Tell el-Iswid 2010-2018

This second volume of the Tell el-Iswid excavations is devoted to the Naqada period remains in sector 4. It concerns a mud-brick building, dating essentially to the Naqada III A-B period. Three major phases of transformation were detected. The best represented is phase 2, which was reworked several times. Particular attention was paid to the structures which were burned. These architectural transformations are mirrored by changes in material culture (ceramics, lithic industry, small finds) in connection with data relating to the subsistence economy (fauna and plant micro-remains). Ceramics have been studied according to new approaches, in which classifications are based primarily on manufacturing techniques and the reconstruction of the ' chaine operatoire ', which makes it possible to better understand cultural identities and to go beyond the essentially chronological aims of traditional morpho-stylistic classifications. The work presented here is part of the review of data from excavations at the neighboring site of Tell el-Farkha and at Bouto in the western Delta. They contribute to shedding new light from the Delta on the socio-cultural transformations that affected the whole Nile valley in the last third of the 4th millennium BC.