Event: WEDS TALKS: Archaeology of Megalithic Culture in Ethiopia: Showcases from the Central Highlands

ABSTRACT: Ethiopia hosts one of the world’s longest‑standing and most diverse megalithic traditions, a heritagethat has earned it the designation “land of megaliths.” From later prehistory onward, communities across theEthiopian landscape constructed monumental stone features that appear in striking density along the Great EastAfrican Rift. Recent archaeological research has begun to clarify this picture through the identification of a distinctconstellation of monuments in the central highlands now termed the Shay Culture, named after the Shay River,where these clusters were documented. From 2016 to 2020, Dr. Alebachew Belay Birru conducted a doctoralproject at the University of Toulouse under the supervision of François‑Xavier Fauvelle, combining intensive fieldsurvey, spatial analysis, and typological study to define the cultural boundaries, architectural characteristics,settlement patterns, and exchange networks associated with these monuments. This work refines the spatial andtypological definition and illuminates the relationships among megaliths, landscapes, and the societies thatproduced them. It also demonstrates how local syncretic religious memories—layered across Pagan, Christian, andMuslim traditions—preserve echoes of long‑standing regional networks that transcend both time and beliefsystems. The seminar will present the major findings of this research, situating the Shay Culture within broaderdebates on monumentality, mobility, and social complexity in the region. It will also outline how communities inthe Ethiopian highlands participated in wider circuits of movement and exchange linking the interior to theMediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds.
BIO: Alebachew Belay Birru is an Assistant Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Debre BerhanUniversity in Ethiopia and a Connecting Art Histories Research Scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He earned hisPhD in Archaeology from the University of Toulouse in 2020 and has since held several prestigious internationalfellowships, including at I Tatti – The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Africa‑Oxford Initiative atOxford University, the Excellence in Humanities Fellow at the Université Grenoble Alpes, and now at the Getty. Hisresearch explores Ethiopia’s medieval multi‑religious landscapes, with a particular focus on the mobility of sacredobjects—such as glass beads and crosses—between the Horn of Africa and the Mediterranean world.