Centrality, marginalisation and mobility in Eastern Tigray (Ethiopia): modern and contemporary periods as analogues to help understand the past

Abstract

International audience ; In northern Ethiopia, the villages of Sewne and Wolwalo form the centre of two areas surveyed by the French archaeological mission in the Eastern Tigray which revealed pre-Aksumite, Aksumite and post-Aksumite settlements. Around Wolwalo, the study zone is on the Tigray plateau, at an altitude of 2700 m. Around Sewne, the site of Wakarida and the surveyed area extend on a topographic spur at the altitude of 2400 m, forming a transition zone between the plateau and the valleys plunging towards the Danakil Depression. The relations maintained by the sites of the two regions with the central powers during pre-Aksumite, Aksumite and post-Aksmuite periods are still unclear, as well as the relationship between the two spaces (spur/plateau), and ancient agricultural practices.Geographically, it is a margin area with a shifting relationship to political centrality, which can be apprehended on various spatio-temporal scales, thanks to an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeology, geoarchaeology, geohistory and ethnogeomorphology. Our geographical analysis relies on the concepts of centrality, marginalization and mobility and is part of a diachronic reflection, essentially based on the modern and contemporary periods.During the modern period, this space is subject to erosion caused by anthropogenic activities from the 14th century onwards but is nevertheless absent from travellers' accounts and early cartographies. Marginalised at the regional scale and away from the main itineraries, the studied space remains locally active and continues developing. Today, the Sewne spur constitutes a central margin: its marginal location makes it a contact zone, an interface area, where the distance from the centre leads to the creation of a new centre. This area becomes a porous and dynamic borderland between sedentary agricultural practices and nomadic or semi-nomadic agro-pastoral practices of the neighbouring Afar populations. These contemporary data provide analogues allowing to question past periods ...