Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Women's work: the first 20,000 years, Women, cloth and society in early times . 334 pages, 78 figures. 1994. New York (NY): Norton; 0-393-03506-9 hardback $23.

tion of the two Egyptian ‘Kingdoms’ (the Nile valley and the delta) has been questioned, and the suitability of Egypt as a model for global questions of prehistory has recently been suggested [Scarre). Prominent among writers of this period has been Kathryn Bard. Articles on subjects ranging from geography to ideology have appeared over the past 10 years, and the present work (adapted from a Ph.D thesis at Toronto) is to some extent a synthesis of these various lines of enquiry. The book breaks down into five main sections: a background chapter which is both introduction and review of the evidence currently available; a brief history (chapter 2) of ideas concerning the correlation between distinctions in mortuary treatment and social stratification, drawing largely on the work of Binford, Hodder, Pader and others; a summary (chapter 3) of the internal discussion on relative and absolute dating of the predynastic; then two chapters (4 and 5) which are the real meat: a statistical analysis and comparison of two of the most extensive and best-published Upper Egyptian (Nile valley) cemeteries, Armant and Naqada. In a concluding chapter, Bard considers two main themes, the rise of complex society and the origins of state formation. The conclusions drawn from the analytical work are interesting if by now uncontroversial: that the two cemeteries differ in character, the recorded tombs of Armant belonging to a small farming community with relatively little social differentiation, whereas Naqada, at least from the Naqada I1 phase, demonstrates increasing social, economic and political complexity, with craft specialization and the emergence of an Blite element with trappings of statehood. This book seems to be aimed at several different groups: students, professionals and the informed public alike. I would expect the main market, however, to be among students, and in this respect there is one particular failing. The provision of illustrations is particularly disappointing: I counted only 13 pages with maps or bar charts (not listed) relating almost exclusively to the two site-specific analytical sections. Although the book is well indexed with a long bibliography, it would have been a great advantage to have at least graphic examples of the many categories of grave goods (beads and other body decoration, amulets, gaming sets, weapons and tools, stone and pottery vessels) selected for the analysis, which are mentioned in the text. The individual cemetery plans are reproduced unmodified from original sources, but no attempt is made to refine these in any way, for example by outlining their horizontal stratigraphy or even identifying the locations of individual tombs singled out for comment in the text. Chapter 3, with its relatively detailed description of the classes of pottery vessels selected for Petrie’s original system of sequence dating (seriation) and its later refinements, would also have been transformed if at least a sample of each class had appeared as a line drawing. The text itself is lucid enough, and the statistical chapters are presented in user-friendly fashion. The referencing is full and thorough, with an extensive and on the whole accessible bibliography covering both the archaeological data and the theory. An appendix provides a useful breakdown of the Armant burials by date (based on Kaiser’s revision of the stylistic phases of pottery production). The general index at the back of the book includes sites and modern archaeologists, but omits historical and protodynastic royal names and (perhaps more seriously] subject headings other than personal names. The value of this book will undoubtedly be as an easily digested review of the main issues of the predynastic current in Egyptian archaeology today, informed by recent developments in archaeological theory worldwide. The Introduction is a particularly useful if brief round-up of the data, including some of the lesser-known and largely unpublished current fieldwork taking place. As a teaching and research tool From farmers to Pharaohs should be on the shelves of all Egyptological libraries. DAVID JEFFREYS Department of Egyptology Institute of Archaeology, University College London