In upper Egypt there is evidence of a transitional culture contemporaneous with the Faiyum A. In western Thebes scatters of lithics with some organic-tempered ceramics have been found by Polish archaeologists at the site of el-Tarif, and the associated material is called the Tarifian culture. Another Tarifian site has been excavated at Armant to the south. The chipped stone tools, which are mainly flake tools with a few microliths, seem to be intermediate in typology between Epipaleolithic and Neolithic ones. There is no evidence of food production or domesticated animals. In the New Kingdom this region of western Thebes was greatly disturbed by excavation of tombs for high-status officials, so most of the evidence of this prehistoric culture has probably been destroyed. What is known about the Tarifian culture suggests that a Neolithic economy was to be found farther north in the Faiyum at this time, and was not yet fully developed in the Nile Valley of upper Egypt, where hunter-gatherers were making very small numbers of ceramics.
South of the Faiyum, clear evidence of a Neolithic culture is first found at sites in the el-Badari district, located on desert spurs on the east bank in Middle Egypt. over 50 sites were excavated in the 1920s and 1930s by Guy Brunton, and more recently Badarian sites have been found farther south - as far south as Elkab and Hierakonpolis. From the el-Badari district sites Brunton identified a previously unknown type of pottery, which he thought was typologically earlier than the ceramics from Predynastic sites farther south. Made of red Nile clay, frequently with a blackened rim and thin walls in bowl and cup shapes, these vessels had a rippled surface achieved by combing and then polishing. Brunton’s hypothesis was demonstrated to be correct by Gertrude Caton Thompson’s stratigraphic excavations at another el-Badari district site, Hammamiya, where she found rippled Badarian potsherds in the lowest stratum, beneath strata with Predynastic wares. Later investigations of el-Badari district sites were conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by Diane Holmes (Institute of Archaeology, University College London). Holmes obtained radiocarbon dates of ca. 45004000 Bc, also verifying the early date of the Badarian.
Near Deir Tasa, Brunton identified some artifacts as coming from an earlier culture that he called Tasian. Tasian pottery includes black-topped ware and black beakers with incised decoration, which have subsequently also been found at sites in the Eastern and Western Deserts. This evidence probably represents seasonal movements of desert peoples into the Nile Valley as the deserts were becoming more arid.
At the Badarian sites, Brunton excavated mainly storage pits and associated artifacts, the only remains of settlements, and cemeteries. At one site he found postholes of some kind of light organic structure, but evidence of permanent houses and sedentism was lacking. Possibly the sites that Brunton excavated were outlying camps, once associated with larger and more permanent villages being sited within the floodplain and now destroyed.
Badarian peoples practiced farming and animal husbandry, of cattle, sheep, and goat. They cultivated emmer wheat, six-row barley, lentils, and flax, and collected tubers. Fishing was definitely important, but hunting much less so. Bifacially worked tools include axes and sickle blades, which would have been used by farmers, but also concave-based arrowheads for hunting. The stone tools made from side-blow flakes suggest origins in the Western Desert, and the rippled pottery may have developed from the burnished Neolithic pottery known in the Western desert.
What may be seen at the Badarian sites is some of the earliest evidence in Egypt of pronounced ceremonialism surrounding burials, which become much more elaborate in the fourth millennium bc Naqada culture. Brunton excavated about 750 Badarian burials, most of which were contracted ones in shallow oval pits. Most burials were placed on the left side, facing west with the head to the south. This later became the standard orientation of Naqada culture burials. The Badarian burials had few grave goods, but there was usually one pot in a grave. Some burials also had jewelry, made of beads of seashell, stone, bone, and ivory. A few burials contained stone cosmetic palettes or chert tools. Although burial elaboration becomes much more pronounced in the later Naqada culture, Wendy Anderson has suggested that a few Badarian burials show greater wealth than the majority - suggesting an incipient (two-tiered) form of social differentiation.
Box 4-D Prehistoric chronology (taken and partially revised from The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw [2000])
Paleolithic, ca. 700,000-7000 bp (before present)
Lower Paleolithic, ca. 700/500,000-250,000 bp Middle Paleolithic, ca. 250,000-50,000 bp Upper Paleolithic, ca. 50,000-24,000 bp Late Paleolithic, ca. 24,000-10,000 bp Epipaleolithic, ca. 10,000-7000 bp
Saharan Neolithic, ca. 8800-4700 bc
Early Neolithic, ca. 8800-6800 bc Middle Neolithic, ca. 6600-5100 bc Late Neolithic, ca. 5100-4700 bc
Nile Valley Neolithic, ca. 5500-4000 bc Lower Egypt
Faiyum A culture, ca. 5500-4500 bc Merimde Beni-Salame, ca. 4750-4250 bc el-Omari, ca. 4600-4400 bc
Middle Egypt
Badarian culture, ca. 4500-4000 bc
Burials such as the Badarian ones represent the material expression of important beliefs and practices in a society concerning the transition from life to death (see Box 5-B). Burial evidence may symbolize roles and social status of the dead and commemoration of this by the living, expressions of grief by the living, and possibly also concepts of an afterlife. The elaborate process of burial, which would become profoundly important in pharaonic society for 3,000 years, is much more pronounced in the Neolithic Badarian culture of Middle and upper Egypt than in the earlier Saharan Neolithic or the Neolithic in northern Egypt.
Many Badarian and contemporaneous sites are located at the mouths of large wadis that ended in the Nile Valley. Studies by geologists David Dufton and Tom Branton suggest that pastoral nomads had seasonal settlements at the mouths of these wadis, but as the desert climate became drier occasional rainfall created wadi wash-out and vegetation no longer grew on the wadi floors. Later settlements became more and more focused on the Nile Valley and its changing geomorphological setting - so that by Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom times settlements were located on the river levees.
World History
