Abstract
When the archaeology of Predynastic Egypt was last appraised in this journal, Savage (2001a, p. 101) expressed optimism that “a consensus appears to be developing that stresses the gradual development of complex society in Egypt.” The picture today is less clear, with new data and alternative theoretical frameworks challenging received wisdom over the pace, direction, and nature of complex social change. Rather than an inexorable march to the beat of the neo-evolutionary drum, primary state formation in Egypt can be seen as a more syncopated phenomenon, characterized by periods of political experimentation and shifting social boundaries. Notably, field projects in Sudan and the Egyptian Delta together with new dating techniques have set older narratives of development into broader frames of reference. In contrast to syntheses that have sought to measure abstract thresholds of complexity, this review of the period between c. 4500 BC and c. 3000 BC transcends analytical categories by adopting a practice-based examination of multiple dimensions of social inequality and by considering how the early state may have become a lived reality in Egypt around the end of the fourth millennium BC.
Highlights
Forty years ago, the sociologist Abrams (1988, p. 63) famously spoke of the difficulty of studying that most ‘‘spurious of sociological objects’’—the modern state
Such a project underpins this review of Predynastic Egypt
Analysis shifts away from modeling the state as a thing to conceptualizing it as an idea that is dynamically emergent through practices and relationships, somewhat different geographies and scales of power can be revealed
Summary
The sociologist Abrams (1988, p. 63) famously spoke of the difficulty of studying that most ‘‘spurious of sociological objects’’—the modern state. Whereas doubt may remain as to the socioeconomic structure of Badarian groups, it is clear that marked changes in community organization and social inequalities emerged only in the early fourth millennium BC (Naqada I), when more substantial proof for a sustained commitment to sedentary habitation and cereal agriculture is found. With these developments, the establishment of complex social formations in Naqada I was relatively swift and materially striking, most remarkably at the Upper Egyptian site of Hierakonpolis, as well as in the Delta toward the end of the phase. As Bussmann notes (2015), it was not until central administration developed relationships with local temples centuries later that kingship became more meaningfully established in these areas in the long term
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