Corporealities of physical labor and the origins of the Nile Valley States: evidence of engendered differences in predynastic Egypt and the Kingdom of Kerma

Abstract

The concept of embodiment in archaeology helps us to understand that the bodies from the past have incorporated into their biology the material and social world that surrounds them. Despite the evident theoretical tensions between sex and gender in osteoarchaeology, comparing the health and physical stress status between different sexual categories can help to rethink their articulation with gender in past societies. In the present work, we shed some reflections on how gender was physically manifested in Egyptian and Nubian communities between the 5th and 2nd millennium BCE through different bone markers of physical activity. In this way, previous research and a recent analysis carried out on 259 individuals suggest that individuals progressively embodied

higher engendered differences in physical labor, which seem to be deeply connected with the increase of social inequalities during the process of state formation in Egypt and Nubia (c. 4400–1750 BCE).