Predynastic Ancient Egypt was a contrast of mixed ecologies. These ranged from the borderland deserts both to the east and to the west of the floodplains, to the contrast between the Middle and Upper Egyptian floodplains itself and the Nile Delta. The differing environments affected not only settlement regions, but also site positions within those regions as well as the cultural composition of the inhabitants.

The Lower Egyptian Cultural-Ecological Sequence

In c. 5 000 BC there was a dip in the level of the Nile floods, which probably exerted an adverse effect on the subsistence fishing practices of the Nile Valley inhabitants. This mid-Holocene ecological crisis effect would also have extended to the plant and animal resources available on the low desert adjacent to the floodplain, most likely leading to a readiness on the part of the native Valley inhabitants to experiment with new social and economic forms. It was a period when desert groups migrated into the Valley, a consequence of the desert desiccation, and subsequent cultural and demographic mergers occurred with the Nilotes. These mergers are evident in the archaeological record by both artifact and faunal remains.

It is unfortunate that until fairly recently the archaeology of the Delta has largely been disregarded, an error primarily due not only to the mistaken early impression that it was unimportant in Egypt's formative periods, but also because of the difficulties of conducting archaeological excavations there. Knowledge about Predynastic settlement patterns in Lower Egypt (the Delta) is limited, due to the low numbers of sites that have been found and excavated.

The inner Delta, which is a vital area as it is possible that it was the key area of northern Predynastic Egyptian settlement (which it was in later Dynastic periods), has yet to yield a Predynastic site. Nearly all the sites are covered either by the watertable (for which special archaeological water-logged excavation techniques are currently being developed) or by more modern communities. Sites excavated at the Delta apex and its margins reveal a different Predynastic cultural pattern to that existing in Upper Egypt, yet they are too few to be able to determine between geographical and temporal cultural variations.