CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

One of the main foci of comparative studies on ancient societies deals withurban dynamics and, in particular, with initial urbanization processes andtheir concomitance with the transformations that lead to the emergence of statedynamics. Within this context, we will analyze here the evidence about twonuclei that have provided a large amount of information on the characteristicsof the population nucleation on the banks of the Nile during the IV millenniumBC: Hierakonpolis, in Upper Egypt, and Tell el-Farkha, in the Nile delta. Wewill address, first, the available evidence for both historical situations, organizing it into four major areas, related to spatial dynamics, forms of functional specialization, social differentiation, and conflict, which allow us to notice the main innovations that characterize these processes. And second, we will propose a reconsideration of the information that relates to a specific problem: the relationship between the concentration of population in urban contexts and the processes of sociopolitical hierarchization that took place within and from the urban centers. In this sense, beyond the multiple differences between the urbanization trajectories of Hierakonpolis and Tell el-Farkha in the long term, the beginnings of these processes in both nuclei have a common characteristic, which is fundamental for further transformations: the creation of a social context whose practices exceeded the limits related to the preexisting logic of social organization.