translation of further Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Summary
There is no narrative history for the earliest years of Pharaonic Egypt. Archaeological methods are thus our best means for understanding the events in Egypt's early historical past, as well as the events leading up to the development of hieroglyphic writing.
The archaeological record, as we will see, provides us with a bigger picture of the Egyptian past by allowing us to better understand the lives of all Egyptians, even from the time before written history.
Reference
Quirke, S. and J. Spencer
1992 The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt. British Museum Press, London.
Learning Outcome #2- Describing the general geography/geology of any region helps define the kinds of natural constraints ancient cultures faced.
Egypt is truly a “gift of the Nile,” for without the Nile River, Egypt is essentially a desert.
The Nile River brings water and renewed sediment to the Nile Valley and Delta, and only recently in the past century with the building of dams at Aswan, has the river not flooded annually.
Therefore, to understand Egypt, one first has to understand the Nile River, which structured how ancient Egyptians made a living.
The Nile and environs- Three geographic zones
1. The Nile and its flood plain, stretching down in a long corridor into Africa
2. The Eastern Desert and the Sinai Peninsula .
3. The Western Desert , which links Egypt to more nomadic populations of the Sahara.
Egypt along the Nile is often divided into three regions, Upper, Middle and Lower (from south to north). These regions are determined by the direction of flow of the Nile, which flows from south to north, draining into the Mediterranean Sea .
“Lower Egypt” refers to the river, relative to its headwaters, thus “Upper” Egypt is closer to the headwaters of the Nile.
Today, there is little or no annual precipitation in Egypt, with virtually no precipitation to the south and no more than 10-20 cm per year in Lower Egypt (farther north, closer to the Mediterranean Sea.
The waters of the Nile originate far upstream in the tropical rainforest region of Uganda, Tanzania, and the mountainous highlands of Ethiopia.
Thus, the water volume of the Nile is determined by weather systems in thousands of miles to the south.
The area drained by the Nile is 1.1 million square miles (the linked image approximately compares the area drained by the Nile to the size of the continental US). The Nile itself is about 6670 km long, the longest river in the world (just inching out the Amazon at 6450 km). It is unique among the world’s rivers in that it flows for 2700 kilometers without receiving any substantial inflow of water.
Two areas along the Nile
1. The Delta - This is where the Nile runs into the Mediterranean Sea, is broad and swampy. In ancient times, before the construction of the Aswan high dam (in 1899-1902), several branches of the Nile ran across the delta. Today, there are only two branches of the Nile on the Delta; the Damietta to the east and the Rosetta to the west. The Delta broadens to several hundred kilometers wide, just north of Cairo. The Delta is narrowest where it begins 23 kilometers north of Cairo, where the Nile begins to slow down after a journey of 2500 km through the desert. Ecologically, the Delta is a region of meadows and cultivated land, concentrated in an area of 22,000 km2, which accounts for 63 % of the habitable surface of the country as a whole (Butzer 1976).
2. The Nile Valley- Here, rainfall is negligible. Much of the inhabited area of Egypt consists of narrow stretches of Nile floodplain surrounded by mountainous desert. The cultivable strip along both banks of the river is only a few kilometers wide. The maximum width of the floodplain from Aswan to Cairo is 12 miles. Click here to see the relationship between the floodplain and the desert at Aswan at Egypt’s southernmost extent.
Where does the Nile come from?
The sources of the Nile are in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.
The White Nile - Originates at Lake Victoria in Uganda and Tanzania.
After making a long descent from 4000+ feet above sea level, starting in Uganda, the White Nile flows downhill until it reaches the southern border of Sudan. It continues downhill until it reaches Khartoum, where it meets the Blue Nile.
The Blue Nile - Originates in the Ethiopian Highlands at an elevation of 6000 feet (2000 meters). The water that fills the Blue Nile comes from the rains that fall on the Ethiopian Highlands, during the seasonal monsoon that moves inland and to the NW from the Indian Ocean .
The Nile Flood
Before the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Nile flooded (overtopped its banks) every year, starting in late summer in Upper (southern) Egypt.
The reason Egypt is often referred to as “the gift of the Nile” is that there is extremely limited rainfall in Egypt. Therefore, a habitable environment is created by the mineral rich silts deposited by the annual flood, which is caused by the rains from the Indian Ocean monsoon. Thus, Egypt’s environment is largely controlled by weather systems some 6000 kilometers to the SE.
While the White Nile provides a constant supply of water from the generally wetter climate surrounding Lake Victoria year round, the flood itself is the result of seasonal rains.
The Blue Nile and the Atbara carry run-off water from monsoon rains on the Ethiopian plateau.
The Blue Nile meets the White at Khartoum. So violent is the summer flood that the White Nile is backed up and the torrent, at peak in September has risen from 7000 (2333m) to 350000 (116666m) cubic feet per second. The Blue Nile contributes 70% of the Nile flood.
This link takes you to a brief video (about 4 minutes) showing scenes along the Nile. The video is footage set to music, providing a sense of the Egyptian landscape.
Flood timeline
- The rains start in May and June in the Ethiopian Highlands, and peak in July and August
- These waters reach southern Egypt by late summer and the Nile Delta by fall.
- As a result, the timing of the Nile flood is fairly predictable, occurring in between the late summer and early fall. The volume, however, is not predictable, in that flood volume is directly tied to the amount of rainfall resulting from the rains upriver.
- The flood brings with it not only water, but more importantly, nutrient rich topsoil that is crucial for farming (floods pick up silt when they are moving fast and deposit it as they slow down). A larger flood brings lots of topsoil, a smaller flood brings less.
- By mid- July the inundation reaches Aswan and continues to rise in Egypt until the beginning of September, when it slowly falls and disappears by the following spring.
The flood grinds boulders in its bed and carries the finer red-brown silt in suspension for thousands of miles.
As the Nile moves north it exceeds flood stage and spills into low-lying basins, then recedes back to its channel or evaporates. As the river recedes, it drops its sediment load (the fine red-brown silt).
The convex floodplain of the Nile is an accretionary surface marked by natural levees that rise a few meters above the alluvial flats, and these levees divide the alluvial flats into natural flood basins.
When not flooding, the Nile averages 800-1,000 meters wide and is 10-12 meters deep.
The floodplain (which averages three kilometers wide south of the Delta) accumulates primarily through the bank overflow of suspended sediment.
Summary
The Nile was extremely important to the Ancient Egyptians. The flood waters brought new sediment, and provided a natural irrigation system for wild plants and animals for millennia. More recently, the river provided resources for domesticated plants and animals.
Reference
Butzer, Karl
1976 Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Learning Outcome #1- Archaeology employs scientific logic and practice, the way we learn about the past involves measurement of real world phenomena that exist in the present. We test our ideas about the past against material culture to find out if they are wrong.
Learning Outcome #2- These notes provide an overview of some basic archaeological terminology, as well as a discussion of the scientific aspects of archaeology as a discipline. This discussion is not exhaustive, as we go through the quarter, we will see how these general practices are applied to answer specific archaeological questions.
“Archaeology…is a science as well as a humanity. That is one of its fascinations as a discipline: it reflects the ingenuity of the modern scientist as well as the modern historian,” (Renfrew and Bahn 2012:13)
What is Archaeology?
Archaeology is a series of methods embedded in a variety of scientific disciplines that we use to reconstruct the past of ancient peoples all over the world.
Archaeology is properly the study of changes in human material culture, including technology, over time and across space. We use materials such as pottery; stone, metal and bone tools; structural debris; plant and animal remains; and in some cases, human skeletal material to understand the nature of past events. We also consider the sediments in which we find those materials, as they give us a sense of changes in the environment over time.
To observe archaeological phenomena in the real world, we collect information about ancient human material culture through a variety of methods (link takes you to an 8 minute video overview of archaeological practice) to develop and test hypotheses about the past. This video features an archaeological project in Idaho, but similar methods are also used in Egyptian archaeology.
Archaeology is, therefore, the study of changes in material culture and environmental conditions over time; an historical science. If you think about history, it is really an explanation as to how things become different from each other, or what series of events resulted in a certain phenomenon.
Historical explanations are explanations about how things come to be. Consider stratigraphy in the video; each layer of the earth records some local information about what happened at particular periods in time. Pieced together, this information provides a kind of historical account of what happened in that place over thousands of years. This kind of observation forms the basis for archaeology.
Archaeological Science
“Science is a series of techniques used to maximize the probability that what we think we know really reflects the way things are, were or will be,” (Feder 2002:21).
Science is a process of understanding phenomena through observation and measurement of real world phenomena, also referred to as empirical evidence.
Archaeologists assess these characteristics in the present day through physical inspection of the object. Measurements and material descriptions are examples of archaeological data.
Science is a process of formulating hypotheses (provisional explanations) and testing them against data collected in the real world.
An hypothesis is a provisional explanation or observation of any kind of phenomena, phrased in such a way that the statement can be evaluated in the real world or tested. Hypotheses are tested with data.
An example of a recent archaeological study
In 2015, researchers working in Tel Aviv, Israel discovered archaeological stratigraphy dating to the early Bronze Age (ca 3500-3100 BC). For reference, Egypt’s first writing dates to ca 3000 BC, so this find predates that (Eisenbud 2015).
Hypothesis- Ancient Egyptians traded with people in Ancient Israel ca 3500-3100 BC
Evidence/Data- Ceramic material recovered from datable stratigraphy in Israel.
Investigation- Within the Bronze Age stratigraphy in Israel, the researchers discovered some ceramics made from clay that had come from Egypt’s Nile Valley.
Archaeologists specializing in ceramics are able to recognize pottery made from foreign or exotic clays, because clays have distinctive mineral compositions.
Therefore, finding fired clay in Israel that originated in Egypt is empirical evidence of a connection between Egypt and Israel between 3500-3100 BC.
Result- In this instance, the hypothesis is supported. Ancient Egyptians did engage in trade with ancient Israel.
This is an example of how archaeological investigation can reveal connections between ancient communities, in the absence of written information.
Dating Techniques
Establishing chronology is a key aspect of archaeological practice. In our example of archaeological hypothesis testing above, I noted that researchers worked with Bronze Age stratigraphy. How do archaeologists establish chronology?
Different time periods are recognized in archaeological deposits using a variety of methods and techniques.
Archaeologists divide techniques for establishing the ages of things into two categories; relative and absolute.
Relative dating techniques involve determining whether something is older than something else, but not knowing how by how many calendar years. For example, if we have two ceramic pots, we might say one is older than the other based on its decoration, or from the layer of earth (stratum) from which it was recovered.
Absolute dating techniques involve determining how old something is in calendar years. The most commonly used dating technique is radiocarbon dating. For example, if we have a piece of wood from an ancient site, we could send it to the radiocarbon lab and find out how many years had elapsed since the wood had been part of a living tree.
I have included two links to parts 1 and 2 of a general lecture about archaeological dating from Brown University. The first part covers relative dating techniques, while part 2 provides some examples of absolute dating methods applied to particular archaeological questions.
Part 1 (about 9 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qBjGtlXnD4
Part 2 (about 10 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQZ4b36zwUM
Again, please note that the application of both relative and absolute dating methods to archaeological materials takes place in the present. The results of these analyses are based on observations of present day phenomena.
Note that archaeological methods are used to study archaeological materials in the present. We do not need access to the thoughts of ancient people, nor do we rely on our common sense perceptions of what we think ancient people did to construct information about the past.
Instead, we use our observations and measurements to reconstruct past conditions, and to observe how certain technologies and cultural practices changed over time.
Some archaeological terminology
We will talk more specifically about how archaeologists collect data over the course of the quarter as we discuss specific archaeological cases. Below are some terms that are basic vocabulary when discussing archaeological phenomena, just to get you started.
Artifact: Anything which owes its form to human activity. Artifacts are portable, in that they can be moved and still be the same phenomenon. Examples include stone tools and clay pots .
Feature: Anything which owes its morphology (shape, configuration) to human activity. Features are not portable, in that when they are moved they become different things. Examples include phenomena ranging from fire hearths to pyramids ; if moved, both of these things become rocks or building blocks.
The Archaeological Record: The archaeological record is not written down; it is a record of the human past rendered in the remains of human material culture that we study in the present day. The archaeological record consists of artifacts and features, and relevant past environmental information.
What is an archaeological site?
While we tend to think that what we call archaeological sites, such as the Pyramids, have a certain inherent reality, sites are really modern-day constructs that group related archaeological materials.
Sites are defined by high densities of artifacts, or features, or both. The archaeological record is best conceived of as being continuously, but unevenly distributed across the surface of the earth, but human beings do leave behind material culture in dense patches, and these are commonly called sites.
Sites come into existence through a series of site-formation processes. Tools can be discarded, food can be thrown out, villages can be abandoned. Over time, archaeologists find these deposits, which are frequently stratified, and use archaeological methods and techniques to reconstruct changes in culture, technology and environment over time.
Summary
Archaeological information about change over time is collected through a combination of literature review, survey, subsurface testing, excavation, and relative (stratigraphy) and absolute dating techniques. Carefully collected archaeological data show trends and changes in technology and culture over time, and thus allow us to understand the prehistory of an area, even in the absence of written records.
References
Eisenbud, D.
2015 Egyptians brewed up a party in ancient Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Post online (March 29, 2015, accessed 3/26/2020) https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Beer-in-the-Bronze-age-Evidence-shows-Egyptians-brewed-up-a-party-in-ancient-Tel-Aviv-395464.
Feder, K.
2002 Frauds, myths and mysteries. McGraw Hill, New York
Renfrew, C. and P. Bahn
2012 Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practices. New York: Thames and Hudson.
Learning Outcome #2- In this lecture, we consider how artifact location and stratigraphy (both are archaeological methods) have been used to estimate when hominins (our branch on the evolutionary tree) were first in Egypt.
As Bard notes on p. 71, Ancient Egyptian civilization is relatively recent, in contrast to Egypt’s prehistory which extends thousands of years into the past on a continent that itself is the ultimate source of the human species.
We know little about Egypt’s first people, they are represented by distinctive stone tools. The earliest hominins in Egypt left no written record, therefore the techniques outlined in the Week 1 part 3 lecture notes are our only means of knowing about these early people of the Nile Valley.
The Paleolithic and the Pleistocene
Your reading for this week covers a period of time in Egypt referred to as “the Paleolithic.” This term literally means “the Old Stone Age.”
The Egyptian Paleolithic is shaped environmentally by the global climatic conditions of the Pleistocene, a geologic epoch that began ca. 1.8 million years ago and ended around 10,000 years ago. During this time, glaciers covered the northern latitudes of the earth. The enlarged glaciers had an effect on the Earth’s overall climate.
Click here for an image showing the glacial extent during a period in the Pleistocene, as compared to current conditions.
Egypt was never covered in glaciers. However, increased glaciation farther north reduced the amount of water available for the summer Indian Ocean monsoon, diminishing the volume of the Nile flood.
During the Pleistocene, Nile floods were smaller and temperatures in Egypt were generally somewhat cooler. Also, because of increased glaciation in Europe, rains from Europe occasionally made their way as far south as the Nile Delta. Therefore, as people and their ancestors begin to inhabit the Nile Valley and Delta, the general environmental conditions in Egypt were different than they are today.
During the Pleistocene, our hominin ancestors evolved in parts of Africa. Therefore, the first people in Egypt were an older form of human known as…
Homo ergaster (erectus) 1.8 million- ca 500,000/300,000 years ago
These hominins (human ancestors who existed before modern people) are fully bipedal and have height and stature comparable to modern humans. They tend to have a brain size between 600-910 cubic centimeters (ccs).
Early specimens of this species have been found in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa starting around 1.8 million years ago. Generally, members of this species have larger brains than previous hominin forms (e.g. the australopithecines, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis). H. ergaster is also one of the earliest hominin populations to expand out of Africa.
Homo ergaster is also associated with more sophisticated tool production, as exemplified by the Acheulean or Lower Paleolithic tool making tradition. The linked image shows some examples of these tools recovered from the Turkana Basin in Tanzania (south of Egypt on Africa’s eastern coast).
Similar tools have been found across Eastern and Northern Africa, as well as Europe and the Near East. As these early hominins moved across the landscape, they left their tools behind as evidence of their presence.
Sometime after 1.8 million years ago and before 500,000-300,000 years ago, these premodern humans alternately known as Homo erectus/ Homo ergaster made their way into Egypt.
For more information about Homo erectus/ergaster refer to Bard, pp. 72-73. Other species of premodern hominins may have been present in Egypt as well. It is not possible to be more specific, because to date, no actual Homo erectus/ergaster fossils have been found in Egypt.
Thus, we can recognize Egypt’s earliest occupants by the tools they made, including the distinctive tool, the lower Paleolithic handaxe (aka the Acheulean handaxe).
Lower Paleolithic Handaxes
A drawing of a Lower Paleolithic Hand Axe can be found in Bard on p. 73 (Figure 4.1).
The tools are what we call lithics in archaeology, or stone tools. Lithics are the oldest recognizable technology. Early stone tools are made by chipping a parent rock (such as a river cobble) to achieve a desired shape.
Early hominins made chipped stone tools, with the earliest known tools dating to about 2,000,000 years ago.
The best kind of material for manufacturing chipped stone items has the properties of glass, smooth without a lot of inclusions. Such materials are also called “ cryptocrystalline .”
Acheulean tools have a distinctive pear-shape and in Egypt are usually made of quartzite (a rock that conforms to the qualifications of a good stone tool material.)
Click here to watch an eight minute video demonstration of how to make an Acheulean (Lower Paleolithic) handaxe.
Handaxes in Egypt
As we learned in last week’s lecture, the dating limit on the C14 process is about 50,000 years ago (see also Bard, p. 78-79, Box 4-B). The early hominins in Egypt predate that time. Therefore Egypt's earliest people will always be a bit of a mystery, in terms of how long ago they lived along the Nile.
To estimate when the first hominins arrived in Egypt, archaeologists use stream terrace stratigraphy and the locations of stone tools within stream terrace strata to determine how long ago the tools were on the ground surface.
In some cases, Lower Paleolithic tools are found in the gravels running alongside the plains of the Nile Valley. Usually these finds lack any useful archaeological context (are not associated with dateable material). The tools found are “rolled” or abraded, suggesting that they have been knocking around in the water and are far from their original context (Midant-Reynes 2000:27).
In other words, these tools are not found in a context that can be meaningfully connected to the activities of ancient hominins such as H. ergaster.
Archaeologists estimate the approximate age of Acheulean tools in Egypt in two ways…
- By extrapolating dates from stone tools found in other locations in Africa. If Egyptian tools resemble tools from other more well-dated African contexts, they are inferred to be approximately the same age.
- By studying the position of the stone tools relative to the modern Nile channel. For further discussion of dating Lower Paleolithic tools in Egypt, refer to Bard, p. 73-74 and box 4-B (Bard pp. 78-79).
Because the Nile has been downcutting into the bedrock underlying the sands of Egypt, over time, the depth of the channel has dropped. Therefore, the closer a terrace deposit is to the Nile channel and associated deposits, the more recent that material is.
This general rule of thumb also tells us that stream terraces farther away from the main Nile channel are older.
The earliest stream terraces in Egypt are estimated to be about 500,000 to 300,000 years old, therefore, material within those terrace deposits are also approximately that old. This is how archaeologists and geologists estimate the age of early hominin technology in the Nile Valley.
Summary
We cannot know for certain when the very first Homo ergaster (or other hominin forms) walked into Egypt. By using archaeological methods, researchers have been able to estimate when hominins first settled along the banks of the Nile using estimates of the ages of stream terraces and the Lower Paleolithic artifacts contained within them.
The early Egyptian hominins left no skeletal remains behind, as far as we know in that no H. ergaster fossils have ever been recovered from Egypt. But perhaps future efforts will find some!
Reference
Midant-Reynes, B.
2000 The Prehistory of Egypt. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford.
Relates to Learning Outcome #2- The locations and contexts from which Egypt’s earliest Homo sapiens sapiens remains are recovered can be dated using stratigraphy and absolute dating.
Relates to Learning Outcome #3- Archaeological and osteological (skeletal) evidence combine to present a multifaceted picture of Egypt at the end of the Pleistocene.
Modern humans, formally known as Homo sapiens sapiens evolve in parts of Africa from earlier hominin populations (e.g. Homo ergaster).
Some of the earliest known modern human remains ever found on earth come from Herto Ethiopia, dating to ca 160,000 years ago. Genetic evidence tells us that modern humans likely evolved around 200,000 years ago.
Early human remains from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco
The oldest known fossil evidence of modern humans, comes from the site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco . While not in Egypt, per se, this find does indicate that there were modern humans in northern Africa ca 300,000 years ago.
Recently, refined dating techniques have been used to date cave deposits in Jebel Irhoud containing fossils. The fossils come from a single bone bed in the lower reaches of the archeological deposits in the cave. The remains represent at least five individuals and consist of skulls, teeth and long bones. These remains were in a deposit that formed over a short period of time, and within this deposit there were also flint tools that had been heat treated.
These heat treated tools turned out to be key for dating the deposit. Heat treatment improves the predictability of flake removal in flintknapping, and involves intentionally heating flint (stone) in a fire.
If the flints are heated past 450° centigrade, they can be dated with thermoluminescence. Thermoluminescence measures the amount of time elapsed since crystalline material was last heated past 450°. So the date on the flints reflects the amount of time elapsed since they were heat treated by humans, perhaps even the humans recovered from the deposit.
Click here to learn a little more about luminescence dating.
Thus, the age of the deposit containing the fossils and the flints is now thought to be ca 315,000 or so years ago (Hublin et al. 2017:290).
Egypt's earliest human remains
As noted in Bard on pp. 78, the skeleton of a child who died 55,000 years ago was recovered from the site of Taramsa Hill.
The remains of this child were dated using optically stimulated luminescence (aka OSL, similar to thermoluminescence), a technique that dates the last time sediments (such as sand) were exposed to light. The sand in which the child was buried was last exposed to light 55,000 years ago, therefore the child was buried about 55,000 years ago.
OSL is similar to thermoluminescence dating, except that instead of measuring the amount of time elapsed since material was heated, it measures the amount of time elapsed since sediments were exposed to light.
Two other sets of modern human remains individuals were recovered from the site of Nazlet Khater, and are estimated to date to ca 30,360-35,100 years ago, again using C14 dating. One of the individuals recovered was largely complete, and was found with a stone axe placed next to the individual’s face (Midant-Reynes 2000:43).
The simple bifacial axe as the first attested funerary equipment so far known from Egypt (Midant-Reynes 2000:43). While not comparable to the spectacular material recovered from King Tut’s tomb (for example), every tradition has to start somewhere.
The end of the Pleistocene and the cemeteries of Wadi Halfa
Because Egypt has been occupied for such a long time, the evidence of Egypt’s earliest people is sparse, relative to the material culture left behind by later people. So we will zoom forward in time to the end of the Pleistocene.
As the last glaciers retreat in Europe between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago, climatic conditions changed dramatically in Eastern Africa. Across the globe, temperatures rose, ice sheets melted, coastlines were inundated due to the rising sea - level that resulted from the melting glaciers. This changed global weather patterns, because the water that was locked up in the ice sheets is now liquid and available for rain.
The behavior of the sluggish shallow Nile changed dramatically. Total water discharge increased and as plant cover was restored at the Nile’s headwaters, the sediment load declined (plant cover reduces erosion). Initially there were very high floods; these are often referred to as “Wild Niles” 13,000-12,000 years ago (Bard, pp. 81-82, Midant-Reynes 2000:63).
The first identifiable cemeteries in the Nile Valley appear around the same time as the Wild Niles. While the Taramsa Hill and Nazlet Khater remains were individuals, the collection of human remains recovered from the Wadi Halfa region in northern Sudan are more properly cemeteries in that they contain the remains of multiple individuals buried in a designated space.
Furthermore, these remains tell a tale of conflict between 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. The dates for these remains come from stratigraphy and a limited amount of C14 dating.
Two Wadi Halfa Cemeteries ca 14,000-12,000 years ago
Bard, pp. 81-82 discusses the Qadan cemetery at Jebel Sahaba near Wadi Halfa in modern northern Sudan. This cemetery has two components.
1. Site 117 (summarized from Hoffman 1979:94-96)- This series of internments is located on the east bank of the Nile, just north of Wadi Halfa. The burials are beneath purposefully arranged thin sandstone slabs. The burials are in small pits underneath the slabs and measure approximately 1.0 meters long, 1.5 meters wide and 30 centimeters deep.
The individuals buried at this cemetery were found in 59 interments. Several graves had cattle horns at the head of the grave. This practice is reminiscent of a much later Pharaonic era tradition wherein male cows were buried with their horns appearing above the surface of the ground.
Forty percent of the burials were accompanied by small projectile points (small spear points). These are not arranged nicely, but almost as if they had been embedded in soft tissue which rotted over time and left the points in place. Support for this speculation comes from the fact that four people had points embedded in their bones. Some individuals had multiple wounds.
2. Jebel Sahaba (summarized from Hoffman 1979:94-96)- This cemetery is across the river from 117. Here, excavators uncovered 39 graves, and found no projectile points. One individual did have a fractured forearm and cutmarks, indicating he tried to defend himself against the penetration of long knives (sharp, bladed tools).
Also recovered were three multiple inhumations, e.g. two graves containing four bodies each. Simultaneous burial often indicates untimely demise.
What happened? Some archaeologists speculate that the evidence from these cemeteries indicates violence among these groups. Certainly the people with projectile points embedded in them did not die of natural causes. The question is whether the violence happened over a short or long period time.
To evaluate that proposition we need information about how long it took these cemeteries to form. For example, the inhumations at 117 potentially represent an active breeding population consisting of equal numbers of men and women. Fifty percent of that population is women and children. If that population accumulated as the result of a brief period of intense violence, then such a mortality rate would lead quickly to the extinction of the population.
Beatrice Midant-Reynes (2000:64) outlines two possibilities:
- One dramatic event caused intense violence and resulted in the formation of short term cemeteries.
- These cemeteries are the selective burials of people who died violently over several generations.
One interesting thing to ponder about such material is that hunter-gatherers, such as the Qadan people of this part of Egypt/ Sudan, have often been assumed to be peaceful. The material recovered from the Wadi Halfa cemeteries suggests otherwise.
Thus unfolds our first window into the behavior of some of Egypt’s earliest people….
Click here to read a brief update about the Jebel Sahaba cemetery from Archaeology magazine.
References
Hoffman, M.
1979 Egypt before the Pharaohs. Knopf, New York.
Hublin, J. et al.
2017 New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature 246:289-292.
Midant-Reynes, B.
2000 The Prehistory of Egypt. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford.
Learning Outcome #2- Areas that are now desert in Egypt, and across northern Africa today were on occasion wetter and more habitable in the past. Archaeological investigations have uncovered the remains of an extensive community that dates back to almost 10,000 years ago in a dried lake bed in the Western Desert. The presence of these remains tells us that the environment around the Nabta Playa changed from wet and marshy conditions in the past to the desert environment that is present today.
Learning Outcome #4- Remains of ancient technology show us how people made a living in what is now a desert environment.
The African Aqualithic and the end of the Pleistocene, ca 10,000-7,000 years ago
As the Pleistocene ended ca 10,000 years ago, melting glaciers at higher latitudes (North America, Europe and Asia), meant more water in the seas, and higher temperatures in general increased evaporation rates. As a result, more water was available to fall as rain, meaning that parts of northern Africa that are Sahara desert today, were once grasslands, savanna and forest.
Across the Sahara, wetter conditions created bodies of water in what is now desert. For this reason, this time is known as the “African Aqualithic.”
Wadi Sura
Rock art (link takes you to a brief video about ancient Egyptian rock art) located near Gilf Kebir and Wadi Sura in southwestern Egypt is an intriguing piece of artistic evidence telling of the existence of water in the past in this now desolate part of Egypt. This image shows Gilf Kebir today, note the ancient fluvial patterning on the desert surface; this tells us that water once flowed across the landscape.
El Salha
Another find from the site of el Salha near Khartoum, produced an intriguing piece of evidence that early Nile Valley people had sophisticated water-craft. Archaeological work at el Salha resulted in the discovery of a small pebble with what appears to be an image of a boat.
The boat pebble was found in an ashy stratum that dated to ca 8000 BP (C14 dating). This stratum was not disturbed, therefore the boat pebble is contemporary with the stratum.
This means that by 8000 BP, people in the Nile Valley had already invented sophisticated water craft (Usai and Salvatori 2006).
Nabta Playa Region, Western Desert, Egypt
Nabta Playa, was part of the larger African Aqualithic “culture.” Jordeczka et al. 2013 also refer to Nabta Playa as an example of “El Adam” culture.
Note- When archaeologists refer to “cultures,” what they mean is collections of material with certain similarities across space. Ceramic designs are often used as evidence of archaeological “culture,” because they are complex and similarities are unlikely to result from chance alone. Therefore, similarities in ceramic designs in from (say) two different sites are evidence of direct communication; sharing ideas about making ceramics.
For example, consider this image of ceramics from northern Sudan (Garcea and Hildebrand 2009). Compare it to Figure 12 in Jordeczka et al. 2013. Despite these sites being several hundred miles apart, the similarity in ceramics is evidence of either direct or indirect cultural contact.
Nabta Playa is now a dried lakebed in the Western Desert. At various times in the past, particularly as the Pleistocene ends and the Holocene begins, the monsoon belt that normally extends across the Ethiopian Highlands extended farther north into southern Egypt. This allowed the basin of the Nabta Playa to fill with water, which in turn supported a variety of plant and animal life.
Archaeologists subdivide the archaeological material from the Nabta Playa into an earlier period (9500-8000 BP) and a later period (7000-6500 BP). In between these periods, the area experiences a major drought.
Nabta Playa I: 9500-8000 BP
This time period is represented by 13 surface settlements discovered around the dried lakebed.
The site of E-06-01 is one of these sites (Jordeczka et al. 2013). It is thought that at the time these settlements were occupied the environment around this lake was semi-wooded and bushy, supporting a population of hares, gazelles and cows (which were probably not domesticated). The lake also supported significant amounts of wild sorghum, a kind of starchy grain common throughout Africa. It is thought that people and animals were able to live around this lake because of the abundant sorghum stands. However, because the sorghum recovered from the Nabta Playa shows no evidence of being domesticated, we cannot say the people of Nabta Playa were farmers.
The 13 early settlements are characterized by abundant archaeological materials, including:
- Pottery
- Bladelet tools (small tools associated with plant processing)
- Mortars and pestles (also associated with plant processing).
- Decorated ostrich egg shells
Another of the 13 sites, designated E-75-6, exhibited high artifact density. Here archaeologists found the remains of 18 huts, averaging three meters in diameter, arranged in two straight lines, indicating a planned community (Malville et al. 1998:488).
Two wells were also found at E-75-6 four meters wide and three meters deep, dug deep into the limestone bedrock to access underground springs. It is thought that these wells were communal, serving all 18 huts. Generally the features of E-75-6 suggest an organized population (Malville et al. 1998:488).
This early material foreshadows the complex society well-known from later Dynastic Egypt, still thousands of years in the future.
8000-7000 BP: Drought! The sites around the playa are abandoned and covered with dunes. The rains return again around 7000 BP.
Playa II: 7000-6500 BP
A site called E-96-1 (archaeologists don’t always pick the most romantic names for their discoveries) is a particularly interesting site from this later period of occupation. Here archaeologists found five megalithic alignments radiating from a cluster of stones. They were constructed from quartzite sandstone quarried a half km away from the cluster. One alignment runs E/W and the other N/S (confirmed by GPS measurements)(Malville et al. 1998:488-489).
A stone circle consisting of 20-25 2 x 3 meter slabs of “imported” sandstone (i.e. sandstone quarried 500 meters away) dates to this phase (Malville et al. 1998:489)
The circle had two openings at two different apertures: 1) 358 degrees (almost due north) and 2) 62 degrees, this azimuth matches the position of the rising sun on the summer solstice at this latitude approximately 7000 years ago (Malville et al. 1998:490).
At this latitude, the sun crosses the zenith on two days about three weeks before and after the summer solstice, meaning that vertical structures cast no shadows on these days during the noon hour. Modern African groups in this region celebrate these events today, and some archaeologists speculate that the Nabtean structures were also built to commemorate such an event (Malville et al. 1998:490).
Some 300 meters north of the calendar circle, archaeologists also found covered tumuli (burial mounds). These are subdivided into two types.
- Unshaped blocks containing the disarticulated (dismembered) remains of one or more cows.
- Articulated (not dismembered) skeleton of a young cow in a wooden roofed clay lined chamber, covered with unshaped sandstone blocks carbon dating to 6,470+/-270 BP (as determined by the age of the wood from the roof).
Thus, the earliest known complex tomb in Egypt is for cattle , not people (Malville et al. 1998:490).
The end of the occupation of Nabta Playa
Between around 6000 and 5000 BP there is an arid interval, and the Nabta playa dries up permanently. The people who lived out there then either moved into the more habitable Nile Valley or adopted a more nomadic existence that could no longer support a permanent settlement.
I bring up this early population because 1) It’s cool and 2) It is a population with a somewhat complex social organization that does not appear to have practiced intensive agriculture.
Instead, this interesting ceremonial complex appears to have been built by a population largely supported by wild resources. There is some debate about whether the cows were domesticated; we will look at issues surrounding the identification of domesticated plants and animals next week.
Reference
Garcea, E. and E. Hildebrand
2009 Shifting Social Networks along the Nile: Middle Holocene ceramic assemblages from Sai Island, Sudan,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, vol. 28:304-322.
Jordeczka, M., H. Krolik, M. Masojc and R. Schild
2013 Hunter-Gatherer Cattle Keepers of Early Neolithic El Adam Type from Nabta Playa: Latest Discoveries from Site E-06-1. African Archaeology Review, vol. 30, pp. 253-284.
Malville, J., F. Wendorf, A. Mazar and R. Schild
1998 Megaliths and Neolithic Astronomy in Southern Egypt. Nature, vol. 392, pp. 488-491.
Usai, D. and S. Salvatori
2006 “The Oldest Representation of a Nile Boat” Antiquity online https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313611232_The_oldest_representation_of_a_Nile_boat (accessed 4/06/20)
Learning outcome #3- Biology and genetics help archaeologists develop a model for explaining the emergence of domesticated animals (and plants). Biology gives a general model for explaining how animals might develop characteristics pleasing to people.
There is a kind of common sense mindset among some scholars that plant domestication precedes animal domestication. But there is no necessary reason for this assumption.
The Ancient Egyptians held cattle in high regard. The ruins of Nabta Playa featured a burial of a complete unbutchered young bull, demonstrating that this high regard for cattle has ancient roots.
How does Domestication Look Archaeologically?
Domesticated plants and animals feature modifications from their wild ancestors in terms of how they reproduce themselves. These modifications can be observed in animal (and plant) remains from archaeological sites.
Note: The development of a domesticated strain of a plant/animal does not necessarily mean that the wild strain from which that species is derived goes away/becomes extinct.
Identifying domesticated animals (e.g. cattle)
Animal domestication can be difficult to detect, archaeologically, but there are three kinds of evidence;
1. Presence of the animal species remains outside of natural habitat, or abrupt increases in the number of species that cannot be accounted for by natural causes.
2. Some kind of morphological change in the species.
Presence of animals outside habitat: Large numbers of particular animal species outside of their natural habitat is evidence of domestication in that some external entity is likely helping them reproduce.
Morphological change: Changes in the characteristics of particular animals indicates domestic animals, as it does in plants. In sheep and goats, for example, the size and shape of horns is a good indicator of domestication. In the wild, reproductive success for goats depends to a certain extent on large strong horns, because the longer and stronger your horns, the higher you are in the mating pecking order.
However, as goats continued in a co-evolutionary relationship with people, who were developing a vested interest in producing more goats, but were not particularly concerned with horn size, large strong horns become less of an issue.
Cattle domestication is a little trickier to recognize, but there is scholarly agreement that some strains of domesticated cattle originated in Africa.
African Cattle
During the early to middle Holocene, northern Africa was wetter and more vegetated in places than it is today. The mobile hunter foragers of this region would eventually incorporate cattle into their nomadic foraging system. These cattle are considered to be native to Africa and have the species name Bos primigenius . Aurochs are thought to be the wild ancestor of these animals.
Evidence for domesticated cattle in Africa may date back to around 10,000 years ago in the Eastern Sahara, a region that includes Nabta Playa (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005:194). The remains of these early animals are considered “domesticated” because they are outside their native habitat, and are associated with other animal species with which they are not known to be associated in the wild (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005:194-195).
Genetic evidence suggests that African domesticated cattle are likely a combination of indigenous development and cross-breeding with animals from SW Asia. This is particularly true of ancient cattle remains recovered from parts of Egypt; not surprising given that Egypt connects Africa to SW Asia (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005:195).
Africa’s record has been considered surprising in that domesticated cattle in northern Africa seem to precede plant cultivation (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005:197).
However, given the patchy environment of northern Africa during the African Aqualithic, this really isn’t that surprising in that cattle are mobile and can be entrained to follow mobile folks across an unpredictable landscape, providing renewable resources such as milk and blood. Cultivating plants, on the other hand, requires a more sedentary existence which hinders mobility.
“…In fact, a pastoralist / gathering system with limited hunting and fishing appears to have been extraordinarily successful and resilient in what is now the Sahara and Sahel, ebbing and flowing with climatic fluctuations…” (Gifford-Gonzalez 2005:213).
Summary/ General concepts for identifying domestication archaeologically
The development of domesticates does give the impression that somehow plants and animals “know” how to evolve. This is not the case.
Because all populations of species vary to some extent, by chance alone, there will be some species that have characteristics that make them easier to utilize. People will choose these members, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unintentionally, and bring them back to their settlements or maintain them.
Over time, these species with characteristics such as those outlined above will only breed with each other, thus increasing the frequency of those attributes within that population (think of it as a case of genetic drift ). Eventually, the differences will accumulate to the point that the plant or animal is genetically distinct from its wild ancestor.
When archaeologists examine material from prehistoric (and historic) sites, they look for plant and animal remains and examine them for attributes reflecting domestication, such as those for animals described above. Bear in mind however, that cattle are just one example and that archaeobotanists and archaeozoologists look at a large number of details to determine domestication in any particular setting.
Reference
Gifford-Gonzalez, Diane
2005 “Pastoralism and its Consequences,” in African Archaeology, edited by Anne Brower Stahl, pp. 187-224, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
Learning outcome #3- Biology and genetics help archaeologists and paleobotanists develop a model for explaining the emergence of domesticated plants.
Biology provides a general model for explaining how plants might develop characteristics pleasing to people; this mechanism is embedded in coevolution. Paleobotanists and archaeologists can test ideas about how plants respond to coevolution by looking at changes in plant species over time under particular conditions. Observing changes across several plant species over time helps bolster the case for coevolution as being a factor in the development of domesticates.
The end of the Pleistocene brought environmental changes in a region sometimes called the Fertile Crescent , which encompasses parts of Israel, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Iran. The term “crescent” refers to the configuration of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, which arc across Turkey into Iran.
This region connects with the Egypt via the Sinai Peninsula. Warmer temperatures increased the abundance of wild plants in this region, just after 10,000 years ago at the beginning of the Holocene (coincident with the warmer and wetter conditions in northern Africa). At this time, people of the Fertile Crescent region became increasingly focused on exploiting the wild plants they encountered.
Some of these wild plants, native to the Fertile Crescent, evolve into domesticates that become staples for the ancient Egyptian population.
Domestication is a process that can happen under particular circumstances in particular locations. We expect to see domestication in plants and that lend themselves to relatively rapid genetic deviation in association with relatively sedentary human populations.
Ancient peoples living in the Fertile Crescent region ca 10,000 years ago appear to have set the stage for incidental domestication of wild wheat, among other things.
Domestication: General information
As noted in part 1 of this week’s lecture notes, domestication is a mutualistic relationship. Mutualism is a relationship between predator (us) and prey (plants or animals) in which our predation, or consumption of said plant or animal actually increases the fitness of the prey species as well as the predator species.
Domestication: Defined as a coevolutionary process in which a plant or animal deviates from an original gene pool and establishes a protection and dispersal relationship with the animal feeding on it (Rindos 1984:137). A domesticated plant, therefore, has deviated genetically from its wild ancestry. It has traded off an ability to reproduce without intervention (think seeds dispersing on the wind, for example), for greater reproductive output (more seeds, bigger seeds) conditioned on human (or other animal or plant’s) intervention.
In other words, we (collectively) are as domesticated as the plants we prey on, for once we become dependent on domesticated plants for food, we have a hard time going back to making a living from foraging exclusively.
Over time, as people intensify their co-evolutionary relationships with plants in the Fertile Crescent region, they increase the population, and thus the nutritional yield of the plants they prey on (collect).
Cultivation of domesticates increases the carrying capacity , the maximum number of a given species that can be supported by the resources of a given unit of land, on average (note- the link takes you to an online ecology lecture from Western Oregon University, good information, with an interesting discussion exercise at the end). Increased carrying capacity means increased population because species tend to increase their number to match the available food resources.
However, the increased homogeneity within that unit of land also means that an event that affects the domesticated plant or animal will experience a higher magnitude environmental failure than the same unit land wherein a population is supported by wild/native plants and animals.
Trade-offs
Wild plants and animals: Lower carrying capacity, greater resilience in the face of species specific diseases because of species diversity.
Domestic plants and animals: Higher carrying capacity, greater vulnerability in the face of species specific diseases because of decreased species diversity.
The Near East
As the Near Eastern population grows and becomes increasingly sedentary, they initiate genetic changes in the wild plants and animals in their vicinity; particularly emmer wheat , einkorn wheat , sheep and goats (and many other plant species). These domesticates will become widespread throughout Europe, SW Asia and North Africa, Egypt in particular. Click here for a map showing earliest dates of domestication for some common domesticates.
Reference
Rindos, David.
1984 The Origins of Agriculture, Academic Press, New York.
Learning outcome # 2- Similarity in artifact styles indicates exchange of ideas. Badarians are considered a “culture” because they shared ideas about artifact styles.
Learning outcome #5- Fancy objects recovered from some funerary contexts indicate the presence of elites in Badarian society. These people had access to valued resources and status and were thus able to commission the production of fancy things like jewelry and ivory figurines.
Sometime between 4800 and 4400 BC the Badarian “culture” emerges in some sites in Upper Egypt, north of the Qena Bend (Qina Bend). This archaeological “culture” was first identified at the site of el-Badari near Asyut. Badarian material has been recovered from sites in the same region, including the sites of Matmar, Mostagedda and Hammamiya (Midant-Reynes 2000:152).
The beginnings of Badarian culture go back to about 5000/4400-4000 BC. It is best to not to think of these terms like Badarian as time periods but rather as groups of people roughly represented by distinctive assemblages of artifacts (sharing ideas about style).
Settlement and subsistence
Settlement areas found within the valley, and contained abundant domestic objects; pottery, stone tools, bone piercers, and baskets. Badarian sites typically do not feature elaborate structural remains.
Subsistence evidence (plant remains and animal bones) indicate a reliance on both wild and domesticated animals and plants.
Midant-Reynes (2000:160) characterizes Badarian subsistence and settlement as “…a relatively mobile existence, combining the annual flood cycle with agricultural, pastoral and hunting activities.”
Ceramics and projectile points
The “signature” pottery produced is called black topped redware, a handmade form, featuring a blackened area around the rim burnished with a pebble to create a shiny surface. More utilitarian vessels were simply red burnished red. In some cases, the outside of the vessel was covered with shallow grooves made by a combing the surface of the unfired vessel (Midant-Reynes 2000:162).
Badarian people either made hollow-based projectile points or exchanged for them with people of the Faiyum, as this distinctive manufacturing style occurs in both cultures/locations (we will learn more about the Faiyum next week).
Art and adornment
Many of the grave goods described in Anderson 1992 are objects of personal adornment . Badarians used cosmetic materials for eye-paint, ground from mineral substances such as malachite (a greenish mineral). This mineral was ground on stone palettes. Some of these palettes are stained green providing a clear confirmation of their use.
Other items of personal adornment include; strings of shells used for bracelets, anklets and necklaces. Ivory and bone were modeled into small objects such as beads, pins, needles and combs.
Ivory or bone was also used for the modeling of human and animal figurines.
Cemeteries
Badarian cemeteries largely contain oval graves with bodies in a contracted position. These cemeteries are usually located in the desert (the habit of putting cemeteries in the desert persists throughout the Pharaonic era, one of the most spectacular cemeteries being the Giza necropolis).
Bodies were often enclosed in basketry or skins. Some bodies have the remains of linen clothing, which may have included kilts, robes and some sort of headgear. Bodies are buried with their heads toward the south, facing west. Items of personal adornment were common, particularly strings of shells used for anklets, bracelets, and necklaces.
Some Badarian graves feature crania from cattle, sheep, goats, antelope, jackals and dogs. This anticipates the much later Dynastic practice of mummifying animals to accompany deceased humans into the afterlife.
Badarian cemetery assemblages are the focus of the Anderson 1992 reading assigned for this week.
Anderson 1992
This reading provides evidence of some degree of social stratification among Badarian people, despite their being characterized as “…semi-sedentary agriculturalists (with) flimsy dwellings.. stored grain… superb pottery.. crude flint implements… (who) herded goats and cattle (and) hunted game and entombed grave goods with their dead” (Anderson 1992:54).
Anderson demonstrates status differences by comparing burial assemblages. She used χ2 analysis to test the null hypothesis “there is no association between the set of variables under study” (Anderson 1992:56-57)
Anderson concludes that a few Badarian burials show greater wealth than the majority which is evidence of incipient (two-tiered) form of social organization (Bard, p. 91). You are exploring the particulars of her conclusions in Assignment 1 for this week.
Anderson further notes that the existence of elite classes indicates some form of resource control and some heredity inheritance of that control and authority. This kind of social formation is an incipient form of what will become the highly stratified Dynastic authority wherein the King (Pharaoh) controls resources through the Nile Valley and Delta, and wherein control of those resources is passed down through family lineages.
Generally
Badarian materials reflect the development of a class of at least part-time craft specialists in that the artistic products of these people are distinctively sophisticated.
Badarian materials also reflect a developing stratified society in that the grave goods differ in terms of abundance and elaborateness.
Reference
Anderson, W.
1992 Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle Egypt During the Early Predynastic Era. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, vol. 29, pp. 51-66.
Midant-Reynes, B.
2000 The Prehistory of Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.
Learning outcome # 2 – Faunal and botanical remains combine to give a picture of how people made a living at different places and times in Egypt. Stratigraphic excavation shows us how those ways of making a living changed over time. Similarity in artifact styles indicates exchange of ideas. The plant and animal remains recovered indicate environmental conditions from 7000-4000 BC.
Learning outcome #4- Grinding stones, adzes, storage baskets and silos, are all evidence of adaptations to conditions in the Nile Valley 7000-4000 BC. These pieces of technology indicate cultures that primarily hunt, gather and fish for a living. The presence of storage facilities indicates a level of planning for the future; saving wild grains in cool dry places for use during times when food is less plentiful.
This week I would like to introduce you to two populations living within the Nile Valley at about the time that some of the people of the Nabta Playa may have relocated there; the people of the Faiyum and Merimde.
Populations in both locations feature material evidence of contact with SW Asia as well as areas farther south in the Nile Valley. Both locations also have evidence of imported wild and domesticated plants and animals from the Fertile Crescent region in SW Asia.
The Fertile Crescent
As we learned last week, the Fertile Crescent region in SW Asia contains the earliest known evidence of domesticated plants and animals anywhere on the planet. The Fertile Crescent is the source of domesticated sheep, goats, pigs, cattle (Bos taurus as opposed to Bos primigenius which was a native African domesticate) wheat, barley and many other crops. Domesticated sheep and goats move into the Nile Valley and into the Sudan by around 4500-4000 BC. Both wild and domesticated wheat move into the region between 5000-4000 BC (Midant-Reynes 2000:83-85).
Excavations at the Faiyum and Merimde revealed populations with at least indirect contact with the Fertile Crescent as evidenced by the remains of plant and animal species imported from SW Asia.
The Faiyum
The Faiyum (note, “Faiyum” is spelled many ways) itself is a dried lakebed that once contained a large lake. The source of this lake was the Nile River.
During the early to mid Holocene (ca 9000-6000 years ago, or 7000-4000 BC) the Faiyum was a freshwater lake replenished annually by an influx of Nile floodwaters. At the peak of the flood in early autumn, the lake level may have been as much as 2.5 meters above the level during the non-inundation period (during periods of high floods). Low floods would have cut the Faiyum off completely, while during high floods, the lake would have risen dramatically as the only drainage out of the Faiyum is the Hawara channel (Butzer 1976:16-17).
Drainage would not be as good here as in other parts of the Valley, so the lake shore would be submerged for long periods creating conditions for marsh development. When the lake was thriving, much of the depression was probably covered by vast marshes.
Evidence of ancient wetlands comes from bird bones found at sites in the area suggesting an abundance of species that like shallow water vegetation. Plant remains feature a relatively high frequency of reeds that like to grow in marshy environments.
Beyond the lakeshore the landscape would have been devoid of vegetation.
In general, archaeologists recognize two archaeological phases in the Faiyum, Faiyum B and Faiyum A (Bard, p. 87, Midant-Reynes 2000:100-108).
Faiyum B (7100-6450 BC)
This is a non agricultural hunting and gathering community which subsisted on…
Fauna: Hartebeest, wild cows, gazelle, shallow water birds and ostrich, catfish
Flora: Sedges, tubers, wild seed grasses.
Artifacts present: One grinding stone, indicative of plant processing, small bladelets , also indicative of plant processing.
Features present: Hearths and storage pits.
Faiyum A (6500-4000 BC)
This occupation seems to indicate higher population density (relative to Faiyum B). Sites containing typical Faiyum A materials are located along the ancient lakeshore. Here we actually see pottery, stone artifacts, fishbones and chunks of charcoal. Some of the pots are burned and contain fish bones. Bifacial tools, polished axes and hollow based (swallow-tail) projectile points are common. These points are similar to the hollow-based projectile points found in Badarian settlements further south.
There are no permanent domestic structures, however, there are…
Storage pits , 30 cm to 150 cm in diameter with depths ranging from 30cm to 100 cm, sunk into bedrock, about 15 to 30 cm deep. Sometimes these pits have cooking pots in them with fuel (charcoal packed around them) presumably for heating the contents of the pots (i.e. cooking). These features are often referred to as “granaries.” Some of these retain evidence of basketry lining.
Fifty-six granaries recovered from Faiyum A contexts. Nine of these contained cereal grains and other seeds. Of the seeds recovered, many are emmer wheat and barley grains (both wild and domesticated).
Other flora: Nutlets of sedges (wild plants) were stored in granaries separate from cereals, suggesting a continued emphasis on wild plant foods.
Fauna: Nile perch, turtle, crocodile, gazelle and waterfowl, hippo. Cattle are also present, but it is difficult to determine whether they are wild or domesticated. Bones of domesticated sheep and goats were also recovered, in some cases in the same numbers as wild fauna.
Merimde
Merimde is further north, at the base of the Nile Delta. This site covers more than 200,000 square meters on a terrace above the Nile, approximately 45 kilometers NW of Cairo. Of the 200,000 square meters identified as containing early archaeological materials, only about 6400 square meters have actually been excavated.
Three distinct levels of occupation were identified during the excavations directed by Josef Einwanger in the 1980’s (Midant-Reynes 2000:108-118, this information summarized in the following material).
Level 1- This is the deepest level excavated. The deposit contained reddish brown to purple pottery with an incised herringbone design in a variety of forms; cups, basins and bowls. This pottery is reminiscent of pottery recovered from SW Asia. Also found were the remains of sheep, cattle and pigs. In general, this material is similar to materials recovered from SW Asia suggesting the Nile Delta was closely connected to that region.
Two radiocarbon dates: 4795+/-105 BC and 5005 +/-125 BC.
Level 2- Artifact density suggests a more intensive occupation as indicated by larger quantities of ash and organic remains.
Polished stone axes similar to those recovered from the Faiyum were also recovered, indicating exchange between the two regions. In addition to the polished stone axes, excavators also recovered polished stone maceheads similar to materials recovered from the area around Khartoum, Sudan from approximately the same time period.
No date is associated with this deposit. Despite that, because of the dates on the lower level, we can estimate that this deposit represents a more recent time period relative to the lower dated stratum.
Level 3- Occupational intensity (population) increases, as indicated by hundreds of objects recovered made of bone, horn, ivory, baked clay and shell. Among these objects is a curious clay (terracotta) head (this week’s “picture of the week” on the class homepage) that may have been used in a procession. The object is a little larger than life sized, has a large hole in the base, and smaller holes covering the entirety of the head. Thus the head may have been placed atop a pole, and had feathers attached to it through the small holes. Alas, while reasonable, this possible explanation for the function of the head remains speculative.
The people of Merimde at this time made some of their living from fishing. Excavators found limestone weights with grooves likely used as net weights.
Level 3 also featured distinctive dwellings arranged in rows, perhaps along streets of some kind. These dwellings were represented by post molds (the shadow of a wooden structural element once the wood has rotted away) and oval depressions about 2-3 meters in diameter. These dwellings were surrounded by granaries similar to those from the Faiyum, basket-lined or jars embedded in pits. The distribution of the granaries suggests that each dwelling may have had its own. This pattern is similar to villages from the same time period recovered from the Syro-Palestine region of the Near East.
Remains of SW Asian domesticated barley and wheat, as well as sheep, cattle and pig bones were also recovered from this level.
Summary
The Faiyum and Merimde occupations are roughly contemporary with the Badarian population we met last week. Thus the Nile Valley, from about 7000-4000 BC, is home to locally distinctive but connected populations. These areas also have broader contact as far south as Sudan and as far north and east as the Fertile Crescent region of SW Asia.
Similarities in material culture from known time periods helps archaeologists understand the extent of cultural contact across space, as we learned in last week’s lecture material. The Faiyum and Merimde archaeological materials indicate continued interaction with SW Asia in the form of food stuffs recovered from both sites, and in the form of dwellings and pottery at Merimde.
Polished axes and maceheads from both locations indicate interaction between these two sites and with Badarian people and people farther south in modern day Sudan.
References
Butzer, K.
1976 Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Midant-Reynes, B.
2000 The Prehistory of Egypt. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford.
Learning outcome #2- Mortuary analysis, and ceramic analysis are some of the earliest archaeological techniques ever developed. The Upper Egyptian Predynastic served as a kind of laboratory for the development of techniques that used archaeological materials to indicate status differences. Environmental reconstruction (particularly Nile flood level reconstructions) also help explain periods of diminished site activity.
Learning outcome #5- During the Predynastic, Egypt’s economy continues to become more complexly organized. Fancy tombs, fancy pottery and fancy objects are all the products of at least part time specialists. Elites had sufficient resources to compensate these artisans for their efforts.
By about 3700 BC, SW Asian agricultural products (emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, sheep and goats) have been incorporated into the Egyptian economy. These plants and animals are not native to Egypt and their presence is evidence of trade, either direct or indirect between the peoples of the Nile Valley (such as the Badarian people we met last week, and the people of the Faiyum and Merimde) and the people of SW Asia.
Agricultural products from SW Asia increase the carrying capacity of the Nile floodplain, and probably resulted in a population increase. The Nile floodplain dictates the annual productivity of the region because the flood event brings rejuvenated sediments to the region.
At this time, there is archaeological evidence of the emergence of “city states” at Hierakonpolis and Nagada. These localities were separate but equal (more or less) power centers, identified as such because each featured its own cemetery with a section for elites. Thus, we presume that each locality had its own elite population.
Hierakonpolis 3700-3500 BC
The name “Hierakonpolis” is a Greek word, meaning “City of the Hawk.” The site is located on the west bank of the Nile, at such a point as where the Nile flows almost E/W and comes out of the east.
Hierakonpolis was initially occupied as a capital from 3700-3500 BC. During that time the settlement covered a large area about 1.5 km along and 0.5 km into the low desert.
Despite the limited agricultural potential due to the narrow floodplain, Hierakonpolis appears to have been an early economic powerhouse in the Nile Valley. This may be due to Hierankopolis having access to mineral resources such as granite (a hard stone only available in Upper Egypt), copper and gold in Sudan and the eastern desert.
Three activity zones provide evidence of economic specialization.
Three zones- Click here for a map of localities at Hierakonpolis
1. Locality 11- Evidence of industrial scale pottery manufacture and beer brewing. These activities appear to be on a scale well beyond local production, suggesting production for export outside of Hierankonpolis.
2. Locality 29- Domestic zone with evidence of small circular hut footprints and one large rectangular dwelling;
· “Farmhouse” featuring radiocarbon date of 3650 BC, more elaborate than any dwelling we’ve seen thus far, the oldest known rectangular dwelling in Egypt
· Evidence of a more permanent settlement? A population that isn’t as nomadic, more complex economic base focused on manufacture and possibly trade in valuable mineral resources.
3. Locality 6- Elite cemetery, evidence of powerful families. The cemetery largely features small oval graves, but also a small number of larger rectangular graves. Two tombs are particularly interesting.
Tomb 23 - This tomb is rectangular with larger dimensions, 2.5 meters by 1.8 meters. The tomb “furniture” (grave goods) recovered consisted of a green porphyry (hard stone) macehead and several arrows. Maceheads have also been recovered from Merimde and the Faiyum, so there are connections between the different parts of Egypt at this time.
Tomb 72 - This tomb dates to ca 3700 BC, making it one of the oldest elite tombs known from the Nile Valley. This tomb was the grave for a young man who was buried with ivory figurines, combs, hollow-based projectile points and maceheads.
This tomb was apparently desecrated; the structure was burned and most of the body removed, but the grave goods remained. Were this just a simple case of looting, we would expect the grave goods to be taken.
Around 3500 BC, the once fertile green reaches of the Hierakonpolis region gradually became desert, partially due to a decline in Nile flood levels. The fragile ecosystem had also been upset by the over-grazing of livestock and by the insatiable appetite of local pottery kilns for acacia, tamarisk and cattle dung fuel. Ultimately, between 3500 and 3400 BC, the settlements were abandoned.
Nagada 3700-3500 BC
As with Hierakonpolis, Nagada consisted of a cemetery and a residential area. Nagada appears to have been continuously occupied from 3700 BC into the historic or Pharaonic era. Archaeologists have subdivided the town into northern and southern components (see Bard, p. 101, Figure 5.3 for a map).
The North town consists of archaeological deposits covering four hectares, including domestic sites and burials of young children.
The South town is in the central part of the site, and incorporates a large rectangular mudbrick structure, which archaeologists suspect of being a royal residence. This structure is 50 x 34 m with a 2 meter thick wall. To the south of this structure, is a group of rectangular residences, radiocarbon dated to 3440+/-70 BC.
South of South town are the “ T-cemeteries ,” consisting of large rectangular graves with rich grave goods, including; slate palettes, beautiful flint tools, jewelry made of bone, beads and figurines.
There is a tendency for variation in mortuary practices during this period. Fewer individuals are being buried in tombs and those that are buried in tombs are buried in larger tombs than noted in previous periods. These tombs are well-built and equipped with richer and better grave goods. As was the case with Hierakonpolis, one particular grave stands out as evidence of an elite population; tomb T-5 .
T5- One of the larger graves (4m x 2.8m) from the T cemetery. This tomb was discovered William Flinders-Petrie. When he discovered it, the tomb was more or less intact and contained human remains piled along the wall, indicating the presence of secondary burials.
Remains consisted of the following;
- Five crania had been carefully arranged, with the one in the center placed on top of a brick.
- Petrie noticed teeth marks and breaks in the long bones. He thought this was evidence of cannibalism, though others suspect human sacrifice. The teeth marks may also have been caused by rodent gnawing.
Whatever was happening, cemetery T is associated with an elite population, suggesting the living population at Nagada also featured its own elites (separate from those of Hierakonpolis).
In general
People are tending to move into narrower strips of land in the Nile valley at this time as the marginal areas are becoming more arid.
Between 3700-3500 BC, Nagada and Hierakonpolis are the dominant polities. Nagada controls a gold mining route through the eastern desert, while Hierakonpolis served as a key trading post for gold, turquoise, copper and ivory.
“There were thus more and more groups of non-producers, within the population, placing increasing pressure on modes of production and forcing the agriculturalists to cast their eyes further beyond the existing lands and pasture.” (Midant-Reynes 2000).
Reference
Midant-Reynes, B.
2000 The Prehistory of Egypt, Blackwell, London.
William Flinders Petrie could be considered the father of the Egyptian Predynastic period, in that he excavated several sites and cemeteries from the period between 4000-3000 BC.
Perhaps Petrie’s most notable contribution to Egyptian archaeology was his relative chronological system devised using the contents of ceramics and other material recovered his excavations of Upper Predynastic Egyptian graves; called “ sequence dating ” This technique is described in Bard, pp. 100-102 (box 5-A).
Petrie devised this system in the early 20th Century (1901 and 1920), well before the invention of radiocarbon dating. There is no translatable written information for the Predynastic period, so Petrie used archaeological information to establish his chronological information.
He ingeniously determined that styles of ceramics changed over time, and that particular types had peaks in popularity. He inventoried the ceramic types of close to 1000 graves from the Nagada cemetery, and wrote his observations on slips of paper (one for each grave).
He then arranged the slips by similarity in content, inferring that the closer two graves were to each other in time, the more similar their contents should be. Therefore, the presence of particular types served as an indication of whether archaeological contexts were earlier or later in the Predynastic sequence.
This kind of archaeological technique is called “relative dating” because it tells us whether something is older than or younger than something else, without assigning an actual calendar date.
For the time, Petrie’s technique was revolutionary because he could construct chronological information without written information, or, in some cases, even without stratigraphic information.
Reference
Midant-Reynes, B.
2000 The Prehistory of Egypt, Blackwell, London.
