Egyptian state formation and the entanglements of personhood, power and emotions in Predynastic children's burials.

正如女权主义学者在过去三十年中所主张的那样，童年已经从历史发展中抹去，并且在考古学叙事中仍然缺席，尽管它对于理解国家形成等政治过程非常重要。埃及也不例外，尽管尼罗河流域有丰富的考古数据，主要来自墓地，这有可能大大加强儿童研究：这是在坟墓的材料记录中，儿童是最好的识别。关于国家作为一套新的定义社会实践，本研究研究之间的联系不断变化的情感参与与儿童的死亡和发展的分层社会在第四个千年在尼罗河流域。情感，物质和谈判的权力在亚成人的墓葬空间之间的关系将被探讨，以解决以下问题：-什么是儿童的坟墓在埃及前王朝的权力谈判中的作用？在亚成年人的葬礼上，表现了什么样的情感、记忆和身份，以创造一个特定的死者形象？- 儿童墓在葬礼中积极运用了哪些物质文化？通过情感、记忆和身份的表现，坟墓物品的质量方面如何与权力动态相关联？- 亚成年人的葬礼组合和社会复杂性如何在整个第四磨坊同时演变。BC？什么时候，人们对儿童死亡的情感发生了重大转变？儿童的死亡是如何促成埃及国家的出现的？墓地是前王朝时期社会关系的中心，是哀悼者通过葬礼与死者接触的竞技场。因此，我专注于仪式环境，如坟墓和葬礼，其中对象被部署来创建不同个人/群体的图像，以重新排序社会。我研究了什么样的考古组合构成儿童的坟墓，并建立他们如何通过前王朝演变，试图在太平间仪式的修改，在埃及墓地的人格，身份和权力关系的谈判的变化。我的研究将不再关注数量方面，而是探讨丧葬记录的质的特征，如物质文化的碎片化和身体的肢解。这将使我能够评估物品和其他遗体的太平间处理可能参与操纵情绪（如悲伤），社会身份和人格。该分析从未发表的挖掘档案、博物馆收藏的挖掘组合的直接检查和正在进行的实地调查中出现的新数据以及该地区世纪研究的已发表数据中汲取了新数据。通过整理数据库的统计分析，我将研究各种历史趋势和群体的存在，这些趋势和群体提供了对国家形成过程中社会动态的宏观分析。这项研究将有助于将人类学与当代社会学，人类学和考古学理论中的当前争论联系起来，如人格和身份，物质和情感或童年研究。另一方面，理论反思也意味着对我们获取数据的自我批评。大部分的报告，档案和收藏住房埃及材料来自欧洲殖民和帝国主义的过去。因此，我们有责任使这些收藏与当代研究相关，并反思其作为东方主义话语基础的问题性质。最后，这篇博士论文的目的不仅是促进对童年的学术研究，但打开儿童和考古遗产之间的相关对话，以创造新的空间，在博物馆和收藏品，涉及这个通常被遗忘的观众。

As feminist scholars have argued for the past three decades, childhood has been erased from historical developments and remains absent in archaeological narratives, despite its importance for understanding political processes such as state formation. Egypt is no exception, despite the rich archaeological data available for the Nile valley, mainly from cemeteries, which has the potential to significantly enhance childhood studies: it is in the material record from graves where children are best identified. Regarding the state as a new set of defining social practices, this research studies the connection between the changing emotional engagement with children's death and the development of a stratified society during the 4th millennium in the Nile valley. The relationship between emotions, materiality and the negotiation of power in subadult's funerary spaces will be explored in order to address the following questions: - What was the role of children's tombs in the negotiation of power in the Egyptian Predynastic? What emotions, memories and identities were performed in subadult's funerals to create a specific image of the deceased? - Which material culture was actively deployed in children's tombs during funerals? How do the qualitative aspects of grave goods relate to power dynamics through the performance of emotions, memories and identities? - How did subadult's funerary assemblages and social complexity evolve concurrently throughout the 4th mill. BC? When do major shifts in the emotional engagement with the death of children emerge? How did children's deadscapes contribute to the emergence of the Egyptian state? Cemeteries were the locus of social relationships in the Predynastic period, an arena for mourners to engage with the deceased through burial practices. Thus, I focus in ritual contexts such as graves and funerals where objects were deployed to create images of different individuals/groups to reorder society. I examine what kinds of archaeological assemblages constituted children's graves and establish how they evolved through the Predynastic, trying to relate the modifications in the mortuary rituals to changes in the negotiation of personhood, identity and power relations in Egyptian cemeteries. Instead of focusing on quantitative aspects, my research will explore qualitative traits of the funerary record, such as the fragmentation of material culture and the dismemberment of the body. This will allow me to evaluate how objects and other remains of the mortuary treatment might be involved in the manipulation of emotions (such as grief), social identities and personhood. The analysis draws in new data from unpublished excavation archives, direct examination of excavated assemblages in museum collections and from fresh data emerging from ongoing fieldwork, as well as published data from a century of research in the region. Through statistical analysis of the collated database, I will examine the existence of various historical trends and groups that afford a macro-scale analysis of social dynamics during state formation.This research will contribute to connect Egyptology with current debates in contemporary sociology, anthropology and archaeological theory, like personhood and identity, materiality and emotions or childhood studies. On the other hand, theoretical reflection also implies self-criticism on our access to data. Most of reports, archives and collections housing Egyptian materials come from a European colonial and imperialist past. It is thus our responsibility to both make these collections relevant to contemporary research and reflect over its problematic nature as a foundation of orientalist discourses. Finally, this doctoral thesis aims not only to foster academic research on childhood, but to open a relevant dialogue between children and archaeological heritage in order to create new spaces in museums and collections to involve this usually forgotten audience.