Badarian culture

El-Badari
Geographical range	Egypt
Period	Neolithic
Dates	circa 5,000 B.C.[1] — circa 4,000 B.C.
Type site	El-Badari
Characteristics	Contemporary with Tasian culture, Merimde culture
Preceded by	Faiyum A culture
Followed by	Amratian culture

The Badarian culture provides the earliest direct evidence of agriculture in Upper Egypt during the Predynastic Era.^[2] It flourished between 4400 and 4000 BC,^[3] and might have already emerged by 5000 BC.^[1]

Location and excavation

Ancient Badarian mortuary figurine of a woman, held at the Louvre

Badari culture is so named because of its discovery at El-Badari (Arabic: البداري), an area in the Asyut Governorate in Upper Egypt. It is located between Matmar and Qau, approximately 200 km (120 mi) northwest of present-day Luxor (ancient Thebes). El-Badari includes numerous Predynastic cemeteries (notably Mostagedda, Deir Tasa and the cemetery of el-Badari itself), as well as at least one early Predynastic settlement at Hammamia. The area stretches for 30 km (19 mi) along the east bank of the Nile. Some Badarian sites also show evidence of later predynastic use.^[4]

It was first excavated by Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson between 1922 and 1931.^[5][6]

About forty settlements and six hundred graves have been located.

Cultural features

The Badarian economy was based mostly on agriculture, fishing and animal husbandry. Populations in the Badari culture planted wheat, barley, lentils and tubers. Pits that have been found may have served as granaries. They kept cattle, sheep, and goats; their livestock, as well as dogs, were given ceremonial burial. They used boomerangs,^[7] fished from the Nile and hunted gazelle.

Little is known of their buildings, although remains of wooden stumps have been found at one site and may have been associated with a hut or shelter of unknown construction.

The deceased were wrapped in reed matting or animal skins and buried in pits with their heads usually laid to the south, looking west.^[7] This seems contiguous with the later dynastic traditions regarding the west as the land of the dead. They were sometimes accompanied by female mortuary figures carved from ivory,^[7] or with personal items such as shells, flint tools, amulets in the shape of animals like the antelope and hippopotamus,^[7] and jewelry^[7] made of ivory, quartz or copper. Green malachite ore has also been detected on stone palettes, perhaps for personal decoration. Tools included end-scrapers, axes, bifacial sickles and concave-base arrowheads. Social stratification has been inferred from the burying of more prosperous members of the community in a different part of the cemetery.

red-polished ware with blackened tops has been discovered in these cemeteries. These works with their distinctive rippled pattern is considered the most characteristic element of the Badarian culture.

Trade

Basalt vases found at Badari sites were most likely traded up the river from the Delta region or from the northwest. Shells came in quantities from the Red Sea. Turquoise possibly came from Sinai. A Syrian connection is suggested for a four-handled pot of hard pink ware. The black pottery, with white incised designs, may have come directly from the West, or from the South. The porphyry slabs are like the later ones in Nubia, but the material could have come from the Red Sea Mountains. The glazed steatite beads were not made locally. These all suggest that the Badarians were not an isolated tribe, but were in contact with the cultures on all sides of them. Nor were they nomadic, having pots of such size and fragility that would have been unsuitable for use by wanderers.^[8]

Ancestral origins

A Badarian burial. 4500–3850 BC

The Badarian culture seems to have had multiple sources, of which the Western Desert was probably the most influential. The Badari culture was likely not solely restricted to the Badari region, since related finds have been made farther to the south at Mahgar Dendera, Armant, Elkab and Nekhen (named Hierakonpolis by the Greeks), as well as to the east in the Wadi Hammamat. Archaeological evidence has suggested that the Tasian and Badarian Nile Valley sites were a peripheral network of earlier African cultures that featured the movement of Badarian, Saharan, Nubian and Nilotic populations.^[9]

Dental trait analysis of Badarian fossils found that they were closely related to other Afroasiatic-speaking populations inhabiting Northeast Africa and the Maghreb. Among the ancient populations, the Badarians were nearest to other ancient Egyptians (Naqada, Hierakonpolis, Abydos and Kharga in Upper Egypt; Hawara in Lower Egypt), and C-Group and Pharaonic era skeletons excavated in Lower Nubia, followed by the A-Group culture bearers of Lower Nubia, the Kerma and Kush populations in Upper Nubia, the Meroitic, X-Group and Christian period inhabitants of Lower Nubia, and the Kellis population in the Dakhla Oasis.^{[10]: 219–20} Among the recent groups, the Badari markers were morphologically closest to the Shawia and Kabyle Berber populations of Algeria as well as Bedouin groups in Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, followed by other Afroasiatic-speaking populations in the Horn of Africa.^{[10]: 222–4} The Late Roman era Badarian skeletons from Kellis were also phenotypically distinct from those belonging to other populations in Sub-Saharan Africa.^{[10]: 231–2}

Other cranial analysis and skeletal studies have demonstrated strong biological affinities between Badarians and other African populations.^[11][12][13] Shomarka Keita, a biological anthropologist, in 1990 conducted a craninometric analysis of pre-dynastic Badarian and Naqada skulls which found both series to "cluster with tropical Africans".^[14][15] A 2005 study was conducted by Keita on pre-dynastic Egyptian Badarian male crania with comparative analysis made to other African and European series. The Badarians showed greater affinity to indigenous Africans while not being identical. This suggested that the Badarians were more affiliated with the local and an indigenous African populations rather than with the European series.^[16] In 2020, Goode analysed a series of crania, including two Egyptian (predynastic Badarian and Nagada series), a series of A-Group Nubians and a Bronze Age series from Lachish, Palestine. The two pre-dynastic series had strongest afffinities, followed by closeness between the Nagada and the Nubian series. Overall, both Egyptian samples were more similar to the Nubian series than to the Lachish series.^[17]

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  Vase in the shape of a hippopotamus. Early Predynastic, Badarian. 5th millennium BC. From Mostagedda. This vessel is carved from elephant ivory. The fine modeling and attention to detail show the skill in achieving these pieces.

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  Ancient Badarian mortuary figurine of a woman, held at the British Museum

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  Badarian arrowhead, 4000-3800 BC.^[18]

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  String of bead, Badarian, 4400-3800 BC.

Relative chronology

See also

• Merimde culture
• Tasian culture

References

Sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Badari culture.

• Badarian Art Badarian figurines in the British Museum
• Badarian Government and Religious Evolution
• The Journal of African History, published by the Cambridge University Press

Coordinates: 27°00′N 31°25′E / 27.000°N 31.417°E / 27.000; 31.417