DESCENT GROUP COMPETITION AND ECONOMIC-STRATEGIES IN PREDYNASTIC EGYPT

During the late fourth and early third millennia Bf the pristine state of Egypt arose from a group of independent, Neolithic agricultural vi llages. The traditional explanation of the unification of Upper and Lo wer Egypt is that Narmer conquered the Delta. A diachronic model based on intergroup competition suggests that a gradual coalescence of poli ties occurred. Chiefdoms at Nagada, Thinis, and Hierakonpolis are hypo thesized to have formed in the middle Predynastic and were then absorb ed by the Hierakonpolis polity in the later fourth millennium. Later, the Upper Egyptian polity absorbed the Deltaic one. If such a model is accurate, it may be possible to identify intragroup competition at th e level of a single polity (as weil as interpolity competition). Here, a mortuary analysis of the large Predynastic cemetery at Naga-ed-Der indicates that several descent groups used the facility simultaneously . Grave inventories indicate that the different groups experienced eco nomic trajectories consistent with a competition model. At various tim es in the use of the cemetery, different groups displayed,greater amou nts of wealth, and ii was derived from different sources. In the earli est phase of the cemetery, trade was directed toward the south. In the second phase evidence of outside trade vanishes at about the time of the Chalcolithic collapse in the Southern Levant. In the third phase, trade rebounds, but now it is oriented toward Syria and Mesopotamia. T he outside contacts appear to have been an important element in elites ' gaining and justifying positions of power. The political unification of Egypt may be the result of the efforts uf Upper Egyptian chieftain s to control the lucrative trade routes with Southwest Asia; the creat ion of an Egyptian state may then be seen as an unintended consequence , in that it resulted not from the tenuous political unification forge d putatively by Narmer, but from a series of actions throughout the fi rst two dynasties to retain and extend economic, political, and ideolo gical control of the Nile Valley. (C) 1997 Academic Press.