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Urban precursors in the Horn: Early

1st-millennium BC communities in
Eritrea
Article in Antiquity December 2015
DOI: 10.1017/S0003598X00089420

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AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

849

Urban precursors in the Horn:

early 1st-millennium BC communities in Eritrea
PETERR. SCHMIDT
& MATTHEW
C. CURTIS*
Key-words: Eritrea, urbanism, radiocarbon dates, 1s t millennium BC, Asmara Plateau

Eritrea fought a war of liberation for three decades between the early 1960s and 1991. While
professional research stagnated because of the
war, amateur archaeologists provided the sole
source of information for ancient material culture in the country during this era. With the
coming of independence in 1993, awareness
of the potential value of Eritreas heritage resources began to grow, leading to an initiative
in 1997 to teach archaeology and heritage management at the University of Asmara.
Out of the combined training and research
programmes conducted by the University of
Asmara have come several major discoveries
that change the way that the rise of urbanism
is seen in the Horn of Africa. We highlight research showing that between 800 BC and 400
BC the greater Asmara area of Eritrea supported
the earliest settled agropastoralist communities known in the highlands of the Horn. These
communities pre-date and are contemporaneous with Pre-Aksumite settlements in the highlands of southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.
The agropastoralist settlements around
Asmara were vital precursors to later 1stmillennium BC and early 1st-millenniumAD urban developments in the southern highlands
of Eritrea at Keskese, Matara and Qohaito.
Matara, 90 km to the south of Asmara, was an
urban centre of between 2 0 and 40 ha, possibly even larger. It was likely an Aksumite administrative centre that also had a significant
Pre-Axumite settlement that has been dated to
approximately 500 BC by the French archaeologist Francis Aiifray (1967; 1974), suggesting that the communities around todays Asmara
were the first in the region to show an organic
In rrr:eiit piiblications, Kodolfo Fattovich contends that
the Pre-Aksumitc Culture period dates from approximately
8001700 B C to 4001300 BC (e.g. Fattovich 1997b; 2000).
1

growth toward demographic complexity. Another urban center, Qohaito, located approximately 70 km south of Asmara, was an ancient
garden city (Schmidt &Wright 1995)surrounded
by hundreds of satellite towns, villages and
homesteads located on the 13x3 km Qohaito
plateau (Wenig 1997)and connected to a larger
urban hinterland (Curtis & Libsekal 1999).
Qohaito remains unexcavated, but survey evidence indicates that its urban character derives
from a tradition that goes back to Matara and
the communities of the Greater Asmara area.
We also discuss evidence that suggests the
possible presence of humped cattle (Bosindicus)
in the greater Asmara area about 500 BC, revising previous ideas about the arrival of this species in the Horn and assessing what importance
it has for the development of a settled agropastoral way of life.

Setting and background

Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, is located at 2350
m a d . on a portion of the Eritrean highlands
called the Asmara Plateau, a peneplain that ranges
from approximately 2200 to 2500 m (Abul-Haggag
1961) (FIGURE
1).In comparison to other parts of
the highlands, the greater Asmara area is blessed
with relatively fertile soils, a more moderate climate, a relatively flat plain for agriculture and a
reliable supply of water.
Only Italian amateur archaeologists,V. Franchini
and G. Tringali, focused on this region; their most
significant identifications centred on what are
called Onasites.*The basic characteristics of the
Onasites and their material culture, particularly
ceramics and ground and chipped stone figurines
2 Ona is a term in the Tigrinya language that describes
ruins or old homesteads where either ancient populations
once resided or where now departed families once resided
within a village. We use this term to refer to ancient sites only.

* Department of Anthropology, IJniversity of Florida, 1 1 1 2 Turlington Hall, Gainesvillc FL 32611, LJSA.

rncurtis@ufl.edu pschmidt8africa.ufl.edu (Schmidt also Department of Archaeology, LJniversity of Asmara, PO
Box 1220, Asmara, Eritrea.)
75 (2001): 849-59
ANTIQTJITY

850

SPECIAL SECTION

FIGURE
1.Map of
Eritrea. The rectangle
near the capital city
of Asmara indicates
the general zone in
which archaeological
survey has been
conducted.

called Bullsheads, were described by Tringali

in a number of Italian-language publications
(Tringali 1965; 1967; 1969; 3 973-77; 1980-81;
1987). These sites were mentioned and identified as Pre-Aksumite by Anfray (1970). The potential importance of the Ona finds went mostly
unnoticed in the archaeological world until
Rodolfo Fattovich drew attention to their significance for understanding early complex societies
in the Horn. Calling these sites both the Ona
Cultureand OnaGroup-A,he argues that the Ona
ceramics bear affinitiesto the black-toppedware of
the Sudanese Nile Valley dating to approximately
1500 BC (Fattovich 1978; 1980; 1988; 1990).3
3 Fattovich (1980: fi2; 1990: 10) assigns one Ona site from
the greater Asmara area, Ona Hachel, to the Pre-Aksumite
culture period based on his study of affinities with Yelia
and Matara ceramics ofthat era. However, i n his 1990 article and in other publications (e.g. Fattovich 1997a and
1997h),Fattovich argues that the Orla sites date to the 2nd
millennium BC.

Fattovich also subscribes to the presence of

south Arabian cultural influence among Ona
peoples. He links undated petroglyphs at sites
around Asmara to figures in Arabian rock art
that date between the 3rd and 1st millennia BC
(Fattovich 1983; 1988).4He also argues that the
Tihama coastal culture along the south Arabian
littoral of the mid 2nd millennium BC has ceramic affinities to Kerma and the C-Group in
Nubia, stating that A possibly Arabian influence is noticeable in the Ona Group-A culture,
where the ceramics reflect a local tradition,
partly comparable to the Tihama (Fattovich
1997a: 481). Fattovichs positions have a larger
design: that there was an interregional interaction zone that linked the Nile Valley and the
lowlands of eastern Sudan and western Eritrea
While the Arabian rock art dates between 3000 BC to
500 R C , Fattovich settles on dates of 2nd and 1st millen-

nium

B(:

for Eritrean examples (1997a).

AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

851

GREATER ASMARA SURVEY AREA 1998-2000

GARASP 1999-2000

SURVM UNITS

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

EXCAVATE0 SITES

/L---. ROADS
WPTERCOURSES
RESERVOIRS
CONTOUR LINES
(20 METER INTERVAL)
TOWNS

1000

500

1000 2000
500

111--

3000

4000

5000 METERS

1 50000 SCALE

HORIZONTAL DATUM. ADINDAN DATUM

FIGURE
2 . Survey units around greater Asmara. The small circles within each square indicate site locations.

with the highlands of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia as well as with the Tihama culture area.5
The Ona culture is central to his diffusionist
construct because of its geographical location
at the confluence of these cultural areas. As
our archaeological investigations were launched
in Eritrea, these were the interpretations that
dominated thinking about the ancient history
of the Eritrean highlands.
Within two years of independence, large
housing projects and light industrial complexes
began to spring up around Asmara. This spurt
of development intersected with the initiation
5 Fattovich (1997a) calls this the Afro-Arabian cultural
complex (Tihama cultural complex).

of an archaeological teaching programme during which we conducted several survey courses

outside of Asmara in areas in which Onasites
had been generally but not precisely documented. We also embarked upon a programme
of regional documentation and analysis of settlement in concert with strategic test excavations to establish baseline culture histories. We
now turn to the results of these inquiries over
the last three years.
Initial archaeological tests
Sembel site
The Sembel site in 1998 was under threat from
rock quarrying, ploughing, rock removal for
grave markers, terracing for erosion control, and

852

SPECIAL SECTION

new road development (See FIGLJRE

2 for location). On this 12-13 ha site the area strewn with
dense amounts of building stone and wall features associated with mounds is limited to approximately 4 ha. Recent terracing for tree
planting on the northwest side of Sembel had
exposed a large number of small bowls and cups
(5-7 cm. diameter at mouth) (Schmidt 1 9 ~ )
The presence of a cup and small bowl in
situ on the surface of one of the central mounds
provided an opportunity to establish a stratigraphic context for this aspect of Ona material culture. A 2x2-m test was placed where the
vessels were located, on a mound with stone
walls exposed at its base. This test upon the
mound, among others on the site, provided the
most useful information for building a more
refined idea of Ona culture. From the surface
to the deepest deposits at -220 cm, this test
unit was characterized by a inass of stone rubble from collapsed walls, filling spaces between
ancient stone walls.
The stone walls exposed in the initial test
were made of closely fitted fieldstones held
together with a mud mortar. It appears that the
test was placed in such a manner to intersect a
passageway or niche between two houses that
were joined by a common wall. Ash features within
this niche cannot be definitively tied to cooking.
At approximately 60 cm depth, an extensive ash
layer was first observed and eventually documented to as deep as 140 cm, having been piled
against the northern stone wall exposure.
Bulls heads figurines were found throughout these deposits, as were small red ware cups,
burnished and slipped red ware, and coarse brown
ware vessels. Indirect evidence for grain agriculture was found throughout the deposits in the
form of many upper and lower grindstones. Faunal
materials were also plentiful and were found in
discrete clusters often associated with ash, suggesting a discard context (Schmidt 1999).
In 1999 an advanced archaeological field
school was conducted at Sembel with the express goal of expanding knowledge about the
6 These cups are smaller than most Prc-Aksumite and
Proto Aksumite cups known from southern Eritrea and
northern Ethiopia, which range from 7 to 2 5 cm in diameter, have slightly curving rims. sometimes have vertical
handles, and are mostly undecoratetl: Bard et al. 1997: 3 9 5 ,
397: Fattovich & Bard 1998: 2s. A few niiniaturc cups at
Yeha are within the size range of these finds: Fattovich
1980: 2 4 , plate 27.

architectural characteristics. These additional

excavations yielded significant information on
agricultural food processing, with the recovery of many upper and lower grindstones. As
well, the exposure and definition of two in situ
hearths provided excellent evidence for additional paraphernalia used in food preparation.
. ~
Sernbel Kushet
Approximately 1kin to the northwest of Sembel
is another Ona culture site of equally large
size, about 1 2 ha. A central portion of the site
has mounds and a very dense concentration of
architectural stone. One of the distinctive characteristics of this site is a large zone of ashy
soil, approximately 60x80 m , that has been
partially disturbed by ploughing. One test in
this zone showed plentiful remains of burnished
and slipped red ware. Another test located in
an area of dense ceramic scatters to the south
of the mounds and ashy zone showed that many
of the ceramics may be redeposited from the
higher mounds to the north.

Sem be1 II
On the western margins of the Sembel site we
noted another discrete Ona period site that
was adjacent to another component marked by
black ware ceramics. Regional survey shows
that black ware sites are relatively few in number
when compared to Ona sites. A large portion
of the Sembel I1 site had been destroyed by rock
quarrying, exposing human burials, hearths and
charcoal concentrations. Also present was a hole
drilled and ground into the surrounding bedrock, descending into what appears to be an
underground chamber. Two exposed hearths and
an exposed wall were tested. The presence of
human burials, including a fetus burial in one
test, suggest that a cluster of hearths may be
associated with the underground chamber.
Black-ware ceramics were recognized by Tringali
in other parts of the Asmara plateau, mostly
on the far eastern side of Asmara (Tringali 1965;
Munro-Hay & Tringali 1993). One radiocarbon
date from a hearth in association with black
ware indicates that this component dates to
approximately the 11th century AD, or the post
Aksumite era.
Regional survey
Results from the Greater Asmara Regional Archaeological Survey Project (carried out in 1999-

AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

853

2000) amplify insights concerning the development of ancient complex society around
Asmara. The survey universe was designed to
capture a variety of physiographic and environmental zones and to build upon the survey
projects carried out during earlier University
of Asmara field schools. An area of mostly nonurban landscape of 145 sq. km surrounding
Asmara was demarcated, with a simple random
sample of 15 1-sq. km survey units resulting
in a 10.3% sample of the survey universe (FIGURE 2).

Field survey incorporated an intensive surface survey of these sample units. Walking linear transects, surveyors recorded detailed
archaeological, physiographic and environmental observations. A total of 80 archaeological
sites were documented in the 15 sq. km sam2). Average site size of the 80 docupled (FIGURE
mented sites is 1.64 ha. Of the 80 sites
documented, 47 sites are less than 1ha, 22 sites
are 1-3 ha, 6 sites range between 3 and 6 ha, 3
sites are between 6 and 1 2 ha and 2 sites are
larger than 1 2 ha. Most Ona sites are located
in upland areas above or adjacent to ploughed
and/or fallow agricultural fields and situated
within a few hundred metres of seasonal and/
or perennial streams.
Of the 80 Ona sites documented, half have
substantial intact mound features composed of
architectural rubble and/or architectural features within anthropogenic soil deposits, often exhibiting exposed stonewalls, platforms,
terraces, and sometimes cisterns. Mounds range
in height from fewer than 30 cm to over 4 m in
elevation. A diverse range of local igneous and
metamorphic rocks were used for building.

Mui Hutsu
A site of more than 1 2 ha located 4 km north of
Asmara, Mai Hutsa stretches from the edge of
Mai Hutsa stream to the top ofa 30-m high ridge
approximately 400 m east of the Asmara-Keren
highway. This site, at the time of excavation,
was threatened by construction of irrigation
channels and other major agricultural
earthmoving. A mound in the sites centre once
rose to 4 m in height. Stone walls were visible
on the surface, with 1 4 linear patterns clearly
visible. Visible architectural features included
a small cistern, terraces, and platforms. A test
was placed at the top of the main mound over
an exposed wall feature, an apparent room with

FIGLJRE
3. Stone builf walls af the Mai Nutsa site.
Walls are constructed of closely fittedfiield stone
and mortared with m u d . In this photograph there
are two intersecting walls on the left.

adjoining walls that were 1.7 m high (FIGURE

3). Foundations made of andesitic rock underlay regularly shaped fieldstones mortared with
mud. Of particular interest was a thick deposit
of faunal material, including ovicaprines and
cattle, some of which was burned and found
in association with lithic tools. Also of note
were the presence of three whole and four nearly
complete vessels of both Ona red ware and
coarse brown ware ceramic traditions, apparently propped against one wall; these were found
in mid-way in a 230-cm deposit.

Ona Gudo
This site was mentioned by Tringali (1965).Oral
traditions link it closely with the adjacent site
of Ona Hachel. It lies on a ridge above the Mai
Bela stream and next to Ona Gudo village. The
site is marked by a series of 5 terraces/platforms
on which are found much eroding ash and exposed ancient walls. There are large numbers
of Bulls heads and abundant quartz and ob-

SPECIAL SECTION

854

overlap with the so-called Ethio-Sabean culture in the highlands of northern Ethiopia and
southern Eritrea. One Sembel date is an AMS
determination with a low standard deviation
that fixes the deepest deposit at the juncture
of the 9th and 8th centuries BC. The results from
Sembel are amplified and affirmed by three
radiocarbon dates from Mai Hutsa and four dates
from Ona Gudo (TABLE
1).At both of these sites
the basal deposits, or deepest 10 cm directly
above bedrock, date to as early as the late 9th
century BC, dates that are congruent with the
Sembel dates. Dates from upper deposits, while

sidian lithics on the site surface. One test on

the topmost platform showed a series of ashy
deposits filled with artefacts such as slag, textile fragments, stone beads, ceramics and Bulls
heads. Two hearths were documented during
excavation, one with similarities to a hearth
excavated at the Sembel site.
Radiocarbon dates
An initial series of five radiocarbon dates were
processed in 1999 from Sembel. These dates
range from the 9th to the 4th centuries BC, indicating that Sembel dates to a period that may
site
test
excavation

laboratory
number

excavation
level and
depth

conventional
radiocarbon
age

calibrated

Sembel A

Beta 130119

Level 4D,
-77 to -86 ern

2440k70 BP

2720-2355BP
770-405 BC

2740-2335BP
790-385 BC

Sembel A

Beta 130120

Level 5, Lens A,
-102 to -107 em

2460k60 BP

2720-236OBP
7 7 0 4 1 0 BC

2740-2345BP
790-395 BC

Sembel A

Beta 130121

1,evel 7,
-124 cm

2370k70 BP

2465 to 2335 BP
515-385 BC

2720-2310BP
770-360 BC,

Sembel A

Beta 130122

Level 8,
--135 to -142 cm

2550k60 BP

2750-271OBP
800-760 BC

2770-2450BP
820-500 BC

Beta 130123

Level 11,
-167 ern

2600+40 BP

2760-2735BP
810-785 BC

2770-2720 BY
820-770 BC

Sembel A

AMS

10
(68% prob.)

calibrated
20
(95% prob.)

Mai Hutsa
MH07-A

Beta 152960

Level 5,
Feature 2,
-40 to -50 cm

2390k70 BP

2480-2340BP
530-390 BC

2730-2320BP
780-370 BC

Mai Hutsa
MH07-A

Beta 152961

Level 10,
Feature 4,
-90 to -100 ern

2480k80 BP

2740-2360BP
790-410 BC

2760-2340BP
810-390 BC

Mai Hutsa
MH07-A

Beta 152963

Level 23,
Feature 7,
-220 to -225 ern

2560rt-70 BP

2760-2710BP
800-760 BC

2780-2370BP
830-420 BC

Ona Gudo
OGO1-A

Beta 152964

Levels 6-8,
-50 ern to -80 ern

2400k80 BP

2500-2340BP
550-390 BC

2740-232OBP
790-360 BC

Ona Gudo

Beta 152965

Level 13-15,
-129 to -140 cm

2200k80 BP

2330-2120BP
380-160 BC

2350-1990 BP
400-40 BC

Ona Gudo
OGO1-A

Beta 152966

Level 17,
Feature 3,
--161 to -170 cm

2360rt-80 BP

2460-2330BP
520-380 BC

2720-2300BP
770-350 BC

Ona Gudo

Beta 152967

1,evel 2 2 ,
Feature 4
-211 to -220 cm

24801t60 BP

2730-2370BP
780-420 BC

2750-2350BP
800-400 BC

Beta 130124

hearth: associated
with Black Ware

1030rt-50 BP

970-925 BP
AD980-1025

AD 1095-1140

OG01-A

OGO1-A

Sembel I1

TABLEI. Calibrated radiocarbon dates for Ona sites.

855-810 BP

AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

showing one reversal at Ona Gudo, fit well with

the idea that these Ona sites represent contemporaneous settlements.
Faunal assemblage
The most notable characteristic of the fauna
excavated in Ona sites is the dominant presence of domestic animals, mostly cattle and
ovidcaprines. There is only incidental evidence
for wild animals -an unidentified shrew species and a bird, suggesting that the Ona people
had made the transition from an economy in
which hunting played a significant role
(Shoshani & Boza 1999; Shoshani & Beyin 2000).
The assemblage from Sembel, Mai Hutsa and
Ona Gudo shows a very low incidence of butchery cut-marks. Most long bones are broken, sometimes in multiple places -suggesting extraction
of marrow and perhaps meat division. There
are no pigs, horses or donkeys - results that
mirror excavations elsewhere in the Horn where
Semitic speaking peoples may have resided.
There is a decided preference for cattle over
sheep and goats, with a ratio of nearly 2:1, favouring cattle (TABLE
2). Although the sample
is too small to comment definitively on herd
management, at Sembel it tentatively appears that
sub-adult cattle were preferred for meat consumption. The emerging picture of the pastoral part of
the subsistence economy is one in which domesticated cattle played a dominant role.

Bullsheads
Bulls heads figurines were excavated from all
tests at Sembel, Sembel Kushet, Mai Hutsa and
Ona Gudo. The figurines from excavated contexts tend to be predominantly ground stone
artefacts, made of metavolcanic rocks, quartz
and various igneous andesitic rocks, chloritic
schist and, occasionally, ground ceramic sherds.
Found throughout the excavations, the Bulls
heads seem to be manufactured from locally
available material, with laterized metamorphic
rock sources the easiest to work and the most
readily available in the Sembel and Sembel
Kushet areas. As the name suggests, these objects are likely symbolic representations of cattle.
Several radiocarbon dates are associated with
Bulls heads, which continue deep into the
deposits to at least 700 BC at Sembel and Mai
Hutsa, and in the deepest level at Ona Gudo.
One of our more significant finds at Sembel
is a stone Bulls head that shows a hump be-

855

tween the horns - dated to approximately 500

(see FIGURE4). This appears to depict a
humped cattle species, perhaps Bos indicus,
which has been indirectly documented in Eritrea
from a bronze figurine from the Aksumite site
of Zeban Kutur in the Akele Guzai region, dated
to the 2nd century AD (Ricci 1955-58; Drewes
1962; Clark 1976; Drewes & Schneider 1976;
Fattovich 1977) and by clay figurines of humped
cattle found in excavations at Matara and ascribed to the Aksumite period (Anfray 1967).
The presence of Bos indicus, with its ability to
tolerate drier climates, to resist disease and
parasites (Du Toit 1936; Epstein 1971:198),and
its capacity for high milk productivity in arid
conditions may be linked to the development
of this early agropastoralist culture in the Horn.
The genetic material of Bos indicus may have
tipped the scales towards permanent settlement
in these early Eritrean communities, making it
possible to tolerate a mid-Holocene period of
aridity that seems to have affected the Horn
about 3000 years ago. Bos indicus would have
provided a more stable subsistence base, and
in combination with grain agriculture may have
been a primary catalyst for the rise of large
permanent villages and small towns in the
greater Asmara area in the early 1st millennium
BC.The timing of these highland developments
corresponds to what some scholars believe to
be rapid changes in the size and numbers of
pastoralist communities in eastern Africa about
3000 BP (Bower 1991; Marshall 1994).We must
also keep in mind known corridors of interaction between the highlands and the lowland
zones of the northern Horn. The coming of new
breeds of cattle and the transhumant interaction of cattle keepers and agriculturalists of the
highlands are ideas that have been discussed
for some time in the archaeology of the Horn
BC

sites

Sembel
Sembel
Kushet
SembelII
MaiHutsa
OnaGudo

Bos,
Bos, ovicaprine, ovicaprine,
adult sub-adult adult
sub-adult
to juvenile
to juvenile
4
2

9
1

4
1

2
2

nil

nil

2
1

nil
nil
nil

nil

TABLE
2. Minimum Number of Individuals in
faunal assemblages.

85fi

SPECIAL SECTION

FIGLJRE
4. Stone hulls

heads from the

Semhel and Senibel
Kushet sites. The
h u m p e d figurine at
bottom right was
recovered from
deposits at Sembel
dated t o approximately 500 BC. T h e
scale of the h u m p e d
figurine i s 6.5 e m .

(Clark 1967; 1976; 1980;Brandt 1984;and Brandt

Carder 1987). The greater Asniara area may
provide the substantive archaeological evidence
to test the appropriateness of these models of
interaction.
&

Ceramics

One surprise of these excavations was the relatively high proportion of a coarse brown ware,
largely unrecorded by earlier investigators.
These thick-walled, heavy-duty vessels range
in height from 40 to 70 cm, with a mouth diameter of 19-30 cm (see FIC:URE 5). A notable
vessel attribute is an extruded coarse temper,
often exaggerated on the interior by significant
exfoliation of the clay. Decoration is limited to

several forms of occasional vertical incising

located usually above small horizontal lugs.
Burning on the bottom and lower sides of vessels and the extreme exfoliation of clay from
the interior of vessel walls both fit with recent
ethnoarchaeological evidence on vessels used
in beer production, suggesting their use for beer
brewing (Arthur 2000; 2001).
Red-ware ceramics have commonly characterized the Ona culture. They predominate in
number of vessels represented as well as numbers of sherds. Red wares are dominated by red
slipping with a burnish applied. Sometimes the
top of the pot is black and burnished. These
vessels are adorned with finely executed hatched
incising (often in triangular fields), punctates

AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY TODAY

857

FIGURE
5. The two
major ceramic wares
of the Ona culture.
Coarse Brown Ware i s
on the left (scale i n 5cm units), while the
Red Slipped and
Burnished Ware i s on
the right (scale in 1cm units).

and wavy-line comb incising, the latter applied

to the excavated pot from Sembel (see FIGURE
5). The geometric motifs are seen by some to
resemble redware decoration common to the
mid 2nd-millennium BC Nile Valley, Kassala in
the eastern Sudan, and Pre-Aksumite redwares
of southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia
(Fattovich 1988; 1997a; 1997b).Our radiometric
dating of Ona red ware to the early 1st millennium RC now throws such attributions into question. These vessels have a very fine paste, are
finished with a high burnish and sometimes show
signs of cooking. There are a few affinities between the red wares of Yeha and other PreAksumite sites and the Ona ceramics. Each
tradition includes vessels that have very fine
pastes, similar colours including black tops, and
slipped and burnished exteriors. Yet the shapes,
sizes and decorative applications on more southerly Pre-Aksumite vessels are distinct in important ways from the Ona wares7This suggests
that there are regional commonalities in finish
and paste that cross cut time and space in northeastern Africa, but these commonalities are so
broadly distributed that they do not constitute
sufficient criteria on which to base ideas about
culture contact or interaction.
7 The Mai Temenai site i n northern Asmara has been dated
to approximately 400 BC. It appears to be a discrete funerary
context i n which bronze knives, bracelets and tweezers as
well as finely finished vases were documented. We cannot assess possible affinities between Mai Temenai ceramic
vessels and the ceraniics excavated from the tombs of Yeha
in Ethiopia until these salvage excavations are published.

Lithics
Flaked stone lithics are characterized by quartz
material, which comprises more than 75/0 of
the surface and excavated assemblages. Lesser
amounts of obsidian, chert and various other
igneous and metamorphic rocks were also utilized. Scrapers, including end-, side-, convergent , circular and thumbnail forms make up
the most frequent artefact class. Perforators,
burins and unifacial points also are abundant
in assemblages. In addition, a diverse range of
quartz and obsidian microliths, including crescents, triangles, outil ecaille and backed
microblades are important components of the
tradition.
Conclusions
Research in the greater Asmara area shows that
we cannot substantiate earlier ideas that the
highlands of Eritrea owed their cultural genesis and their urban development to interactions
with the South Arabian Peninsula. Comparison
of the latter ceramic traditions with the ceramics
of the Ona culture suggests that the communities around Asmara were endogenous. There is
currently no evidence that the Ona communities were influenced by Sabean incursion(s) to
the south or that they were an integral part of
the Ethio-Sabean cultural complex.
General elements of these lithics are similar to PreAksumite and Aksumite lithic materials described from
the highlands of thc northern Horn (Puglisi I 946; Franchini
1853; Tringali 1969; Fattovich 1 9 7 2 ; Phillipson 1977;
Phillipson 2 0 0 0 ) .
8

858

SPECIAL SECTION

In the area around Aksum in northern Ethiopia it appears that the earliest Pre-Aksumite
settlements and ceremonial sites date from the
mid 1st millennium BC (Fattovich 1988; 1990;
Michels 1994; Bard et al. 2000). The ancient
Ona communities of Greater Asmara show signs
of growth toward urbanism in the very early
1st millennium BC. Tentatively, we see a corridor of intensifying urbanism beginning around
Asmara in the early 1st millennium BC, extending to southern Eritrea at Matara and Keskese
possibly in the mid 1st millennium BC.
The Ona settlements are sedentary communities practising a mixed economy of grain agriculture and pastoralism, a significant development
that marked a major transition from pastoral economies that seem to have prevailed in the highlands
of the Horn up to Ona times. These prosperous
people, living in villages and small towns made
of solid stone walls, also made images of cattle
that included depictions of Ros indicus. These
representations provide us with the first evidence
that this hardy species was in the Horn by the
mid 1st millennium BC, some 700 years before
previously thought. The presence of Bos indicus,
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Diversity in mastic-mounted stone adzes and the use of

mastic in precolonial South Africa:
evidence from Steenbokfontein Cave
ANTONIETA
JERARDINO*
Key-words: mastic, hafting, stone adzes, Steenbokfontein Cave, Western Cape, southern Africa

Introduction
Composite tools and hafted tools were used
world-wide over the last 35,000 years, and
possibly earlier than that (Boeda et al. 1996;
Holdaway 1996).Evidence for the use of composite tools in South Africa is provided by a
small number of arrows from ethnohistorical
and archaeological collections (Binneman 1994;
Deacon & Deacon 1999: 158-9), a handful of
mounted stone artefacts, a n d a significant
number of mastic stained stone artefacts from
archaeological sites (Deacon & Deacon 1999).

On the basis of the limited sample of near intact mounted artefacts found in South Africa,
it appears that small scrapers were side-mounted
(at almost 90" to the axis of the handle) and
fixed asymmetrically by surrounding resin (Deacon &Deacon 1980: 31-2). Adzes, on the other
hand, were end-mounted (on one extreme, and
along the same plane, of the handle) and held
by a large ovoid lump of mastic (Hewitt 1 9 2 1 ;
Goodwin & Van Riet Lowe 1929: plate 4 2 ;
Sampson 1974: figure 105). From their analysis of the available material two decades ago,

* Department of Archaeology, IJniversity of Cape Town, Rnndebosch 7701, S o u t h Africa. chnpi~beattie.uc.t.ac.za

ANTIQUITY
75 (2001): 859-66

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