The bulk of archaeological excavations in the Horn has focused on the highlands, where the ‘firsts’ and the ‘onlys’ are concentrated, particularly on the site of Aksum-Tigray in the northern Ethiopian-Eritrean highlands. Though the early and mid-twentieth century efforts focused on the stelae, monumental architecture, artwork, and epigraphic research to reconstruct the development of the Aksumite state from the Early Common Era to its demise in the late first millennium CE, recent work has focused on tracing the beginnings of pre-Aksumite settlement. The early development of complexity in the Ethiopian highlands has now been tentatively traced to the early first millennium BC and interactions with the Hadramaut and Southwestern coast of Arabia have now been traced to the second millennium BC. Archaeo-botanical and zoological approaches have also moved away from mere establishment of antiquity to understanding the regional and evolutionary context of plant and animal domestication in the Horn of Africa. In particular, recent work in South Asia dates the African domesticates to 2000 BC. Not only does this suggest the deep antiquity of interconnections between the Horn of Africa and Asia but also the larger transregional context of domestication involving transfer of ideas, products, and technology. Current reconstructions of the demise of Aksum vary from blaming the declining climate conditions from the mid-late first millennium CE to the emergence of Islamic power along the northern coast from the late eighth century, concentrated in the ports of Massawa, Adulis, the Dahlak Islands, and Zeila. The latter argument has also been made for the fall of the subsequent polities of Zagwe, the Solomonids, and Gondar. However, it is clear that there are multiple and path-dependent causes for the decline of the highland polities and these need to be explored further in a regional context. Recent archaeological and historiographic approaches have aimed at understanding the post-Aksum polities beyond just establishing king-lists and reigning periods. The difficulty presented to researchers interested in the latter settlement and political history of the highlands is the shift in settlement organization and political infrastructure. Whether in response to conflicts with Islamic polities such as Adal and Harar and/or pastoral groups such as the Somali and the Oromo, climate, and environmental changes, the elites of Zagwe, Gondar, and the Amhara moved their capitals periodically, making their archaeological signatures ephemeral and difficult to locate.
World History
