Workers' Cemetery at Hierakonpolis: Rescue of an Endangered Resource

University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville AR

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Rose and his collaborators will conduct two intensive excavation and analysis seasons at Hierakonpolis, located 650 miles south of Cairo. The site is clearly associated with the birth of the ancient Egyptian state, and has produced spectacular finds, such as the Narmer Palette and the large ceremonial mace-heads of King Scorpion and Narmer, the earliest Egyptian kings. These objects and the size of the site indicate its importance as a possible capital of an early kingdom prior to unification. No other site can tell us as much about when and how Egypt was transformed from a scatter of farming villages into a great kingdom of the ancient world. Hierakonpolis is the first where there are three widely separated and distinct class cemeteries: elites, skilled middle class, and laboring poor. We focus on the cemetery of the working class. The site is also unique for the level of preservation where the hot dry sand has preserved delicate matting, basketry, fabric and food stuffs, as well as human skin, fingernails, hair, internal organs, stomach contents and human feces. Teams of will excavate and comprehensively analyze 200 skeletons each season. Skeletal and dental analyses will be used to reconstruct differences in diet, disease, stress, and work loads between social classes. We propose to use the skeletal and archaeological data to test the following: if the elites, skilled middle class, and laboring poor all derived from the same population; if disease, stress, and parasite loads low enough not to suppress per capita production of the laboring poor; if the laboring class received sufficient nutrition to maintained a high level of economic output; and if the laboring class was able to produce the surpluses necessary to support the other classes without exceeding normal levels of effort by looking at arthritis. This site is highly threatened by agricultural development and within several years will be completely destroyed by bulldozing. Increased soil moisture which results from irrigation will also cause the deterioration of fragile materials which have been preserved in the dry desert environment. Thus this research must be conducted now.