The funerary sacrifice of animals during the predynastic period

grantor: University of TorontoTwo principal categories of animal burial have been identified for the predynastic period, those animals buried in human graves and those buried independently within the confines of human cemeteries. This study is an attempt to marshal all the available contextual evidence for the independent animal burials, with the intention of providing a cultural framework within which interpretations for such burials may be adequately evaluated. Explanations for the independent animal burials may be formulated within two distinct interpretive frameworks. One assumes a religiously symbolic significance for the species that occur. The other assumes the burials were an aspect of mortuary practices and suggests the possibility of differing species-specific intent for the burials. A review of the archaeological evidence for the two categories of animal burial reveals that the distribution of each conforms to the geographically circumscribed territories of the contemporary, but culturally diverse, cultures of the predynastic period. The available evidence also suggests that the phenomenon of independent animal burial vanished from the cemeteries of the Nile valley north of the Second Cataract with the demise of the Badarian, Maadi (variant), and A-Group as discrete archaeologically detectable cultures. The results of an intersite comparison of the animal and human burials as well as of an investigation of the iconography of each of the cultures with which the independent burials were associated reveal no unequivocal evidence in support of an interpretation of such burials as concrete manifestations of a contemporary attitude of reverence for the animals that occur, either individually or as representatives of their species. In conjunction with the geographically circumscribed and apparently culture-specific distribution of the phenomenon of animal burial, this lack of evidence for reverence for the relevant species suggests that the independent burials, like those in human graves, should be viewed within the context of the traditional burial customs of each of the cultures with which they were associated.Ph.D