The Badarian Culture of Egypt: A Social Network Approach

In recent years archaeological discourse has shifted to integrative approaches. Nonetheless, imagined boundaries still divide periods, regions and cultures from one another. Much of Egyptological literature is still informed by early scholarship that emphasised these divisions. This thesis re-examines and documents materials collected during Brunton’s excavation at el-Badari. An investigation of down-the-line contacts between the Badarian and surrounding cultures during the 5th and early 4th millennia calBCE is undertaken to understand the place of the Badarian culture in the broader Neolithic of northeast Africa and Chalcolithic of the southern Levant. A synthetic review of objects and raw materials from el-Badari and surrounding regions demonstrates interregional contacts with cultures to the north and south. Raw materials present in Middle Egypt reveal that the Badarian community was engaged in long-distance networks of resource acquisition primarily with the Eastern Desert and Lower Egypt. The archaeological data is modelled utilising Social Network Analysis software and interpreted through the Cultural Entanglement and Strength of Weak Ties theoretical frameworks. The findings present spatio-temporal interactions across northeast Africa and the southern Levant, demonstrating that as exchanges with Lower Egypt increased, contacts with cultures further south became less apparent. The theoretical perspectives explore the phenomenological aspects of socio-cultural changes present in the material culture, which this study suggests emerged as a result of entangled interactions that were neither geographically nor temporally isolated. This work thus re-situates the Badarian culture and Middle Egypt within its spatial and historic continuum.