The Development of Ancient States in the Northern Hornof Africa, c. 3000 BC–AD 1000: An...

Beginning in the 3rd millennium BC, complex societies and states arose in the northern Horn of Africa. This process culminated with the development of the Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1st millennium AD. The development of these polities can be outlined in principle on the basis of the archaeological evidence. The process consisted of at least two distinct trajectories to social complexity, indirectly related to each other in the Eritrean–Sudanese lowlands and the Eritrean–Ethiopian highlands, respectively, with a shift in the location of complex societies from the lowlands to the highlands in the early 1st millennium BC. This shift was due to changes in the general pattern of interregional contacts between the regions facing the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean along the Nile Valley, Red Sea and western Arabia from the 4th millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD.

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Journal of World Prehistory. – 2010. – Vol. 23, № 3. – P. 145–175.