What can pottery tell us about society?
Can you imagine that the changes in shapes and decorations on ceramics may allow us to understand the process of creating society and a state? Dr. Jade Bajeot with her project is going to unveil these mechanisms and their role in the origins of Pharaonic Egypt. The Archaeological Museum of Krakow is an important part of this investigation.
Today we introduce Dr. Jade Bajeot from Italy who studies archaeology and in particular Predynastic Egypt. As a principal investigator of the project Ceramic technology and the socio-political environment of Predynastic Egypt (TECHNOPREGYPT), she currently works on the identification of technical traditions for pottery production.
Her research concerns ceramic technology and the socio-political environment of Predynastic Egypt. In this period (4th millennium BCE) three different material cultures, namely the Naqada, the Nubian, and the Lower Egyptian Cultures were distinguished. Each of them developed its particular technological approach towards manufacturing pottery that was strongly connected with the cultural identity of each group. As their mutual interactions intensified over time, one can observe a homogenization of the pottery and other artifacts produced by these groups. At the end of this process not only is the production of ceramics the same throughout the country, but Egypt is unified and Pharaonic Egypt begins. The project is focused on the organization of the ceramic production, particularly its centralization – this is assumed as an essential factor determining the level of political involvement in the pottery manufacturing process. The aim of the project is to advance our knowledge of the dynamics that led to the birth of the Egyptian state.
“I have always been fascinated by archaeology in general and in particular by ancient Egypt”, dr. Bajeot says. “Since I was a child I asked my mother to buy me archaeology magazines and books. I discovered predynastic Egypt at university and I immediately became passionate about this period that is still little known, especially by the general public. This is the reason why during my Polonez Bis project I tried to devote myself as much as possible to dissemination to the general public leading conferences, participating in activities such as the museum night and the preparation of an exhibition, and contributing in the creation of a cartoon with Polish, English and Italian subtitles”.
As dr. Bajeot’s field of research is little developed in Italy while it has a good tradition in Poland, she decided to carry out her project at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Although she is based in Warsaw, the project is truly international – in the process of identification of various technical traditions the Archaeological Museum of Krakow also plays an important role, alongside Aswan-Kom Ombo Archaeological Project in Egypt, the Egyptian Museum of Turin, and the National Archaeological Museum of France. The Krakow Museum has one of four important corpuses representing Middle Egypt and the south of Upper Egypt, and the samples collected in four institutions cover the whole timespan that have been taken into consideration in the project.
“The implementation of the project allowed me to collect more data than I expected, which I started publishing through a first article in the journal African Archaeological Review”, dr. Bajeot says.
Thanks to the Polonez Bis she was able to apply X-rays microtomography to more than 50 pottery vessels from the Egyptian predynastic collection of the Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, domaine du château de Saint Germain-en-Laye (France). This type of analysis was necessary to study the internal structure of the ceramic samples without damaging them and reconstruct the manufacturing procedure. The scans, together with other raw data, will soon be made available to the scientific community on a repository such as Zenodo and will be the subject of publications.
The project ends in September, but Dr. Bajeot has established contacts with Polish and foreign colleagues that will lead to future collaborations. She and her team have already submitted a paper to the journal “African Archaeological Review” and they are working on a second one.
Dr Bajeot describes her experience in a Polish team as very positive, particularly in terms of communication which she finds very good and easy. She did not notice any particular differences between the work culture and work environment in Italy and in Poland, except for some administrative procedures that – surprisingly! – are easier and smoother in Poland. Dr. Bajeot observes that in the archaeological field the majority of students and researchers are women, but as their careers progress (particularly regarding permanent positions) there are proportionately more men. Therefore women perhaps have more difficulty reaching the highest professional positions. It is a phenomenon that she has observed not only in Poland or Italy, but in various European countries with which she has collaborated, albeit with some differences between one and the other.
