Isotopic and NAA Investigations into Globalizing Social Communities in Ancient Aksum, Ethiopia 50-800 AD
Author(s): Dilpreet Basanti
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "Stable Isotope Analysis in Global History" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
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This talk presents stable isotope and Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) results to examine the development of social and geo-local communities during the globalizing punctuations of ancient Aksum, Ethiopia. Aksum (50-800 AD) was the capital of a major polity well-known for its central role in the Indian Ocean trade. Aksum’s most notable material features are its monumental funerary stelae located in a central cemetery now called the Stelae Park. δ<sup>18</sup>O isotopes from available human remains demonstrate minimal variation, perhaps indicating a shared water source for this community. In contrast, NAA results show greater variation in multiple components for grave good pottery at each tomb. Taken together, these data may suggest a geo-local community buried in the cemetery whose social networks expanded beyond these boundaries. While much material culture at Aksum appears to facilitate the development of larger abstracted social communities during this period of globalization, Stelae Park burial traditions instead value experiential and indexical material cultures that rooted communities back into the local. Stable Isotope and NAA reflect an output of these overlapping community spheres that help to demonstrate how death became a dimension of the local within the wider Aksumite negotiations with cosmopolitanism.
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Cite this Record
Isotopic and NAA Investigations into Globalizing Social Communities in Ancient Aksum, Ethiopia 50-800 AD. Dilpreet Basanti. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 509824)
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Abstract Id(s): 51260