Under the direction of Dr. Elmer Miller, Judy Lustig, a graduate student at Temple University will conduct doctoral dissertation research. She will focus on the First Intermediate and Middle Kingdom periods of ancient Egypt and examine the relationships among gender ideology and roles, kinship structure and beliefs and practices about ancestors. Because the database is so rich, it will enable her to ask specific kinds of questions which cannot be addressed in most archaeological situations. Primary sources include scenes, texts and statuary found in elite tombs as well as a variety of literary and religious texts concerning divine and human relationships and the values Egyptians attached to these. Cemetery, village and house plans will be utilized as additional sources of social information. This research is of anthropological significance for several reasons. It will shed light from a new perspective on the social processes which led to the growth of Egyptian civilization. Secondly, it is methodologically innovative. While an anthropological/archaeological approach stresses the search for the general rules which underlay human behavior and which are best revealed by their development over long periods of time, Egyptiologists tend to review their subject matter from a tighter more historical perspective. Therefore, anthropological archaeology and Egyptology constitute, unfortunately, two distinct disciplines with very little overlap and anthropologists rarely examine Egyptian data. Ms Lustig's research cuts across this divide since it will examine this Egyptian material with an anthropologist's eye and use this database to ask anthropological questions. Hopefully, it will mark a path which others will follow. This project will also assist in the training of an extremely promising young scientist.
