Benishangul-Gumuz is a borderland territory in the lowlands of western Ethiopia. It was originally inhabited by swidden cultivators belonging to the Nilo-Saharan family and only became part of the modern Ethiopian state in the late 19th century. Like many other frontier regions, this is a place with an extraordinary history of trade, migration, travels, cultural exchange, state ambitions, geopolitics and violence. It is also a country marked by slavery and resistance. The interests of the research team, led by Víctor M. Fernández (UCM), between 2000 and 2007 have been manifold and include prehistoric archaeology (survey and excavations) and the preservation and display of cultural heritage. We have discovered dozens of sites, from the Late Stone Age to the present, including some remarkable rock shelters with Mesolithic and Neolithic pottery akin to that found in Sudan link.
My particular work focuses on modern material culture, ethnoarchaeology and the archaeology of the contemporary past. The research is related to my interests in the failures of modernity and its impact on non-industrial communities. In the Ethiopian case, modernity came under the cloak of war and colossal projects of social engineering, fostered by a communist regime (the Derg). After the end of the Derg in 1991, most projects were abandoned, thousands of peasants returned to their traditional ways of life and innumerable weapons were abandoned all over the country. I study the ruins of model farms, agricultural machinery, abandoned tanks and war debris: the painful end of modern technology in one of the poorest countries in the world link.
In 2008 and 2009 I will be enjoying a research grant (UCM-Santander) to continue my research in Ethiopia.
A museum for Benishangul-Gumuz:
http://archaeology.stanford.edu/journal/2007/04GonzalezFernandez.pdf
The Sudan-Ethiopia Borderland. A topology:
