Ballas, Egypt, 3,900–3,650 BCE
Sir Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) is credited with the development of a chronology of Ancient Egyptian culture using everyday objects. Petrie established the chronological development of ceramics through seriation, or sequence dating, a system he invented and upon which his historical importance rests. His painstaking work on observing and recording pottery styles resulted in a new methodology for establishing the chronology of an archaeological site. He developed an 18-step system in which he arranged different types of pottery in sequence. These distinctive black-topped vessels, commonly known as Egyptian B-ware and made of Nile silt clay, are examples of one of the types cited by him in his new standard of sequence dating.
Ballas, Egypt, 3,900–3,650 BCE
Sir Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) is credited with the development of a chronology of Ancient Egyptian culture using everyday objects. Petrie established the chronological development of ceramics through seriation, or sequence dating, a system he invented and upon which his historical importance rests. His painstaking work on observing and recording pottery styles resulted in a new methodology for establishing the chronology of an archaeological site. He developed an 18-step system in which he arranged different types of pottery in sequence. These distinctive black-topped vessels, commonly known as Egyptian B-ware and made of Nile silt clay, are examples of one of the types cited by him in his new standard of sequence dating.
Petrie excavated many similar items from graves around the Upper Egyptian site of Naqada where the vast number of items retrieved made them appear to be something completely new. As a result, Petrie hypothesized that they were products of a foreign people who invaded the Nile valley after the end of the Old Kingdom. On the label on the inside rim of the unbroken pot Petrie describes it as a product of a ‘new race’ of foreign invaders into pre-dynastic Egypt, a theory which he later revised. He changed his mind after reading the work of Jacques de Morgan, who believed that they were produced a by a preliterate indigenous culture before the unification of Egypt.
Petrie also had an interest in eugenics and sent skeletal remains back to London to be used in biometrical research. He worked with the eugenics pioneers Francis Galton and Karl Pearson and, from 1883, this brought Petrie into the world of biology. Petrie was instrumental in supplying the much needed human data for the research Galton and Pearson were carrying out.
The pots were given by Petrie to Sir Herbert Thompson in 1895, who donated them to the Library with his collection of ostraca in 1946. Examples of similar pots can be found in the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Lawrence Room Museum in Girton College.
