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Pre-Aksumite plant husbandry in the Horn of Africa

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Abstract

Palaeoethnobotanical studies completed at the archaeological site of Mezber in Tigrai, Ethiopia, have led to important new insights on plant husbandry practices of the Pre-Aksumite Period (1600 cal bc to cal ad 25) in the Horn of Africa. The Mezber material record includes a transition from an agro-pastoralist economy in the Initial Phase (1600–900 cal bc) to a more sedentary agricultural way of life in the Early, Middle and Late Phases (825 cal bc–cal ad 25). Macrobotanical samples are dominated by Southwest Asian C3 crops and weeds including emmer, barley, linseed, flax and Lolium, while microbotanical samples of phytoliths are dominated by plants belonging to the Chloridoideae and Panicoideae, indicative of African domesticates such as t’ef, finger millet, sorghum and wild grasses. The Mezber data constitute the earliest evidence to date for crops and plant use in the region, which are present by at least the mid-second millennium bc. In these early subsistence regimes, Southwest Asian crops likely formed one component of a complex plant husbandry system that also incorporated indigenous African C4 plants. This mode of subsistence is analogous to those encountered in other late Holocene archaeological sites in northeastern Africa and has now been demonstrated for the Ethiopian highlands.

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Data availability

The Mezber archaeobotanical data has been deposited and is freely available at: Beldados A, Ruiz-Giralt A, Lancelotti C, Meresa Y, D’Andrea AC (2023) Pre-Aksumite Plant Husbandry in the Horn of Africa [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7731585. In addition, the Mezber radiocarbon chronology and Bayesian analysis is available at: D’Andrea, AC, Welton L et al. (2023) The Pre-Aksumite Period: Indigenous Origins and Development in the Horn of Africa [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7738247. 

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Acknowledgements

We owe a debt of gratitude to our Tigrayan colleagues and field assistants who have participated in ETAP research at Mezber since 2007. In particular, we acknowledge Medhin Abate, the owner of the field beneath the land upon which Mezber sits, and our many excavation assistants from the Gulo Makeda area of Eastern Tigrai. We are grateful to Shannon Wood who completed site mapping, figures and participated in excavations, Pamela Wadge who conducted flotation and preliminary archaeobotanical studies, and Ato Tesfay Gebremariam for assistance with flotation. We thank Ahmed G. Fahmy, El Shafaey A.E. Attia, Michael Tofollo and Linda Perry for completing initial analyses of Mezber microbotanical remains. ETAP team members and collaborators included Helina Woldekiros, Lynn Welton, Habtamu Mekonnen, Shannon Wood, Stephen Batuik, Steven Brandt, Andrea Manzo, Laurie Nixon-Darcus, Elizabeth Peterson, Michela Gaudiello, Aman Mohammed, Abebe Mengistu, Lucas Johnson, Hagos Hailat and Stefano Biagetti. We thank the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ARCCH) and the Tigrai Bureau of Culture and Tourism (TBCT) for permission to excavate at Mezber, especially Kebede Amare and Desalegn Abebaw. We greatly appreciate the participation of ARCCH and TBCT Representatives including Habtamu Mekonnen, Abebe Mengistu, Endashash Awate and Giday Gebregziabhir. ETAP palaeoethnobotanical investigations at Mezber were financially supported by two grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), including Standard Research Grants 410-2007-2472 and 410-2011-1646. Further support was obtained from a SSHRC/SFU Institutional Grant from Simon Fraser University (PI of these grants D’Andrea). The work of CL and ARG was supported by the "RAINDROPS” Project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 framework (ERC-Stg 759800, PI Lancelotti). We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

    Alemseged Beldados

  2. CASEs Research Group, Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005, Barcelona, Spain

    Abel Ruiz-Giralt

  3. CASEs Research Group, Department of Humanities, Universitat Pompeu Fabra and ICREA, Barcelona, Spain

    Carla Lancelotti

  4. Department of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Aksum University, Aksum, Ethiopia

    Yemane Meresa

  5. Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Education Building 9625, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    A. Catherine D’Andrea

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  1. Alemseged Beldados
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  5. A. Catherine D’Andrea
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Contributions

Conceptualization: AB, AR-G, CL, ACD; methodology: AB, AR-G, CL, ACD; formal analysis and investigation: AB, AR-G, CL, YM, ACD; writing—original draft preparation: AB, AR-G, CL, ACD; writing—review and editing: AB, AR-G, CL, YM, ACD; funding acquisition: CL, ACD; resources: CL, ACD; supervision: AB, CL, ACD.

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Correspondence to A. Catherine D’Andrea.

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All authors certify that they have no direct or indirect affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this manuscript. Permission to complete the research was provided by the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage ARCCH) in Addis Ababa and by the Tigrai Bureau of Culture and Tourism (TBCT) in Mekelle.

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Beldados, A., Ruiz-Giralt, A., Lancelotti, C. et al. Pre-Aksumite plant husbandry in the Horn of Africa. Veget Hist Archaeobot 32, 635–654 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-023-00949-7

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