Badarian

  General Description   The Badarian, a Neolithic archaeological culture located in Upper Egypt and dating from c. 4400 to 3300 BCE, was first described in 1928 by archaeologists Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson, who excavated in the Badari district near Assyut. ^[1] Its relationship to an earlier culture, called the Tasian, is unclear, ^[2] but there is some evidence to link it to the later Naqada I period in Upper Egypt. ^[2] Little is known of the everyday lives of the people who occupied the Badarian sites: our information comes mainly from the numerous grave sites in the region around Assyut.
Population and political organization
Research on Badarian sites has yielded a total of about 600 graves and 40 poorly documented settlements. ^[2] The culture was first identified in the el-Badari region, near the modern city of Sohag, but several small sites near the villages of Qau el-Kebir, Hammamiya, Mostagedda, and Matmar are also categorized as Badarian. ^[2] Characteristic Badarian material culture has also been discovered much further south at Mahgar Dendera, Armant, Elkab, and Hierakonpolis, as well as to the east of the Nile in the Wadi Hammamat. ^[2]
The archaeology of the period has inevitably been affected by the flooding of the Nile over the millennia: any larger, more permanent settlements were likely situated close to the great river and subsequently washed away or covered with alluvium. ^[2] Surviving remains come from raised desert spurs and include ’huts and windbreaks associated with hearths and large, well-shaped granary pits or silos’. ^[3] A Badarian settlement at Deir Tasa covered an area of about 5000 square metres. ^[3] At the Seshat standard of 50-200 inhabitants per hectare, this gives us an estimated population between the range of 25 and 100 inhabitants.
Evidence from Badarian settlements shows that the people who occupied these sites were primarily engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, ^[2] but we know trade also occurred. Badarians imported raw materials like wood, turquoise, shells and ivory and exchanged goods with groups from as far away as Palestine, the Red Sea and Syria. ^[4] Model boats found at the site of Merimda to the north ’suggest that boats and canoes were already in use [in Egypt] before 4500 B.C.’ ^[5]
Very little can be concluded about Badarian political and social structure, but analysis of grave goods shows that there was an unequal distribution of wealth, and that the wealthier graves tended to be kept separate within the cemeteries. ^[2] However, no monumental remains have been found so it is likely that higher-status members of society did not command a significant labour force.

[1]: (Hassan 1988, 138) F. A. Hassan. 1988. ’The Predynastic of Egypt’. Journal of World Prehistory 2 (2): 135-85.

[2]: (Hendrickx and Vermeersch 2000, 36-40) Stan Hendrickx and Pierre Vermeersch. 2000. ’Prehistory: From the Palaeolithic to the Badarian Culture’, in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 16-40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[3]: (Hassan 1988, 153) F. A. Hassan. 1988. ’The Predynastic of Egypt’. Journal of World Prehistory 2 (2): 135-85.

[4]: (Trigger 1983, 29) Bruce G. Trigger. 1983. ’The Rise of Egyptian Civilization’, in Ancient Egypt: A Social History edited by Bruce G. Trigger, Barry J. Kemp, David O’Connor and Alan B Lloyd, 1-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[5]: (Hassan 1988, 157) F. A. Hassan. 1988. ’The Predynastic of Egypt’. Journal of World Prehistory 2 (2): 135-85.