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Cited by 6Ancient Egypt and ArchaeologyArchaeology and ancient environmental studiesAncient and Medieval Archaeology Studies

Telling Times: Time and Ritual in the Realization of the Early Egyptian State

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Stevenson, Alice·2015·Cambridge Archaeological Journal
DOI 10.1017/s0959774314000742
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Abstract

The increasing use of Bayesian-modelled absolute chronologies has met with calls for more sophisticated accounts of not just our perception of archaeological time, but also of past temporal experience. Using a case study of fourth-millennium bc Egypt this article seeks to address this. It is a period that has long been perceived through a detailed relative framework, a legacy of Flinders Petrie's development of seriation. Yet this legacy imparted more than a framework, for its origins within nineteenth-century cultural evolutionism veiled an explanatory apparatus that encourages linear and gradualist narratives of Predynastic development. By setting a new series of absolute dates within a historically informed critique of relative dating it is possible to question previous assumptions concerning tempos of change. This does not obviate relative typologies, however. Rather it encourages us to ask new questions as to what they might represent. It is argued that in evaluating new absolute measurements of time with reference to ritual activity that distinctive temporalities in the transformation of society can be discerned, ones in which world's first territorial state became a social reality for past communities.

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  • These royal edifices materialized a very different set of social relationships and economies of sacrifice than in Naqada IIIA-B.

    “These royal edifices additionally materialized a very different set of social relationships and economies of sacrifice than in Naqada IIIA-B (Stevenson 2015a;Wengrow 2006, p. 226).”

    From The Egyptian Predynastic and State Formation (2016) · cites this paper as Stevenson 2015a

    In “Contrasting temporalities: From Predynastic to Early Dynastic Egypt” (page unavailable), Stevenson says First Dynasty burials constructed “a very different set of social relationships” from those of the Predynastic funerary setting. The paper also describes an unprecedented scale of burials around royal monuments, but treats human sacrifice as a possibility supported by circumstantial evidence; it does not explicitly compare distinct “economies of sacrifice” with Naqada IIIA-B. (LLM, conf=0.84)

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Authors
Stevenson, A.
Affiliations
University College London (GB)
Corresponding author
Stevenson, Alice
ORCID
Stevenson, Alice
Venue
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2015-02
Volume
25
Issue
1
Pages
145-161
ISSN
  • 0959-7743 (ISSN-L)
  • 1474-0540
DOI
10.1017/s0959774314000742
OpenAlex
W2117663907
Cited by
6
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2016: 1
FWCI
2.16
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 31 d)
Locations
  • Cambridge Archaeological Journal (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • University College London
  • Cardiff University
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Ancient Egypt and Archaeology
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies
Keywords
Predynastic Egypt, 4th millennium BC, absolute chronology, Bayesian dating, relative dating, seriation, cultural evolutionism, Flinders Petrie, ritual, temporality, state formation, social change

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