Growing out of a colloquium organised in São Paulo in March 2016, here Nine papers approach the potential of materiality in Ancient Egypt based on several case studies covering a wide range of topics such as Egyptian art, recent perspectives on sex and gender, hierarchies, and the materiality of textual sources and images.

The eight papers presented here stem from a conference held in Oxford in 2017 which brought together international early-career researchers applying novel archaeological and anthropological methods to ‘overlooked’ subjects in ancient Egypt and Nubia. The diverse topics covered include women, prisoners, entangled communities and funerary displays.

In this book, Richard Bussmann presents a fresh overview of ancient Egyptian society and culture in the age of the pyramids. He addresses key themes in the comparative research of early complex societies, including urbanism, funerary culture, temple ritual, kingship, and the state, and explores how ideas and practices were exchanged between ruling elites and local communities in provincial Egypt. Unlike other studies of ancient Egypt, this book adopts an anthropological approach that places people at the centre of the analysis. Bussmann covers a range of important themes in cross-cultural debates, such as materiality, gender, non-elite culture, and the body. He also offers new perspectives on social diversity and cultural cohesion, based on recent discoveries. His study vividly illustrates how our understanding of ancient Egyptian society benefits from the application of theoretical concepts in archaeology and anthropology to the interpretation of the evidence.

Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt shifts the focus of gender studies in Egyptology to social phenomena rarely addressed through the lens of gender – war and violence, exploring the complex intersections of violence and gender in ancient Egypt. Building on current discussions in philosophy, anthropology, and sociology, and on analysis of relevant historic texts, iconography, and archaeological remains by looking at possible gender patterns behind evidence of trauma, the book bridges the gap between modern understandings of gendered violence and its functioning in ancient Egypt. Areas explored include the following: differences in gendered aggression and violent acts between people and deities; sexual violence; the taking of men, women, and children as prisoners of war; and feminization of enemies. By examining ancient Egyptian texts and images with evidence for violence from different periods and contexts – private tombs, divine temples, royal stelae, papyri, and ostraca, ranging over 3,000 years of cultural history – Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt highlights the complex intersection between gender and violence in ancient Egyptian culture. The book will appeal to scholars and students working in Egyptology, archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies.

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of gender archaeology, both theory and practice, and contributes a substantial and definitive reference work by bringing together state-of-the-art research, theoretical overviews, and the latest debates in the field. Responding to the shifts in the theoretical landscape and the societal and political frameworks within which we produce our knowledge, chapters create both a solid theoretical baseline which help readers grasp the significance of gender in archaeology as well as offer perspectives on how to engender produced knowledge about the past. In line with recent focus on the shortcomings of gender and archaeological representation, chapters also detangle academic discourse and popular representations in order to present novel ways of successfully negotiating the pitfalls of gendered ideas about past behaviours. By encouraging novel ways of integrating theoretical perspectives with scrutiny of gender stereotypes, original empirical examinations of identity markers and behaviours, and re-examinations of static representations of identities through new lenses, such as intersectional perspectives, personhood, and materiality debates, the volume is theoretically rich and will simultaneously provide a necessary benchmark for future archaeological discourses. Finally, it will incorporate perspectives from researchers with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints to provide a truly comprehensive overview. It will not shy away from engaging with politically contentious issues surrounding knowledge production but will include perspectives from researchers whose focus is less on feminist critiques and more on gender and identities. Thus, the volume bridges the two most prominent directions currently discernible within the focus area, namely, feminist re-examinations on the one hand and research focused more on bodily practice and gendered experiences on the other. The Routledge Handbook of Gender Archaeology is an invaluable resource for students and researchers in gender archaeology as well as gender studies more widely.

Volume II focuses on systems of thought and belief in the history of world sexualities, ranging from early humans to contemporary approaches. Comprising eighteen chapters, this volume opens with a chapter on the evolutionary legacy and then delves into the sexualities of ancient Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and Rome, continuing with pre-modern South Asia, China, and Japan, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania. Chapters include an examination of sexuality in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and also look at more recent approaches, including scientific sex, sexuality in socialism and Marxism, and the intersections between sexuality, feminism, and post-colonialism.

Papers in this volume aim to reevaluate the importance of women as active and powerful social agents in the definition of ancient cultures, their contribution to the economic and social development of the community and to the position, reputation, and prestige of their families.

This volume challenges assumptions about—and highlights new approaches to—the study of ancient Egyptian society by tackling various thematic social issues through structured individual case studies. The reader will be presented with questions about the relevance of the past in the present. The chapters encourage an understanding of Egypt in its own terms through the lens of power, people, and place, offering a more nuanced understanding of the way Egyptian society was organized and illustrating the benefits of new approaches to topics in need of a critical re-examination. By re-evaluating traditional, long-held beliefs about a monolithic, unchanging ancient Egyptian society, this volume writes a new narrative—one unchecked assumption at a time. Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches is intended for anyone studying ancient Egypt or ancient societies more broadly, including undergraduate and graduate students, Egyptologists, and scholars in adjacent fields.