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PALEORIEN T, vol. 18/2 - 1992

EGYPTIAN OLD KINGDOM PATTERNS OF ANIMAL USE AND THE VALUE OF FAUNAL DATA IN MODELING SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

R. W. REDDING

elucidating producing

Introduction

An unresolved question in archaeology is the potential of faunal data for providing insight on human subsistence decisions and, therefore, on economic and social structure. The main reason the question has not been resolved is a lack of testing of constructs based on faunal data to determine the value of fauna in understanding socioeconomic systems. Usually, a model, or other construct, is developed from one data set and no other data set is available to test predictions generated by it. Recent excavations at two Old Kingdom sites in Lower Egypt provide an opportunity to examine the value of faunal data in developing models of human subsistence behavior by testing predictions. How much can we do with faunal data ?

In 1983 a group from the University of Washington began excavations at an Old Kingdom village site, Kom el-Hisn, in the Nile Delta. Three preliminary reports have been published and a monograph is being prepared (1). Because most previous work on the Old Kingdom has tended to focus on tombs, temples, palaces and pyramids, the samples obtained in the residential deposits at Kom el-Hisn are unique and present us with the opportunity to test ideas about Old Kingdom socioeconomic organization. The faunal analysis was undertaken with the assumption that relative abundance of species and age and

sex structures for the samples of each species provide information on economic decision making and could provide a broad view of the economic and, perhaps, of the social system in the Old Kingdom. Using this approach on the Kom el-Hisn fauna produced two results. First, it yielded an internally consistent model of the subsistence strategy and tactics that led to the patterns observed in the faunal data. Second, it produced a wider view of animal production strategy in the Old Kingdom that yields predictions of the faunal structure at other sites involved in the regional economic system. Specifically, it produced predictions of the structure of the fauna at a site provisioned by the central authority. In 1988 when the Kom el-Hisn analysis was completed no adequate data from a provisioned site were available to test these predictions. Kokabi (2) had published a sample of fauna from excavations by Kromer at what may be a village site associated with workers at the pyramid complex. But the age and sex data for the domestic animals published by Kokabi were inadequate for testing the predictions derived from the Kom el-Hisn samples. A test of the predictions had to await the excavation of a sample from a site, preferably contemporaneous with Kom el-Hisn, that was administered and provisioned by the central authority that oversaw decisions at Kom el-Hisn. The recent excavations by Mark Lehner in the "workers' village" at the pyramids have provided the necessary samples.

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