Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class Etcetra in Ancient Egypt

Archaeologies of Social Life is a fascinating new perspective on everyday life in ancient Egypt. The author provides detailed discussions of new topics of debate, including the body, sexuality and issues of identity, while also addressing some of the traditional questions in archaeology about society and self, the individual and social relations. The book is unusual in examining ordinary life in ancient Egypt rather that focusing on the traditional subjects of pharaohs and elites. Meskell makes Egyptian social history available to an archaeological audience and shows the reader how factors such as age, class, sex and ethnicity were played out in the lives of real people. The author takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, combining theories of third wave feminism with the archaeological data of New Kingdom Egypt. She presents innovative theory from the social sciences and puts it into practice to reveal individuals in antiquity, relating the issues of their lives to our experience of society today.

List of Figures. Acknowledgements. Prologue. 1. Individuals, Selves and Bodies. 2. Feminisms, Gender Trouble and Sexuality. 3. Body and Soul in the Archaeology of Egypt. 4. Mapping Age, Sex and Class at Deir el Medina. 5. Accessing Individuals at Deir el Medina. Epilogue. Notes. References. Index.

Lynn Meskell is Assistant Professor in the department of Anthropology at Columbia University. She was previously a research fellow at New College, Oxford. Her publications include Archaeology Under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (1998) and a forthcoming volume with Dominic Montserrat, Private Life in New Kingdom Egypt .

"The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of social anthropology, although chapters focussing on Deir el Medineh will interest Egyptologists as well." Religious Studies Review "[T]his study is a welcome addition to archeological research which employs various theories in order to present more data from an ancient, long–gone past." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient