Doc Savage's
Archaeology Projects in Egypt

Predynastic Egypt-Dissertation Project

In my dissertation project, an analysis of the Predynastic Egyptian (ca. 3800-3050 BC) cemetery at Naga-ed-Dêr, I used a combination of multivariate statistical techniques and spatial analysis procedures to track six different social groups within the cemetery,  and explore various aspects of competition expressed by these groups through time. Each cluster of graves appears to represent a separate descent group, with slightly different artifact assemblages, and slightly different ways of adorning the body for burial. 

The different descent groups placed valuables on their dead in different places. When grave robbers later removed these items, they left distinct patterns of damage that varied from one cluster to another, reflecting the original placement of valuables.  Grave robbing appears to have taken place shortly after burial; items stolen from the cemetery were probably metals such as gold or copper, which could be re-worked into something unrecognizable by the relatives of the deceased. Grave robbing became more intense through time. As more wealth was placed on the dead, more parts of their bodies were disturbed; and during the third phase of the cemetery's use, when the wealthiest graves were made, there is frequently no body left in the grave. This at least suggests that the bodies in these wealthy Phase 3 graves may have been very richly adorned. So the different descent groups competed with each other in mortuary display, and at least one segment of society responded by plundering graves. 

Competition was also evident in grave size and shape, in architectural elaboration of the graves, and in the ritual paraphernalia included in some of them. Another way competition is reflected in the cemetery is through the presence of exotic items such as ivory and lapis lazuli. Different groups appear to have controlled these items, and they prospered at different times during the Predynastic period.  The cemetery exhibits a fundamental reorientation of the trade system, and reflects a dramatic shift in the wealth and power of different descent groups. At Naga-ed-Dêr, an early emphasis on African ivory, controlled by Cluster 1, was replaced by prestige goods of northern origin, controlled by Cluster 3. Significantly, at the time ivory ceases to be included in Cluster 1 graves, it also disappears from the coast of the Southern Levant (Modern Israel and Lebanon), during the period when the Chalcolithic culture in that area collapsed. When the ivory trade collapsed, the prosperity and power of Cluster 1 burials declined dramatically; the descent group that had the wealthiest burials in the cemetery became one of the poorest at Naga-ed-Dêr. 

After a hiatus of a bit more than a century, prestige goods appear in the cemetery again. But, ivory is still largely absent. Instead, cylinder seals executed in Mesoptamian style (used to indicate ownership of various objects), lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and copper from the Sinai all point to the northern focus of trade during Phase 3. In this period, the richest in the cemetery, the wealthiest graves appear in Cluster 3. These burials are part of a different descent group than that of the Phase 1 ivory merchants. Significantly, virtually all the lapis and copper, and the only Mesopotamian-style cylinder seal found in the cemetery were recovered from wealthy Cluster 3 graves. 

The competition visible among the different descent groups in the cemetery took place at a local level, but it suggests that Egyptian society in the late Predynastic may have been dominated at a larger scale by even more intensive forms of competition, as different regions of the Nile Valley sought to dominate the lucrative northern trade. Narmer, the reputed first ruler of both Upper and Lower Egypt, may have conquered the Delta region simply to control the trade with western Asia.Sometime around 3050 BC, Narmer appears to have extended his power all the way to theMediterranean. Immediately afterwards, Egyptian trading colonies are found in what is now the Negevof Israel. Then, throughout the course of the first two dynasties (called the "Archaic Period" byEgyptologists), the early Pharaohs instituted a series of steps designed to maintain and increase theircontrol over Upper and Lower Egypt. These measures ultimately created the social, political, economic, and religious institutions that anthropologists associate with full-fledged state level societies. 

Radiocarbon Dating Project

My radiocarbon dating proposal to the National Science Foundation was accepted, and I collected and dated 100 additional samples from Cemetery N7000.  Click the "NSF Proposal" button on the navigation bar to read the full textp.

The radiocarbon dating project is an integral part of my work with the Predynastic cemetery at Naga-ed-Dêr, and began several years ago, as I was beginning to study what the different burial clusters at the cemetery might mean. There were several alternative explanations for the burial clusters, such as 1) demographic sorting (different parts of the cemetery might have been used for people ofdifferent age and sex groups); 2) different social classes might have been buried in different areas of the cemetery; 3) the different grave clusters may have been the burial grounds of different descent groups (this is what I finally concluded); or 4) the clusters might have been used sequentially, starting at one end of the cemetery, and gradually moving across the area as each cluster became filled with graves. Each of these explanations had to be tested. The first two were tested simply by making maps showing the distribution of graves by age, by sex, and by wealth; and these maps showed that the first two alternative explanations were probably not true. The third was tested by examining patterns of artifact placement, grave robbing, grave architecture, and so on. I continually found statistically significant associations between these kinds of data and the spatial clusters. So I could not reject the third explanation. 

To test the fourth possibility it was necessary to date the graves, order them in a sequence (called seriation by archaeologists), and then see how they were arranged in the cemetery. I used a statistical method called Correspondence Analysis (CA), which can place items in a series if the variables used in the analysis are time-sensitive. I used seven different types of ceramics from the cemetery, and was able to date 143 graves with CA. This method requires at least two pots per grave, and they have to be of two different types. I chose to use graves with at least three pots, because it produces a better time series, and avoids ties between two pottery types in a grave. This decision reduced the number of graves in the analysis from 201 to 143, but I am more confident of the results.  CA produces scores called "Eigenvectors" for each case (grave) and each variable (pottery type), and they can be graphed to examine the distribution. When the resulting graph is strongly linear or horseshoe shaped, it means that the analysis is measuring temporal change adequately, and may be considered to be an acceptable seriation (time series). I divided the curve into four temporal phases, which contained about the same number of graves, but might not represent the same lengths of time. 

Seriation by correspondence analysis is a relative dating method. I wanted to get absolute dates for the seriation curve for two reasons. First, the radiocarbon dates would serve as a test of the seriation and the four phases I developed. Second, there are really very few radiocarbon dates from the Predynastic, and hardly any are from cemeteries, so the dates would be useful for comparing to other sites. I obtained small samples (about 10 milligrams each) from the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, the University of California at Berkeley, where the materials from the Cemetery are curated. The samples were submitted to the University of Arizona radiocarbon dating facility, where they were dated by the AMS method (which is very accurate and requires very small amounts of carbon). The samples included items such as reed matting, seeds from food or grain offerings, human hair, and animal hair. 

Radiocarbon dates were obtained from 12 of the graves dated by seriation (spread out along the seriation curve to pin down the entire sequence in absolute time), and the results tend to confirm the division of the dated graves into four phases. The two sigma calibrated date ranges indicate that Phase 1 spanned the period from 3800-3630 BC, Phase 2 from 3640 to 3500 BC, Phase 3 from 3510 to 3340 BC, and Phase 4 from 3360 to 3090 BC. See the Abstracts section of my page for a further discussion of the dating, and a graph that compares the Cemetery's dates to others from Upper Egypt. 

After dating the graves, I plotted them in order on the cemetery map. If the cemetery had spread from one area, I expected to see the early graves all in that place, and the later graves placed further and further from the early ones,as the space in the cemetery was filled. Instead, I saw that there were many early graves in all of the five clusters on the top part of the cemetery map (none of the graves from Cluster 4 could be dated, because they did not have enough pottery). Thus, I concluded that there were several different areas of the cemetery being used at the same time. When this is considered along with the clear associations between spatial clusters and artifacts, architecture, and plundering, and the radiocarbon results that tended to confirm my division of the cemetery into four phases, it seems pretty clear that six different descent groups used the cemetery at the same time-each burying its members in a separate area. Each cluster began with a few "founder" graves, spaced far from the early burials of the other clusters. Over time, the space between clusters became filled with graves, until there was finally no space left on the terrace. At that point, the cemetery was abandoned, in favor of a different place. 

Radiocarbon Testing Publications:

• 2001  Towards an AMS Radiocarbon Chronology of Predynastic Egyptian Ceramics.  In "Proceedings of the 17th International Radiocarbon Conference, Jerusalem, Israel, June, 2000." Radiocarbon 43(3, part 3): 1255-1278.
  
  
• 1998  AMS 14-Carbon Dates from the Predynastic Egyptian Cemetery, N7000, at Naga-ed-Der. Journal of Archaeological Science 25:235-249.