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This article presents new data from fieldwork in the de facto state of Somaliland, a region in the Horn of Africa historically inhabited by nomadic pastoralists who played a key role in commercial exchange from the first century BCE onward. Relations between ancient empires and nomadic populations have received comparatively little attention in relation to other groups living within or outside imperial boundaries. Our understanding of these interactions has been colored by stereotypes from classical authors and the elusive nature of their archaeological record. It is thus not surprising that the role of nomadic groups in long-distance trade networks in antiquity has been often downplayed. This is the case in the Western Indian Ocean region. Archaeological evidence from survey and excavation work conducted between 2018 and 2020 in Xiis and the Berbera area reveals the strong integration of the region in the Indian Ocean network, the high purchasing power of the nomads, and their heterogeneity. Participation in long-distance trade seems to have provoked important social changes in local communities that did not, however, put them on the path to sedentism and political centralization. 1 introduction Nomads and Empire in Northeast AfricaPastoralist communities were an important component of many empires in antiquity. They were not necessarily living in the margins or beyond imperial borders: semisedentary transhumant pastoralists have been documented archaeologically and epigraphically for the Roman period in southern France, 1 Funding for this research was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (project PGC2018-099932-B-I00) and the Palarq Foundation. Arturo Morales (Autonomous University of Madrid) identified the fish remains from the shell middens of Ceel Gerdi. Special thanks to Abdilqadir Abdilahi Yusif for his friendship and invaluable support in the field, and Álvaro Minguito Palomares for the stunning photographs of the 2020 field season. Three anonymous reviewers for the AJA provided valuable comments that have helped improve the article. Any errors remain our own. Figures are the authors' except as noted. Supplementary figures can be found online (

A new Polish project, the first to be carried out in Ethiopia by the PCMA University of Warsaw, focused on the excavation of the ruins of a church tentatively dated to the Late Aksumite period (6th–8th centuries AD). The site, which is located in the northern region of Tigray in Ethiopia, was chosen for multiple reasons, not the least because of its location on ancient trade routes and because the surviving ruins offered the advantage of immediate visual impact. The work was unexpectedly interrupted by the global Covid-19 pandemic and recent political turbulences in the Tigray region. The paper discusses the early findings, providing, among others, a full description of the PolART excavations in the southeastern part of the church and the discovery of a rock shelter with ancient inscriptions and painted pictograms.

The ruins of the Ketema Ra’isi site in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia could prove to be the southernmost site on the westernmost border of the Arksumite empire, at least during the times of king Ezana and his immediate successors. The mound of ruins contains a residential complex enclosed inside a stone wall featuring typical Aksumite architectural building techniques. Three Aksumite coins collected from the site yield a terminus ante quem date for the settlement in the Middle Aksumite period (mid-4th century AD). Therefore, the potential of the site for future archaeological exploration by the PolART expedition is substantial.

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