The cosmopolitan borderland: western Ethiopia<i>c</i>. AD 600–1800

González‐Ruibal, Alfredo

doi:10.15184/aqy.2021.23

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(35 reference statements)

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“…If we look, for example, at the coexistence of “pagan and Christian ritual paraphernalia” in the fourth-century phase at Beta Samati (Harrower et al . 2019: 1550), we see a mix of local and non-local elements, which encapsulate the definition of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ recently applied to the western Ethiopian borderlands (González-Ruibal 2021: 530). In such contexts, the transition from pagan to Christian was the result of various influences that never aimed to erase definitively the vernacular peculiarities of an area.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

An archaeology of conversion? Evidence from Adulis for early Christianity and religious transition in the Horn of Africa

Castiglia

2022

Antiquity

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The port-city of Adulis in modern Eritrea was a key node on the Red Sea linking the Kingdom of Aksum to the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. Recent excavations at Adulis have reinvestigated two early Christian churches. New radiocarbon analysis dates both structures to the sixth and early seventh centuries AD, with multiple phases of architectural development reflecting changing use and liturgy. The author uses evidence for both continuity and change in architectural materials, construction styles and sacred practices to assess religious transition at Adulis, and across the Aksumite Kingdom more broadly. Moving beyond an archaeology of conversion, the article reinforces recent work on cosmopolitanism in the Horn of Africa.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

An archaeology of conversion? Evidence from Adulis for early Christianity and religious transition in the Horn of Africa

Castiglia

2022

Antiquity

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“…108 See the edited volume inLohwasser et al (2018) and the summary inKarberg & Lohwasser (2019).109 Brass (2016);Gregory et al (2022). New fieldwork has also been conducted along the Dinder watershed in the Ethiopian borderlands, seeGonzález-Ruibal (2021).110 Sidebotham et al (2002);Lassányi (2012).111 Manzo (2020, pp. 77-78);Cooper (2021, pp.…”

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confidence: 99%

Beyond the Nile: Long term Patterns in Nomad-State Interactions across Northeast Africa

Cooper

2022

Mare Nostrum (São Paulo)

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The fertility brought about by the Egyptian and Sudanese Nile Valley allowed for one of the densest urban populations in the African continent, creating a myriad of different dynasties, states, and cities that dominated trade and politics across Northeast Africa. Despite the Nile-centric axis of this world (and our study of it), almost every boundary of the Egyptian or Nubian states were bordered by desert and savannah ecologies, the abode of herders or more properly ‘pastoralist nomads’. From the Marmarica coastal steppe of the Mediterranean coast, to the Atbai Hills of the Red Sea, to the Sahel west of the Upper Nubian Nile in Kordofan, Northeast Africa was dominated by nomads. In this thinking, sedentary urban groups on the Nile are spatially the exception rather than the rule, with urban peoples occupying a thin ribbon of agricultural potential on the banks of the river and select oases. The rest of Northeast Africa was ‘nomad land’. The history of nomad-state interactions is one of constant transgression of each other’s realms, with nomadic peoples coming to the Nile for employment and grazing and Nile peoples journeying through the desert for resource exploitation and trade. This Nile-desert nexus is one of the longest documented case studies in nomad-urban interactions in world history.

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Embodying Ethiopia’s Global Golden Age on the Muslim-Christian Frontier: The Allure of Glass Beads

Marín-Aguilera

Dussubieux

2023

Afr Archaeol Rev

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The period between AD 700 and 1500 has been recently labeled as “Africa’s global Golden Age.” This is particularly true for the Shay communities living on the Muslim-Christian frontier in the ninth to fourteenth century AD. Located in the center of the Ethiopian highlands, the Shay faced the expansion of the Christian kingdoms and the advance of the Muslim polities. In an increasingly violent context of religious conversion and war between the two religious powers, the Shay stressed their independence by burying their deceased in collective structures, contrary to the mortuary practices of both Christians and Muslims, and by including precious local and global grave goods in their tombs. The laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) analysis of 34 glass beads shows how the Shay communities benefited from the Islamic global trade routes at the time, particularly the Middle East, Egypt, and the Indo-Pacific networks. This article examines the crucial role of global glass beads in the construction of a trans-corporeal landscape among the Shay that served the emergence and consolidation of the social self as a collective identity against their Christian and Muslim neighbors.

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The cosmopolitan borderland: western Ethiopiac. AD 600–1800

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 5 publications

References 24 publications

An archaeology of conversion? Evidence from Adulis for early Christianity and religious transition in the Horn of Africa

An archaeology of conversion? Evidence from Adulis for early Christianity and religious transition in the Horn of Africa

Beyond the Nile: Long term Patterns in Nomad-State Interactions across Northeast Africa

Embodying Ethiopia’s Global Golden Age on the Muslim-Christian Frontier: The Allure of Glass Beads

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