Ethiopia's Peripatetic Royal Capitals and Prospects for Their Study

Summary

From the 13th to 17th centuries, emperors of Ethiopia, attended by the royal court, largely abandoned rule from fixed capitals in favor of a migratory lifestyle suited to projecting imperial power across an unruly collection of subjugated states and territories. At its peak, this system of administration was formalized into a highly regulated assembly of people with the visual and functional attributes of a royal urban center, though it lacked the spatial permanency of a conventional city. The archaeological study of such a site then is important not only for better understanding the context of royal power and authority in medieval Ethiopia, but would also make a major contribution to our understanding of urbanism and the diversity of forms it may take. The mountainous setting of the Ethiopian highlands, however, poses a number of challenges to the identification and study of such ephemeral settlements. This poster will outline the significance and archaeological identification of such settlements with attention toward recent research into highland formation processes, human and natural, likely to affect the archaeological visibility and preservation of such ephemeral settlements.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage