An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling

Dee, Michael W.; Wengrow, David; Shortland, Andrew; Stevenson, Alice; Brock, Fiona; Flink, Linus Girdland; Ramsey, Christopher Bronk

doi:10.1098/rspa.2013.0395

Cited by 66 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Geller (1992b:118-119) gave a relative date of Ib-IIa for the structure. However the C14 absolute date was calibrated to 3500-3400 BCE, which according to Dee et al 2013's scheme is closer to NIIA-B (Table 3.1). The lithic artifacts analyzed by Holmes (1996) come from a 5m x 5m unit that included most of the beermaking structure, square 360L420, unit 2.…”

Section: Hierakonpolis 24a and 25dmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hoffman dated the site to the Ib-Ic period (ibid. :129), and radiocarbon dates yielded an average estimated date around 3500BCE (Hassan 1984), which should be somewhere around the NIC-IIAB considering the revised chronology of Dee et al (2013). The dwelling was semi-subterranean and composed of wattle and daub with 8 wooden posts.…”

Section: Hierakonpolis Hk29mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Managerial model: Efficient use of differentially distributed resources (Service 1962) Scheduling conflicts: Increased government demands for agriculture leaves households little time to make other items (Blanton et al 1982) Buchez (2011b), Hartmann (2011), Hendrickx (2006, 2011b, and Dee et al (2013). Köhler (2004) offers revisions for the NIIIC and divisions of the NIIID (not pictured here).…”

Section: Symbolic Goods Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16 Not calibrated to the shorter Naqada period dates given by Dee et al 2013. Mond and Meyers (1937) excavated the Armant cemetery, which is about 300 meters away from MA21/83, across a small wadi (Ginter et al 1985: Fig 1).…”

Section: Armant Settlementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The conventional range for the Predynastic period has been from around 3900 BCE to around 3050 BCE. However, due to the above-mentioned problems with dating, Dee et al (2013) used Bayesian statistical modeling methods to refine the radiocarbon dates from new samples taken from museum collections (focusing on short-lived remains) and measurements available in published material. Notably this revised chronology indicates that the Predynastic period and all its associated socio-economic and political changes took place over a shorter time span than had been previously thought, from around 3700 to 3075 BCE (Table 3.1).…”

Section: Chronologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beyond Prestige: A Ritual Production Model for Stone Tool Specialization in Naqada Period Egypt

Skarzynski¹

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This dissertation looks at the organization and development of specialized production in 4th millennium BCE Egypt. At the outset of this period northeastern Africa was occupied by small-scale groups of pastoralists and early agriculturalists. By the close of the 4th millennium BC, the Nile Valley was one of the earliest instances of a society with centralized political organization, extensive labor division, and institutionalized inequalities.This research brings data on stone tools and settlement sites to bear on competing models of specialization. Many models of specialized production have focused either on the production of symbolically meaningful goods for the elite, or the production of utilitarian goods for the masses; they have not considered the production of symbolically meaningful goods for commoners. In Egypt the prevailing theory for the development of specialized production is a prestige-goods model, where elites sponsored the production of items used to display status and which were not available to all. However, this model does not account for all specialized production. A review of the evidence for specialization in Egypt shows that some items made by specialists were quite widely used (e.g., lithic blades, black-topped red ware ceramics), and so do not fit a prestige-goods model. To explore how the production of various stone tools was organized and developed, a model of ritual production outlined by Spielmann (2002) was considered. This model recognizes that people have often increased their economic production in order to make items needed for ritual activities, such as life cycle events (e.g., birth, marriage, death) and community-encompassing rituals. These ritual activities involved many members of society, not a restricted subset. Expectations were developed for archaeological patterns of raw material choice, production locations, and find contexts that should be observed if the ritual production model can account for the development of some aspects of specialized production in -ivEgypt. These expectations were evaluated based on examination of lithic artifact collections from the settlement sites of el-Mahâsna, Abydos, and Nag el-Qarmila, and comparison to published data from other sites and online museum databases. This research showed that there were many different ways that stone tool production was organized at the intra-site and regional levels. Some of stone tools-early fishtail knives, axes, large-blade knives, and microendscrapers-fit the ritual production model for the development of specialized production quite well. Preferences for certain raw materials were evident, and these preferences could not be accounted for by functional considerations or access to local resources. Instead, the raw material choices probably related to the symbolic significance of their colors, which can be traced from the Pharaonic back to the Predynastic periods. These tools were produced in conjunction with ritual activity areas, and the tools themselves were found in ritually significant cont...

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Section: Hierakonpolis 24a and 25dmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hierakonpolis Hk29mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Symbolic Goods Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Armant Settlementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Chronologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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