Vortrag/Lecture: What are these desert stones telling you?

The people of the Horn of Africa are often missing from the main archaeological narratives. The sunbeaten lowlands of Djibouti, Somalia and eastern Ethiopia were home to many nomadic pastoralist groups since the 2nd millennium BCE until the mid-20th century. Keeping track of the material traces mobile people left is a rather challenging issue as very few objects are preserved due to the portable and perishable nature of pastoralist material culture. By systematically studying the materials from eight archaeological field seasons, systematic mapping and classification of pastoralist funerary structures and, finally, the application of different GIS analyses, we tried to answer the following questions, among others: How did pastoralists live within and create the current landscape? What is the logic behind the spatial distribution of diachronically built structures? Plus, how does all that information and materials help us to understand the changes and continuities experienced by nomadic societies?