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Discussion: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle Egypt

Discussion: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle Egypt

Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle Egypt During the Early Predynastic Era Author(s): Wendy Anderson Source: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 29 (1992), pp. 51-66 Published by: American Research Center in Egypt Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000484 Accessed: 13-04-2020 10:55 UTC

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Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle Egypt During the Early Predynastic Era

Wendy Anderson

I. A Social Approach to the Study of Mortuary Data

Recent studies of predynastic Egyptian graves at Armant by Kathryn Bard demonstrate that by Nagada I times, Nile Valley populations were differentiated into two groups consisting of a large number of individuals with few burial goods and a smaller number of persons with large numbers of burial offerings. Prior to that time the situation is less clear. While some

archaeologists have suggested that earlier pre- dynastic Badarian peoples, who are currently regarded as the earliest food producers in Up- per Egypt, show no evidence of wealth or social differentiation, others have suggested the op- posite. Hoffman has argued that marked eco- nomic differences between members of this

population indicate that their social system was distinctly inegalitarian. In this paper I will review briefly current debates concerning the relevance of funerary data for understanding social organization and present the results of an analysis of the Badarian cemeteries that were excavated in the 1920s.

Largely under the influence of Kroeber, who believed burial practices to be unstable and rep- resentative of “fashions” rather than “social ex-

pression, objections to the use of mortuary data to infer social organization have been raised by several researchers. Thus, Hodder has argued that in a grave context the absence of differentiation based on sex, age, and status does not necessarily indicate the absence of social differentiation during life. He maintains that changes in social attitudes towards death can result in less differentiation in the burials of

hierarchically organized societies. As a result of such attitude changes “partial expressions and even inversions of what happens in social life” can take place. Mortuary studies should there- fore not expect to find that any systematic correspondence exists between the burial prac- tices and the social organization of a particular society. Similar observations have been made by Peter Ucko and reiterated by Sally Hum- phreys, who stressed the instability of mortuary practices and noted that representative samples of a population may not be present in cemetery sites, from which individuals may be excluded on the basis of age, sex, or social status. Hum- phreys also warned that burial practices may not be “closely correlated with other aspects of social structure or beliefs …”

These arguments do not seem to be appro- priate for the Nile Valley, where practically all

1 Kathryn Bard, “A Quantitative Analysis of the Predynas- tic Burials in Armant Cemetery 1400-1 500, “Journal of Egyp- tian Archaeology 74 (1988), 55; An Analysis of the Predynastic Cemeteries of Nagada and Armant in Terms of Social Differentia- tion (University of Toronto, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, 1987), 123-25.

Bruce G. Trigger, “The Rise of Egyptian Civilization,” in Trigger, B. G., Kemp, B. J., O’Connor, D. and Lloyd, A. B., Ancient Egypt: a Social History (Cambridge, 1983), 27.

Michael Hoffman, Egypt Before the Phara

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