Having established that the graves were Predynastic, the next task was to organize the considerable quantity of material uncovered, and to place the newly defined Predynastic culture within a chronological framework. Using the pottery from 900 graves in the cemeteries of Hiw and Abadiya, Petrie devised a method of seriation that formed the basis for a system of‘sequence dates’, in which the new categories of
Map of Egypt showing principal sites of the Naqada I and II phases
Pottery were defined according to the form and decoration of the vessels. Petrie reached the intuitive hypothesis that wavy-handled pots evolved gradually from globular vessels with clearly moulded functional handles towards cylindrical forms on which the handles were merely decorative. The ‘sequence-dates’ chronology was initially organized around this concept of evolution in wavy-handled design.
A table of fifty sequence dates resulted, numbered from 30 onwards, in order to leave space for earlier cultures that had not yet been discovered. This turned out to be a wise precaution, given that Brunton’s excavations at Badari would later result in the identification of the Badarian Period, the first stage of the Upper Egyptian Predynastic (see Chapter 2). The lengths of the individual phases represented by each of these sequence dates were uncertain, and the only link with any absolute date was that between SD 79-80 and the accession of King Menes at the beginning of the ist Dynasty, which was assumed to have taken place in c.3000 bc.
The sequence dates were grouped into three periods. First, there was the Amratian (or Naqada I), from the type site of el-Amra, containing styles SD 30-38: this phase corresponds to the maximum development of the black-topped red ware and of vessels with painted white decorative motifs on a polished red body. Secondly, there was the Gerzean (or Naqada II), from el-Gerza, containing styles SD 39-60 and characterized by the appearance of pottery with wavy handles, coarse utilitarian ware, and decorations comprising brown paint on a cream background. Finally, there was Naqada III, representing the final phase of SD 61-80, which was marked by the appearance of a so-called late style, whose forms were already evoking Dynastic pottery. According to Petrie, it was during the Naqada III phase that an Asiatic ‘New Race’ arrived in Egypt, bringing with it the seeds of pharaonic civilization.
Scholars have frequently praised Petrie’s relative dating system, and, although various analyses have corrected it and improved its precision, the three basic phases of the late Predynastic have never been fundamentally questioned, and today they still constitute the loom upon which Egyptian prehistory is woven.
The reliability of the ceramics corpus is fundamental to the validity of the system. In 1942 Walter Federn, a Viennese exile to the USA, exposed certain flaws in Petrie’s corpus. In order to classify the vessels from de Morgan’s collection in the Brooklyn Museum, he was obliged to revise Petrie’s groups, removing two of them from the sequence. It was Federn who introduced a factor that had been ignored by Petrie: the fabric of the vessels. It also became apparent that a system based on material from Upper Egyptian cemeteries was not necessarily transferable either to the necropolises of the north or to those of Nubia.
In spite of its recognized shortcomings, Petrie’s work nevertheless formed the sole means of organizing the Predynastic into cultural phases until the system devised by Werner Kaiser in the 1960s, which even then could not actually replace it. Kaiser seriated the pottery of 170 tombs from cemeteries 1400-1500 of Armant using the publication of the site made by Robert Mond and Oliver Myers in the 1930s. His work showed that there was also a ‘horizontal’ chronology in the cemetery. The black-topped red ware abounded in the southern part of the cemetery, while the ‘late’ forms were concentrated towards the northern end. A very detailed analysis of the classification, still based on Petrie’s corpus, allowed him to correct and fine-tune the sequence-dating system. Petrie’s three major periods were thus confirmed, but refined by the addition of eleven subdivisions (or Stufen) from la to Illb. In 1989 Stan Hendrickx’s doctoral thesis allowed Kaiser’s system to be applied to all of the Naqadan sites in Egypt. This resulted in slight modifications, particularly to the transitional phases between Naqada I and II.
The other important progress in Predynastic chronology has involved advances in absolute dating. Both Petrie’s sequence dates and Kaiser’s Stufen constitute relative dating systems; they have a terminus ante quern of c.3000 bc (the presumed date for the unification of Egypt), but they cannot in themselves provide any absolute date for the beginnings and ends of each of the Naqada phases and subdivisions. The necessary links to an absolute chronology were made possible in the second half of the twentieth century by the development of methods of dating based on the analysis of physical and chemical phenomena. As far as the Egyptian Predynastic is concerned, thermoluminescence (TL) and radiocarbon (C-14) dating are the most important of these scientific methods.
Libby tested the accuracy of the radiocarbon dating system on material from the Faiyum region, and since then the testing of samples for dating has been sufficiently systematic to enable the construction of a fairly precise chronological framework, in which Petrie’s three great phases have come to take their place. The first Naqada phase (Amratian) lies between 4000 and 3500 bc, followed by the second phase (Gerzean), from 3500 to 3200 bc, and the final Predynastic phase runs from 3200 to 3000 bc.
The geographical locations of Naqada I sites all lie within Upper Egypt, from Matmar in the north to Kubaniya and Khor Bahan in the South. This situation changes, however, in the Naqada II culture, which is particularly characterized by a process of expansion: emerging from its southern nucleus, it diffuses northwards as far as the eastern edge of the Delta, and also southwards, where it comes into direct contact with the Nubian ‘A Group’.
World History
