Description
- Abstract:
- Abstract of SOCIAL LANDSCAPES OF THE EGYPTIAN DESERTS, 3000-1100 BCE, by LAUREL DARCY HACKLEY, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2020. Historically, Egyptology’s approach to desert landscapes has been rooted in the idea that the desert ciphered for things frightening, chaotic, and otherworldly, a foil to the Nile Valley’s lush, fertile, ordered safety. This dissertation examines this assumption in the context of the considerable archaeological evidence for Pharaonic activity in the Egyptian deserts, which suggests that these landscapes were inhabited, traversed, cultivated, mined, controlled, and deified. The project uses a social landscape paradigm, in which landscape is viewed as a multi-layered and complex product of cultural processes, to integrate this archaeological data with textual, art-historical, and phenomenological studies of the Egyptian deserts. This integration allows the investigation of questions about how ancient engagements with the deserts were mediated by culture, imagination, memory, and individuals’ physical experience. A selection of case studies consider the application of phenomenological methods to archaeological research in arid landscapes, the pragmatic and memorial functions of desert rock art, the logistics and experience of desert travel, the social context of mining and quarrying expeditions, the dynamics of Egyptian encounters with indigenous Saharan groups, the study of landscape representations as a filter for culturally salient features, and the cosmological associations of the desert landscape as they influenced human experience in the desert and cultic practice in the Nile Valley. Each case study is geared toward inserting a conceptual, emotional, and social analysis of the action of desert landscapes into Egyptological understandings of the desert environment. The results of this work underscore the importance of inserting a consideration of social dynamics into archaeological work, especially at the landscape level. It suggests that productive analyses can be performed by processing legacy data in new theoretical frameworks, and that methodologies for new research can be developed that more fully record important social indicators. Most importantly, it contributes to the growing body of evidence proving that the Egyptian deserts were important, dynamic social actors throughout Pharaonic history.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2020
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Citation
Hackley, Laurel Darcy,
"Social Landscapes of the Egyptian Deserts, 3000-1100 BCE"
(2020).
Graduate Research Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/jf10-5k35
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Graduate Research Theses and Dissertations
Theses and Dissertations for the Graduate Research department....