Badarian Burials: Evidence of Social Inequality in Middle Egypt During the Early Predynastic Era

Abstract

Largely under the influence of Kroeber, who believed burial practices to be unstable and representative of fashions rather than expression, objections to the use of mortuary data to infer social organization have been raised by several researchers. Thus, Hodder has argued that in a grave context the absence of differentiation based on sex, age, and status does not necessarily indicate the absence of social differentiation during life. He maintains that changes in social attitudes towards death can result in less differentiation in the burials of