1 Anth 363 Anderson 1992 reading essay 25 poin.docx

1
Anth 363
Anderson 1992 reading essay
25 points
Due Monday, April 20th, before 11:55p
Learning outcome #2- Statistics are a powerful way to evaluate
differences between groups (in this case
graves and their contents) to see whether differences between
groups are due to some real social factor, or
simply random chance. If random chance can be ruled out,
statistical comparisons provide powerful
evidence of status difference or other social factors.
For this assignment, you are asked to compose a 2-4 page
double-spaced essay that examines some of
the archaeological data presented in this reading;

Anderson, W.
1992 Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle
Egypt During the Early Predynastic
Era. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, vol.
29, pp. 51-66.
In this paper, Anderson evaluates the distribution of grave
goods across 262 graves from seven Badarian
cemeteries. Anderson reports 2955 grave goods were recovered
from the graves in these seven
cemeteries.
Anderson uses χ2 (chi-squared) analysis to determine whether
the goods distributed across the 262 graves
show patterning indicating different classes or statuses for the
people buried in the graves. The basis of χ2
is to assume a null model wherein every grave good has an
equal chance of turning up in every grave.
If the null model is confirmed, then there is no evidence of
status difference. However, if there are
significant differences between observed (the actual data) and
expected (estimate derived from the χ2
model) counts, that indicates non-random patterning, which in
turn indicates status difference.

To test the null model, observed counts of grave goods by sex
and age are compared to expected counts,
calculated from the data using χ2. The “expected” model are the
counts that should result if every grave
good has an equal chance of turning up in every grave.
Big differences between the observed and expected counts
means that the difference is not simply due to
chance. In other words, large differences are more likely to
result from real social factors driving status
differences.
For this essay, I want you to focus on two of Anderson’s chi-
square comparisons listed in Table 4 and
Table 7. Your essay will summarize the information presented
in these tables. You will then be asked to
more generally reflect on the results presented in those tables.
Table 4. Badari cemeteries: grave goods by sex of grave
occupant
Table 7. Badari cemeteries: grave goods and age status

2
Part I: Introduction
Generally summarize why Anderson undertook this analysis
(see particularly p. 54).
Part 2: Analysis
Answer each question in about 1-2 paragraphs.
1. Compare the observed versus expected values for Table 4.
Are there big differences between the
observed vs expected values (more than 3)?
Do males and females exhibit status differences based on these
data?

2. Compare the observed versus expected values for Table 7.
Are there big differences between the
observed and expected values (more than 3) for…
Subadults- significant / not significant
Adults- significant / not significant
Old- significant / not significant
Part 3: Conclusions
Write 2 or 3 paragraphs summarizing your thoughts on the
information presented in Anderson 1992.
Given these results, what is the nature of the burial
differentiation described by Anderson? Is it simply
haves and have nots? Or are there other kinds of divisions
indicated by the nature and distribution of the
burial goods at Badari?
What other factors besides economic differences might be
driving the distribution of grave goods?
Citation guidelines
Follow these citation guidelines when citing information from
the reading. When citing specific material

or quoting from a reading, include the page number (Author
date:pp), or (Anderson 1992:445).
Please include the complete text reference at the end of the
paper, e.g.
Anderson, W.
1992 “Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in
Middle Egypt During the Early Predynastic
Era,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, vol.
29, pp 51-66.
3
Grading rubric
25-22 points
Content- Student is able to clearly and comprehensively
summarize what the authors are attempting to
demonstrate within the context of the provided background
material.

Organization- Student organizes the essay using paragraphs that
follow a logical progression. Essay starts
with an introductory overview paragraph followed by logically
sequenced paragraphs that flesh out the
ideas in the introductory paragraph. Essay ends with a
concluding paragraph summarizing the information
presented and how it bears on larger issues.
Spelling and grammar- Spelling and grammatical errors are
minimal to non-existent. Sentences are clear
and neither overly long or incomplete. Student follows proper
citation guidelines.
21-18 points
Content- Student understands what the authors are attempting to
demonstrate, but leaves some terms
undefined and some background information is omitted.
Organization- Essay construction may not follow a logical
progression. Paragraphs may not be comprised
of a single idea that fleshes out the information in the
introductory paragraph. Essay may not end with a

summary concluding paragraph.
Spelling and grammar- Some spelling and grammatical errors
are present. Some sentences are difficult to
follow, are incomplete or overly long. Student attempts to
follow proper citation guidelines.
17-14 points
Content- Student may not understand what the authors are
attempting to demonstrate, leaves terms
undefined and omits important background information.
Organization- Paragraph structure is not used, essay
construction does not follow a logical progression.
Essay does not end with a summary concluding paragraph.
Spelling and grammar- Abundant spelling and grammatical
errors are present. Sentences are difficult to
follow. Student does not follow proper citation guidelines.
Less than 14 points

As with the 17-14 point range, only more so…
“Disco Sucks”:
Musical Masculinity, Redefined
Rock, Hip Hop, & Revolution
History A383
Class 23
Prof. McGerr
Spring 2019
1
I. Gay Liberation
II. David Bowie
III. Glam
IV. Disco
V. Backlash

2
I. Gay Liberation
Key late 1960s development—wider conception of people
deserving “rights”:
Beyond race & ethnicity to sexuality
This time focus on men
3
1. Gay America
Closeted identities, McCarthy era,
1940s & 1950s
Laws: anti-“Sodomy”
Slurs: “Faggot”
Medicine: “mental disorder”
4
2. Stonewall
Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village,6/28/1969:
confrontation with police; beatings
Continued for several nights
Folk singer Dave

Van Ronk arrested
5
3. Coming Out
After Stonewall, new willingness to assert gay identity openly
& to call for “Gay Power”—equal rights
6
4. Gay Liberation Front
New organizations
Gay Liberation Front, 1969:
Gay rights, anti-sexism, anti-war, anti-capitalism, pro-3rd
World

7
Gay Liberation Day March, 1970
6/28 (anniversary of Stonewall)
8
5. Music & Liberation
Gay liberation rested on willingness of men to come out
& then changing other Americans’ conception of homosexuality
What role did popular music play?
“Tutti Frutti”
Popular music avoided
gay identities
Little Richard, rock & roll star,
1950s
Ambiguous identity
“Tutti Frutti” lyrics censored:
“Tutti Frutti, good booty/
If it don’t fit, don’t force it /
You can grease it, make it easy”

“Love Is a Drag”
1962 album of openly gay songs—male singer singing about
“him”
But singer used a pseudonym
& record came out on small
label
II. David Bowie
Music as a means of creating a new identity:
An old story…..
but with a new ending
1. From Jones to Bowie
b. David Jones (London, 1947)
Talented dancer
Musician at 15: jazz, rock, blues
Modeling, 1963

Renamed David Bowie (1967)—
title of his first album.
But just David Bowie wasn’t good enough:
Career didn’t take off
2. Transformations
Space Oddity (1969)
The Man Who Sold the World (1970-71)
British cover:
Bowie in a “man dress”
3. “Oh! You Pretty Things”
From “Hunky Dory,” 1971, 4th album, 1st for RCA
Cover patterned after film star Greta Garbo

“Changes”
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Oh, look out, you rock and rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
“Oh! You Pretty Things”
Oh, you pretty things (oh, you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mothers and fathers insane
Oh, you pretty things (oh, you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mothers and fathers insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Look out at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of the coming race
The earth is a bitch
We've finished our news

Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
22
4. Ziggy Stardust
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972 concept album
Gay/Androgynous Identity
“The only thing that shocks now is an extreme. …. I’m gay and
I always have been.”
24

25
26
In-Authenticity & “Fabrication”
Bowie: “I took the idea of fabrication and how it had
snowballed in popular culture. Realism and honesty had
become boring to many jaded people by the early Seventies….I
thought it would be such great fun to fabricate something so
totally unearthly and unreal and have it living as an icon. So the
story of Ziggy came out of that thinking….It was a way of
creating myself.”
Precursors?
Elvis’s hips in the 1950s
Jimi Hendrix burning
his guitar, Monterey Pop, 1967
Concept albums Sgt. Pepper & Tommy
5. “Ziggy” Comes to America, 1972
US tour, cross-country, Sept. to Dec.

“Theatricality”
Music as visual drama:
“Theatricality is the idea whose time has come for pop music
this season. Theatricality in in dress, in manner, in presentation
and in
attitude. . . .”
Don Heckman, NY Times, Sept. 11, 1972
Bowie’s style
“on-stage androgynous sexuality, colorful theatrical effects and
rudimentary dramatics”
Rejection: “A goulash of degeneracy”

Bowie, Alice Cooper, NY Dolls, Queen:
“Call it freak rock, transvestite rock or decadent rock, the uglies
are the latest giggle on the pop music scene. …. What unites
them is their use of standard hard rock music as a framework
for kinky lyrics, bizarre costumes, garish makeup, and, most of
all, flamboyant stage shows that blend homo-eroticism, and
sado-masochism into a goulash of degeneracy. ” Grace
Lichtenstein, NY Times, Sept. 24, 1972
Sexual Power Struggle?
Lew Siegel, National Publicity Director, Capitol Records:
“Rock ‘n’ roll came right after the G.I. era of the ’40s. There
was a great fascination with the sex goddess and rock was a
revolt against that female cultural domination. That’s why most
of the groups were male; they were banding together to reassure
each other. … Today much of David Bowie’s appeal is the
novelty of pushing in exactly the opposite direction, against
male cultural domination.”
6. Musical Activism?
Bowie on “bisexual expectations”:
“I’ve felt that from city to city. There have been vast
delegations of gay lib coming in. It’s very nice, but I do worry
because I can’t do that much for any organization. I’m not a
banner waver for any cause because I am not a cause.”

But Still: Pain & Community
“At the concert’s closing, climactic moment, Bowie/Ziggy
stands at the edge of the stage, reaching out for the hands of
those who have pushed their way down the aisle to be near him.
As he sings ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,’ he seems to touch his
audience the way he most wants to touch them—emotionally.
It’s a song about agony and pain, but he comforts: ‘You’re not
alone . . . Gimme your hands.’”
Robert Hilburn, LA Times
Oh no love! You're not alone
You're watching yourself but you're too unfair
You got your head all tangled up
But if I could only make you care
Oh no love! You're not alone
No matter what or who you've been
No matter when or where you've seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain
You're not alone
Just turn on with me and you're not alone
Let's turn on with me and you're not alone
Gimme your hands 'cause you're wonderful
Gimme your hands 'cause you're wonderful
Oh gimme your hands
“And the hands reach up for Bowie. Not the way the audience

reaches for Elvis Presley, or the way it reached for the Beatles,
but, a little like the desperate, emotionally involved way it used
to reach for, yes, Judy Garland. Bowie couldn’t have asked for
more.”
Judy Garland:
“An Elvis for Homosexuals,”
The Advocate
“Friends of Dorothy”
“The name Judy Garland is nearly synonymous with
gayness….She’s…a symbol of emotional liberation, a woman
who struggled to live and love without restraint. She couldn’t
do it in real life, of course, and neither could her fans. But she
did it in her songs….” Advocate, 1998
So, despite rejection of ‘60s countercultural focus on
community,
Bowie/Ziggy was about the creation of community after all—
but a community
of pain and struggle rather than revolution and utopia
(Rather like James Taylor)
Focus on Future Change
“What frightens me . . . Is that people are holding on to a

century that is fast dying. That includes a lot of young people
as well; those, for example, who are into the idea of communal
living. I think that things are going to change so incredibly and
so drastically that we should really start developing our ideas
along a different tangent. I don’t know which way we should go
but what with the pill and sperm banks and with all those
trimmings, things have got to change very drastically. It’s
going to be a brave new world and we either join it or we
become living relics.”
Not an activist—but building community around a new set of
values in the hope of changing the future……
Isn’t that
musical activism?
7. Impact: A Fan
Penny Nugent: “I’ve never seen such a concert where the music
was so physical but the end effect was not—I mean I felt no
desire to dance and jump about because it was my mind that was
freed and that was dancing. … I feel different now that Friday
the 20th is come and gone.”
“All you have to do is turn around, face yourself, see the good
parts and the bad parts, get up the courage to say, ‘hi!’ and
recognize yourself for what you are, and then carry on living
and trying because you’re not alone. I guess that was the

message, no? And the medium was Bowie . . . .”
III. Glam
Bowie part of a broader musical movement in the early 1970s:
“Glam” or “Glitter” rock
New, post-60s outlook & aesthetic
1. Platforms & Glitter
Glam only loosely defined by distinctive sound
Rock, rooted in 1960s psychedelic music & British “art rock”
Glam more defined by visual styles:
Long hair
Unisex & cross-dressing fashions
Lots of makeup
Glitter!
Dyed hair
Platform boots
2. Glam Heroes: “Friends of David”
Bowie

sponsored &
produced
other acts,
Including
Iggy Pop»»»
David Bowie, Iggy Pop, & Lou Reed
49
T. Rex (Mark Bolan)—inspiration for
Bowie
Queen (incl. Freddie Mercury)
New York Dolls

Alice Cooper
3. Ideology of Glam
Guiding ideas or dispositions:
Break with 1960s counter-cultural
faith in “revolution”
Re-emphasis on gender & sexuality
(but now ambiguous,
adrogynous, bi-sexual, homosexual)
Rejection of Authenticity for
Artificiality & Theatricality
4. Musical “Coming Out”
1972 Bowie song for glam group, Mott the Hoople, laid out key
ideas.
Sexuality:
All the young dudes (I want to hear you)
Carry the news (I want to see you)
Boogaloo dudes (And I want to talk to
you all of you)
Carry the news
Now Lucy looks sweet cause he dresses

like a queen
But he can kick like a mule
It's a real mean team
But we can love oh yes we can love
55
Anti-60s counter culture:
And my brother's back at home
with his Beatles and his Stones
We never got it off on that revolution stuff
Lou Reed, Transformer, 1973
Bowie-produced album
“Make Up”: “No we’re coming out/
out of our closets and into the streets”

57
Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the USA
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild side
Hey honey
Take a walk on the wild side
Female impersonator Holly Woodlawn
“Walk on the Wild Side”
58
IV. Disco
Another 1970s genre
1. Monti Rock III
b. Joseph Montanez, Jr., Bronx, NY, 1942
Puerto Rican-American
Celebrity hairdresser & TV talk show guest
Openly bi-sexual

Monti Rock: “ I [was] the first openly gay man in the 50s and
60s that got on television. The story should start with
that…being openly gay was very romantic in that
era….Everyone knew I was gay. I was very over the top,
darling! If you donned long hair and beads and wore pancake
makeup in 1961, if that wasn’t openly gay, what was it?”
2. Disco Tex & the Sex-O-Lettes
Group formed with producer Bob Crewe
1974 #10 hit, Get Dancin’
1975 #23, “I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo (Doo Dat Dance”
1975 LP “Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes”
Audience-centered music—dancing
(eventually long-playing 12-inch singles)
Instrumentation: Focus on rhythm section

Keyboards, drum machines, fast tempos
But lush orchestration, slick production
Simple Lyrics—focus on the beat
Like earlier pop music,
After rock’s move away from dancing,
disco was music for dancing
“The Hustle”
“Le Freak”
3. Outsiders’ Music
Like heavy metal and punk, disco became popular initially
without much radio play or publicity
Gay Roots
Disco roots in gay dance clubs
Record producer, 1979: “hot records usually start off in gay
discos . . .Gays are open to new sounds.”

“The music is a symbolic call for gays to come out of the closet
and dance with each other” (Fantasy Records producer)
Racial Roots
Disco also emerged from black and latino
clubs
The Hustle originated as line dance in
Hispanic clubs in NYC & Miami in the 1970s
4. Cross-Generational Appeal
Like country—and unlike heavy metal and punk, disco appealed
across generational divide.
“Disco is for all ages. Rock wasn’t. Disco is mainly for the 18-
to-35 group, but there are teen discos, even kiddie discos with
soft drinks, and senior citizen discos. The music hasn’t divided
parents and children, as previous popular music did.”
5. A-political music?
“It’s total escape. The music is happy, up-tempo, you have fun,
you loose yourself in the lights and the sound. It isn’t thinking.
It’s total feeling.” Washington DC club manager
Rejection of ‘60s political “message” music

“….the other acts…were trying to put messages across and
people are getting bored with messages. They want fun and they
want to see something as well as hear it….I’m getting a
rhinestone bicycle made so I can ride round on stage…..”
Another side of the Me Decade?
DC Club manager: “Americans are very involved right now in
the release of energy—running, exercise, and now disco.
There’s a new-found body consciousness—health, good food,
fitness. And, having taken care of our bodies, we want to
display them. Disco is the release of energy. Disco fashions—
color, glitter, tight fit or sheer—are the display.”
6. Cross-over Music
In effect, disco in gay clubs was a site where regulars could
come out and adopt a new style
While visiting heterosexuals could begin to explore and accept
gay/black/Latino culture
In this respect, a very political music
Monti Rock III played a DJ in the 1977 hit crossover film
Saturday Night Fever

(John Travolta as Tony Manero, 19, from Brooklyn)
V. Backlash
One sign of disco’s political strong backlash against the music
76
1. “Disco Sucks”
Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl’s anti-disco crusade
Invading disco clubs and throwing marshmallows at the dancers
“Disco Demolition Night,” Chicago White Sox, Old Comiskey
Park, July 12, 1979
“Disco Demolition Night” got out of control; forced
cancellation of second game of doubleheader
2. Anti-black, Anti-Gay
John Rockwell, critic: “There’s a darker side to all this....Even

with the embrace of disco by the white masses, symbolized by
John Travolta and the Bee Gees, disco is still regarded by rock
loyalists as a black and homosexual phenomenon. It’s not
always clear when whites profess a dislike of disco as to
whether they dislike the music or whether they dislike those
who like it.”
3. Anxiety Over Decline of Working & Middle Classes
Rockwell: “Sitting in the Palladium, listening to a hall-full of
white rock fans chanting their anti-disco slogans over and over,
is just a bit too reminiscent for comfort of Lumpen-proletariat
proto-Fascism.”
Conclusion
Disco & Glam reflected:
Break with/end of 60s counterculture
Leading edge of sexual revolution—
especially gay rights movement
In that sense, a return to traditional
political function of popular music: dance
music mediating
gender & sexuality
“Caravan Tonight”
Glam & disco marked important change
But music industry almost completely avoided openly gay
artists

Mercury Records issued
Steven Grossman’s
Caravan Tonight, 1974
And that was it.
Songs included:
“Out”
“Many Kinds of Love”
“You Don’t Have to
Be Ashamed”
“Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”:
Feminism & Popular Music
in the 1970s
Rock, Hip-Hop, and Revolution
History A383
Prof. McGerr
Spring 2020
1
I. “Women’s Liberation”: Feminism in the
1960s & 1970s
II. “Cock Rock”: The Feminist Critique of

Counter-Cultural Music
III. “I Will Survive”: Women in Disco
IV. “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”:
Country Feminism
V. “No One’s Ever Gonna Keep Me
Down Again”: Pop Feminism
2
I. “Women’s Liberation”: Feminism in the 1960s & 1970s
Emergence of new ideas, new activism leading to new critique
of popular music generally & rock in particular
1. Liberal Feminism
Emerging middle-class movement demanding equality in the
workplace & politics particularly
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
National Organization of Women (NOW) 1966
Equal Rights Amendment
(ERA)
4
2. Radical Feminism

Late 1960s
Younger women with roots in black freedom struggle & campus
activism
Private and public focus: “The personal is the political”
Male violence/women’s control of their bodies—rape,
abuse, abortion
Celebration of broader
range of identities--
lesbianism
5
Much of radical feminism focused on culture:
How men used words & cultural categories such as beauty to
denigrate &
subordinate women
Protest against Miss America beauty pageant, Atlantic City, NJ,
1968
3. Anti-Feminism
Marabel Morgan,
The Total Woman (1973):
“It’s only when a woman
surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him

and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to
him. She becomes a priceless jewel, the glory of femininity, his
queen!”
7
Phyllis Schlafly, leader of movement against the Equal Rights
Amendment
8
II. “Cock Rock”
Feminist critique of countercultural rock as male privilege
Reinterpreted 1960s
Undermined rock’s revolutionary image
But how much impact?
1. “Susan Hiwatt”
First important example: anonymous 1970 article, “Cock Rock”
in feminist magazine Rat (aka Women’s LibeRATion).
Republished under pseudonym “Susan Hiwatt”

( play on British amplifier company)
From Generation…
In school, “Hiwatt” saw rock in generational terms:
“It was the only thing we had of our own, where the values
weren’t set up by the famous wise professors. It was the way
not to have to get old and deadened in White America.”
…to Gender
“It took me a whole lot of going to the Fillmore and listening to
records and reading Rolling Stone before it even registered that
what I was seeing and hearing was not all these different
groups, but all these different groups of men.
And once I noticed that, it was hard not to be constantly
noticing all the names on the albums, all the people doing sound
and lights, all the voices on the radio, even the D.J.’s between
the songs—they were all men.”
“Massive Exclusion of Women”
“Because in the female 51 percent of Woodstock Nation that I
belong to, there isn’t any place to be creative in any way. It’s a
pretty exclusive world.”
No women electric guitarists or drummers
Women singers but they had “to be twice as good just to be
acceptable”

Aretha Franklin: “Soul Sister Number One”
14
Rock: Janis Joplin
Susan Hiwatt: “…an incredible sex object…a cunt with an
outasight voice…easy to fuck.”
15
Folk’s more acceptable women
Judy Collins
Joni Mitchell
Note the acoustic guitars
Male guitar gods

Jimmy Page
Jimi Hendrix
Studio player Carol Kaye:
Still the only major female exception
Joy of Cooking
San Francisco folk-rock band led by pianist Toni Brown &
electric guitarist Terry Garthwaite (Ruby Brown)
First album Capitol 1971
Allison Steele, “The Nightbird”
Pioneering woman DJ, WNEW-FM, New York City
“The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds
of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars,
above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we
exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the
Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.”
Rock Misogyny
“Because when you get to listening to male rock lyrics, the

message to women is devastating. We are cunts—sometimes
ridiculous (‘Twentieth Century Fox’), sometimes mysterious
(‘Ruby Tuesday’), sometimes bitchy (‘Get a Job’) and
sometimes just plain cunts (‘Wild Thing’).”
“And all that sexual energy that seems to be the essence of rock
is really energy that climaxes in fucking over women…a million
different levels of women-hating.”
Women Still Necessary
“Women are required at rock events to pay homage to the rock
world—a world made up of thousands of men…Homage paid by
offering sexual accessibility, orgiastic applause group worship,
gang bangs at Altamont.”
The Exception to the Counter-Cultural Revolution
“And so women remain the last legitimate form of property that
the brothers can share in a communal world.
Can’t have a tribal gathering without music and dope and
beautiful groovy chicks.
For the musicians themselves there is their own special
property—groupies.”
Linda de Barres, “Queen of the Groupies”

2. “Does Rock Degrade Women?”
New York Times article, 1971
Marion Meade, journalist,
b. 1934,
Northwestern graduate involved in women’s liberation
movement
Would publish Bitching, women’s
views of men, in 1973
Echoed much of “Susan Hiwatt”
analysis
Rethinking Woodstock
“…a fantasyland that welcomed only men.
How about the women? Barefooted and sometimes barebreasted,
they sprawled erotically in the grass, looked after their babies,
or dished up hot meals.”
Organizer Michael Lang
basks in the glow of admiration

60s Revolution wasn’t real
Rock’s reconfiguration of masculinity in the 1960s—unisex
clothes and long hair a la Beatles?
Just “hip camouflage” for continuing sexism
‘60s worse than ‘50s
Earlier rock didn’t cast women simply as passive sexual
partners or bitchy emasculators
Rock heroes of 60s guilty—Beatles, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones
3. Impact
Feminist critics subverted the history of rock as rebellion
In some ways reinforced 1950s critique of rock as degeneracy
But very little changed in the world of rock in 1970s
III. “I Will Survive”:
Women in Disco
Meanwhile, female performers played a larger role in disco

1. Disco Divas
Major star, Donna Summer
b. LaDonna Gaines, Boston, 1948
Left psychedelic rock band for solo career
“The Queen of Disco”
1975 breakthrough hit, “Love to Love You, Baby”
Numerous hits into early 1980s, including
“Hot Stuff”
Gloria Gaynor
B. Newark, NJ, 1949
1975 hit disco album Never Can Say Goodbye
“I Will Survive”, 1977 # 1 hit
Grace Jones
B. 1948, Jamaica
First hit, 1975, “I Need a Man”

“The Queen of the Gay Discos”
2.Why So Many Women?
John Rockwell, NY Times:
“…a high, piping sound suits the silly, partying mood and
bounciness of many disco songs.”
Women singers suit “national mood” of “sentimental
escapism”
Rockwell:
Women in disco:
“cult figures for homosexuals.”
3. Still Exploitation
Rockwell: “Disco music…is ultimately a producer’s music,
which means men’s music, which means the exploitation of
women to suit male fantasies, be they homosexual or

heterosexual….
At worst it’s a puppet-like acting-out of a male fantasy of
women as objects or as slightly grotesque figures of
exaggerated lust and dominance.”
4. Too simple?
Rockwell’s argument effectively erased disco divas—as if
Summer, Gaynor, & Jones had no identity of their own
Or as if identity couldn’t be complicated:
Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” was simultaneously a “gay anthem”
and a feminist anthem, too:
Weren't you the one who tried to crush me with goodbye
Do you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die?
Oh no, not I. I will survive
IV. “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”: Country Feminism
Once again, country offered a surprising contrast to rock culture
As before, country had plenty of divas

1. Country Conservatism
Paradox?
Country music had more women star singers
But their message about gender seemed conservative
The music of Marabel Morgan & Phyllis Schlafly?
Dolly Parton
43
2. The Sound of Submission?
Tammy Wynette:
b. Virginia Pugh, Bounds, Mississippi, 1942
“(You Make Me Want to Be)
A Mother”
“Make Me Your Kind of Woman”
“Don’t Liberate Me (Love Me)”
But, like Patsy Montana’s “Cowboy’s Sweetheart” in 1930s,
1960s country was complicated
Wynette offered a kind of resistance for traditional women, too:

“Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” (1967)
45
“Stand by
Your Man”
#1 Billboard Country
#19 Billboard Hot 100
The ultimate in female submission?
46
“Stand by Your Man”
Tammy Wynette & Billy Sherrill (1968)
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man
You'll have bad times and he'll have good times
Doin' things that you don't understand.
But if you love him you'll forgive him
Even though he's hard to understand
And if you love him oh be proud of him
'Cause after all he's just a man.

2. Loretta Lynn
“The Coal-Miner’s Daughter”
b. Ky., 1935
Traditional image
Married 1948
Six children
But husband urged her to sing
Canning, 1958
48
Assertiveness
“Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” #1
Country Hit, 1966”
49
1968 single,

1969 lp album
Like Merle Haggard, seemingly unexpressive performance style
allows expressive lyrics
50
“Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”
Loretta Lynn
Well your pet name for me is Squaw
When you come home a drinkin' and can barely crawl
And all that lovin' on me won't make things right
Well you leave me at home to keep the teepee clean
Six papooses to break and wean
Well your squaw is on the warpath
tonight
51
Well I've found out a big brave chief
The game you're a huntin' for ain't beef
Get off of my huntin' grounds and get out of my sight
This war dance I'm doin' means I'm fightin' mad
You need no more of what you've already had
Your squaw is on the warpath tonight

52
Well that fire-water that you've been drinking
Makes you feel bigger but chief you're shrinking
Since you've been on that love making diet
Now don't hand me that ole peace pipe there ain't no pipe can
settle this fight
Your squaw is on the warpath tonight
Well I've found out a big brave chief...
Yeah your squaw is on the warpath tonight
53
“The Pill” 1970:
All these years I've stayed at home
While you had all your fun
And every year that’s gone by
Another baby’s come
There's a gonna be some changes made
Right here on nursery hill
You've set this chicken your last time
'Cause now I've got the pill

54
Country Feminist?
“I am not a big fan of the Women’s Liberation, but maybe it
will help women stand up for the respect they’re due.” 1976
V. “No One’s Ever Gonna Keep Me Down Again”: Helen Reddy
& Pop Feminism
The biggest feminist “message” song came—not from rock—but
from mainstream pop
56
1. Helen Reddy
b. 1941, Melbourne, Australia
Show-business family:
Her rebellion was to want to be a wife & mother rather than
performer
To the US in 1966, divorced, a single mother with a 3-year-old
child

Gradually made it as a singer
Remarried & moved to LA
1971 #13 Billboard Hot 100 Hit:
“I Believe in Music”
2. “I Am Woman”
In 1971, Reddy wanted song reflecting her experience in the
women’s movement
Found only “total doormat” songs; wrote her own statement
instead
59
Radio stations wouldn’t play it
She went on afternoon TV talk shows;
Women viewers then phoned radio stations to demand the song
Mike Douglas
Show,
Philadelphia
60

“I Am Woman”
Helen Reddy & Ray Burton (1972)
I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back and pretend
Cause I've heard it all before,
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna' keep me down again.
61
Yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom for the pain
Yes, I paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
I am invincible
I am woman.
62
You can bend but never break me
'cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer

'Cause you deepen the conviction in my soul
63
I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my loving arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long, long way to go
Until I'll make my brother understand.
64
3. The (Male) Critical Reaction
Critics: Reddy was “beneath contempt . . . a purveyor of all that
is silly in the women’s lib movement”
But another: “As an admitted male chauvinist pig in the one or
two areas in which my own wife has not yet beaten me into
submission, I must admit the …distaff libber’s anthem-of-sorts
would normally raise my hackles…But Miss Reddy sings it so
well…that her modicum of breast-beating (or should I call that
‘chest-beating’?) for the cause on that one song is fair enough.”

65
Reddy: “For a lot of men, thinking about the women’s
movement makes them grab their groins. What can I say? I
didn’t say that we were going to cut their dicks off or anything,
you know?”
#1 Billboard Hot 100, Dec. 1972
1973 Grammy, Best Female Vocal Performance
Controversial acceptance: “I want to thank God because
She makes everything possible.”
Letters: “You skinny, blasphemous bitch”
67
Theme Song, United Nations “International Women’s Year”
1975
Some feminist activists considered her not radical enough
Another example of effective “political” music: no policy
prescriptions

Instead, lowest-common denominator music—collective
identity, group pride
Like Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee” & James Brown, “Say It
Loud”
Conclusion
Rock “revolution” wasn’t absolute
Paradox, again: country& mainstream pop arguably more
“feminist”
1970s music radical—gay identity, feminism—by doing what
popular music had always done: redefining gender & sexuality
Men with Yen for Superstardom 1972 September 3 Boston
Herald 1Men with Yen for Superstardom 1972 September 3
Boston Herald 2
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.
Secure sexuality... and the scene sells
Lynn Van Matre
Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file); Apr 7, 1974;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune (1849-1990)

pg. E3
Why Are the New Stars of Disco Mostly Women?
By JOHN ROCKWELL
New York Times (1923-Current file); Mar 4, 1979;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 -
2007)
pg. D23
Prof. McGerr
Spring 2019
Writing History Essays:
Eight Do’s & Six Don’ts

Nothing promotes more anxiety in a history lecture course than
when the time arrives to write an
“essay,” either in or out of class: the word can strike terror. It
shouldn’t. The fundamental
requirements of a successful essay are simple. There’s nothing
mysterious, especially if you keep
these basics in mind.
Do:
1. Answer the question. This point seems so obvious, but it is
remarkable how many students
don’t read questions carefully enough or, if they do, still don’t
make sure that what they write is
really responsive to the prompt. Essay questions often have
more than one part: “Based on the
history of rock ‘n’ roll in communist Europe, what role, if any,
did the music play in changing
the young? What can you conclude, then, about whether music
‘matters’”? Too often,
especially during tests, students answer the first part of the
prompt fully and then write little or
even nothing in response to the last part.
2. Make an Argument. Essay questions, like the one given
above, require you to make an

argument. To answer a typical question, you need to take a
stand about why things were they
were: “How did Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles
redefine masculinity?”; “Did hip
hop change the politics of American popular music?” Make
sure, then, that you state your
position clearly. Don’t simply write down what you know about
Presley or Kool Herc: make an
argument. The toughest essay prompts are often the ones that
ask you to compare and contrast
two phenomena, such as rock and hip hop. You can’t just write
down a bunch of facts about
rock and then a bunch more about hip hop. Instead, you must
make certain you are consistently
relating one set of facts to the other, ensuring the reader
understands specifically what is similar
and what is different, and then stating what those similarities
and differences tell us as historians.
3. Draw on the Main Themes and Arguments of the Course.
“…what those similarities and
differences tell us as historians” sounds fairly high-flown and
academic. You won’t go wrong if
you ground your argument in the concepts, categories, themes,
and larger arguments of the

course. As you’ve seen already, a history class is concerned
with: power; individual and group
identity; differences of gender, generation, race, and social
class; democracy; economics and
technology; and so on. Always ask yourself how an essay
question relates to any of these and
other basic ideas in the particular course.
4. Introduce Your Argument. Make sure you state your
argument clearly and plainly at the
outset. An introduction not only helps the reader; it helps you
to be sure you are indeed
answering the question. The length of the introduction varies
with the length of the essay. For
2
an in-class essay on a test or a 900-word take-home paper, a few
sentences will suffice to set up
the following paragraphs. For a one-page paper, only one or
two sentences are necessary to set
up what you’re about to argue.
5. Define Key Terms. If an essay question asks you whether
Elvis Presley was an “outsider,”

or Madonna was a “radical,” you must be absolutely sure to
explain what defines an “outsider”
or a “radical.” Don’t just assume that the reader will know what
you mean when you use such
terms as authenticity, democracy, consumerism, popular, and so
on. Failure to define
fundamental concepts can drag down a whole essay.
6. Use Evidence. Whatever argument you make, you must
explain why you think as you do—
and the “why” means evidence—particular facts and concepts—
drawn from the readings,
lectures, and other course materials.
7. Be Specific. As much as possible, make your points detailed
and specific. For instance,
don’t just say, “The material conditions of teen-age life
promoted a separate youth musical
culture.” Better to go farther: “The material conditions of teen-
age life, including ‘segregation’
in high schools and money from allowances and jobs, promoted
and paid for a separate youth
musical culture.”
8. Give Credit Where It’s Due. Whether you’ve quoted a
source directly, paraphrased the

source, or borrowed a key idea from it, you need to
acknowledge the source. For take-home
essays, that means using footnotes; for in-class tests, you
should just mention the author of key
sources and ideas.
Don’t:
1. Don’t Use Material from Other Courses. In writing an essay,
you’re expected only to draw
on the specific material of the course—the lectures, readings,
and so on. There is no need
whatsoever to drag in anything else you think you know from
other courses or from general
knowledge. That will only get in the way of what we are trying,
in part, to discover: what you
have learned from this course.
2. Don’t Get “Literary.” To write a good essay, you don’t need
to try to be dramatic or throw
in lots of adjectives and adverbs for the sake of effect. You
don’t have to set the stage before
you answer the question, either: “It was a hot, August day in
1969, as Country Joe McDonald,
clad in an old Army jacket and the hopes of a generation, gazed
uncertainly but hopefully out

over the enormous crowd strewn across the open fields of
Bethel, New York. How could just
one man, strumming a guitar and singing into a microphone,
slay the great, spectral beast that
was the war in Vietnam?” Just get to the point. A powerful,
well-supported argument will be
dramatic enough.
3
3. Don’t Universalize. Resist the temptation to begin your
essay with some supposedly
universal truth: “All human beings are imperfect”; “Music hath
charms to soothe a savage
breast”; “Mean people suck.” How do we know any of this?
And, unless the questions are,
respectively, about human imperfection, savage breasts in
human history, or the suck-i-ness of
the mean, what do these sweeping assertions have to do with
what you’re being asked to write
about? The actual questions are hard enough; don’t dig yourself
an even bigger hole with broad
claims that are probably unverifiable and certainly irrelevant to

the matter at hand.
4. Don’t Moralize. Don’t substitute your own feelings for a
reasoned argument, backed up by
evidence. If you’re asked how the Vietnam War shaped popular
music, there’s no need to assert
that war is a good or bad thing. Your values and your politics
are as irrelevant to the assignment
as mine are. Academic history is an attempt to produce
reasoned, substantiated explanations of
why human phenomena occurred. Whether those phenomena
were good or bad is another
matter.
5. Don’t Narrate. If you’re asked “How did Elvis Presley
change the role of music in American
youth culture?” you don’t need to re-tell the story of his birth in
Tupelo, his audition for Sam
Phillips, his contract with RCA, and his appearances on TV in
1956. What you need to do is to
refer to these events and explain why they mattered. For
instance, you could say that Presley’s
rise from Tupelo to Sun, RCA, and TV was an example of how
corporatized popular music
system harnessed outsider innovation.

6. Don’t Throw in the Kitchen Sink. Don’t use irrelevant
information in a desperate attempt to
increase your word count or paper over your inability to answer
the question: the reader is
always going to notice. Which takes us back to the first “Do” at
the beginning of this document:
just answer the question.
So there are the key principles for writing a history essay. But
remember: as in most things, the
principles are straightforward; it’s applying them that can
require more care and attention than
we expect.
Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle
Egypt During the Early
Predynastic Era
Author(s): Wendy Anderson
Source: Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol.
29 (1992), pp. 51-66
Published by: American Research Center in Egypt
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000484
Accessed: 13-04-2020 10:55 UTC

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Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle
Egypt During the Early Predynastic Era
Wendy Anderson
I. A Social Approach to the Study of
Mortuary Data
Recent studies of predynastic Egyptian graves
at Armant by Kathryn Bard demonstrate that by

Nagada I times, Nile Valley populations were
differentiated into two groups consisting of a
large number of individuals with few burial
goods and a smaller number of persons with
large numbers of burial offerings. Prior to
that time the situation is less clear. While some
archaeologists have suggested that earlier pre-
dynastic Badarian peoples, who are currently
regarded as the earliest food producers in Up-
per Egypt, show no evidence of wealth or social
differentiation, others have suggested the op-
posite. Hoffman has argued that marked eco-
nomic differences between members of this
population indicate that their social system was
distinctly inegalitarian. In this paper I will
review briefly current debates concerning the
relevance of funerary data for understanding
social organization and present the results of
an analysis of the Badarian cemeteries that
were excavated in the 1920s.
Largely under the influence of Kroeber, who
believed burial practices to be unstable and rep-
resentative of "fashions" rather than "social ex-
pression, objections to the use of mortuary
data to infer social organization have been
raised by several researchers. Thus, Hodder has
argued that in a grave context the absence of
differentiation based on sex, age, and status
does not necessarily indicate the absence of
social differentiation during life. He maintains
that changes in social attitudes towards death
can result in less differentiation in the burials of

hierarchically organized societies. As a result of
such attitude changes "partial expressions and
even inversions of what happens in social life"
can take place. Mortuary studies should there-
fore not expect to find that any systematic
correspondence exists between the burial prac-
tices and the social organization of a particular
society. Similar observations have been made
by Peter Ucko and reiterated by Sally Hum-
phreys, who stressed the instability of mortuary
practices and noted that representative samples
of a population may not be present in cemetery
sites, from which individuals may be excluded
on the basis of age, sex, or social status. Hum-
phreys also warned that burial practices may
not be "closely correlated with other aspects of
social structure or beliefs ..."
These arguments do not seem to be appro-
priate for the Nile Valley, where practically all
1 Kathryn Bard, "A Quantitative Analysis of the Predynas-
tic Burials in Armant Cemetery 1400-1 500, "Journal of Egyp-
tian Archaeology 74 (1988), 55; An Analysis of the Predynastic
Cemeteries of Nagada and Armant in Terms of Social
Differentia-
tion (University of Toronto, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation,
1987), 123-25.
Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Egyptian Civilization," in
Trigger, B. G., Kemp, B. J., O'Connor, D. and Lloyd, A. B.,
Ancient Egypt: a Social History (Cambridge, 1983), 27.
Michael Hoffman, Egypt Before the Pharaohs (London,
1984), 143.

4 Alfred L. Kroeber, "Disposal of the Dead," American An-
thropologist 29 (1927), 312-15.
5 Ian Hodder, The Present Past: an Introduction to Anthro-
pology for Archaeologists (New York, 1982), 144-45.
Peter Ucko, "Ethnography and Archaeological Inter-
pretation of Funerary Remains," World Archaeology 1 (1969),
273-74.
7 S. C. Humphreys, "Introduction: Comparative Perspec-
tives on Death," in Humphreys, S. C. and King, Helen, eds.,
Mortality and Immortality: the Anthropology and Archaeology
of
Death (London, 1981), 4.
51
2020 10:55:03 UTC
52 JARCE XXIX (1992)
corpses were buried in cemeteries since the
Mesolithic age; where there is ample evidence
that grave goods were used as status markers
throughout the Egyptian Dynastic era as well as
during the preceding Gerzean and Amratian
periods; where similar objects such as pottery,
ivory artefacts, statuettes, jewelry, slate palettes,
and other toilet articles are found as funerary

equipment throughout the entire time span
from the Badarian to the fourth century a.d.;
and where socio-economic practices are known
to have been closely intertwined with burial
practices during the historic period. Further-
more, the converse of Hodder's observation on
"inversions" is questionable, since it is unlikely
that a society that lacks marked social differ-
ences among the living would institute differ-
entiation among its dead.
Other researchers have arrived at conclusions
that are fundamentally opposed to those of
Kroeber and his recent disciples. The earliest
use of mortuary data to infer social distinctions
among ancient peoples can be traced to the
activities of archaeologists whose discoveries of
pyramids and nobles' tombs from the early
civilizations of Egypt, China, Mesopotamia, and
Mesoamerica led them to equate lavish burials
with high rank. More recently, Binford has sug-
gested that there is a strong correlation between
the structural complexity of burial practices and
the status system within any particular society
because the "form and structure which charac-
terize the mortuary practices of any society are
conditioned by the form and complexity of the
organizational characteristics of the society it-
self. Saxe has established the interconnection
that exists between resources, formal disposal
areas, and corporate groups through compari-
sons of ethnographic data from three socie-

ties.10 O'Shea has documented the decrease in
elaboration of Plains Indian burials that was as-
sociated with a corresponding simplification in
social organization. Chapman and Randsborg
have suggested that the use of formal disposal
areas, such as cemeteries, may be linked to con-
trol over local resources by corporate groups
who have acquired authority in those areas; 2
Tainter argues that energy expenditure in mor-
tuary ritual is linked directly to rank grading
and has asserted that ethnographic tests reveal
that most corporate groups use formal disposal
areas, and James Brown has claimed that
emerging power groups tend to attach them-
selves to specific burial locations that serve as
symbols of their power base.14 These conclu-
sions are all consistent with Binford's premise
that a strong correlation should exist between
the organizational complexity of a society and
its mortuary system, and it is on this assumption
that my analysis of Badarian burials was con-
ducted. The greatest problem is involved in
detecting incipient rather than highly devel-
oped social inequality, because societies that
are either highly egalitarian or characterized by
well-developed hierarchical systems can usually
be clearly identified in the archaeological
record. It is far more difficult to recognize those
that manifest rudimentary inegalitarianism, es-
pecially when this condition must be inferred
from mortuary data alone.
It has been suggested that the structural com-
plexity of a particular society will be expressed

by the amount of social differentiation in that
society. Two dimensions of social differentia-
tion, horizontal (such as sex and age) and verti-
cal (social rank), have been conceptualized to
measure variations in the degree of social com-
8 T. G. H. James, An Introduction to Ancient Egypt (New
York, 1979), 248.
9 Lewis R. Binford, "Mortuary Practices: Their Study
and Their Potential," in Binford, Lewis, R., ed. An Archaeo-
logical Perspective (New York, 1972), 236.
A. Saxe, Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices (Univer-
sity of Michigan, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Ann
Arbor 1987), 119-21.
11 John M. O'Shea, Mortuary Variability (Orlando,
1984), 273.
Robert Chapman in Chapman, Robert, Kinnes, Ian,
and Randsborg, Klavs, eds., The Archaeology of Death (Cam-
bridge, 1981), 80; Chapman and Randsborg in Chapman
et al., op. cit., 17-19; T. W. Jacobsen and Tracey Cullen in
Humphreys and King, op. cit., 90.
Joseph A. Tainter, "Mortuary Practices and the Study
of Prehistoric Social Systems," in Schiffer, Michael B., ed.
Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1 (New York,
1978), 124.
14 Brown, in Chapman et al., op. cit., 29.
Randall H. McGuire, "Breaking Down Cultural Com-
plexity: Inequality and Heterogeneity," in Schiffer, Michael

B., ed., Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 6
(New
York, 1983), 101.
2020 10:55:03 UTC
BADARIAN BURIALS 53
plexity exhibited by different societies; and
Tainter has suggested that mortuary data are
most suitable for assessing both of these dimen-
sions. The variables that constitute the "level
of inequality" can be "assessed" by estimating
economic differences between members of a
society. I therefore would propose that, if it can
be established that a prehistoric community:
1. made use of formal disposal areas to
which inclusion was granted on the basis
of economic status, and that
2. some form of resource control was opera-
tive that may have been vested in a heredi-
tary authority, and that
3. horizontal social distinctions within the
society were cross-cut by vertical types of
mortuary distinction, and that

4. the higher the status, the fewer were the
number of individuals able to attain that
status,
it can be argued that some form of ranking had al-
ready developed within the population.
II. The Badarian Problem
Material remains from the Badari region of
the Nile Valley were first assigned to this ar-
chaeological culture during the 1920s by Guy
Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson. Esti-
mated dates for the Badarian culture period are
from ca. 4,800 B.C. to 4,200 b.c.19 The early date
of 5,500 B.C., obtained by the thermolumines-
cence method on potsherds from Hemamieh is
now believed to be inaccurate, and a time range
beginning earlier than 3,850 b.c. is considered
more acceptable. Hays has reported a cali-
brated radiocarbon date of 3,715 b.c. for the Ba-
darian-like remains at El-Khattara.
In addition to the conflicting chronological
estimates associated with Badarian remains,
some archaeologists have noted that the true
relationship between the Badarian and other
predynastic cultures has yet to be established.
Some have argued that the claim for Badarian
priority over Amratian may not apply in all lo-
calities and that the Badarian and Amratian
cultures may have been "partly contempo-

rary . . . for some typical Naqada I wares were
found sealed off in Badarian levels at He-
mamieh where pure Naqada I was very poorly
represented."23 Others have maintained that
there may be a temporal overlap with the still
later Gerzean;24 while still others have insisted
that wherever it was encountered, the Badarian
predated the Amratian period.25 Thus, al-
though it is possible that the Badarian may be
(in whole or part) a subdivision of the Amratian
or even the Gerzean, since no definitive chro-
nology of early predynastic cultures presently
can be advanced, it will be assumed that the Ba-
darian represents a separate cultural period that pre-
ceded the Amratian in time. It was decided that
the chronological issue need not be addressed
further in this paper, which is primarily con-
cerned with assessing the degree of social ine-
quality characteristic of Badarian communities.
Brunton located Badarian villages and ceme-
teries in the low desert along the east bank of
the Nile from Matmar to Etmanieh and Caton-
Thompson excavated a stratified site at He-
mamieh in which Badarian flint implements
and potsherds were recovered from the lowest
levels of the deposits. Unfortunately, Caton-
Thompson's discoveries at Hemamieh provided
little or no information about the Badarian way

16 Ibid., 93, 98.
Joseph A. Tainter, "Modeling Change in Prehistoric
Social Systems," in Binford, Lewis R., ed. For Theory Building
in Archaeology (New York, 1977), 329.
Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson, The
Badarian Civilization and Predynastic Remains near Badari
(London, 1928), 1.
19 David O'Connor, "The Earliest Pharaohs and the Uni-
versity Museum - Old and New Excavations: 1900-1987,"
Expedition 29 (1987), 27-39.
* Diane L. Holmes, "The Predynastic Lithic Industries
of Badari, Middle Egypt: New Perspectives and Inter-
regional Relations," World Archaeology 20 (1988), 70.
21 T. R. Hays, "A Reappraisal of the Egyptian Predynas-
tic," in Clark, J. Desmond and Brandt, Steven A., eds., From
Hunters to Farmers (Berkeley, 1984), 72.
22 A. J. Arkell and Peter J. Ucko, "Review of Predynastic
Development in the Nile Valley," Current Anthropology 6
(1965), 156.
16 Ibid., 152; Gertrude Caton-Thompson and E. Whittle,
"Thermoluminescence Dating of the Badarian," Antiquity 49
(1975), 94-95.
^ Hays, op. cit., 73.
Brunton and Caton-Thompson, op. cit., 1.
^ Ibid., 79-116; Caton-Thompson and Whittle, op. cit., 90.

2020 10:55:03 UTC
of life. Reconstructions of Badarian culture are
therefore derived almost wholly from Brun-
ton's interpretive reports of the cemetery
data. The Badarians are usually depicted as
semisedentary agriculturalists who inhabited
flimsy dwellings, stored grain in deep clay bins,
baked bread, made superb pottery, fashioned
crude stone implements, herded goats and
cattle, hunted game, and entombed grave
goods with their dead. Recently, Trigger has
suggested that they were probably engaged in
pastoralism or a seasonal occupation of the
floodplain combined with hunting and fishing
in the wadis along the Nile. An economy of
this type would certainly account for the nu-
merous animal bones, fish bones, mussel shells,
apparent hunting equipment, and lack of farm-
ing implements at the Badarian desert-village
sites. In fact, little evidence for Badarian agri-
culture exists. However, although there is no
indication of grain storage at any of the known
Badarian sites, some evidence for Badarian
agriculture is derived from a disturbed grave at
Mostagedda from which Emmer wheat was re-
covered. The animal domesticates identified

by Brunton consisted of a "quadruped," that
may have been an ox, and "probably a sheep."
Goats were mentioned but never identified pos-
itively.31 Partly because of the inconclusive na-
ture of this information, and partly because no
systematic analysis of the data resulting from
Brunton 's excavations was ever undertaken, re-
constructions of Badarian socio-economic sys-
tems are often in considerable disagreement.
In an attempt to resolve whether socially
significant differences existed within Badarian
communities, I made a quantitative analysis of
the excavated mortuary remains from several
Badarian cemeteries. Grave sizes, the types of
pottery discovered in tombs, the presence or ab-
sence of luxury goods and the degree of grave
disturbance encountered were among the cate-
gories examined in order to determine whether
significant differences in access to material
goods existed amongst these Nile Valley com-
munities during the fifth and sixth millennia B.C.
III. A Quantitative Analysis of Badarian
Mortuary Remains
The eighteen cemeteries chosen for this
analysis were all located on the east bank of the
Nile in three adjacent regions: Matmar, Mo-
stagedda and Badari. They contained a total of
725 Badarian burials. However, this discussion
will be concerned mainly with the 262 burials in
the seven cemeteries at Badari. All data were

compiled from information recorded in Brun-
ton's site reports. Unlike many mortuary pop-
ulations, the Badarian skeletal material on
which this research is based is considered to be
quite representative of the past living popula-
tions from which it was derived, since it was well
preserved and consisted of relatively large num-
bers of specimens, including numerous sub-
adults. Skeletal remains were only scarce in
those badly plundered cemeteries from which
bodies presumably had been removed by tomb
robbers. In Brunton's report on the difficulties
involved in determining the age and sex of skel-
etal material, he notes that his relatively un-
qualified "assistants" were responsible for the
sex determinations that appear in the Tomb
Registers.33 Unfortunately, it was not possible to
estimate the level of error involved, which de-
pends both on the method used and the compe-
tence of the analysts. In this case, the method is
unknown. The results of a recent re-analysis of
some of the skeletal material unearthed by
Brunton suggested an error level of approxi-
mately twenty-six percent. But these results are
inapplicable to the Badarian remains, since
only four of the 108 skulls studied were predy-
nastic, and none of these is apparently Badar-
ian. However, since the sex of 134 bodies and
the ages of 170 skeletons from Badari are also
attributed to apparently independent estimates
by Brenda N. Stoessiger of the Biometric Labo-

Trigger in Trigger et al., op. cit., 9-30.
Guy Brunton, Mostagedda and the Tasian Culture (Lon-
don, 1937), 38, 59.
30 Brunton and Caton-Thompson, op. cit., 38.
51 Ibid., 41.
32 Brunton and Caton Thompson, op. cit.
55 Guy Brunton, E. W. Gardner and W. M. F. Petrie, Qau
and Badari (London, 1927), 5.
34 George E. Mann, "On the Accuracy of Sexing of
Skeletons in Archaeological Reports," Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 75 (1989), 246-49.
2020 10:55:03 UTC
BADARIAN BURIALS 55
ratory at University College London and by
G. M. Morant,35 the published determinations
are probably reasonably accurate.
Twelve major variables were utilized in the
data analysis: sex, age, grave condition (undis-
turbed, disturbed, and plundered), grave size, to-
tal grave goods, pottery (polished, rippled, and
rough), tools, shells, a residual class of "other
objects" such as animal bones, and a category of

luxury goods, including beads, slate palettes, and
ivory. The term "subadult" has been used to in-
dicate immature individuals of either sex, and
the "ages" assigned refer to the categories "sub-
adult," "adult" and "old."
The first object of the analysis was to deter-
mine the characteristics of the burial good dis-
tribution in the Badarian cemeteries. It was
suggested that by adopting the hypothesis that
the grave goods were dispersed at random, the
apportionment of grave goods could be de-
scribed by a statistical model called the multi-
nomial distribution. "Distributed at random" is
used here to mean that every burial good has
the same probability of occurring in every
grave. It also means that the grave goods are in-
dependently distributed. In other words, the
placement of any grave good in a particular
grave has no bearing on the placement of any
other grave good in a grave.36 It was found that
the hypothesis (that grave goods were distrib-
uted at random) could be rejected for grave
good dispersal among undisturbed subadult
graves as well as those of adult females and
males in all seven Badari cemeteries. In other
words, it was established that the burial goods
were not distributed in a random fashion.
A preliminary analysis of Brunton's observa-
tions from Badari revealed that 2,955 grave
goods were distributed among 262 burials in

seven cemeteries (Table 1 and Table 2). Ninety-
eight percent of the total burial goods at Ba-
dari occurred in three of the seven cemeteries.
These three cemeteries contained ninety-two
percent of all the graves in the Badari area, and
the greatest percentage of burial equipment
occurred in the graves at Badari West. Sixty-
seven percent of the burial offerings occurred
Table 1 . Descriptive statistics of Badarian
burials near Badari
Total Total Mean %
Grave No. of Goods/ of Grand
Goods Graves Grave Total
Subadults 856 42 20.38 28.97
Adults 1587 134 11.84 53.71
Old individuals 42 21 2.00 1.42
Individuals: missing 470 65 7.23 15.91
or age unknown
Males 1340 93 14.41 45.35
Females 295 60 4.92 9.98
Individuals: missing 1320 109 12.11 44.67
or sex unknown
Burials in all seven 2955 262 11.28 -
cemeteries

(Percentages are based on the total number of grave goods
[2955]
at all seven Badari cemeteries). Note: Not all categories are
con-
tained in this table (e.g., graves in which the condition is
unknown)
and some of those listed are redundant or included more than
once
(e.g., adults are males and females from the following types of
graves: plundered, disturbed, undisturbed and those of
unknown
condition.)
in this cemetery, which had ninety-three graves.
Twenty-one percent of the burial goods were
found at Badari North, also with ninety-three
graves, and ten percent at Badari South with
fifty-four graves. The remaining 1.76 percent
of the burial goods were distributed in tiny
grave clusters, totalling twenty-two graves, at
the other four cemeteries (Table 3).
In addition to the statistical tests that were
performed on raw counts of individual grave
goods, wealth indices were computed for each
cemetery. These were determined from aver-
ages of the "total goods value" for individual
cemeteries. Each wealth index (W), was calcu-
lated as:
where Vj is the total value of burial goods in the
ith grave, and TV is the number of graves in the
particular sample being analysed. For each i, Vj
was calculated from the formula

m
Vi = Lnkvk
k=
where m is the number of types or classes of
burial objects in a grave, nk is the number of
grave goods of type k, and v k is the value of a
35 G. M. Morant, in Brunton, op. cit., 63.
36 W. J. Anderson, personal communication.
2020 10:55:03 UTC
Table 2. Descriptive statistics for grave goods from
Badarian burials in all seven cemeteries at Badari
%of
Grave No. of Mean/ Grand
Goods Graves Grave Total
Plundered graves:
adult males 145 15 9.67 4.91
adult females 77 13 5.92 2.61
subadults 154 6 25.67 5.21
occupants of 408 54 7.56 13.81
unknown age

Disturbed graves:
adult males 21 9 2.33 0.71
subadults 1 1 1.00 0.03
occupants of 47 4 11.75 1.59
unknown age
Undisturbed graves:
adult males 1147 55 20.86 38.82
subadults 629 29 21.69 21.29
occupants of 4 2 2.00 0.14
unknown age
Total:1
subadults 856 42 20.38 28.96
adults 1587 134 11.84 53.70
old individuals 42 21 2.00 1.42
grave occupants 470 65 7.23 15.91
of unknown age
Grand total 2955 262 11.28 -
(Percentages are based on the total number of grave goods
[2955] at all seven Badari cemeteries).
1 All categories of data (e.g., graves of unknown condi-
tion) are included in these totals.

grave good of type k. Because some items were
characterized as "luxury goods" in terms of their
exotic origin, their relative scarcity or the
amount of effort expended on their manu-
facture, they were given higher "values" than
pots, which were all assigned a value of one.
Wealth indices indicated that the average Badari
wealth index was twenty-four. The wealth index
of sixty-one, which was the highest obtained for
a Badarian cemetery, occurred in the Badari
South cemetery at Badari.
Since an initial frequency distribution of
grave areas within all seven cemeteries at Badari
indicated an unexpected variation in the sizes
of graves from 0.19 to 4.34 square metres, and
Table 3. Burial goods from Badarian burials near Badari
Badari North Badari Far-North
No. % No. %
Total luxury goods 470 20.58 1 0.04
Shells 37 11.14 10 3.01
Pottery 76 36.54 4 1.92
Total grave goods 616 20.85 16 0.54
Badari West Badari East
No. % No. %
Shells 252 75.90 0 0

Pottery 66 31.73 14 6.73
Badari South Badari Mid-South
No. % No. %
Shells 33 9.94 0 0
Pottery 36 17.30 4 1.92
Badari Far-South
No. %
Total luxury goods 0 0
Shells 0 0
Pottery 8 3.85
Total grave goods 13 0.44
(Percentages are based on the total number of luxury goods
[2284], shells [332], pottery [208], and grave goods [2955]
at all seven Badari cemeteries). Note: Not all categories are
contained in this table and some of those listed are redundant
or included more than once.
since it was immediately apparent that there was
great diversity in the nature and number of
grave goods present in the various tombs, the
cemetery data were further examined in an
attempt to establish whether there were any
significant differences between cemeteries or

within cemeteries in terms of the number and
type of burial goods recovered or of the extent
of plundering reported.
The data were also analysed to determine
whether there was any association between the
occurrence of burial goods and the age or sex of
the grave occupants. Cross-tabulation was em-
ployed in each case, and the findings may be
summarized as follows: In every instance, the
null hypothesis states that there is no association
2020 10:55:03 UTC
BADARIAN BURIALS 57
Table 4. Badari cemeteries: grave goods and
sex of grave occupant
DF: 3
Total Chi-square: 0.397
p: 0.9409
Contingency coefficient: 0.051
Cell freq. Male Female Totals
Goods = 0 Observed 27 19 46
Expected 27.96 18.04 46

Expected 34.04 21.96 56
Expected 12.76 8.24 21
Goods > 3 Observed 18 12 30
Expected 18.24 11.76 30
between the set of variables under study. This hy-
pothesis could be rejected in three instances.
The data indicate that there is some association
between grave goods and grave area; grave
goods and grave condition; and between grave
goods and the age status of a grave occupant.
However, the data do not indicate any associa-
tion between grave goods and the sex of a grave
occupant (Table 4).
The positive association between grave goods
and grave area is that more than the expected
number of large graves contained three or
more burial goods (Table 5); likewise, far more
than the expected number of graves with more
than three burial goods tend to be plundered
(Table 6). Between grave goods and age status
the positive association is that more than the
expected number of subadults seem to have
large numbers of burial goods, while more than
the expected number of adults seem to have no
burial goods. In other words, subadults have
more grave offerings than adults (Table 7).
IV. An Interpretation of the Data Analysis

It has been suggested that it would be reason-
able to infer something of Badarian socio-
economic conditions from an analysis of their
burial remains. Some archaeologists have argued
that economic differences between members of
the Badarian population were small and their
Table 5. Badari cemeteries: grave goods
and grave area
DF: 6
p: 0.0058
Cell freq. Small Medium Large Totals
Goods = 0 Observed 23 7 3 33
Expected 15.2 11.05 6.75 33
Expected 34.07 24.78 15.14 74
Expected 14.73 10.72 6.55 32
Goods > 3 Observed 26 25 25 76
Expected 35 25.45 15.55 76
social system may have been basically egalitarian.
They attribute the inclusion of grave goods with
some burials but not with others to personal
choice or to status differences achieved as the

result of personal effort or perhaps even to in-
creases or decreases in the number of artefacts
that were deposited in tombs over time. It could
be argued that some Badarian people simply
chose to be buried with personal adornments
while others did not. On the other hand, the
discovery that the grave goods in the predynas-
tic cemeteries under consideration were not dis-
tributed in a random manner seems to require
an explanation beyond that of personal choice
on the part of the grave occupant or his or her
kin group. At least one source to which a non-
random dispersion of burial goods may perhaps
be attributed is age.
( 1 ) Differences in economic status between grave
occupants
The data indicate that there is an association
between the number of burial goods discovered
in a particular tomb and the age status of its
occupant. However, the nature of this associa-
tion can only be further established through an
interpretation of the cross-tabulation results.
37 Trigger in Trigger et al., op. cit., 27.
2020 10:55:03 UTC

Table 6. Badari cemeteries:
grave goods and grave condition
DF: 6
p: 0.0052
Cell fre- Plun- Undis- Dis- Totals
quencies dered turbed turbed
Expected 15.45 22.74 3.82 42
Goods =1 Observed 28 49 11 88
Expected 32.36 47.64 8 88
Expected 13.61 20.03 3.36 37
Expected 27.58 40.6 6.82 75
Of the 197 individuals that comprise the three
age categories present at Badari, adults comprise
the largest number of persons (134) associated
with grave goods. Only thirty-eight subadults
and sixteen old individuals are associated with

burial goods (Table 7).
This distribution of burial goods is quite con-
sistent with an interpretation of the Badarian
socio-economic system as one that exhibits
both a minimum of social complexity and mar-
ginal differences in wealth between its mem-
bers. Moreover, it has been observed that status
differences in such societies are often found to
be age-dependent and also that these distinc-
tions may be reflected in the society's mortuary
practices. For example, Binford reports that in
seven of eleven instances where status differen-
tiation within a society was based on age,
separate burial locations were used for adults
and children. Two patterns were recognized:
house burials were reserved for children while
a cemetery was used for adults, or, children
were buried on the outskirts of the settlement
while adults were buried within it. However,
although there is an apparent association be-
tween grave goods and age status at Badari,
there is no unmistakable evidence of differen-
tial treatment of individual grave occupants in
terms of age-related burial location.
Table 7. Badari cemeteries: grave goods and age status
DF: 6

p: 0.0043
Cellfreq. Subadult Adult Old Totals
Expected 10.66 34.01 5.33 50
Expected 15.14 48.29 7.57 71
Expected 5.12 16.32 2.56 24
Expected 11.09 35.37 5.54 52
Furthermore, the data also show that nearly
equal numbers of subadults and adults (twenty-
one and twenty-six respectively), as opposed to
only five old individuals, received more than
three grave goods each. Also, almost twice the
expected number of subadults received more
than three burial offerings, and twice as many
subadults as old people received at least one
burial good. Four subadults were found to lack
burial goods and five old individuals had
been buried without offerings. Still, a larger
percentage of old adults were found to lack
burial offerings, since there were forty-two sub-
adults and only twenty-one old adults in these
cemeteries near Badari.

There are therefore several reasons why this
particular association of age and grave goods
cannot be interpreted as an indication that sta-
tus differences within Badarian society were
age-dependent or dependent on seniority. First
of all, in the four cemeteries in which imma-
ture burials were discovered, the largest mean
number of grave goods is found with subadults.
Secondly, the largest number of grave goods is
found with adults rather than with old individ-
uals, and thirdly, twenty-four percent of the old
grave occupants, as opposed to thirty percent
of the adults and ten percent of the subadults,
had no grave offerings whatsoever. Besides, out
of a total of fifty-four undisturbed graves at
Badari North, eight were those of old individ-
uals with a mean number of 0.75 grave goods
deposited in their tombs. The mean number of 38 Binford, in
Binford, ed., op. cit., 233-34.
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BADARIAN BURIALS 59
burial goods in the ten undisturbed subadult
graves at the same cemetery was 12.60.
At Badari West, it was found that, although
almost equal numbers of subadults and old in-
dividuals were likely to have no grave offerings
or either one or two grave offerings, subadults

were three times as likely as old adults to have
three or more than three grave goods.
At Badari South, the data did not indicate any
association between the number of burial goods
discovered in a given tomb and the age status of
its grave occupant. Moreover, although ten per-
cent of the total Badarian tomb offerings and
forty-six percent of the total ivory goods were
recovered from these burials, none of the grave
occupants at this cemetery was listed as "old." It
would therefore appear that the nature of the
association between grave goods and age status
within the Badari cemeteries consists of a high
association of grave goods with subadults but
not with old individuals. It can therefore be con-
cluded that the non-random distribution of Ba-
darian mortuary offerings cannot be attributed
to status distinctions achieved solely as the re-
sult of age.
Furthermore, a comparison of subadult burial
offerings in the seven cemeteries shows that
there was considerable variation in both the
quantity and quality of the grave goods depos-
ited in the tombs. At Badari West the mean
number of goods in twenty-five subadult tombs
was 26.64, while that in the twelve subadult
graves at Badari North was 10.67, and 14.75 was
the mean for offerings in the burials of four
subadults at Badari South. There were three

burial goods in the grave of the only child found
at Badari East. Subadults were absent from the
remaining three cemeteries at Badari. In three
undisturbed graves of subadults at Badari South,
Badari North, and Badari West, the total num-
ber of grave offerings is four, one, and ten arte-
facts respectively. The tomb at Badari North
only contained locally made pottery; the others
contained items made of both local and im-
ported materials. A fourth undisturbed child at
Badari West had been buried with a single pot of
local manufacture.
Both between cemeteries and within ceme-
teries, these differences in the quantity and
quality of offerings may be interpreted as an
indication of an unequal distribution of mate-
rial wealth amongst the grave occupants. How-
ever, the discoveries of plentiful burial offerings
in the graves of young children are necessary
but insufficient evidence to demonstrate the ex-
istence of a rudimentary system of ranking
among members of the Badarian population.
Unless further evidence of economic inequality
between members of Badarian communities can
be produced, their social system might be por-
trayed as being basically egalitarian.
At Badari, a study of the distribution of luxury

goods recovered from the graves revealed that:
1. Graves containing luxury goods tend to
have areas that are larger than the mean
grave area computed for all graves. For
example, the mean grave size for all graves
is 1.32 square metres. At Badari South, the
disturbed grave (5151) from which five
ivory objects were retrieved was 3.03 square
metres in area. Another disturbed grave in
the same cemetery that was 3.25 square
metres in area contained seven ivory
artefacts.
2. Graves containing luxury goods tend to
have more grave goods than other graves.
The mean number of burial goods found
in the graves at Badari is 11.28; however,
forty-four is the mean number of grave
goods present in graves at Badari North
that contain two ivory artefacts, and
seventy-seven burial offerings were found
in the Badari West grave with fifteen ivory
artefacts. Even at Badari South, where only
forty-four percent of the burials still con-
tained luxury objects after plundering,
forty grave offerings were discovered in the
grave that contained seven ivory goods.
3. Graves containing luxury goods tend to be
more "elaborate" than other graves. Brun-
ton reported that in some burials "... the
matting which surrounded the body was
kept up by means of sticks, forming a
sort of miniature tent." Moreover, while

Badarian corpses were usually wrapped in
39 Christopher S. Peebles and Susan M. Kus, "Some
Archaeological Correlates of Ranked Societies," American
Antiquity 42 (1977), 431.
2020 10:55:03 UTC
matting in the most common form of
burial, "hamper coffins" were identified in
some instances. Some of these occurred in
graves that contained both luxury goods
and large numbers of burial offerings. The
burial at Badari West that is described as
the undisturbed tomb of a child "in a rush
coffin" contained gravegoods that included
carnelian, blue glazed steatite beads, an
ivory spoon, a slate palette, and a string of
shells. "Hamper coffins" may also have
been present in three other burials.
4. Graves containing luxury goods tend to be
"disturbed." A brief account of the distri-
bution of ivory artefacts in the Badari
cemeteries will serve to illustrate this

point. A total of seventy-eight ivory objects
were retrieved from thirty-six tombs in
three cemeteries. Fifty-four of these ivory
artefacts were removed from plundered
graves; twelve artefacts occurred in dis-
turbed graves and nine artefacts were re-
moved from undisturbed graves. Thus, of
the thirty-six Badari graves that contained
ivory objects, only seven were undisturbed.
Two were listed as disturbed; the rest were
all plundered. It would appear to be
highly significant that no ivory artefacts
occurred in the undisturbed graves at Ba-
dari South, whereas twelve ivory artefacts
were found in two of the six disturbed
tombs and twenty-four ivory objects were
retrieved from sixteen of the forty-four
plundered tombs at this cemetery. More-
over, cross-tabulation between grave con-
dition and the presence or absence of ivory
artefacts at all seven Badari cemeteries
showed that twice (twenty-seven) the ex-
pected number (13.24) of graves that con-
tained ivory were plundererd, while less
than half (seven) the expected number
(19.49) were undisturbed.
The data therefore suggest that certain highly
visible graves were subject to plundering and
also that such graves comprised a minority of the
total burials in these cemeteries. Of the 262
graves at all seven Badari cemeteries, 131 (fifty

percent) were recorded as undisturbed. Twenty-
two burials were listed as disturbed. The condi-
tion of twenty burials was described as un-
known; the remaining eighty-nine were listed as
plundered. Therefore, only thirty-four percent of
the total number of burials were plundered.
Five of these plundered graves were discov-
ered at Badari West and thirty-three were found
at Badari North. At Badari South, forty-four
burials, or eighty-one percent of the cemetery
total, were plundered. The scale on which the
business of grave robbing was conducted there-
fore varied from cemetery to cemetery. It is also
perhaps significant that the largest amount of
ivory was recovered from Badari South, the
same cemetery for which the highest rate of
plundering is recorded (Table 8).
On the other hand, a study of the distribu-
tion of Badarian pottery suggests that pottery was
consistently ignored by tomb robbers. Rippled
pottery tended to be found in undisturbed
graves. Polished pottery tended to be found in
the wealthier graves, even after plundering.
Thus, plunderers were apparently primarily en-
gaged in removing luxury goods or "sociotech-
nic" artefacts (those that served to symbolize
social rank or vertical social differentiation)
from the Badarian tombs.
Brunton's data show that in many cases im-
ported materials were found in the tombs. In
the plundered graves, only the broken parts

of the presumably more valued articles were
usually left behind. Even so, imported goods
are more often found in the disturbed or plun-
dered burials. Locally made artefacts usually
tend to predominate in the undisturbed graves.
Krzyzaniak reports that the clay which was uti-
lized in the manufacture of Badarian pottery
was found locally, whereas ivory was probably
imported from the south.41 The steatite, cop-
per, turquoise, carnelian, slate, and malachite
found in some graves were all imported and
assumed by Brunton to be evidence of trade.42
The origin of the carnelian may have been
either the Western or the Eastern Desert or
Lech Krzyzaniak, Early Farming Cultures on the Lower
Nile (Warsaw, 1977), 32.
41 Brunton and Caton-Thompson, op. cit., 41.
1 Brunton and Caton-Thompson, op. cit., 41-42; Krzyz-
aniak, op. cit., 32-33.
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BADARIAN BURIALS 61
Nubia; the slate must have been obtained from
the Eastern Desert and the malachite was ob-
tained from either the Sinai or the Eastern

Desert.43 However obtained, the evidence indi-
cates that these "luxury goods" were dispersed
in a minority of the Badarian graves, and also
that plundering of these graves actually took place
during the Badarian period. At Badari South,
Burial 5162 is reported to be undisturbed. The
corpse, that of an adult male, was wrapped in
matting and unaccompanied by burial goods.
Nineteen inches (0.48 metres) under this grave,
Brunton discovered Burial 5163, the plundered
tomb of an adult female. Eight grave goods in-
cluding an Ancillaria shell of Red Sea origin,
malachite, a shell bead, four slate beads, and a
carnelian bead remained in the plundered
grave. These burial offerings were all imports.
The discovery that the dispersion of grave
goods amongst the Badarian graves is non-
random; the finding that thirty-five of the grave
occupants had been entombed with more than
ten grave goods each, while ninety had received
only one burial offering and fifty-one had re-
ceived none; the discovery that there was an as-
sociation between the number of burial goods
recovered from the various tombs and (a) the
sizes of graves, (b) the condition of graves, and
(c) grave occupants listed as "subadults"; the
finding that the data do not indicate an associa-
tion between the sex of a grave occupant and
the number of grave goods retrieved from any
particular grave; the detection of differences in
the quantity and quality of grave offerings both
between and within cemeteries; the detection that
the most richly furnished graves were restricted

to a minority of the mortuary population, and
furthermore that such tombs were subject to
plundering - all may be interpreted as a mani-
festation of the unequal distribution of material
wealth amongst the grave occupants and thus
an indication of differential access to resources
by members the same Badarian community.
Another indication that both social and eco-
nomic differences existed amongst Badarian
groups is provided by the observation that, apart
Table 8. Burial characteristics of Badarian
burials near Badari
Badari North Badari Far-North
No. % No. %
Total burials 93 3
Graves without 18 19.36 0 0
goods
Graves with 1 burial 41 44.09 1 33.33
good
Graves with 11 to 9 9.68 - -
115 goods
Burials with ivory 12 12.90 1 33.33
Burials with palettes 6 6.45 0 0
Burials with beads 13 13.98 0 0

Burials with pottery 53 56.99 3 100.00
Plundered burials 33 35.48 2 66.67
Undisturbed burials 54 58.07 1 33.33
Wealth index 29 - 5 -
Badari West Badari East
No. % No. %
Total burials 93 9
Graves without 23 24.73 0 0
goods
good
511 goods
Burials with ivory 7 7.53 0 0
Burials with palettes 8 8.60 1 11.11
Burials with beads 19 20.43 0 0
Badari South Badari Mid-South
No. % No. %
Total burials 54 5

Graves without 8 14.82 1 20.00
goods
good
55 goods
Burials with ivory 16 29.63 0 0
Burials with palettes 3 5.56 1 20.00
Burials with beads 14 25.93 1 20.00
Note: Many of the categories contained in this table are
redundant or included more than once.
43 Krzyzaniak, op. cit., 32-33.
2020 10:55:03 UTC
from those undisturbed graves that contained
no grave offerings, at least four different "types"

of burial appeared to exist at Badari:
1. Wealthy interments that contained objects
made specifically for burial and with no evi-
dence of use constitute 3.4 percent of the
Badari burials. These tombs usually con-
tained non-utilitarian objects often made
of exotic materials and pottery types that
were almost never recovered from "village"
deposits.
2. Wealthy interments with possibly used ar-
ticles, such as the occasional worn slate
palette or ivory cosmetic vase that still con-
tained traces of malachite paste. Five per-
cent of the Badari graves can be assigned
to this category of burials.
3. Burials that were similar to the "wealthy"
burials in every respect but substituted
products manufactured from local materi-
als. The nonutilitarian burial goods in
tombs of this type, which accounted for 4.6
percent of the Badari burials, were fash-
ioned of bone or clay rather than of ivory.
4. Burials that contained only used domestic
objects, such as repaired or smoke black-
ened pots, accounted for eight percent of
the total burials at Badari.
Given the thesis that the burial status of a
particular individual will correspond to the so-
cial position occupied by the deceased during

his or her lifetime,45 the identification of major
categorical differences between the burials at
Badari suggests the existence of several differ-
ent burial statuses symbolizing several different
social positions. The economic differences be-
tween the burials, and thus between the social
positions symbolized, further imply the exis-
tence of unequal access to resources by mem-
bers of Badarian society.
The claim of unequal resource use among
these communities was also supported by the
discovery that economic differences were ex-
pressed in the spatial patterning produced by
the placement of graves within certain ceme-
teries as well as by the location of particular
cemeteries. Thus, an analysis of the graves at
Badari North demonstrated that burials were
grouped in two spatially distinct areas. Al-
though there was one child in the western part
of the cemetery who had been interred with
sixty objects, the thirty-seven graves in this sec-
tion normally contained only one offering in
each burial along with the remains of mainly
undisturbed males and subadults. Luxury goods
were restricted to the burials in the eastern half of the
cemetery. Twelve burials contained ivory and six
contained palettes. One contained a carved
ibex head, one contained copper beads, while
turquoise beads were recovered from another.
None of these materials was found in graves in
the western area.

(2) Resource control vested in a hereditary authority
It has been established that, at those Badarian
cemeteries for which grave plans were available,
the most notable aspect of burial placement was
the tendency to separate burials into distinct
clusters in various sections of the same ceme-
tery. Following a review of the ethnographic evi-
dence from thirty societies, Tainter suggested
that the "presence of formal disposal areas will
strongly indicate that the archaeologist has iso-
lated individual corporate groups . . . The
tendency to place burials in clusters within cem-
eteries might, therefore, reflect the existence of
Badarian family or clan groups.
Moreover, it would appear that some burial
offerings may have been regarded as "sumptu-
ary" items that served to mark differences in
rank and to which restricted access was socially
sanctioned. A spatial analysis of the cemetery
plots at Badari North, Badari West and Badari
South did indeed suggest that certain burial
items, such as ivory objects and carnelian beads,
tended to cluster in specific areas.
At Badari South the grave plot distribution
revealed that burials were grouped in three sec-
tions. Roughly equal numbers of burials were
located in each section. Graves were first cate-
gorized in terms of the presence or absence of
ivory. Although some ivory bearing tombs were

45 O'Shea, op. cit., 10.
46 Tainter in Schiffer, op. cit., 123.
47 Bard, op. cit. (1987), 121.
2020 10:55:03 UTC
BADARIAN BURIALS 63
situated in both the north-western and south-
western areas, ten graves containing ivory were
clustered in the south-western portion of the
cemetery. Among these were tombs that con-
tained an elaborate statuette of elephant ivory,
a knobbed ivory bracelet, and fancy ivory combs
as well as spoons. Only four graves in the south-
eastern part of the cemetery contained ivory,
and ivory occurred in only two graves in the
north-west portion. Ivory was discovered in a
dozen Badari North graves and in seven tombs
at Badari West.
Of the three burials at Badari South that con-
tained carnelian beads, two (Burials 5111 and
5132) were located within the orbit of the ivory
bearing tombs. At Badari West, carnelian was
recovered from two burials (5710 and 5718),
both situated in the cluster of tombs that con-
tained luxury objects. Five burials in the east-
ern section of the cemetery at Badari North

also contained carnelian (5397, 5399, 5403,
5413 and 5449).
Brunton's excavations established that access
to carnelian was probably even more restricted
than access to ivory, since only seventeen of the
total number of Badarian burials unearthed con-
tained objects manufactured from carnelian.
Ten of these tombs were located at Badari.
Both "rich" and "poor" burials were also
present at Badari West, where graves contain-
ing luxury goods tended to be concentrated in
the southern part of the cemetery. Thus, 5705
is spatially close to 5735, and both are the un-
disturbed graves of adult males in which "bead
belts," fashioned from masses of green glazed
steatite beads, had been placed. Forty-six per-
cent of the beads from Badari were discovered
in these two tombs. A "large number" of green
glazed steatite beads was also found in Burial
5721.
The apparent restriction of bead belts to the
graves of adult males suggests that these belts
may have been symbolic of high status and au-
thority. At Armant, bed burials were inter-
preted by Kathryn Bard as symbols of high
status and authority. Since it is quite likely
that glazed bead belts were associated with a
type of "bed" burial in some Badarian graves,50
then bead belts may also have been indicative

1 Anth 363 Anderson 1992 reading essay 25 poin.docx

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