WOmen–PRO explored the social identity and life history of women in pre-Pharaonic Egypt and Nubia (Sudan) during the 5th–3rd millennium BCE transition to complex society and the rise of the Pharaonic state. While this period has been the subject of extensive archaeological research, the lives of women have received considerably less attention than those of men, reinforcing male-centred interpretations of social roles, labour organisation, and gender dynamics in the region. Additionally, bioarchaeological approaches have rarely been applied to broader questions of lived experience, identity, and social organisation in early Nile Valley contexts.
WOmen–PRO has been the first project to address this gender gap in pre-Pharaonic Egypt and Nubia via a social bioarchaeological approach. Specifically, the Principal Investigator, Dr. Veronica Tamorri, employed a cutting-edge, non-destructive biocultural methodology, integrating osteological, archaeological, and statistical data. This approach combined the analysis of activity levels, women’s health status, diet and nutrition, with mortuary practices as expressions of social identity.
Data were collected from the skeletal and dental remains of adult individuals of both sexes across key cemeteries in Egypt and Nubia, enabling broad geo-temporal comparisons. By shifting the focus of Predynastic research away from grand narratives centred on elite male individuals and state formation processes, WOmen–PRO foregrounded the lived experiences of women at a crucial historical and cultural juncture, offering a more balanced perspective on the emergence of early society in the region.
WOmen-PRO’s objectives were:
1. To reconstruct female health status in view of rising social complexity.
2. To investigate aspects of female diet and how it may have changed over time.
3. To identify evidence of female physical activity levels over this transitional period.
4. To identify any correlates between funerary rites and the indicators of embodied life experiences, emerged from overall bioarchaeological analyses.
