Fascination with ancient Egypt has often been cyclic in nature like the seasons of the Nile. Whilst the great temples and tombs of the pharaohs are a perpetual lure, interest in the beginning of the country's civilisation has been revitalised by excavations since the 1970s, not only in the Predynastic desert cemeteries of traditional exploration in Upper Egypt, but also in their associated settlements and in hitherto unexplored parts of the alluvial...