In the Field: Bead making at Hierakonpolis

The desire for personal adornment, especially in the form of beads, has been with us for a very long time-- as far back as the Neanderthal era, some 75,000 years ago or perhaps even more (see "More than an Ornament". Like many before them, the Predynastic (ca. 3600 B.C.) inhabitants of Hierakonpolis gave into this primeval urge, but seemingly not as freely as those living at other sites of this time. Beads are not especially prevalent, except in the graves of the elite where the selection is choice, but limited in quantity. Then as now, beads were valuable and this lack probably has more to do with theft and plunder over the millennia than with any disaffection for such finery. In fact, bead making appears to have been a significant industry at Hierakonpolis--far more plentiful than the beads themselves are the tools used to make them...or at least this is what we think they are.

Distinctive little flint borers, called microdrills, averaging only 2 cm in length, have been recovered in great numbers at Hierakonpolis in conjunction with evidence to deduce their use. In 1899, the British archaeologist, F.W. Green, discovered two caches which he described as containing "an enormous number of exceedingly small pointed flint implements" (i.e., microdrills) along with many broken carnelian pebbles, some chipped into the form of rough beads, some showing the signs of the beginning of the boring operation, as well as chips of amethyst, steatite, rock crystal, obsidian and ostrich egg shell. These objects had been stowed in cavities, rather like little lockers, hollowed out at the base of the outer wall surrounding the temple precinct in which the famous Narmer palette had been found just the year before.