Place-making, participative archaeologies and Mursi megaliths: some implications for aspects of pre- and proto-history in the Horn of Africa

Abstract

Here we present the context and nature of findings from the first season of archaeological survey and trial excavation in an area of Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley. With the exception of well-documented early hominin discoveries, the region has previously been overlooked as a wilderness absent of human inhabitation. Such an outlook has fostered various consequences for strategies of legal, research and conservation policy within the regional boundaries of Mursiland in particular. In this paper recent discoveries of megalithic circular platforms and other archaeological remains are introduced against their dynamic local and regional placement within present-day understandings of place. Furthermore, we emphasise the value of a participative archaeology research framework in which accountability is directed towards common ground between multiple “stake-holders” within the design and dissemination of the research agenda. This demonstrates important possibilities for intricate understandings of wilderness and landscape linked to heritage, conservation, development and tourism.

Keywords:

• archaeology
• landscape
• Mursi
• participation
• stone platform
• wilderness

Acknowledgements

Research was carried out with the consent of the ARCCH and local elders. We acknowledge gratefully the field assistance of Alemayehu Agonifir, Emily Bennett, Uligidangi Bidameri, Patrick Clack, Karatiramai Dunige, Olitharali Olibwi, Olirege Rege, Jessica Smith-Lamkin, and Tadele Solomon. Fieldwork was made possible by grants from the Christensen Fund, San Francisco; Fell Fund, Oxford; McDonald Institute, Cambridge; and BIEA, Nairobi. For their assistance additional gratitude is owed to David Anderson, Marco Bassi, Sarah Foster, Graciela Gil-Romera, Will Hurd, Worku Megenassa, Serge Tornay and David Turton. Various permissions for image reproduction were received from: Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (Figures 4 and 5); Larry Robbins (Figure 7); Matt Davies (Figure 8); Charles Nelson (Figures 9 and 10) and Alberto Arzoz (Figure 11).

Notes

1. Bower, “The Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa,” 62.

2. Phillipson, African Archaeology, 173.

3. Pinter, The Homecoming.

4. Clack and Brittain, “The ‘Ella’ Stone Platforms of Mursiland”; Clack and Brittain, “Excavations and Surveys in Mursiland.”

5. See for example Bender, Landscape: Politics and Perspectives; Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space; Feld and Basso, Senses of Place; Hirsch and O'Hanlon, The Anthropology of Landscape; Knapp and Ashmore, Archaeologies of Landscape; Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape; Ucko and Layton, The Archaeology and Anthropology of Landscape.

6. Thomas, “Archaeologies of Place and Landscape,” 172.

7. Ingold, Lines.

8. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places.

9. Turton, “The Meaning of Place in a World of Movement,” 267.

10. Gowlett, “Archaeological Studies of Human Origins,” 32–3.

11. See for examples Asfaw et al., “Fejej”; Fleagle et al., “New Hominid Fossils from Fejej”; McDougall, Brown and Fleagle, “Stratigraphic Placement and Age.”

12. See for example Brown, “Barbed Bone Points from the Lower Omo Valley.”

13. Turton, “A Journey Made Them.”

14. See Lamb et al., “Oxygen and Carbon Isotope Composition of Authigenic Carbonate”; Verschuren, Laird and Cumming, “Rainfall and Drought in Equatorial East Africa”; Gil-Romera et al., “Long-Term Resilience.”

15. Clack and Brittain, “The ‘Ella’ Stone Platforms of Mursiland”; Clack and Brittain, “Excavations and Surveys in Mursiland.”

16. Turton, “The Meaning of Place in a World of Movement,” 272.

17. Marta Lahr, pers. comm.

18. See Anfray, “Les Steles du Sud Shoa et Sidamo”; Bekele, “Notes on the Megalithic Sites of Southern Ethiopia”; Joussaume, Le Mégalithisme en Éthiopie; Joussaume, Tiya: L’Éthiopie des Mégalithes; Joussaume, Tuto Fela et les Stèles du Sud de l’Éthiopie; Megenassa, “An Inventory of Megalithic Sites in Gurage Highlands.”

19. Fattovich, “Some Remarks on the Origins of the Aksumite Stelae,” 43–69.

20. Chittick, “Somalia.”

21. Joussaume, Tuto Fela et les Stèles du Sud de l’Éthiopie, 14.

22. Robbins, “Lake Turkana Archaeology: The Holocene.”

23. Evans-Pritchard, “Megalithic Grave Monuments in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Other Parts of East Africa.”

24. Hallpike, The Konso of Ethiopia; Henze, “Arsi Oromo Tomb Art.”

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26. Insoll, “Shrine Franchising and the Neolithic in the British Isles,” 234–5.

27. Brittain, “Layers of Life and Death.”

28. Thomas, “Archaeology, Landscape, and Dwelling.”

29. Turton, “The Meaning of Place in a World of Movement,” 265.

30. Turton, “The Meaning of Place in a World of Movement,”, 266.

31. Turton, “The Meaning of Place in a World of Movement,”, 269.

32. Smith, “Origins and Spread of Pastoralism in Africa,” 132.

33. Lynch, “The Namoratunga Cemetery and Rock Art Sites of Northwest Kenya”; Lynch and Robbins, “Animal Brands and the Interpretation of Rock Art in East Africa”; Robbins, “Lake Turkana Archaeology.”

34. Butzer, Recent History of an Ethiopian Delta.

35. Robbins, “Lake Turkana Archaeology.”

36. See for example Lynch and Robbins, “Animal Brands and the Interpretation of Rock Art”; for critique see Soper, “Archaeo-Astronomical Cushites”; Doyle, and Wilcox, “Statistical Analysis of Namoratunga.”

37. For example: Lonsdale, “The Moral Economy of the Mau Mau,” 266.

38. Stiles, “Preliminary Results of Archaeological and Paleoenvironmental Research in Northern Kenya.”

39. Bower, “Early Food Production in Africa,” 131.

40. Hodder, Symbols in Action.

41. Galaty, “Pastoral Orbits and Deadly Jousts,” 172.

42. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer.

43. Karega-Munene, “The East African Neolithic.”

44. Bower, “The Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa,” 61.

45. Bower, “The Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa”; Smith, “Origins and Spread of Pastoralism in Africa”; Smith, “Environmental Limitations on Prehistoric Pastoralism in Africa”; Williams, “After the Deluge.”

46. Nelson, “The Work of the Koobi Fora Field School at the Jarigole Pillar Site.”

47. Nelson, “Evidence for Early Trade between the Coast and Interior of East Africa.”

48. Mturi, “The Pastoral Neolithic of West Kilimanjaro.”

49. Merrick and Brown, “Obsidian Sources and Patterns of Source Utilization.”

50. Robertshaw, The Early Pastoralists of Southwestern Kenya.

51. Kahn, “Anthropology as Cosmopolitan Practice”; Lane, “Rethinking Ethnoarchaeology”; Meskell, Cosmopolitan Archaeologies; Mire, “Preserving Knowledge, Not Objects.”; Wylie, “The Promise and Perils of an Ethics of Stewardship.”

52. Hall, “Situated Ethics and Engaged Practice.”

53. Fuller, “The Critique of Intellectuals in a Time of Pragmatist Captivity.”

54. Petras and Porpora, “Participatory Research.”

55. Smith and Waterton, Heritage, Communities and Archaeology, 44.

56. Mapunda and Lane, “Archaeology for Whose Interest – Archaeologists or the Locals?”

57. Marliac, “Scientific Discourses and Local Discourses.”

58. Tornay, “Archéologie, Ethno-histoire, Ethnographie.”

59. Anderson, Imagined Communities; Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition; Jones, The Archaeology of Ethnicity; Smith, Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage.

60. Lemaire, “Archaeology between the Invention and Destruction of Landscape.”

61. Clack, Memory and the Mountain.

62. Meskell, Cosmopolitan Archaeologies, 17.

63. Thomas, Time, Culture and Identity, 83.