ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will consider the evidence for technological development from approximately 2.5 million years ago (mya) to about 3,000 years ago (kya). It will become apparent that the term ‘prehistoric’ is not satisfactory; in fact the fabrication and use of stone tools is recognised in the Aksumite period (and in some areas of Ethiopia the manufacture of stone tools in very circumscribed industrial contexts is still attested today). This overview of cultural development also includes, towards the later end of the period, an outline of the earliest pottery-using groups of the region as well as the evidence for early metallurgy. There remain considerable shortcomings in our chronological schemes; we cannot really speak, in Ethiopia, of an ‘iron age’ as one might recognise in the broader African picture. Also any notion of national boundary is meaningless within the context of ‘prehistoric’ material, especially for the archaeology of the very earliest humans. An accident of geomorphology means that most of the richest hunting grounds in the world for early fossil hominins just happen to be found in the Middle Awash and Hadar regions of the Afar Rift, and in the Omo region in the south-west. These issues need to be borne in mind in the light of the foregoing discussion. The central position of Ethiopia in the archaeology of human origins has
not been lost on its people or on those responsible for the protection and promotion of Ethiopia’s heritage. The skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis (named ‘Lucy’ by her American discoverers) is not now Ethiopia’s oldest set of hominin remains, but is certainly the best known globally. Her identity has been seized upon as the ‘first Ethiopian’, and her Amharic name Dinqinesh means ‘she who is wonderful’. Her skeleton, about 40 per cent complete, takes pride of place in the National Museum of Addis Ababa alongside stone tools, Aksumite pottery and Christian icons. The biography and symbolism of ‘Lucy’ as an artefact is woven into the wider sweep of the Ethiopian metanarrative, but physically, of course, she is not Ethiopian, she merely contributes to a later creation of Ethiopian-ness.
