Ceramic Perspectives on Ancient Egyptian Society

Download or read book Ceramic Perspectives on Ancient Egyptian Society written by Leslie Anne Warden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-24 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element demonstrates how ceramics, a dataset that is more typically identified with chronology than social analysis, can forward the study of Egyptian society writ large. This Element argues that the sheer mass of ceramic material indicates the importance of pottery to Egyptian life. Ceramics form a crucial dataset with which Egyptology must critically engage, and which necessitate working with the Egyptian past using a more fluid theoretical toolkit. This Element will demonstrate how ceramics may be employed in social analyses through a focus on four broad areas of inquiry: regionalism; ties between province and state, elite and non-elite; domestic life; and the relationship of political change to social change. While the case studies largely come from the Old through Middle Kingdoms, the methods and questions may be applied to any period of Egyptian history.