Seniority through ancestral landscapes: Community archaeology in the highlands of southern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on our collaboration with the Boreda of southern Ethiopia to document the ways in which their cultural heritage knowledge is entwined with Ochollo Mulato, one of their nine tangible senior ancestral landscapes or Bayira Deriya. Through the interface between oral traditions, life histories, and the archaeological record, we grew increasingly aware of the descendant community’s wide range of alternative but equally valid memories and attachments to their ancestral lands. Articulated through the landscape at Ochollo Mulato, Boreda demonstrated to us the various historical paths for defending assertions of seniority between youths and elders and between farmers and craft-specialists.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethiopia
• Gamo
• African community archaeology
• Indigenous heritage
• ancestral landscapes
• alternative memories

Acknowledgements

Heartfelt thanks go towards the Boreda who with compassion and enthusiasm collaborated and shared their present and past lives with us and to them most of all we hope this work brings pride, honour, and dignity. We also would like to thank the program officers and reviewers at the National Science Foundation (award numbers 0514055 and 1027607), National Endowment for the Humanities (award number RZ-50575-06), and the University of South Florida for providing funding for this project. We extend our deep gratitude for the assistance of the personnel of the offices at Ethiopia's Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage particularly our national representative Gezehegne Girma; the National Museum of Ethiopia; and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region's Bureau of Culture and Information in Awassa, Arba Minch, and Zefine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kathryn Weedman Arthur is an associate professor of Anthropology, who has been working with Gamo communities in Ethiopia over the last 20 years focusing issues related to women, craft-specialists, and heritage.

Yohannes Ethiopia Tocha earned a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Arba Minch University and is currently working for CVM-Ethiopia Italian Development/Volunteering Organization.

Matthew C. Curtis is an anthropologist specializing in the Holocene archaeology of Eastern Africa, with particular focus on the archaeology of complex societies in Ethiopia and Eritrea. He is the founder of Eastern African Archaeology Online, a cultural heritage information and advocacy website, and teaches anthropology and African studies for UCLA Extension, Ventura College, College of the Canyons, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at California State University, Channel Islands.

Bizuayehu Lakew earned an MA in Anthropology from Addis Ababa University and has committed decades of service with the Southern Nations, Nationality, and Peoples Region Bureau of Culture and Information in Awassa, Ethiopia.

John W. Arthur is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He has been working in Ethiopia since 1995 focusing on issues related to ceramic ethnoarchaeology, caste, and development of food production.

Citation information

Arthur, Kathryn Weedman, Matthew C. Curtis, Bizuayehu Lakew, and John W. Arthur. 2017. 'Seniority through ancestral landscapes: community archaeology in the highlands of southern Ethiopia'. Special Series, African Perspectives on Community Engagements, guest-edited by Peter R. Schmidt. Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage 4(2): page #s tbd.

Notes

1 When writing these grant proposals, we used Boreda histories to underpin our proposed theories for interpreting these sites, rather than Western-derived archaeological models.

2 At this writing, there are no other works published in Ethiopia that discuss that population pressure and increasing need for farm land, deforestation, and erosion, and how they impinge on heritage preservation. We believe that this issue will be increasingly important in the future.

3 We are planning to print the book ourselves and provide copies to the community at that point. This book will not be online because very few people in the community have access to the internet, and most are still without electricity. In addition, two of the co-authors (Kathryn Arthur and Yohannes Tocha) plan to translate all of our articles for the local community, and to seek funding to build a small cultural centre.

4 Tompe was a June festival associated with their Indigenous religion and practices that was later conflated with the national New Year celebration with a bonfire in September.