Premières sociétés de production dans la Corne de l’Afrique

Abstract

This paper presents the work of an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional team which has developed over the years (with the help of the Ministry of foreign affairs) a research programme on the early agro-pastoral societies of the Horn of Africa. Several campaigns of excavations and field-walking surveys in the countries concerned - Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia - have made it possible to update and renew what has been a particularly patchy and unreliable archaeological record. Upon these studies, it is now possible to propose a first overview of the neolithisation process in the region, whose unfolding differs from that recorded elsewhere (Europe, Near-East). The characterisation of regional cultural complexes and their chronological position has hardly begun, yet some advances can be recorded, notably thanks to the analysis of ceramic series, the study of funerary practices in Djibouti, and the important discoveries of rock art in the Somaliland.