The Development of Ancient States in the Horn

[thought]

The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Horn
of Africa, c. 3000 BC–AD 1000: An Archaeological Outline

Rodolfo Fattovich

Abstract
Beginning in the 3rd millennium BC, complex societies and states arose in the northern Horn of Africa. This process culminated with the development of the Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1st millennium AD. The development of these polities can be outlined in principle on the basis of the archaeological evidence. The process consisted of at least two distinct trajectories to social complexity, indirectly related to each other in the Eritrean–Sudanese lowlands and the Eritrean Ethiopian highlands, respectively, with a shift in the location of complex societies from the lowlands to the highlands in the early 1st millennium BC. This shift was due to changes in the general pattern of interregional contacts between the regions facing the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean along the Nile Valley, Red Sea and western Arabia from the 4th millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD.

Journal of World Prehistory
October 2010

[thought]

Oct 31, 2010 18:59:11 GMT -5 thought said:

The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Horn
of Africa, c. 3000 BC–AD 1000: An Archaeological Outline

Rodolfo Fattovich

Conclusion:

At present, the development of early complex societies and states in the northern Horn of Africa can be tentatively outlined as follows:

1. In the 4th millennium BC, an incipient hierarchical society emerged along the middle
Atbara valley.

2. In the early 3rd millennium BC these people moved northwards, following the
progressive shift of the Gash river to the present delta, and occupied a strategic
position as a gateway to the sources of frankincense, gold, and ivory in the lowlands
and along the western slopes of the highlands.

3. In mid-3rd to mid-2nd millennia BC a complex society consolidated itself in the Gash
Delta, and was part of an exchange circuit with Egypt, Nubia and southern Arabia.

4. Beginning in the mid-2nd millennium BC, the Gash Delta was cut off from the
exchange network with Nubia and Egypt, although a hierarchical society survived in
the region. At the same time people culturally related to the occupants of the Gash
Delta occupied the Barka valley and acted as intermediaries between the Nile Valley
and/or the coast and the highlands.

5. In the early 1st millennium BC, the progressive inclusion of the highlands into the
South Arabian area of commercial expansion most likely stimulated the rise of
hierarchical societies in Eritrea.

6. In the mid-1st millennium BC, an early state arose in northern Tigray and central
Eritrea, maybe as a commercial partner of the Yemeni kingdom of Saba.

7. In the late 1st millennium BC, the pre-Aksumite state disappeared in Tigray. A new
polity emerged at Aksum and was included into the Roman trade circuit of the Red
Sea.

8. In the early to mid-1st millennium AD, the kingdom of Aksum was consolidated as a
large territorial state, becoming an important commercial partner of the Roman and
Byzantine empires.

9. In the late 1st millennium AD, the kingdom progressively declined, most likely
because of environmental crises, migrations from the Eastern Desert, and the Arab
commercial and political expansion along the Red Sea.

This process was characterized by a shift in the location of complex societies and states
from the lowlands to the highlands, which apparently reflected changes in the general pattern of interregional interaction between the regions facing the Mediterranean Sea and
the Indian Ocean along the Nile Valley, Red Sea and western Arabia from the 4th millennium
BC to the 1st millennium AD (see Fattovich 2000, pp. 8–11). In fact, the strategic
location of some communities, allowing them to control access to the sources and flow of
local and exotic raw materials reinforced the rank and political power of their elites.
The development of the state, however, was not concluded with the collapse of the
Aksumite kingdom. The Christian kingdom survived in the inner highlands, and its
position was again consolidated in the 12th–13th centuries AD under the so-called Zague
Dynasty, with a capital at Roha (Lalibela) in Lasta, c. 400 km to the south of Aksum,
where an impressive complex of rock-hewn churches was constructed. In the late 13th
century a new ‘Solomonid’ dynasty from northern Shoa (central Ethiopia) replaced the
Zague one and expanded the territory of the kingdom as far as western and eastern
Ethiopia. In the 16th century the state almost collapsed because of a Muslim invasion from
eastern Ethiopia and the Oromo expansion from southern Ethiopia to the north. In the late
17th to late 18th centuries the kingdom re-consolidated and a capital city was built at
Gondar to the north of Lake Tana. In the mid-18th century this state declined because of
internal conflicts and a central power was re-established in the mid-19th century. In the late
19th century, under King Menelik, the Christian state incorporated all regions of western,
southern and eastern Ethiopia, giving birth to present-day Ethiopia.

[sundiata]

Thanks for posting. Good source from Fattovich, who was influential in turning Conti Rossini's old theory of south Arabian state genesis in Ethiopia on its head. What I think I find most interesting is his supposition that progression was from the lowlands to the highlands. Per Rossini, and even later work which understood the African origin of such complexes assumed that the highlands were always the focal point of these kingdoms due to strategic trading geography. Extensive contacts with Yemen, especially ones leading to state formation are all the more dubious it seems.