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Urban precursors in the Horn: early 1st-millennium BC communities in Eritrea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Peter R. Schmidt  and
Matthew C. Curtis
Peter R. Schmidt
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, 1112 Turlington Hall, Gainesville FL 32611, USA, pschmidt@africa.ufl.edu, mcurtis@ufl.edu Department of Archaeology, University of Asmara, PO Box 1220, Asmara, Eritrea, pschmidt@africa.ufl.edu
Matthew C. Curtis
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Florida, 1112 Turlington Hall, Gainesville FL 32611, USA, pschmidt@africa.ufl.edu, mcurtis@ufl.edu
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Extract

Eritrea fought a war of liberation for three decades between the early 1960s and 1991. While professional research stagnated because of the war, amateur archaeologists provided the sole source of information for ancient material culture in the country during this era. With the coming of independence in 1993, awareness of the potential value of Eritrea’s heritage resources began to grow, leading to an initiative in 1997 to teach archaeology and heritage management at the University of Asmara.

Out of the combined training and research programmes conducted by the University of Asmara have come several major discoveries that change the way that the rise of urbanism is seen in the Horn of Africa. We highlight research showing that between 800 BC and 400 BC the greater Asmara area of Eritrea supported the earliest settled agropastoralist communities known in the highlands of the Horn. These communities pre-date and are contemporaneous with Pre-Aksumite settlements in the highlands of southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.

Keywords

Eritreaurbanismradiocarbon dates1st millennium BCAsmara Plateau
Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 75 , Issue 290 , December 2001 , pp. 849 - 859
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2001

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