The Emergence of the State in Predynastic Upper Egypt: An Agent-Based Approach
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-09-23

The archaeological record shows that from ca. 4000 BC onwards, Neolithic farming communities in Upper Egypt underwent a process of increasing social complexity. This included a rise in wealth inequality and hierarchy; settlement agglomeration; and the development of complex cultural ideology, culminating in the emergence of a unified territorial state encompassing the whole Nile Valley by ca. 3200-3100. The rise of the ancient Egyptian state has long been a point of fascination for scholars, but without a clear consensus on how or why this state emerged. Recently, several scholars have set aside the search for a grand unified explanation, acknowledging that the emergence of the Egyptian state was the result of overlapping complex social, economic, geographic factors. However, archaeologists still struggle to adequately narrate and understand this process. This paper will present what Agent Based Modeling (ABM) can contribute to the discussion, focusing on the early stage of the process: the transition from roughly egalitarian agri-communities to agglomerated settlements with pronounced social stratification. This paper will introduce some of the prevailing theoretical models in the Egyptological literature concerning the rise of polities and social complexity and show how ABM can be used to critically evaluate and refine these models. Specifically, we present an ABM (built using NetLogo) that explores how a combination of human-decision making, environmental/topographical factors, and chance all interconnect to result in the emergence of a settlement system and wealth hierarchy similar to that witnessed in the archaeological record of predynastic Upper Egypt.

(Jessica Nitschke, Geoff Nitschke)