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The Ecological Context of Ancient Egyptian
Predynastic Settlements
by Michael Brass
Predynastic Ancient Egypt was a contrast of
mixed ecologies. These ranged from the borderland deserts both to
the east and to the west of the floodplains, to the contrast
between the Middle and Upper Egyptian floodplains itself and the
Nile Delta. The differing environments affected not only
settlement regions, but also site positions within those regions
as well as the cultural composition of the inhabitants.
The Lower Egyptian Cultural-Ecological
Sequence
In c. 5 000 BC there was a dip in the level of
the Nile floods, which probably exerted an adverse effect on the
subsistence fishing practices of the Nile Valley inhabitants. This
mid-Holocene ecological crisis effect would also have extended to
the plant and animal resources available on the low desert
adjacent to the floodplain, most likely leading to a readiness on
the part of the native Valley inhabitants to experiment with new
social and economic forms. It was a period when desert groups
migrated into the Valley, a consequence of the desert desiccation,
and subsequent cultural and demographic mergers occurred with the
Nilotes. These mergers are evident in the archaeological record by
both artifact and faunal remains.
It is unfortunate that until fairly recently
the archaeology of the Delta has largely been disregarded, an
error primarily due not only to the mistaken early impression that
it was unimportant in Egypt's formative periods, but also because
of the difficulties of conducting archaeological excavations
there. Knowledge about Predynastic settlement patterns in Lower
Egypt (the Delta) is limited, due to the low numbers of sites that
have been found and excavated. The inner Delta, which is a vital
area as it is possible that it was the key area of northern
Predynastic Egyptian settlement (which it was in later Dynastic
periods), has yet to yield a Predynastic site. Nearly all the
sites are covered either by the watertable (for which special
archaeological water-logged excavation techniques are currently
being developed) or by more modern communities. Sites excavated at
the Delta apex and its margins reveal a different Predynastic
cultural pattern to that existing in Upper Egypt, yet they are too
few to be able to determine between geographical and temporal
cultural variations.
Those surviving habitation sites in the Nile
Delta built up over time on the higher sections of gerizas (sand
gravel mound formations produced by the Nile floods). As few
pottery sherds have been excavated from the tops of geriza, groups
of people most likely only took refuge on the top during
extra-ordinarily high Nile floods; the tops were also too distant
from the areas of cultivation for permanent settlement.
Merimda Beni Salama
The earliest known Neolithic settlement in
either the Nile Valley or Delta is that of Merimda on the western
Delta margin of the desert, whose beginnings date from between c.
5 000 - 4 800 BC and are represented in the basal layers of the
180 000 sq. m. site. The site, with a 2m cultural deposit, is
situated on a low rise above the modern floodplain, thereby
overlooking the Delta floodplain, and is set against low hills of
a sandy Pleistocene 60m terrace.
The early inhabitants possessed a similar way
to life to their Fayum counterparts (described below), with a
mixed hunting, fishing and cultivation economy. The settlements
were composed of scattered shelters, with the middle occupation
yielding similar postholes to that of the Fayum and more
substantial subterranean homes only appearing in the uppermost
levels that date to c. 4 300 BC. The granaries had also been
integrated within the village by c. 4 300, leading to the belief
that a differential formal organization of houses had occurred.
The Fayum
The Fayum is another excellent example of a
Lower Egyptian settlement region displaying good evidence of a
"Neolithicized" community. The largest Fayum Neolithic
site is Kom W (c. 4 700 BC), whose bone and animal remains
indicate a highly diverse diet which included fish, and cattle and
hartebeest meat. The cereal grains are from emmer wheat and
two-rowed barley. No permanent housing structures have been
detected (but with there being post-holes, suggesting that their
structures were of oval shape with the poles overlain with mats or
reeds), although there are hundreds of hearths, granary pits,
potsherds and lithic debris. The settlements' communal underground
granaries were strategically positioned in higher ground slightly
away from the habitation in order to avoid spoiling from ground
water. These factors indicate that the inhabitants possessed a
mixed pattern of subsistence and residential mobility, a
combination of fully agricultural sedentary communities, nomadic
herders and hunter-gatherers.
If indeed such a para-agricultural mode of life
existed in the Fayum, a symbiotic relationship may also have
existed with the more fully agricultural communities in the Valley
and the Delta. The tentative steps towards the beginning of
agricultural life at Kom W, and indeed the Fayum as a whole, could
well have been hindered by the pitfalls of pursuing agriculture
along the Fayum lake shores. Coupled with this was the high
productivity and stability of the marsh fauna and flora that would
have attracted the inhabitants towards fishing, hunting and
gathering.
El-Omari
Approximately contemporary with Merimda's final
occupation (c. 4300 BC) is an assemblage of habitation sites and
cemeteries, collectively termed El-Omari, and which survive down
into early Dynastic times. These assemblages are situated nearby
and in the mouth of the Wadi Hof (between Cairo and Helwan), most
likely cultivable land then.
The main settlement is situated on a gravel
terrace that slopes down to the Wadi Hof estuary. A smaller site,
contemporary with the estuary community, has been discovered near
two natural rain catchments on one of Jebel Hof's tallest
terraces. It is hypothesised that the latter, and other high
settlements, were established as naturally defended outpost of the
former and other lower habitations.
The Merimda, Fayum and El-Omari occupations
thus provide clear evidence of functional cultural settlements in
Lower Egypt before 4000 BC. Yet there are few sites (apart from
El-Omari) spanning 4000 - 3700 BC, a period when large and
functionally complex societies were flourishing in Upper Egypt,
the most important being at Hierakonpolis.
The Upper Egyptian Cultural-Ecological
Sequence
Throughout Ancient Egyptian history, the
majority of settlements were located on the Nile floodplain while
the Upper Egyptian cemeteries were often positioned slightly
beyond the edge of the cultivated land, in the desert margins. As
a consequence, many settlement sites (with the exception of those
constructed on reasonably high ground or, in the example of Kom
Ombo, on tells - the residential debris of previous sedentary
communities) have either been covered by silt or simply washed
away as the river changed course, thus providing an explanation
for the low ratio of Upper Egyptian Predynastic living-sites in
relation to their known cemeteries. Another reason is probably due
in part to earlier excavators’ priorities. The Predynastic
cemeteries, containing much grave goods (some of which were made
from exotic materials), attracted greater interest to excavate
than habitation sites either disturbed by digging for sebakh
(organic remains utilized as fertilizer) or else wiped out by the
more recent expanding floodplain agriculture.
The Nile floodplain was lower between c. 8 000
- 5 000 BC than it is in modern times and this, coupled with the
valley also being narrower then (averaging c. 2km in many areas),
has resulted in even the cemeteries positioned along the then
flooded land margins having been buried under more recent alluvium
deposits.
Until the early 1960s, Middle Egypt (to the
north of Badari and south of Memphis) was believed to have been
uninhabited in Predynastic times. However, work conducted by the
geologist Karl Butzer has revealed that cemeteries dating to this
period in time were probably either wiped out by shifts in the
channel of the Nile or are buried beneath substantial sand and
alluvium deposits. Those surviving Predynastic living-sites are
all positioned on embankments that are several metres above the
modern alluvium level. Their survival is therefore fortuitous.
Butzer further hypothesizes that the low settlement density in the
region between Memphis and the Upper Egyptian sites may also have
been the result of the large natural Middle Egyptian flood basins
that "would have required massive labour to bring under
control". By contrast, the flood basins from Abydos
southwards, in Upper Egypt, were smaller and thereby more easily
controllable than those from further north and the Delta.
Interpretations differ concerning the exact
nature of these first complex societies. Kemp hypothesizes that a
"primate" settlement pattern existed, i.e. the majority
of the population lived in the towns, thus leading to functional
changes towards rapid centralization and economic functional differential.
The same data, however, has been analyzed by Hassan who has
proposed a "rank" system, i.e. economic and socio-political
systems with comparatively little authoritative or administrative
centralization, and which were first and foremost symbolic of a
new order of life as well as centres for the sacred shrine and
deities. The "rank" system, whereby settlements were
strategically placed in order to maximize control over the valley
inhabitants, came into being as a result of the linearity and
narrowness of the floodplain that limited the available cultivable
land and thereby also the potential for the growth of
pre-industrial settlements in a way that, by comparison, the
Mesopotamian settlements were not.
It seems at first glance an ecological paradox
that Upper Egypt was the initial heartland of cultural complexity
and not Lower Egypt with its wide fertile lands and richer
diversity in resources due to its contact with the Mediterranean
lands. Yet the Upper Egyptian flood basins were smaller in size
and therefore easier to control for agricultural purposes. The
early state formation model of Carneiro could well thus be
relevant in this context, as he hypothesizes that a sharp
population rise in restricted agricultural environments leads to
pressure on the available resources and military competition over
land ensues.
The Badari
The Badari area is located on the Nile east
bank, roughly 30km to the south of Assyut, where Badarian (4800 -
4000 BC) settlements and graves extend 33 km southwards in the
Mostagedda and Matmar region. There are 41 cemeteries and 40
settlement locations in the low desert that overlooks the
floodplain beneath the high desert limestone plateau cliffs. The
dwellings of the Badarians were similar to those Lower Egyptian
sites mentioned.
A connection can be seen between the
cemeteries, and the floodplain and desert-edged settlements that
suggests the Badarians were seasonal occupiers of the plain. The
Badarian settlement areas are modest and deposits are thin, which
suggests that villages did not exist for long periods on the same
site. The 40 habitation site strip from Badari-Mostagedda can be
subdivided up into three subregional settlement clusters and
various subclusters. The fact that these sites were short-lived
suggests lively inter-action between ecological and social
influences. The floodplain narrows here and this would have
stinted the development of large individual settlement. This would
have coupled with the stochastic fluctuations small populations
are subjected to - the inhabitants of a community joining that of
another community when their settlement population numbers
decline.
Hierakonpolis
The settlements at Hierakonpolis differ from
the usual Predynastic communities, settled mostly on the low
desert escarpments paralleling the floodplain, by extending both
parallel and perpendicular to the river banks.
Hierakonpolis contains the entire Nagada I -
III cultural sequence (c. 4000 - 3100 BC), stretching back to the
end of the Badarian. Excavations by Hoffman have led him to
conclude that the initial settlement at Hierakonpolis was by
colonists from more northern unspecified sectors of Upper Egypt.
Hoffman also hypothesizes that there was a "population
explosion" between 3800 and 3400 BC, with the central sector
of the settlement supporting between 5000 - 10 000 inhabitants.
The growth he attributes to the region’s ecological diversity
and incredible agricultural potential. This Nagada Ic - IIa period
was also one of regional expansion, with clustered rectangular
house settlements and Hierakonpolis becoming a centre for pottery
production.
The Neolithic Subpluvial (resulting from the
southward shift of the Mediterranean rainbelts) lasted from c.
7000 - 3000 BC, the rainfall estimates for the Hierakonpolis
region ranging from 5cm to 25cm per year. Even 5cm of rainfall
would have resulted in a regular seasonal runoff from the
surrounding highlands for the Great Wadi at Hierakonpolis,
enriching the surrounding environment enabling plant and animal
life to prosper in this semi-desert.
The rainfall would have been between January
and February, meaning that the inhabitants of the district of
Hierakonpolis practiced two different agricultural regimes:
"dry" farming in the Wadi and basin irrigation on the
floodplain. As the floodplain and the Wadi are separated by a
substantial distance, and taking into account that each regime
requires its own special cultivation technique as well as the
cultivation taking place in both places at the same time (late
March and early April being the harvesting period), the local
predynastic society was most likely divided into two units - one
living in the desert borderlands of the Wadi by a combination of
farming, hunting and herding, and the other existing either on or
nearby the floodplain in areas like the Nagada II town practicing
basin irrigation agriculture (which began during this period) as
well as fishing and plying their trade along the Nile.
The decline in rainfall at the end of the
Neolithic Subpluvial signified the end of the wadi-based
constituent of the Hierakonpolis regional subsistence economy
between c. 3300 - 3100 BC. This increasing desiccation led to a
settlement shift of the desert regional inhabitants that boosted
the floodplain population density and thus the numbers of the
available labour force and the base through which local big-men
could increase in importance (similar to Carneiro's
state-formation model previously mentioned). This increase in
hierarchical power could have been achieved by a number of
different variants, likely acting in tandem with one another -
providing Nile transportation for trade goods; as intermediaries
for local and regional trade exchanges; acting as judges in cases
involving land, water and dower disputes; able military
leadership; and resources for religious and elite secular building
constructions.
Apart from the socio-economic consequences,
resulting in the quickening emergence of an elite, the Saharan
pastures were effectively eliminated to a great extent with the
desiccation which rendered the remainder of the Nile floodplain
and the Delta attractive inducements for military expeditions,
conquest and thereby the expansion of the city-state of
Hierakonpolis - during a time of low Nile floods - into one of the
world's first nation-states, Ancient Egypt.
Conclusion
The currently known distributions of
Predynastic settlements are determined by geological rather than
by cultural factors. The ecology of the Nile Valley and Delta also
determined the placement of sites within a particular region, like
Merimda on a terrace or the divided Hierakonpolis society in its
formative stages. Yet the unparalleled transport navigability of
the Nile, with each settlement located within a few kilometres of
one another, also provides an explanation for most of Ancient
Egypt's political and religious Dynastic unity.
However, it is in this lead-up to the
unification of the Nile city-states under Hierakonpolis that the
environment plays one of its most important roles. The end of the
Neolithic Subpluvial (thus ruling out expansion into the desert)
and the pressure brought to bear by the decreased Nile floods
(thereby putting strain on agricultural production), in tandem
with the increased population, made the rest of the Valley and the
Delta look increasingly attractive for various means of expansion.
Bibliography
Bard, K. A.; The Egyptian Predynastic: A Review
of the Evidence; Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 21, No. 3,
1994
Brewer, D. J. & Wenke, R. J.; Transitional
Late Predynastic - Early Dynastic Occupations at Mendes: A
Preliminary Report. In Van den Brink, D.; The Nile Delta in
Transition: 4th-3rd Mill. BC; Proceedings of Seminar held in Cairo
Oct. 1990; IES 1992
Carneiro, R. L.; A Theory of the Origin of the
State; Science, Vol. 169, 1970
Grimal. N.; A History of Ancient Egypt; Oxford:
Blackwell
Hassan, F. A.; The Predynastic of Egypt;
Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1988
Hoffman, M. A.; Egypt Before the Pharaohs; New
York: Barnes & Noble
Shaw, I. & Nicholson, P.; British Museum
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt; London: British Museum Press
Trigger, B. G. et al.; Ancient Egypt: A Social
History; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Wenke, R. J.; Egypt: Origins of Complex
Societies; Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 18, 1989
Wenke, R. J.; The Evolution of Early Egyptian
Civilization: Issues and Evidence; Journal of World Prehistory,
Vol. 5, No. 3, 1991
Michael Brass is teaching a course on human
evolution, which will be conducted over the internet. The course
runs from 1 April – 1 June 2001. The cost is £30 or $50(US).
This web-based course will consist of the following four highly
intensive and university-standard lessons:
1. Introduction to archaeology: its emergence, theory and dating
techniques
2. Our early hominid ancestors, Homo and its dispersals
3. Trends towards food production and early state formation
4. The late prehistoric and early historic periods of the Near
East, India, China, the Americas and Africa.
Course materials are provided and the course is open to
everyone. For further details on how to register for the course,
e-mail mikeybrass@directonline.net
About Michael Brass,
Archaeology BsocSci(Hons) & History BA
degrees from the University of Cape Town. "Ancient Egypt and
World Prehistory" http://www.users.directonline.net/~archaeology
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