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ORIGINAL ARTICLE Variability in Eritrea and the Archaeology of the Northern Hor

ORIGINAL ARTICLE Variability in Eritrea and the Archaeology of the Northern Horn During the First Millennium BC: Subsistence, Ritual, and Gold Production Peter R. Schmidt Published online: 26 January 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Around the margins of Asmara, Eritrea, hundreds of sites dating to the early and mid-first millennium BC have been documented. They range from single family dwellings to small and large hamlets, small and large villages, and small towns. We call these Ancient Ona sites, using the Tigrinya term for ruin. Our findings testify to significant subsistence, ritual, and economic variation within a region of 12 by 17 km: (1) different subsistence strategies in the well-watered, open basin to the west of Asmara (emmer wheat, barley; cattle) compared to the uplands north and east of Asmara (lentil, teff; goats/sheep); (2) ritual events, marked by stone bulls' heads and a huge ash deposit at Sembel Kushet, that brought people together in rites of passage and intensification during Meskel-like ceremonies, including ritual exchange; and (3) the exploitation of gold north of Asmara among heterarchically organized communities that exchanged specialized products within this region. Résumé Aux environs d’Asmara, en Erythrée, des centaines de sites datant du début et milieu du premier millénaire avant notre ère ont été recensés. Ils comprennent des habitations unifamiliales, des hameaux de taille diverse, des villages petits et grands, ainsi que des petites villes. Nous appelons ces vestiges ‘sites Ona anciens,’ en nous inspirant du terme Tigrinya désignant une ruine. Nos trouvailles démontrent une diversité considérable en matière d’économie, de moyens subsistance, et pratiques rituelles dans une région de 12 par 17 kilomètres: 1) Les stratégies de subsistance employées dans le bassin ouvert et bien arrosé a l’ouest d’Asmara (amidonnier, avoine, bovins) diffèrent de celles en usage dans les hautes terres au nord et à l’est Afr Archaeol Rev (2009) 26:305–325 DOI 10.1007/s10437-009-9061-5 P. R. Schmidt (*) 20924 NE 132nd Ave, Waldo, FL 32694, USA e-mail: schmidtp@ufl.edu d’Asmara (lentille, teff, chèvres/moutons); 2) Les évènements rituels sont repré- sentés par des tètes de taureaux en pierre et par un dépôt énorme de cendres à Sembel Kushet; ils rassemblaient les gens dans des rites de passage et rites d’intensification similaires à ceux des cérémonies de Meskel; 3) Au nord d’Asmara, l'or était exploité par des communautés ‘hétérarchiques’ impliquées dans des échanges de produits spécialisés dans la région. Keywords Eritrea . Ancient Ona . ‘Pre-Aksumite’ . Ritual . Gold . Bulls’ heads Introduction In the view of some scholars, ‘Pre-Aksumite’ means a period of time in the northern Horn when there is evidence for Sabaean influences from the Arabian Peninsula (Drewes 1962; de Contenson 1981; Schneider 1976; Anfray 1968, 1990), even using the term ‘Sabaean’ to designate a developmental period in the mid-first millennium BC. As David Phillipson (2009) has observed, “Sometimes ‘Ethio-Sabaean’ and ‘Pre-Aksumite’ were seen as successive stages, sometimes both were attributed to a ‘Pre-Aksumite’ period.” These influences—whether in the form of appropriated material culture used by local elites or more direct contact with the Sabaean world—are defining attributes that mark off this time period from other post-Holocene cultural periods in the northern Horn. Mere reference to the ‘Pre-Aksumite’ has taken on symbolic power—becoming a trope for an era of foreign influence, an era when local cultures accommodated and co-opted such influences to transform into the proto-Aksumite and then into what we know as the political-geographic entity Aksum. The use of ‘Pre-Aksumite’ has introduced a problematic terminology in the archaeology of the northern Horn by privileging cultural influences external to the Horn and thus submerging local innovations and developments. This paper takes a path away from the homogenizing effects of tropic categories that typify archaeological classification. By examining the archaeology of the Greater Asmara region, I step back from the homogenization of local developments under the ‘Pre-Aksumite’ label and instead shed light on the regional distinctiveness of the archaeological remains around Asmara—illuminating how and why early first-millennium BC developments there diverged from other areas in the northern Horn (for map of the Northern Horn including major sites see Fig. 1). The first step in this process came when my colleagues and I designated the archaeological culture documented from 800 to 350 BC around Asmara as the Ancient Ona Culture (Curtis and Schmidt 2008; Schmidt et al. 2008b) precisely because it did not fit into the earlier tropic classification—lacking evidence for any Sabaean influences or dominant influences from the south. Incorporating the use of ‘ona’ by Tringali (1965)—the Triginya word for ‘ruins’—the Ancient Ona designation leaves behind some vexing cultural characterizations while also opening intellectual space to focus on variation within the northern Horn. Comparisons between the coeval early to mid-first millennium BC sites of Ethiopia and the Ancient Ona of Greater Asmara certainly show that there are affinities between these two zones within a larger region (Fattovich 2009) but importantly also affirm there are noteworthy differences that 306 Afr Archaeol Rev (2009) 26:305–325 testify to unique developmental trajectories deserving to be understood free of biasing labels.1 Among the developments that distinguish the greater Asmara sub-region from other parts of the northern Horn during the early and mid-first millennium BC is the more detailed and nuanced knowledge we now have for subsistence practices across a geographically bounded research universe. Heretofore, subsistence practices that made up quotidian economic life have either been ignored in favor of a focus on exotic and elite artifacts or have been discussed only for a relatively tight cluster of sites at Aksum (Bard et al. 1997; Boardman and Phillipson 2000; Phillipson 2000). There is little evidence in the northern Horn for how communities varied across a sub-region in their subsistence practices during the first millennium BC. The research around Asmara corrects this deficiency while simultaneously providing a better understanding of daily economy linked to topography, water, soil, and climate—a more finely grained analysis that allows us to see possible specializations in the subsistence economy of individual communities. Moreover, it is now apparent that in matters of ritual life and ideology, the greater Asmara research throws considerable light on the question of local belief systems and ritual practices that differ significantly from what we know about other sub- 1 In chapter 10 (D'Andrea et al. 2008) of The Archaeology of Ancient Eritrea (Schmidt et al. 2008a), we use Ancient Ona to replace references to the ‘Pre-Aksumite’ of northern Ethiopia—an extrapolation that is not germane because of differences discussed here. The use of Ancient Ona (800–350 BC) is restricted to the greater Asmara area. Fig. 1 Map of the northern Horn, showing principal sites discussed in this issue (Luisa Sernicola) Afr Archaeol Rev (2009) 26:305–325 307 307 regions of the northern Horn. In particular, the presence around Asmara of ritual objects known as bulls' heads allows us to develop deeper insights into how cattle functioned in the ritual life of first millennium BC people at a very local level and in a manner quite different from northern Ethiopia or even elsewhere in Eritrea. The ritual complex that I have interpreted and documented around Asmara appears in our mapping of quartz bulls' heads to have operated within clear social boundaries and to have been part of local exchange networks on the Asmara plateau (and a few neighboring areas off the plateau), suggesting that ideas that link these bulls' heads with either rock art depictions or other representations of cattle in Arabia or the Horn only serve to erase the distinctively local quality of the phenomenon (e.g., Fattovich 2004; Buffa and Vogt 2001). There are also particular exploitative practices, such as the mining and processing of gold in the first millennium BC, that help to explain some of the demographic clustering that occurred in the northern and western parts of the Asmara plateau— another developmental trajectory that differs from surrounding sub-regions. This again illustrates that knowledge about local variations helps to make representations about the first millennium BC that avoid homogenizing conclusions, and that account for the wide variety of natural and cultural differences that occurred in the macro-region that we call the northern Horn. I propose here to make finer grained examinations of subsistence, ritual life, and exploitative economy on the Asmara plateau to establish a comparative framework that goes beyond the commonalities that have arisen in the literature heretofore. Subsistence: Insights Into Sub-regional Practices I want first to examine how subsistence practices varied significantly across a 12× 17 km research universe around Asmara (Fig. 2; see Curtis and Schmidt 2008 for survey details; Curtis 2009). This discussion is based on paleobotanical remains recovered through flotation after having been systematically sampled from excavation units and all features with ashy deposits. The contexts for such recovery were particularly favorable, with hearths, kitchen floors, and ash discard areas providing the greater proportion of seed remains. Here, I discuss five sites from which significant quantities of crop remains were recovered: Sembel, Mai Chiot, Mai Hutsa, Ona Gudo, and Weki Duba (D'Andrea et al. 2008; Table 10.1). The first key observation is that food crops differed significantly across uploads/Geographie/ variability-in-eritrea-and-the-archaeology-of-the-northern-horn-during-the-first-millennium-bc-subsistence-ritual-and-gold-production.pdf