Borderland ceramics: characterisation and contextualisation of archaeological pottery from the western Somaliland-Ethiopian border

This paper deals with the pottery assemblage recovered during several field campaigns in the western Somaliland-Ethiopian border region of the Horn of Africa. The characterisation of these ceramics through macroscopic analysis, classification and quantification reveals a homogeneous and limited assemblage, the features of which point to non-specialised household production. These results are compared with those of other medieval pottery assemblages from the Horn of Africa, thereby shedding light on a mosaic of diverse regional traditions that highlight interactions between communities and conditioned the different Islamic political structures that ruled over this area in the Middle Ages.