The Relationship between the Badarian and the Amratian in Prehistoric Egypt Justine J James Two Year Paper Stephen. Harvey Gil Stein March 2004 James 1 Introduction Despite over a century of research since Jacques de Morgan and W. M. F. Petrie made the first discovery and identification of prehistoric artifacts in Egypt, the prehistoric or Predynastic period, especially in the final 2000 or so years leading up to the historic period,1 is not clearly understood. One of the major questions still facing Egyptologists is the question of the origins of pharaonic civilization. Specifically, was pharaonic civilization the product of a gradual evolution of a single cultural antecedent in the Nile valley, the product of a combination of a number of different cultural antecedents in the Nile valley, the product of an entirely new culture whose origins are outside the Nile valley, or a combination of all of the above? Answering this question requires a clearer understanding of prehistoric cultures both in the Nile valley proper and in the surrounding deserts and south into the modern Sudan, especially in terms of chronology and geography. In an attempt to clarify one of these cultural relationships, this paper will focus on the Badarian and Amratian cultural units. The Badarian is traditionally described as a Neolithic farming culture dating to between 5000/4000 and 3900 BC focused in a 35 km strip of around 40 settlement areas in Middle Egypt along the Nile, despite finds of Badarian-like materials outside this presumed homeland at Hierakonpolis, Armant, and Wadi Hammamat.2 The Amratian is described as a Predynastic farming culture with a widespread presence in Upper Egypt spanning Matmar in the north to Wadi Kubbaniya in the south, dating to between 3900 and 3650 BC. 1 The term “historic period” here refers to the advent of writing, and the end of the Predynastic/prehistoric period usually dated to Dynasty 1 (ca. 3000 BC). 2F Debono, "Expedition Archéologique Royale Du Désert Oriental.," Annales du Service des Antiquitiés de l'Egypte 51, no. 1 (1951); Michael A. Hoffman, "Predynastic Cultural Ecology and Patterns of Settlement in Upper Egypt as Viewed from Hierakonpolis," in Origin and Early Development of Food-Producing Cultures in North-Eastern Africa, ed. Lech Krzyzaniak and Micha Kobusiewicz (Poznan: Polish Academy of Sciences; Poznan Archaeological Museum, 1984). James 2 One of the first things one should note about the very brief descriptions, which will of course be further elaborated below, of these two cultures given above is the distinction between “Neolithic” and “Predynastic.” The majority of authors discussing prehistoric Egypt draw a clear distinction between cultures predating the 4th millennium BC and the cultures dated to the 4th millennium prior to what is considered to be historic, unified Egypt, based on a perception of 4th millennium, primarily upper Egyptian cultural events as the catalyst leading into unification and the rise of the Egyptian state.3 While this distinction between “Neolithic” and “Predynastic” is convenient in clarifying the (apparently) sudden changes and expansion of upper Egyptian culture, it is an artificial construct. The Predynastic was no less “Neolithic” than the preceding Neolithic cultures present in the Nile valley, of which the Badarian is an example, especially in its earliest phases. The Amratians and the Badarians both practiced agriculture and pastoralism, both made pottery, both still utilized tools made primarily of stone rather than metal, which meets the simplest definition of a “Neolithic” culture.4 The problem with this distinction is that it tends to automatically orient the scholar to an attitude of assuming that there is some distinctly different between the “Neolithic” and the “Predynastic” when this may, and probably is not in fact the case, in other words, the categories become reified. There is a tendency to place both categories – the Neolithic and the Predynastic- into neatly outlined boxes that do not touch, when we should in fact be interested in the interface between them- the place where these neat categories overlap. 3 For examples of this distinction and some discussion regarding the tendency see: Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton Thompson, The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains near Badari (London,: British school of archaeology in Egypt etc., 1928), 1-2; Fekri A. Hassan, "The Predynastic of Egypt," Journal of World Prehistory 2, no. 2 (1988); Béatrix Midant-Reynes, The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Pharaohs, trans. Ian Shaw (Oxford, UK ; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 169. 4 Of course, the use of pottery is not necessarily a requirement to for a culture to be categorized as Neolithic – per the “Pre-Pottery Neolithic” cultures of the Levant. James 3 A more focused example of the problem of reification of cultural units and terminology is the relationship of the Badarian to the Amratian. Along with the already present bias of the Badarian being considered “Neolithic” while the Amratian is considered “Predynastic” the two cultures themselves are placed into neatly defined units of space and time and little consideration is given to the interface between the two. Despite evidence and commentary on the similarities between the two, they are still essentially regarded as distinct units in time and space and the only contact between them is when the Amratian apparently spread northward and replaced Badarian material culture with its own. The problem, however, is that a close examination of the excavation of stratified settlement remains in the Badari region at the site of North Spur Hemamieh belies this simple explanation – if the Badarian as a culture was suddenly overtaken the Amratian culture, either in the form of conquest, colonization, intensive trading, or some other means of transmission, we would expect there to be a sudden, distinction between the Badarian material culture and the Amratian material culture. As will be discussed in further detail below, this is not the case. In addition, despite, as mentioned above, the similarities cited between Badarian material culture and Amratian material culture, a clear quantification of these similarities has not been made. Nor has an explanation for why these similarities exist been clearly stated. In an attempt to further clarify the relationship between the Badarian and the Amratian as cultural units, this paper will focus on outlining the basic aspects of settlements and their associated material culture for both the Amratian and the Badarian followed by a case study in which Amratian artifacts from a disturbed settlement context excavated in recent years at Abydos during ongoing investigations led by Dr. Stephen Harvey will be James 4 identified, described, and then compared to the available corpus of Badarian artifacts from settlement contexts. Using a discreet range of artifacts from an Amratian settlement context rather than the entirety of available artifacts is seen as a more practical approach for the purposes of this paper given the enormous range of artifacts that would need to be examined should the entirety of the Amratian settlement corpus be used for comparison. It is hoped that this comparison will give us a clearer idea of the similarities and/or difference between the Badarian and Amratian and also, depending on the degree of similarity and/or difference between the two in terms of material culture help to shed light on the degree of contact and possibly the nature of contact between the two, especially in the later phases of the Badarian and the early phases of the Amratian. The Badarian as a Cultural Unit The Badarian culture was first identified in the late 1920s by a British archaeologist, Guy Brunton working in the Badari region of Middle Egypt.5 Brunton was initially in the region investigating dynastic cemeteries when he happened upon an unusual sherd of handmade rippled ceramic unlike anything he had ever seen. Further investigation resulted in the discovery of a grave with an unusual collection of objects, including rippled surface pottery and survey of the low desert in the region yielded yet more rippled sherds. Brunton, by his own admission, immediately assumed that this new material was part of a hitherto unknown Predynastic culture, but was not sure where this new culture fit into the framework already established by Petrie.6 Brunton then devoted his 1924-24 field season 5 Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton Thompson, The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains near Badari (London,: British school of archaeology in Egypt etc., 1928). 6 See W. M. Flinders Petrie, Corpus of prehistoric pottery and palettes (London,: British school of archaeology in Egypt etc., 1921); W. M. Flinders Petrie and A. C. Mace, Diospolis Parva, the cemeteries of Abadiyeh and Hu, 1898-9 (London; Boston: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901). James 5 to investigating the cemeteries and settlement remains of this new culture, culminating in the publication of The Badarian Civilisation and Predynastic Remains near Badari in 1927. In the first part of that publication, Brunton, based on evidence both from the cemeteries and from the second part of the publication written by Gertrude Caton- Thompson (discussed further below) that it was highly unlikely that the Badarian was contemporaneous with “the Predynastic” – in this instance, meaning the Amratian, Gerzean, and Semainean.7 Instead, the Badarian was almost certainly earlier, based on what seem to have been certain affinities and/or precursors to the first phase of the Predynastic – the Amratian. Brunton’s work predated the advent of radiocarbon dating by several decades, therefore, no absolute date could be provided for the Badarian So far as Brunton could determine it was early relative to the Amratian, though there seems to have been very little time elapsed between the end of the Badarian and the beginning of the Amratian. Brunton’s reconstruction of Badarian culture was that they were a sedentary people practicing both agriculture and pastoralism, along with supplemental hunting and fishing, living in probably fairly ephemeral dwellings, as he found no evidence of houses or other built structures.