Download Project Title Old Kingdom Collapse in Egypt: Climate change or

Project Title Old Kingdom Collapse in Egypt: Climate change or human impact?
Supervisors Dr Eva Panagiotakopulu, University of Edinburgh and Professor Barry
Kemp, University of Cambridge
Email contact: [email protected]
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/research/globalchange/group5b/QuatEnt/
Project background, the problem and hypotheses
The collapse of the Old Kingdom ca. 2200 BC is one of the most significant and debated
events in the history of Egypt. There has been much discussion of possible causes,
ranging from a simplistic model of the failure of the Nile floods, driven largely by the
interpretation of the so-called Famine Stele at Elephantine, through to more complex
arguments. Some argue for increasing desertification, driven by both increased grazing
pressure and more gradual climate change leading to disruption of settlements by
pastoralists moving in from the increasingly hostile surrounding deserts, whilst others
see collapse in purely socio-economic terms. There has been much archaeological
research on relevant sites, including Edfu, with its thirty metre succession of organic
sediments spanning the relevant interval. Little attempt has been made up to now to
tease out the palaeoecological information, ranging from changes in the insect faunas,
well preserved in the desiccated sediments, to varying inorganic input to both man-made
and natural basins. If, as some have claimed and as evidence from Lake Edward on the
White Nile in northern Uganda might suggest, the Nile floods did fail completely, then it
should be visible in the sedimentary, floral and faunal sequences. This project aims to
test the hypothesis that climate was the principal factor in Old Kingdom collapse rather
than socio-economic events.
Techniques, approaches and work to be undertaken
A combination of empirical data collection and palaeoecological modelling (utilising new
data put into the Egyptian version of the BUGSCEP database for Mutual Climatic
Range) will be employed to produce a new understanding of the end of the Old
Kingdom. Historical and archaeological sources will be taken into account and relevant
sites chosen for sampling. As part of a previous project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust,
a database of habitat and distribution data, Egbugs, for the Egyptian beetle fauna has
been constructed, and interest in the development of this in Egypt has helped to secure
access to relevant reference collections in Cairo. The data collected will be interpreted,
taking into account the palaeoecological record from other proxies in the Nile Basin and
beyond, which have been used to reconstruct the past strength of the monsoons and the
position of the ITCZ across Africa.
The training element
After an initial desk-based assessment of published sources, fieldwork in Middle and
Upper Egypt will allow the recovery of samples. These will be processed at Professor
Barry Kemp’s excavation base at Amarna before identification work in Cairo. Formal
training will be provided in sample recovery, processing and identification of insect
remains, and the interpretation of past environments from insect habitat data. Additional
training is planned in basic sediment description and particle size analysis. The
ecological data stored in the Egbugs and BugsCEP databases will facilitate habitat
reconstruction and comparison. The research will be supplemented by comprehensive
transferable skills training.