Kinship, Concentration of Population and the Emergence of the State in the Nile Valley

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

Egypt at its Origins 3. Proceedings of the Third International Conference “Origin of the State. Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt”

Peeters

Lugar: Leuven; Año: 2011; p. 1229 - 1242

Current research on the emergence of the state ­­­– in Egypt as well as in other contexts – use to pay scant attention on the importance of kinship in non-state communities as the main axis for the organization of such societies. However, where kinship rules, there are limits to the possibilities of social differentiation and to the emergence of the state within the society. Because of this, it is most plausible that practices leading to a state society derive from a relationship between strangers, that is, practices emerged in contexts of interaction between people who are not related by kinship ties. Among the practices between strangers that might lead to a state society, conflicts between village communities impelling wars of conquest can be taken into account, provided that they imply the transformation of the transitory link between conquerors and conquered into a permanent link between dominators and dominated, which defines a state-type situation. But another context can be considered: the formation of urban centers as a result of processes of concentration of population. In these processes, the arrival of migrants coming from different places can imply the convergence of distinct kin groups. And between them, other practices – such as patronage or factional competition – could take place, different from the ones expected within a community ruled by the kinship logic. In this sense, the information coming from Predynastic Hierakonpolis suggests a remarkable tendency toward population growth, simultaneously with the process of state formation. In this paper, we consider the reasons for this concentration of population, as well as the impact of such an agglomeration of population in the process in which the state emerges, and the possible feedback between these dynamics and the intercommunity conflicts unleashed in the region from the second half of Naqada II onward.