“A Model of Urban Development for the Hierakonpolis Region from Predynastic through Old Kingdom Times” by Michael Allen Hoffman, Hany A. Hamroush, and Ralph O. Allen discusses the rise and fall of Hierakonpolis. I thought it was a very interesting history, going from a center of wealth and politics to just a filled in pit set aside for development. The authors claim that the decline of Hierakonpolis was not due solely to environmental conditions, such as the decline of Nile flooding, but a combination of both these factors, as well as economic, political, and social ones. If the capital had not moved to Memphis, and Hierakonpolis had stayed a center of urban activity, how would residents have dealt with worsening environmental conditions? Would these have affected people’s lives enough that they would have to branch out and find other resources, and therefor interact with new populations? And then what would have resulted from that? Another thing that intrigued me was the final desertion of the site. The last people living in Hierakonpolis left for El Kab. The city must have been pretty sad if it was easier for the local population to uproot and move elsewhere.

Another thing I noticed were the conclusions drawn based on archaeological evidence. For example, through coring at Nekhan they found four levels of predynastic occupation, and with this they deducted that Nekhan was above the normal annual flood level. Another was when they used stratigraphic evidence to determine that the Nile had receded some was partly a reason for the change to major centralization. Due to these conclusions, more are made, creating a chain of information on what happened in the span of Hierakonpolis. If one conclusion is wrong, then all the following ones based on that are also wrong. Of course, there is no way of knowing, and archaeologists do the best they can with what they have, but what if some type of evidence was incorrectly interpreted, or something else went wrong, and everything that followed was also inaccurate, and everything we think we know is wrong?

Finally, this piece was published in 1986, so what has happened since then? At the time this was published, the authors say there were three known colonial sites at Hierakonpolis, and that none of them had been excavated. It didn’t elaborate into why. Were the sites unreachable, or was there some sort of political argument over who would be allowed to work there? Have the sites since been excavated? And if they have been, what has been discovered?