ABSTRACT
After the collapse of the Aksumite polity, it is popularly believed that Ethiopia entered a ‘dark age’. Historically, this may be true, for as Sergew states ‘there is a complete lack of internal source material about events in Ethiopia between the end of the ninth and twelfth centuries’ (1972: 209), but I will argue that this ‘dark age’ is actually more real than imagined. It is true that the historical emphasis is upon external accounts (mainly Arab) to help us reconstruct events during this period, but there is also a wealth of internal cultural evidence to work with, and herein lies an ingrained methodological problem. From the perspective of material culture, the emergence and development of medieval Ethiopian culture is a phenomenon which has been approached mainly from an art-historical rather than archaeological perspective (Phillipson 2004a). Using a more multi-disciplinary approach in this chapter, we will chart
the emergence and development of medieval and post-medieval Ethiopia, a process which embraces the evolution of a feudally organised, multi-ethnic empire, with its ideological and bureaucratic machinery, and witnessing the florescence of vibrant and multi-facetted material culture. Yet the social memory of the past remains vital, for during this period we see the creation of a distinctive Ethiopian identity which demanded a reinterpretation of its Aksumite roots. Medieval Ethiopia was a culture in flux; in general terms its horizons are re-orientated, seeing a gradual socio-political shift from the ‘Semitic’ north, southwards to the ‘Cushitic’ highlands, reflecting a shift in psychology of the state away from the sea and the Mediterranean world (Sutton in Munro-Hay 1989a: 5). Yet this is not to deny a rupture with the past; the maintenance of Aksumite forms of material culture as a means of legitimising political control is a central theme. Other important socio-cultural trends are apparent at the time, the most distinctive being the emergence of the Christian monastery as a
powerful centralising economic and ideological force in the landscape, and in contrast an apparently centralised monarchy which existed without any fixed focus of political control. In attempting to define an archaeology of medieval Ethiopia, we
should try to place these ideas in a more global perspective. It is instructive, for instance, to consider the points of similarity between Ethiopia during this period and the major themes that have been emphasised in European-orientated medieval archaeology. The chronological limits are similar, bracketing the end of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance in Europe, that is, c. ad 600-1500. Nuanced approaches to the problem of conversion (and indeed reconversion) to Christianity demand our attention; the archaeology of standing buildings (especially the church) becomes an essential methodological tool of analysis, as does another cognate specialisation: monastic archaeology. The emergence of a feudal system (although one might critique the validity of the term in an Ethiopian context; Ellis 1976) in both regions at a broadly similar period of time – we might term this an archaeology of inequality – becomes an increasingly important topic, focusing upon the development of royal estates, manors and castles – although the labels in an
Ethiopian context, of course, are slightly different. A more global approach to medieval archaeology has to consider the archaeology of shifting identities, historical migrations of peoples and here (and in nearby areas) the archaeological visibility of nascent Islamic communities. As we shall see in this chapter, all of the above themes, which broadly form the core of a thematic approach to medieval archaeology in Europe, are wholly relevant to the study of medieval Ethiopia, but this is to anticipate matters. To grasp the cultural and economic roots of medieval Ethiopia, we need to revisit the Aksumite state during the seventh century and try to understand its decline.
