Communities Reassembled-Rethinking Identity in Ancient Egypt

This project aims to achieve a better understanding of the concept of communities in ancient Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period and early New Kingdom (ca. 17801500 BCE) and to shed light on how diverse identities are constructed, maintained, and negotiated by means of material culture and social practice. In modern societies, we understand that identity and community membership is complicated, but the question of how we can understand this in past societies is more difficult. Current understanding of community and identity in the multicultural landscape of ancient Egypt is hindered by the assumption of sharply defined cultural groups based on the outdated culture-historical approach, as well as the practice of forcing objects and behaviours to fit into inflexible categories. This project will work to identify the different levels of community in a way not yet achieved in Egyptology. It will be the first theory-based investigation of identities in funerary and settlement landscapes targeted specifically at archaeological contexts that display combinations of material culture and practices that do not fit with the current views of "Egyptian- ness". Data from old and new excavations will be analysed using a tailored combination of both well- established and new technologies. The project data comes from four sites: Saqqara, Qau el-Kebir and Badari, Thebes, and Tell Edfu. This dataset includes a wide variety of objects (e.g. pottery, jewellery, scarabs, stone vessels, textiles, figurines, etc.) and behaviours (e.g. the position of objects in a burial, treatment of the body, refuse formation, etc.). Using this data in conjunction with a new combination of theoretical approaches will make it possible to identify the complex and overlapping communities that more accurately reflect the reality of how identities can be constructed, maintained, and changed by the interactions of people and objects. Project results will lead to new ideas and perspectives by moving beyond the rigid object typologies that ignore diversity in technology, function, and different sets of choices that do not fit neatly into current Egyptological boxes for Egyptian-style or Nubian-style material culture. The resulting communities identified in this project are expected to be more complex, overlapping, and accurate than what is currently distinguishable in Egyptology.