Pre-aksumite plant husbandry in the Horn of Africa

Abstract

Palaeoethnobotanical studies completed at the archaeological site of Mezber in Tigrai, Ethiopia, have led to important new insights on plant husbandry practices of the Pre-Aksumite Period (1600 cal BC to cal AD 25) in the Horn of Africa. The Mezber material record includes a transition from an agro-pastoralist economy in the Initial Phase (1600–900 cal BC) to a more sedentary agricultural way of life in the Early, Middle and Late Phases (825 cal BC–cal AD 25). Macrobotanical samples are dominated by Southwest Asian C3 crops and weeds including emmer, barley, linseed, flax and Lolium, while microbotanical samples of phytoliths are dominated by plants belonging to the Chloridoideae and Panicoideae, indicative of African domesticates such as t’ef, finger millet, sorghum and wild grasses. The Mezber data constitute the earliest evidence to date for crops and plant use in the region, which are present by at least the mid-second millennium BC. In these early subsistence regimes, Southwest Asian crops likely formed one component of a complex plant husbandry system that also incorporated indigenous African C4 plants. This mode of subsistence is analogous to those encountered in other late Holocene archaeological sites in northeastern Africa and has now been demonstrated for the Ethiopian highlands.