The Lost Kingdoms. Archaeology of the State in the Horn of Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/etfi.14.2021.32055Keywords:
Ethiopia; Somalia; Sudan; state formation; state collapse; social resistance.Abstract
The Horn of Africa was the cradle of the earliest states in Subsaharan Africa, but they are scarcely known and rarely considered in general discussions on the origin of hierarchical societies and state formations. Yet for some three millennia the Horn saw the emergence, development and collapse of different state organizations which often contradict our conceptions of what a state is. They have much in common with other African states, such as their heterarchical tendencies or the relevance of material symbols, myth and ritual. In this paper a review of the different state models that can be identified in the Horn of Africa is provided from an archaeological perspective. Some shared features can be observed, such as the fragmentary, heterogeneous nature of their territory, their porous borderlands and the persistence of non-assimilated communities within the territory of the polity and the tendency to fission and collpase, which is related to a friction between centripetal and centrifugal forces always at play.
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