Dissertation: An Analysis of Private Sector Craft Specialization in the Artisan's Village of Deir el Medina of Ramesside Period Egypt

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Betsy Bryan, Ms Kathlyn Cooney will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will utilize extant written records and surviving objects to analyze the economic and social organization of craft production at the ancient Egyptian village of Deir el Medina, located near Thebes. Most habitation sites in ancient Egypt were located in the Nile's alluvial plain and have since been covered with millennia of silt deposits. Deir el Medina, on the other hand represents an extraordinary and rate habitation site preserved in the desert. The remarkable well-preserved mud brick homes and associated living debris belonged to the workmen who built, carved and decorated the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. Many of these individuals were literate and, in addition to their official work, functioned as semi-independent craftsmen who fashioned coffins and other ritual and funerary related objects for private sale. It appears that the state supported such private enterprise and provided the necessary wood and other raw materials. Much of such work was arranged on a contractual basis as individual items were made to order and the dry desert environment has preserved thousands of written documents, including many contracts between artisan and purchaser. These provide an unprecedented opportunity to understand the economic and social organization of a craft industry within the context of a centralized state controlled enterprise. Although it is unlikely that specific items and contracts can be matched, many objects produced by Deir el Medina workers have been recovered, are curated in museum collections and available for study. With National Science Foundation support, Ms Cooney will visit archives which contain copies of the documents, study craft objects themselves in several museums and conduct fieldwork at the site of Deir el Medina to gain insight into the spatial organization of craft production. The processes which led to the rise of civilization in Egypt occurred independently in many parts of the world and thus reflect not historic chance but rather an underlying set of principles. To achieve their goal of understanding how complex societies evolve, archaeologists must rely heavily on objects, most often ceramics, recovered through excavation and then use these remains to reconstruct the social and economic systems they indirectly reflect. In recent years scientists have focused on the context within which such items were produced. On this basis further speculation about social organization and degree of political centralization are possible. However because there is rarely an independent control, it is difficult to know whether such an analytical framework and the conclusions which derive from it are correct. Deir el Medina situation offers a unique opportunity to address this issue since it is possible to compare the patterning of material objects with information derived from the written record. Preliminary work, for example, indicates that the distinction between centralized and individualized control may be overly simple since both existed side by side, and likely reinforced each other at the site. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and help to refine an important area of archaeological theory. It will also assist in training a promising young researcher.