There are no written sources are available from the Predynastic period, but an array of art decorated artefacts has been found. This essay will take a closer look at one type of these artefact; the animal shaped stone palette to see what art of this artefact can tell us about the culture that made them.      I will do so by looking at the animal depictions found on the palettes, to allow comparison I will include D-wear, a decorated Predynastic pottery type. I have put together two data sets for the respective artefact that forms the base for this study. My theoretical perspective is that the art depictions of artefact as traces of the culture that made them. The palettes show a variety of patterns that can be seen as such traces in which type of animals are most common, how the animals can be connected by habitat and which animal depiction gets decorated features. My look at the D-ware data set is only brief but shows that animals are quite rare on the pottery and includes only three different kinds of animals. These still correlates with the animal palettes by both artefacts having birds as the most common. The bovids has an almost equal occurrence on the palettes and D-ware in my data sets. Other than this the animal depictions differ notably between the two artefacts. As the traces of culture does not provide any details, this study has given new questions that can be studied further in greater depth.

This thesis takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of ancient Egyptian ceramics by applying scientific dating techniques alongside more traditional methods. It is the first study to apply OSL dating to an Egyptian ceramic assemblage, and it has done so by developing the minimum extraction technique (MET), which has made it possible to use OSL to sample, and thus analyse, ceramics housed in museums. The MET is at present essential to the success of OSL dating of Egyptian ceramics, as the exportation ban on antiquities has prevented OSL analysis of field material. For this thesis, using this new sampling technique, OSL has been applied to several assemblages from the Predynastic to the Early Dynastic period. Ceramics from [ADD IN REVIEW ] have been examined, with three phases being established: late Naqada III, First Intermediate Period, and the mediaeval Islamic period. Absolute dates have been determined for each phase and, where comparison is possible, have been found in good agreement with the historical chronology. A set of vessels from Naqada, Ballas, and the Tomb of Djer at Abydos have been examined using OSL in conjunction with radiocarbon dating. Again, three phases of activity were discerned: late Naqada II, early Naqada III, and the first scientifically determined dates for a burning event in the Tomb of Djer (the New Kingdom). The thesis also demonstrates how OSL can be used as a relative dating technique by analysing a collection of Wavy-Handled ceramics and wine jars from Turah, finding that the OSL results agree well with the established relative chronology. Finally, this thesis has also examined the applicability of cladistic analysis to the study of Egyptian ceramics. Cladistics is a technique borrowed from the biological sciences which offers a complimentary way to examine the evolution of ceramic types and forms, in particular the development of beer and wine jars.