Feeding the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite Society: Subsistence Strategies of Cities, Towns, and Urban Centers in the Horn of Africa (800 BCE–900 CE)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Local and long-distance trade and productive agricultural systems contributed to establishing complex socioeconomic institutions in the Horn of Africa between 800 BCE and 900 CE. Several important urban centers and towns, such as Yeha, Aksum, and Matara, emerged during the pre-Aksumite (>800 BCE–400 BCE) and Aksumite (400 BCE–900CE) period in the North Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands. Robust local and regional food provisioning systems paved the way for life in urban centers and facilitated political centralization, stability, and specialist production of spectacular architecture, art, and religious centers. However, despite the critical role of local and regional trade and agriculture in sourcing urban food supplies, such systems have received limited scholarly attention. Thus, this paper uses faunal data from the sites of Beta Samati, Mezber, and Aksum in northern Ethiopia and historical texts to show how food was supplied to prehistoric urban centers and document the larger provision systems in place to support this urban distribution. Domestic livestock, especially cattle, sheep, and goats, were the main staple of urban society in the Horn of Africa.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Cultivating Cities: Perspectives from the New and Old Worlds on Wild Foods, Agriculture, and Urban Subsistence Economies

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32636