From Farmers to Pharaohs: Mortuary Evidence for the Rise of Complex Society in Egypt

Abstract

In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in multinational, archaeological research into the origins of civilization in the Nile Valley north of Aswan. This has resulted in a more precise definition of the cultural differences between Upper and Lower Egypt in Predynastic times and of the manner in which northern Egypt came to be dominated economically and culturally by southern Egypt in the century or more preceding the beginning of the First Dynasty. In From Farmers to Pharaohs, Kathryn Bard advances this understanding with a reanalysis of material recovered from Upper Egyptian Predynastic cemeteries at Nagada by W. M. F. Petrie in 1894-1895 and at Armant by O. H. Myers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In Chapter 1 Bard briefly surveys the full range of current theories concerning state formation in Egypt and then provides a detailed and critical review of archaeological work that has been accomplished throughout Egypt relating to the Predynastic period. This includes Bard's own surveys and excavations in the Hu region of southern Egypt between 1989 and 1991. Bard stresses the unique characteristics of ancient Egyptian civilization, especially its symbolic association of major institutions of social control with a mortuary cult that had its origins in the Nagada culture of Upper Egypt. This suggests that the emphasis in the prehistoric archaeological record of Upper Egypt on cemeteries rather than on large urban centers, palaces, and temples is culturally significant rather than an accident relating to the preservation or recovery of the archaeological evidence. Bard's approach accords with Michael Mann's (1986) powerful theoretical formulation concerning multiple sources of power in complex societies. Bard then surveys the general archaeological literature relating to the interpretation of mortuary evidence. For the past 25 years the analysis of burials has been to archaeology what the study of kinship once was to social anthropology: a cutting edge of critical debate and measure of intellectual progress. Bard traces how interpretations of material evidence relating to funerary behavior have been systematically theorized; how alternative theories have been elaborated, tested, and modified; and how progress has been made in building an integrated theoretical framework. Bard pays attention to explanations that seek to account for both cross-cultural regularities and the culturally-specific aspects of mortuary behavior. One of the few major studies she does not consider is Aubrey Cannon's (1989) examination of cyclical fashions and the impact of status emulation on funerary practices. She establishes the persistent tendency, beginning in Predynastic southern Egypt, for funerary customs to reflect social status through the elaboration of graves and grave contents. The theoretical literature suggests that the longterm persistence of this practice may be a culturally-specific eature of ancient Egyptian society. A third chapter, dealing with the chronology of the Upper Egyptian Predynastic period, is followed by the application of divisive cluster analysis (specifically the BMDP K-means clustering technique) to detect socially significant cultural patterning in Predynastic cemeteries at Armant and Nagada. At Armant a well-documented cemetery containing about 200 graves exhibits increasing mean sizes of graves and quantities of grave goods from the Nagada I to IIIa periods (3800-3050/2950 B.c.). Cluster analysis reveals a continuation of small numbers of relatively richer and large numbers of relatively poorer burial types into the Nagada IIIa period, when the poorer graves tend to disappear. The geographical division of the Armant cemetery into east and west sections also suggests some kind of moiety or descent group division within the A mant community. The absence of evidence for complex social hierarchies and for a clearly differentiated elite is in keeping with the interpretation of Armant as a small farming community. Nagada, which was one of the major centers of Predynastic Upper Egypt, is associated with a series of cemeteries containing about 3000 graves, half of which had their contents recorded. These cemeteries contained some