The cosmopolitan borderland: western Ethiopia c. AD 600–1800

• Autores: Alfredo González Ruibal
• Localización: Antiquity, ISSN 0003-598X, Vol. 95, Nº 380, 2021, págs. 530-548
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
• Resumen

  • The western Ethiopian borderland is remote from all centres of power in the Horn of Africa. As a result, local communities have often been regarded by scholars and state agents alike as isolated and antiquated. The picture that emerges from archaeological research, however, is more complex: borderland societies have, at different times from the mid first millennium AD onwards, embraced, reworked or rejected innovations from neighbouring polities. Indeed, borderland groups developed a type of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ integrating foreign customs and artefacts. As an old multicultural borderland spanning many centuries and involving a range of state and non-state actors, the region offers important lessons for our understanding of frontier societies in Africa and beyond.