Lalibela in its landscape: archaeological survey at Lalibela, Lasta, Ethiopia, April to May 2009

Laser ablation strontium isotope analysis of human remains from Harlaa and Sofi, eastern Ethiopia, and the implications for Islamisation and mobility

“…Munro-Hay 1989;Phillipson 2000Phillipson , 2004Finneran 2007), or the architecture and archaeology of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity (e.g. Finneran , 2012Phillipson 2009;Bosc-Tiessé et al 2014). This is a significant omission, for historical records indicate that contacts by Muslims with Ethiopia were maintained from the very beginning of Islam.…”

The rock-cut churches of Lalibela and the cave church of Washa Mika'el: troglodytism and the Christianisation of the Ethiopian Highlands

“…Both of these construction types testify to a centuries-long occupation of the site before its architectural transformation into a religious centre under King Lalibela. Our landscape archaeological surveys of a large area around the site, however, show that the human impact on the region was very low until the nineteenth century (Bosc-Tiessé et al 2014: 151-52; for a different view, see Finneran 2009Finneran , 2012. How can we reconcile these apparently contradictory observations?…”

The archaeology of complexity and cosmopolitanism in medieval Ethiopia: an introduction

“…Churches of rectangular basilica form with a central longitudinal space also appeared at this time (Phillipson 2009: 50 & 204). Yet archaeologically, medieval Christianity in Ethiopia has remained relatively unexplored (Finneran & Tribe 2004;Finneran 2005Finneran , 2007Phillipson 2009Phillipson , 2012, with the research emphasis on art history or architecture, or based on historical sources (e.g. Tamrat 1972;Mercier 2001;Lepage & Mercier 2005;Phillipson 2009).…”

“…Most recently, a fourth-century basilica of tripartite Syriac plan has been excavated at Beta Samati in northern Tigray, with an assemblage of 49 ceramic bucrania and zoomorphic figurines from the church suggesting the mixing of early Christian and Indigenous religious elements (Harrower et al 2019). Although medieval Ethiopian monasticism has not received the same archaeological attention as contemporaneous traditions in Nubia and Egypt (Finneran 2005(Finneran : 24, 2012a, limited research suggests connectivity rather than isolation. A fragment of embroidered white cloth bearing a red-silk inscription of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tamid of late ninth-century date, for example, was found in a storeroom in the Debra Damo monastery in Tigray.…”

“…In the past, research at Lalibela had focused predominantly on the rock-cut, hypogeum churches (Gerster 1970;Phillipson 2009: 123;Mercier & Lepage 2012) (Figure 3). More recently, archaeological focus has shifted to investigate, for example, the longer term evolution of churches; their stratigraphy and the possible original non-religious functions of some of the structures (Phillipson 2007(Phillipson , 2012Finneran 2009Finneran : 421-22, 2012a; examining the churches in their landscape setting (Bosc-Tiessé et al 2014); placing Lalibela within its wider geographic context (Finneran 2012b); and excavation of a cemetery at Qademt, 500m north of the churches (Gleize et al 2015). The latter has particularly significant implications for cosmopolitanism, as there were clear changes in burial orientation over three phases between the eleventh and eighteenth centuries, raising the question of whether all the burials were Christian (Gleize et al 2015: 250).…”