Abstract
Finally! Studies of the Pan-Grave archaeological culture now have a clear place to begin. Sincere thanks need to be given to Aaron de Souza for doing the much-required hard work of organizing and verifying the Pan-Grave archaeological record. Prior to this point, studies of the Pan-Grave tradition have been difficult because we had only basic, often contradictory information about these peoples.
In order to conduct his research, de Souza re-examined the primary Pan-Grave ceramic data from the ground up. He scoured museum collections, archives, and publications, and, as a member of several archaeological expeditions, he examined hundreds of new finds, allowing him to re-evaluate and redefine every aspect of Pan-Grave ceramics. From this research, de Souza delineates exactly which sites have Pan-Grave remains and which sites have been falsely identified; he provides full bibliographies for all of them. He establishes a typology for Pan-Grave ceramics and a classification system for their recording. And he puts everything within historical contexts.
This book is written for a variety of academic audiences, and there is important information for everyone to learn. It is also very clearly written and organized, allowing multiple important conclusions to surface that change how we understand the Pan-Grave peoples, and how we understand the archaeological cultures of the Late Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate Period.
What Everyone Should Know – Chronology and Variation
The primary goal of de Souza’s research was to identify similarities and differences among Pan-Grave ceramic traditions that could be linked to chronology and history. In order to do so, de Souza principally examined material from Pan-Grave cemeteries, which could be directly linked to their cultural identities and connections (Pan-Grave settlements still are not well known, and Pan-Grave ceramics within Egyptian settlements offer too many variables on which to base a study). By examining cemetery and ceramic distribution, decoration, and size, he disproves our long-held assumption that Pan-Grave ceramics and cemeteries did not vary chronologically or regionally. Interestingly, his study of Pan-Grave cemeteries and their chronology demonstrates that no Pan-Grave cemetery lasted for more than two to three generations.
Pan-Grave pottery was produced by small local communities who had limited distribution and limited materials. As a result, they would attempt to recreate the same meaningful shapes and decorations as their predecessors, but often used different fabrics or forming technologies to do so. Nevertheless, their pottery was significant to their identities, and, de Souza speculates, they may have used the objects in everyday life and then placed the same types of objects in the burials of the deceased for use after death (however, he has not fully verified his speculation). The Pan-Grave peoples likely originated as small groups of semi-nomadic pastoralists. For that reason and because of the various types of local materials available, Pan-Grave pottery came from very localized and distinct traditions. Often, as a result, similar objects can look diverse at different, but contemporary sites. Indeed, de Souza discovered variability amongst all aspects of the Pan-Grave traditions; this is not limited to pottery, but also extends to grave shape and structure.
Based on the variability of mortuary traditions, de Souza divides Pan-Grave remains into five main geographic areas: 1) Middle Egypt from Rifeh to Hu, 2) Southern Upper Egypt from Hu to Elephantine, 3) Lower Nubia between the First and Second Cataracts, 4) Upper Nubia from the Dongola Reach to the Fourth Cataract, and 5) The Eastern Desert and the Atbai. This fifth area might be better redefined because all of de Souza’s examples (citing Manzo) for the fifth location are from the Atbai and the Red Sea Hills. Both of these areas are very far to the south, east of the Sixth Cataract, and there are no examples cited from the Eastern Desert or the Red Sea Coast east of Egypt or Lower Nubia. Therefore, category five might simply be called ‘The Atbai’ so as to not mislead researchers. De Souza demonstrates that all geographic areas have their own local manifestations of Pan-Grave material culture. In order to emphasize the differences, like branches on a tree, he refers to them as traditions within a Pan-Grave horizon, highlighting the plurality.
Because there is much more evidence for the first three of these regional divisions, he refers to them together as the ‘Nile-Valley Pan-Grave Tradition’, and he divides these three Pan-Grave traditions into four chronological periods within the Nile Valley: 1) Early Nile Valley Pan-Grave, 2) Transitional Nile Valley Pan-Grave, 3) Egyptianizing Nile Valley Pan-Grave, and 4) Late Nile Valley Pan-Grave.
The Early Nile Valley phase dates to the late Middle Kingdom from the reign of Amenemhet III to the beginning of the Thirteenth Dynasty. It includes the sites of Tod, Hierakonpolis HK21A, Hierakonpolis HK47, Nag el-Qarmilla, and Aniba (Cemetery C). De Souza argues that the Pan-Grave peoples first came to the Nile Valley in two locations from the Eastern Desert, Southern Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia, and then expanded from there. These are small cemeteries that are relatively isolated from all other Egyptian and Nubian sites, and they all differ slightly from each other, thus exemplifying localized variability. This phase is characterized by roughly circular, shallow graves, frequently containing irregular black-topped restricted rounded bowls. A few horned bowls come from this period too. They do not contain Egyptian-made weapons, and the few ‘weapons’ in their burials were likely used as tools. Due to their size and variation, and the short length of time that the cemeteries were used, de Souza suggests that each cemetery may have belonged to a different extended family, making each community distinct.
The second phase, Transitional Nile Valley, dates from the Thirteenth to the early Seventeenth Dynasty. It includes cemeteries Qau 1300, Badari 3900, Badari 5400, Hu Cemetery X, and Armant 1900. All of these cemeteries are also relatively small, and so were probably used by extended families. This is a continuation of Phase 1, with a little more of everything. It is characterized by circular and oval graves. Most cemeteries include irregular black-topped pottery, as in the first phase. However, the highly burnished Pan-Grave pottery starts to appear in the cemeteries of Qau and Badari. It seems then that more Egyptian-Pan-Grave interactions were occurring. Imitation wares (Nubian style pots using wheel-made manufacturing techniques) are found. And, coincidentally, there is a distinct increase in the amount of Pan-Grave ceramics found in Egyptian settlements in this period, as well.
The third phase, Egyptianizing Nile Valley, dates to the Seventeenth Dynasty, the high time of the Second Intermediate Period when Egypt was at war with the Hyksos and the Nubians. This is the longest phase, and most of our evidence for the Pan-Grave tradition comes from this time. Pan-Grave cemeteries in this phase include Rifeh Cemetery S, Mostagedda 3100/3200, Balabish, Shellal Cemetery 7, Kubban Cemetery 110, Debeira East (SJE Site 74), Debeira East (SJE Site 170), and Adindan Cemetery K. The Pan-Grave cemeteries of Phase 3 are found in Middle Egypt and Lower Nubia and seem to disappear from Upper Egypt, even though Pan-Grave ceramics are still found in contemporary Upper Egyptian settlements. De Souza notes significantly that two distinct types of cemeteries were used at this point. First, the small, extended family cemeteries with circular and oval graves continue. Thus, we can assume that small communities of Pan-Grave peoples still existed in Egypt as they had since Phase 1. Second, large cemeteries of over 100 graves appear; these include circular, oval, and rectangular graves with bodies laid flat in an extended position. In addition, they sometimes contain Egyptian weapons and other Egyptianizing decorative trends such as the famous bucranium with ‘Qeskanet’ (a name?) written on it in hieroglyphs. In Phase 3, the Pan-Grave burials are distinguished by the increased use of defined and applied black-topped pottery. Because of the contemporary war, the weapons, the large size of the cemeteries, and Ryholt’s earlier observation that these cemeteries were near Egyptian urban centers and near war-torn borders in the north and south, de Souza supports the idea that some Pan-Grave peoples buried in the large cemeteries were likely hired by the Egyptians as mercenaries.
The last phase, Late Nile Valley, dates to the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty. This phase we know very little about. It is only verified in Hu Cemetery Y/YS and Ginari 58:100. At this point all other Pan-Grave cemeteries stopped being used, and Pan-Grave traditions were in decline everywhere. Also at this time, more Egyptian vessels were being painted to imitate traditional Nubian-style wares.
In order to explain these patterns, de Souza speculates that the original Pan-Grave pastoral nomads migrated from the Eastern Desert. Something happened around 1850 BCE causing these people to leave their homelands and move to various urban centers. This expansion included extended families moving into Upper Egypt, Upper Nubia, and the Atbai all around the same time. From there, the people changed how their culture was displayed and represented in their material cultural remains, like pottery and graves. In Egypt, these people then expanded, moved, and sometimes took on Egyptian traits within the changing political situations of the Second Intermediate Period. De Souza sees this as one primary wave of migration, rather than several groups of Pan-Grave nomadic peoples trickling into Egypt from 1850–1550 BCE. However, we should consider that multiple waves of migrant families arrived during those 300 years.
What Ceramicists and Dig Directors Should Know
This book is invaluable for all ceramicists and dig directors working on Middle Kingdom to early New Kingdom sites. De Souza painstakingly catalogues Pan-Grave materials with an emphasis on cemeteries and their ceramics. It is the first comprehensive study to look at the material in all regions. His extensive tables at the back of the book provide the information to be checked and referenced. Black-topped ware is the most useful type of Pan-Grave ceramic for characterizing an object’s or a context’s chronological and regional division. De Souza has established a new framework that all ceramicists should use to identify, describe, and classify Pan-Grave pottery. This system was already proven in the field and was designed taking the advantages and disadvantages of all earlier systems into account. This catalogue and sourcebook extensively identify typologies, terminology, and classification in a meaningful, systematic, clear, and applied way. His system should be uniformly accepted and adopted for all future work. De Souza also advocates that Nubian pottery differs from Egyptian pottery so much that each archaeological team should include a specialist specifically to examine the Nubian wares.
The Knit-Picky Issues
I would like to commend Aaron de Souza for organizing, cataloguing, and researching all of the data on the Pan-Grave peoples. He has laid a superb foundation for the reconstruction of history. That being said, I do not agree with all of his conclusions.
First, de Souza advocates that the Pan-Grave peoples left the Eastern Desert around 1850 BCE because of climate change. He references Semna Dispatch 5, where Medjay pastoral nomads claim that the ‘desert is dying of hunger’ when they are asking the Egyptians for jobs, and de Souza cites a few other secondary sources where authors seem to claim that the climate changed at this time. The problem is that the other interpretations are all based on that one scant reference in the Semna Dispatches. There is no scientific or documentary evidence for the climate actually changing around 1850 BCE. All real references to climate change date to around 2200 BCE, in the First Intermediate Period. We should not conflate these two periods in time. In my opinion, we know only that the Pan-Grave peoples may have left their homelands beginning around 1850 BCE, and we cannot be sure what caused it.
Second, de Souza incorporates the ceramics from the Atbai and the Red Sea Hills into discussions of the Pan-Grave in the Nile Valley. He believes that their connections are ‘undeniable’ and that the similarities in the decoration are striking. However, de Souza is aware that, besides pottery, no other Pan-Grave material culture connected with their identity—such as mother-of-pearl spacer jewellery and animal skulls—have been found in the Atbai. Thus, in my opinion, we still have little evidence for his claim that the Pan-Grave peoples lived throughout the whole of the Eastern Desert (even the sherds at Mersa Gawasis are not really Pan-Grave, as de Souza discusses). Additionally, all of the Pan-Grave ceramics in the Atbai and the Red Sea Hills are from surface finds; none are from a cemetery. Yet de Souza compares the pottery from the surface at the Atbai to those from cemeteries in the Nile Valley. However, the surface finds of the Atbai would be better compared to surface finds from settlements in Egypt. Peoples’ identities manifest differently in different contexts. Although he may be correct that a branch of pastoral nomads tangentially connected to the Pan-Grave migrated to the Atbai, his broader conclusions cannot yet be verified.
Third, when de Souza started the project, he chose, appropriately, to privilege Pan-Grave cemetery data over the data from Pan-Grave ceramics in Egyptian settlements because the latter has led to many more questions than answers. He does devote one chapter to Pan-Grave ceramics in Egyptian settlements, but this topic really needs a volume of its own. The problem, in this chapter, is that de Souza disproportionately privileges ceramics from the Egyptian settlements of Tell Edfu and Elephantine, and he under-considers Pan-Grave ceramics from other settlements. As a result, the version of history constructed is skewed and somewhat inconsistently considered. For example, while no Pan-Grave cemeteries are verified in Upper Egypt during Phase 3, de Souza claims that the peoples were present because their pottery is found at Tell Edfu and Elephantine. However, because there are no Pan-Grave cemeteries in Middle Egypt during Phase 1, de Souza claims that the Pan-Grave people were not there—despite the presence of Pan-Grave ceramics at Abydos. It would seem that these two contexts should be interpreted the same way.
Fourth, de Souza notices the important pattern that Phase 3 cemeteries occur near the Egyptian borders of Cusae and in Lower Nubia, but not in Upper Egypt, where the Egyptian capital of Thebes was located at that time. De Souza agrees with Ryholt that some of the Pan-Grave peoples fought as mercenaries for the Egyptians. He explains that they would have been guarding Thebes but then buried in the border zones. It would seem more probable, though, that the Pan-Grave mercenaries were guarding the borders, rather than the capital, and therefore buried in the border zones.
Future Studies to be Conducted
Obviously, no book can cover everything. De Souza’s book did such an excellent job laying out certain types of basic information, that my biggest issue with the book is that I wanted more. Specifically, I would love for de Souza, his students, or anyone who benefitted from his work to push our understanding of the Pan-Grave tradition even further by pursuing some of the following areas of research.
First, we need the same type of personally verified, comprehensive study of Pan-Grave ceramics in Egyptian settlement contexts as de Souza has given those in cemeteries.
Second, we need an examination of Pan-Grave burials and other Pan-Grave objects to complement the work he has done with the pottery. De Souza briefly discusses tomb structure, shape, tumuli and other objects such as jewellery, or faunal remains, but we need a full discussion of this material to complete our picture of their complex past.
Third, de Souza’s study privileges ceramic decoration and shape. But now we need a closer look at pottery use, especially of Pan-Grave cooking vessels, serving ware, and whatever they used as storage vessels. Most importantly, we need a study of Pan-Grave cooking pots and their distribution and use across both cemeteries and settlements.
Fourth, we need to delve more deeply into theoretical interpretations of the Pan-Grave ceramic data from cemeteries. Much more can be gleaned through applying theoretical readings and cross-comparative studies. In additional to anthropological theory, we would benefit from a discussion of Pan-Grave pottery and contemporary Egyptian pottery in relation to the economy, industry, trade, and the distribution range of workshops. More practically speaking, I’d love to know how much of the Pan-Grave localization in the Second Intermediate Period resulted from Egyptians not yet upscaling their ceramic distribution. And how does pottery imitation and shared manufacturing techniques depend on who is making the pots and who is using the pots?
I urge de Souza and other researchers into the Pan-Grave peoples to continue to build on the solid foundation which is now laid.