The Naqada’s practices are intriguing. The ceramics and the grave burials are probably of the most notable practices. Social complexity seems to be a reoccurring motif in both our lectures and the readings. I found myself wondering how the intricate social norms lead to the increase in political complexity. It’s amazing to think of how Naqada/Buto/Ma’adi et al. started – as in when they were primarily hunter gatherers. The increase in social complexity is [in my opinion] primarily linked to the ability to undergo agricultural practices. From what we have learned this is also a primary factor when you look at how the surplus of goods produced by the Nile River Valley contributes to the ability to trade. In order to have good trading practices you need someone to act as the moderator, which may have resulted in the establishment of formal rules.
These formal rules and the moderator (or “local ruling elite” if you will) could have been the catalyst to the origin of the complex political, social, and religious systems that are common during the dynastic period. For me, the main contribution (aside from agricultural practices) to the establishment and the stability of these predynastic sites is the ability to have trade with each other, and in the case of Lower Egypt with Palestine. As with the East India Trading Company there was a transport of goods across long distances because Britain simply did not have access to goods that were readily accessible in India. I feel that this Palestine may have acted as a ‘gateway’ so to speak to Asia and to Europe. The reading references how ‘exotic raw materials’ that were found in dynastic grave sites are there because of the trading system the predynastic communities put in place.
The movement of goods is also a transfer of ideas, which is a critical aspect of globalization. Not to say that globalization was happening on a scale that we can comprehend modernly, but it isn’t to say that some aspects can’t be applied to the predynastic and the dynastic periods. The intermingling of traders also caused a passage of ideas, philosophies, and theologies across space that may not have normally been conquered. This could have also been a contributing factor in increasing the complexity of the political realm. According to Chapter 5 the development of the dynastic states are in response to the movement of goods and ideas – “…Predynastic settlement development in Upper Egypt, from small egalitarian communities, to agricultural towns, to incipient city-states” (p.105).
This “globalization” or at least “regionalization” happens on more levels than I initially would have thought. Generally we look at how globalization affects people now-a-days, and how it affects third world countries in reference to the west. However, the rapid development of these predynastic sites to the dynastic sites are mainly caused by “regionalization” – the movement from Upper Egypt to Lower Egypt to Palestine and back again. These movements are exponential and seem to be the main reason why (aside from the fertile Nile River Valley) the predynastic sites developed as well as they did.
I was also wondering about how exactly the progression from hunters/gatherers to agriculturists lead to the growth of social complexity and specifically the growth of an elite class. I agree with you that agriculture likely had a strong influence on the empowerment of the elites. The idea of elites being moderators wasn’t something I had thought of, but it could very well have been part of what empowered them. I think the process of becoming an elite probably involved moderation of the community, as well as the elites maybe being more successful (through luck or skill) farmers and craftmakers. All of this together probably lead to certain individuals being more sought out for their opinion, and as they demonstrated good leadership and moderation skills they would have continued to be sought out. Eventually this would have built up, after a couple generations into a slightly more privileged elite class and a less privileged class who sought out the elites for help. I’m not sure if this is necessarily what occurred, but it does make sense. The elites, as the “natural” leaders of the community would probably then be the most likely to communicate with other communities, or to be able to leave the community for a time and provision themselves to be able to travel and communicate with other communities.
I’m not sure whether this would have begun to happen with the transition from hunter/gatherers to agriculturalists though because it seems like it could easily have happened earlier to some extent, maybe not with craft specialization, but at least with leaders becoming slightly more important and elite than other members of the community. It is interesting that the evidence from the mortuary record suggests otherwise though, that “small egalitarian communities” (Chapter 5, pg 106) were the norm. I think part of the reason that the elite system didn’t develop earlier has to do again with agriculture and the way that it created the “regionalization” that you talk about. With people settling in and occupying a specific region for agricultural purposes it almost makes it mandatory that they have some kind of order and system of rule to define the regions they occupied. The way that globalization processes worked even thousands of years ago is indeed interesting.