Rafts and Sickles: Diversified Subsistence and Uneven Agricultural Development in the Early Nile Delta

These files are the materials submitted to PCI journal with the paper manuscript "Rafts and Sickles: Diversified Subsistence and Uneven Agricultural Development in the Early Nile Delta".Author: Hader Sheisha Abstract: Early agriculture in Egypt offers insight into relationships among environmental change, social organization, and emerging political institutions. However, domesticate presence alone does not establish when agriculture became central to settlement economies. This study synthesizes archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence from 11 Nile Delta localities and 26 site–phase or landscape-zone assessments spanning approximately 7000–4800 cal BP. A structured framework distinguishes domesticate presence, local production, and agricultural organization through three working configurations: diversified aquatic–pastoral, mixed agropastoral, and managed agrarian. Eleven assessments received single-category labels, five retained alternative assignments, and ten remained unresolved. Across 68 informative evidence-removal tests, support persisted in 25 and weakened or disappeared in 43, demonstrating substantial dependence on particular evidence sources. These tests assess evidential support rather than independently validate classifications. Agriculture consistently coexisted with livestock exploitation and continued aquatic- or wild-resource use, while investment in storage, processing, and settlement infrastructure developed unevenly among localities. Contrasting configurations within overlapping age ranges provisionally support geographically differentiated trajectories rather than a shared regional progression. Chronological uncertainty and uneven evidence coverage prevent a single timetable for agricultural dependence, and neither hydrological change nor institutional development can be established as its dominant driver. Taken together, the findings argue against a uniform replacement of fishing, hunting, and herding by farming and instead indicate the reorganization of diversified subsistence economies. Keywords: Nile Delta; early agriculture; multiproxy synthesis; subsistence; chronology; environmental change