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30年里所主张的那样，尽管童年对于理解国家形成等政治过程很重要，但童年已经从历史发展中被抹去，仍然没有出现在考古学叙事中。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，这有可能极大地加强儿童研究：在坟墓的材料记录中，儿童的身份是最好的。本研究将国家视为一套新的定义社会实践，研究了在第四个千年期间尼罗河流域与儿童死亡相关的情绪变化与分层社会发展之间的联系。为了解决以下问题，将探讨情感、物质性和未成年人葬礼空间中的权力谈判之间的关系：-儿童坟墓在埃及前王朝的权力谈判中扮演什么角色？在未成年人的葬礼上表现了哪些情感、记忆和身份来塑造特定的逝者形象？-哪些物质文化在葬礼期间活跃地部署在儿童坟墓中？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？-未成年人的葬礼集合和社会复杂性是如何在第四部中同时演变的。公元前？儿童死亡的情感投入何时会出现重大转变？儿童的死胡同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场所，是哀悼者通过葬礼与逝者接触的场所。因此，我专注于仪式环境，如坟墓和葬礼，在那里，物品被用来创造不同个人/群体的形象，以重塑社会秩序。我考察了什么样的考古组合构成了儿童的坟墓，并确定了它们是如何在前王朝时期演变的，试图将葬礼仪式的修改与埃及墓地中人格、身份和权力关系谈判的变化联系起来。我的研究将不再关注数量方面，而是探索葬礼记录的质量特征，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殡仪馆处理的残留物可能如何涉及情绪(如悲伤)、社会身份和人格的操纵。分析从未公布的挖掘档案中提取了新的数据，直接检查了博物馆收藏品中的出土组合，从正在进行的田野调查中出现的新数据，以及该地区一个世纪研究的已公布数据。通过对整理的数据库的统计分析，我将检查各种历史趋势和群体的存在，这些趋势和群体为宏观分析国家形成过程中的社会动态提供了依据。这项研究将有助于将埃及学与当代社会学、人类学和考古学理论中当前的辩论联系起来，如人格与身份、物质与情感或童年研究。另一方面，理论反思也意味着对我们获取数据的自我批评。存放埃及材料的大多数报告、档案和收藏品都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，这篇博士论文不仅旨在促进关于儿童的学术研究，而且还旨在开启儿童与考古遗产之间的相关对话，以便在博物馆和收藏品中创造新的空间，让这些通常被遗忘的观众参与进来。

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.