Use the "back" button of your browser to return to the list of abstracts.
HISTORICAL ECOLOGY: AN APPROACH TO THE INVESTIGATION OF ANCIENT HUMAN-ENVIRONMENTAL INTERACTIONS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA [Abstract ID: 0101-10]
Recent archaeological survey, excavation, ethnoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental research conducted in northeastern Tigrai by the Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP) has produced new insights into the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (>800 BCE-CE 700). The principal ETAP excavations thus far include the Pre-Aksumite site of Mezber (1600 BCE-1CE) and Ona Adi (c. early 1st millennium CE) which was occupied during the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition. Both sites were occupied during times of widely ranging cultural developments. This paper will provide the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental context for a new ETAP interdisciplinary partnership which is investigating what role, if any, environment and human-environmental interaction had in the: 1) origins of social complexity during the Pre-Aksumite period and; 2) the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite transition. Archaeological, palaeoenvironmental and traditional knowledge studies are integrated within a framework of historical ecology.