Someone once said that Egypt was a civilization with no cities, but the paper published by Hoffman, Hamroush, and Allen shows that this is not at all the case. While it is well agreed upon that cities play massive roles in the rise of civilizations, Egypt has always seemed to be the exception. With recent studies in the Hierakonpolis region, however, archaeologists have been forced to adjust that paradigm. New evidence has been brought to light that reveals Egypt did in fact have an urban center. Not only did archaeologists have conclusive evidence of said urban center, but they were able to elaborate upon the ecological conditions that contributed to the rise of such city-structures.
This is an especially important study for a variety of reasons. First off, it shows great progress in the study of Egyptian archaeology and history. Understanding urban development of past civilizations can provide anthropologists and sociologists with analogies for understanding present and future urban development. As has been expressed countless times by various scholars and leaders, the best way to understand present and future conditions is to understand the conditions of the past.
A second, and equally important, aspect of this research project is that it showcases (perfectly) the very nature of science. Science is not static. It is not an unchanging set of ideological frameworks. Quite the opposite, science is dynamic, ever-changing and evolving with the passage of time and accumulation of data. The design of the scientific process, which processual archaeologists adopted over 50 years ago, is formatted to allow room for revision. We accept knowledge we have of specific phenomena that is supported by substantial evidence. But once new evidence is presented, even if it contradicts previous understandings, we must “update” our ways of thinking, so to speak. In such situations, we have to reconsider previous scientific models to ensure we have the most reliable understandings of specific phenomena.
This paper exceptionally underscores the above points concerning scientific reasoning and how we incorporate that theoretical framework into archaeological analysis. At first, our understanding of Egypt was that cities were not a major factor in the development and rise of such a substantial civilization. But, through archaeological work and analysis at Hierakonpolis, archaeologists have been presented with evidence that urban development was in fact a big part of Egypt’s history. In the face of new evidence, archaeologists can now adopt a new way of thinking and studying about Egyptian history, while at the same time, being open to new interpretations in the future.
I also thought that the study of Hierakonpolis was very interesting. Like you said, the study of Ancient Egypt has really come along, as seen in this article with Hierakonpolis. It is amazing how far archaeologists and Egyptologists have come. Hierakonpolis was so interesting to me because of its long history. There is so much to study there, that the article referred to several places that had not even been excavated yet. I also thought your point about the scientific method in this paper was interesting as well. I’m not sure if archaeologists really thought there were no big cities such as Hierakonpolis that added to the Egyptian civilization, but it is certainly important for them to study these cities, and see how they played into Egypt’s development. Even if archaeologists did not have much information on such cities before, I agree that it is important for them to be able to look back at past work and revise their thoughts. It’s so hard to study development in the past through only material remains, so I am curious what led archaeologists to originally dismiss cities like Hierakonpolis as being a major factor in the development of Ancient Egypt. Such revisions of thoughts and conclusions makes me wonder, even though it seems like they know quite a lot about Hierakonpolis now, what else they will find out in the future, and what these new discoveries will lead them to think about Hierakonpolis as a city, but also Egypt as a whole. Perhaps current knowledge will be considered obsolete and inaccurate after new evidence is found.
I found your discussion on the urban development of Hierakonpolis quite intriguing, especially with relation to the reading on state formation that I chose to write about for my blog post. In your blog post you discussed that this studying of Hierakonpolis, and I’m sure it extends to other urban city centers in Egypt, changed how archaeologists viewed ancient Egyptian societies and also how it embodies the scientific process as a whole. In Theories of State Formation, the author also discusses how archaeology as a science has had to undergo a multitude of changes in methods and ideology to be able to more accurately understand the cultures which they are studying. It’s interesting to see how these broader and more abstract ideologies and methods we have for studying state societies discussed in Theories of State Formation, can be seen being applied in specific cases such as that of Hierakonpolis. While reading the article you chose to discuss in tandem with the article on state formation and your blog post, it does make me wonder how our methods and ideologies as they pertain to the study of ancient Egyptian culture will continue to morph, especially as archaeological methods, such as the use of LIDAR, continue to improve and become more refined. Further, I wonder how these ideological changes within the archaeological and Egyptological communities will influence the more public conception, and misconceptions, of ancient Egyptian culture and its interactions with modern day Egyptian culture. I think that it is only through this continued willingness to morph ideologies within the various academic fields that we will be able to gain a deeper understanding of ancient Egypt in all of its complexity.