The Route Most Traveled: The Afar Salt Trail, North Ethiopia

Abstract

In Africa and elsewhere, scholars have demonstrated that early social, political, and economic structures were shaped by salt production, distribution, and long-distance trade in areas where salt was a critical resource. However, despite salt's significant role in developing these structures, archaeological studies of the salt trade have focused almost exclusively on artifacts and historical text references. As a result, data on the diverse and complex routes through which this important commodity has traveled and the nature of its transportation are lacking. This paper examines evidence of ancient Aksumite (400 BC-900 AD) salt trade and exchange from the lowland Ethiopian deserts to the North Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands, drawing on recent ethnoarchaeological and archaeological fieldwork conducted in the Danakil Desert and Aksumite towns. The data reveal that the Afar salt trail passes through diverse regional ecozones, highland trader towns, and foothill towns, via several highland routes and one major lowland route. The study shows that caravaners followed the least costly path on the highland portion of the route, with ideal slopes for pack travel and plentiful water sources. The study also describes ancient caravan campsites dating to ca. 5th century CE and shows that participants differed in religion and identity.

Human movement and gully erosion: Investigating feedback mechanisms using Frequency Ratio and Least Cost Path analysis in Tigray, Ethiopia

“…Material culture shows that long distance exchanges are dated well into the 1 st Millennium BC with the presence of Arabian architects, stonemasons, and merchants in Tigray [11,44,69]. For the later Aksumite period (2 nd century BCE-9 th century CE), most recent investigations on salt trade between the Ethiopian Highlands and locations across the Horn of Africa, emphasise the importance of inter-regional movement due to trade during the Aksumite period [124]. Additionally, Harrower and D'Andrea (2014) investigated possible routes of exchanges and travel between Aksum and the port city of Adulis using LCP analysis.…”

“…Moreover, as dominant features along and cutting through pathways, gullies may have affected decisions regarding which transportation to use in the dissected Ethiopian Highlands landscape. Since the Aksumite period until recently, ancient caravan activities using donkeys and camels as pack animals illustrate that crossing the Ethiopian Highlands is something large groups of humans did on a regular basis for millennia [64,124]. Based on archaeological evidence, the extent of international trade indicates commerce relations with Egypt and other Arab regions occurred at the end of the Aksumite period [129].…”

Complex (multispecies) livestock keeping: Highland agricultural strategy in the northern Horn of Africa during the Pre-Aksumite (1600 BCE–400 BCE) and Aksumite (400 BCE–CE 800) periods

“…We obtained a direct accelerator mass spectrometry date (806-542 calBCE, Beta-266010) for a donkey at Mezber (Table 1), the first direct date from the Horn. Ethnoarchaeological research (Woldekiros, 2019) in the Afar and Tigrai region demonstrates the likely role of pack animals in trade and as a source of wealth for the Aksumites. The fact that very few faunal remains belonging to pack animals (donkeys and camels) were recovered from Mezber, even though the presentday concentration of donkeys and camels in northern Ethiopia is the largest in the world (Gebreab et al, 2005) supports Cain (2000) and Marshall's (2007) arguments regarding a faunal bias against these transport animals because they were rarely eaten or kept in settlements.…”

The archaeology of complexity and cosmopolitanism in medieval Ethiopia: an introduction

“…With few exceptions (e.g. Worku 2018; Woldekiros 2019), medieval/historical archaeology has been neglected by Ethiopian scholars. This is, however, beginning to change, with a growth in interest in Islamic archaeology and active capacity-building initiatives embedded within, for example, two of the projects featured in this section (Insoll et al .…”