We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Find out more

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $121.00

Format:
Hardback
336 pp.
156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780198803591

Publication date:
December 2017

Imprint: OUP UK


Technology and Urbanism in Late Bronze Age Egypt

Anna K. Hodgkinson

Series : Oxford Studies in Egyptian Archaeology

This book provides the first systematic and comprehensive discussion of the intra-urban distribution of high-status goods, and their production or role as a marker of the nature of the settlements known as royal cities of New Kingdom Egypt (c.1550-1069 BC).

Using spatial analysis to detect patterns of artefact distribution, the study focuses on Amarna, Gurob, and Malqata, incorporating Qantir/Pi-Ramesse for comparison. Being royal cities, these three settlements had a great need for luxury goods. Such items were made of either highly valuable materials, or materials that were not easily produced and therefore required a certain set of skills. Specifically, the industries discussed are those of glass, faience, metal, sculpture, and textiles.

Analysis of the evidence of high-status industrial processes throughout the urban settlements, has demonstrated that industrial activities took place in institutionalized buildings, in houses of the elite, and also in small domestic complexes. This leads to the conclusion that materials were processed at different levels throughout the settlements and were subject to a strict pattern of control. The methodological approach to each settlement necessarily varies, depending on the nature and quality of the available data. By examining the distribution of high-status or luxury materials, in addition to archaeological and artefactual evidence of their production, a deeper understanding has been achieved of how industries were organized and how they influenced urban life in New Kingdom Egypt.

Readership : Scholars and students working in the fields of Egyptian and Ancient Near and Middle Eastern Archaeology.

1. Introduction and Background
2. Amarna: Urban Manufacture of Luxury Items
3. Gurob: Luxury Goods Manufacture in a Harbour- and Palace City
4. Malqata: Manufacturing at a Ceremonial Settlement
5. Luxury-Goods Manufacture at Amarna, Gurob, and Malqata in Comparison
6. The Workshop as a Microcosm: Workshops and Factories in Urban Settlements
7. Household- or Cottage Industries: Modelling Industrial diversity in New Kingdom Houses and Courtyards
8. Conclusions

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Dr Anna K. Hodgkinson has over ten years of archaeological fieldwork and data processing experience, having worked as an archaeologist and a GIS specialist in the UK, France, and Egypt, where she has worked at Amarna, Gurob, and Qantir/ Pi-Ramesse. She furthermore directed her own fieldwork at Amarna in 2014, where her team excavated a domestic industrial workshop. Hodgkinson has published papers on Egyptian archaeology as well as on the use of GIS software in archaeology. In 2014, the author carried out a fellowship at the British Museum in London. Since October 2015, she holds Marie Sklodowska-Curie post-doctoral fellowship at the Freie Universität, Berlin

Making Sense in the Social Sciences - Margot Northey, Lorne Tepperman and Patrizia Albanese
Ancient Egypt - Alan B. Lloyd
The Use of Documents in Pharaonic Egypt - Christopher Eyre

Special Features

  • Provides the first comprehensive discussion of the intra-urban distribution of high-status goods and thier role as a marker of the nature of the royal cities of New Kingdom Egypt.
  • Application of multiple types of sources and methods including archaeological fieldwork and GIS.
  • Offers new, unpublished archaeological data from Gurob and Malqata.