Pottery and economy in Old Kingdom Egypt / / by Leslie Anne.

• Superior document: Culture and history of the ancient Near East ; Volume 65
• Author: Warden, Leslie Anne.
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, Netherlands : : Koninklijke Brill NV,, 2013.; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Culture and history of the ancient Near East ; v. 65.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (341 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

In Pottery and Economy in Old Kingdom Egypt , Leslie Anne Warden investigates the economic importance of utilitarian ceramics, particularly beer jars and bread moulds, in third millennium BC Egypt. The Egyptian economy at this period is frequently presented as state-centric or state-defined. This study forwards new methodology for a bottom-up approach to Egyptian economy, analyzing economic relationships through careful analysis of variation within the utilitarian wares which formed the basis of much economic exchange in the period. Beer jars and bread moulds, together with their archaeological, textual, and iconographic contexts, thus yield a framework for the economy which is fluid, agent-based, and defined by small scale, face-to-face relationships rather than the state.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- 1 Egyptian Economic History: Locating Power, Placing Agency -- 2 Wages and Payers -- 3 Archaeology, Pottery, and Economy -- 4 Beer Jars, Standardization, and Economy -- 5 Bread Moulds: An Independent Economic Unit? -- 6 Microeconomic Systems: Ceramic Production -- 7 Placing Royal Administration and State Revenue -- 8 The State of the Egyptian Economy -- 1 Sites and Corpora Used in This Study -- 2 Individual Beer Jar Volumes in Samples Where n≥15 -- 3 Individual Bread Mould Volumes in Samples Where n≥14 -- Bibliography -- Index.