Human-Environment Interaction through Archaeological Charcoal at Kumali Shelter, Southwest Ethiopia

By Tefera Tarekegn Bayu, PhD student, Université Côte d’Azur, Affiliated with CEPAM

Southwest Ethiopia is an important region for studying long-term human-environment interaction. It includes different ecological formations, ranging from moist and dry Afromontane forests to transitional forests and riverine vegetation. Lower-elevation habitats also occur close to the forested highlands, forming an ecological mosaic in which different resources are available within a relatively connected landscape. This ecological diversity has made southwest Ethiopia a focus of research on biodiversity, forest refugia, and indigenous plant domestication, especially the long-term cultivation and use of coffee and enset (Brandt et al., 1997, 2017; Brandt et al., 2012; Friis et al., 2010; Hildebrand et al., 2010).

Recent archaeological projects have shown that the region preserves important evidence of long-term human occupation in the highland and forested environment of southwest Ethiopia (Brandt et al., 2017; Hensel et al., 2018; Hildebrand et al., 2010). However, the paleoenvironmental context of this cultural sequence remains poorly understood. This gap is important because local pollen-based paleoenvironmental records, especially from peat, swamp, or lake deposits, remain limited in the moist Afromontane forests of southwest Ethiopia (Hildebrand et al. 2019).

Archaeological charcoal is present at many sites and, when studied systematically, offers a direct site-level proxy for linking cultural sequences with woody vegetation, fuelwood use, forest disturbance, and human-environment interaction. Charcoal can preserve the anatomical structure of wood, allowing the identification of the woody plants that entered archaeological deposits, and to examine how people selected, collected, burned, and deposited wood within a site (Asouti, 2025; Asouti & Austin, 2005; Chabal, 1992; Kabukcu, 2018; Théry-Parisot et al., 2010).

Across Africa, archaeological charcoal analysis has become an established tool for investigating past human-environment relationships. Studies from West African savanna and woodland regions, Central African rainforest environments, northeast African Holocene sequences, and southern African archaeological sites have used charcoal to explore questions of landscape change, resource use, settlement history, and human adaptation to different environments. Together, these studies demonstrate the value of anthracological research for understanding long-term interactions between people and their surroundings and provide an important comparative framework for archaeological charcoal studies in Ethiopia (Eichhorn & Neumann, 2014; Höhn et al., 2020; Höhn & Neumann, 2017; Hubau et al., 2013; Newton, 2005; Puech et al., 2020).

In Ethiopia, archaeological charcoal analysis remains limited, despite charcoal often being recovered from many archaeological sites. So far, charcoal has been collected primarily for radiocarbon dating rather than systematically sampled for charcoal analysis. An additional challenge is the high diversity of Ethiopia’s woody plants. Many taxa share similar anatomical features, making identification difficult without a strong reference collection and an anatomical database for the Horn of Africa.

Recent anthracological studies in Ethiopia have shown the value of charcoal analysis in different ecological and archaeological contexts. In northern Ethiopia, charcoal samples from Mezber and Ona Adi helped examine human-woodland interaction during the Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite periods (Ruiz-Giralt et al., 2021). In the Bale Mountains, charcoal studies contributed to understanding ancient firewood use and human-environment relations in Afroalpine and Afromontane settings (Beldados et al., 2022). In southwest Ethiopia, the Sodicho charcoal study provided evidence for Afromontane forest development and human impact over the last several millennia (Bodin et al., 2024).

Building on these recent studies, the present research uses archaeological charcoal as the main proxy to examine how humans interacted with woody vegetation around Kumali Shelter. Well-preserved charcoal throughout the Kumali sequence allows the reconstruction of woody vegetation and fuelwood use at the site, rather than relying solely on broader regional environmental records. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop a local environmental and archaeological interpretation of woody vegetation use, fuelwood selection, and human-environment interaction during the Mid-Late Holocene.

The Kumali Archaeological site.

Kumali Shelter is located in Southwest Ethiopia, Kafa Zone, within the moist Afromontane forest. The shelter lies at approximately 2,260 m above sea level (asl), on an east-facing cliff above the steep valley that connects the Kafa Highland Plateau with lower ecological zones. Although Kumali is not the only archaeological site known in the moist Afromontane forest of southwest Ethiopia, it currently provides one of the few well-documented archaeological sequences containing Mid-Holocene deposits in this ecological zone.

Fig. 1. Regional vegetation context and location of Kumali Shelter. Modified from Neumann et al. unpublished project proposal, based on the potential vegetation map of Ethiopia by Friis et al. (2010).

Methodology

Archaeological charcoal is the primary proxy used in this study because it is abundant and well preserved at Kumali. This preservation is partly linked to the rock shelter context, which helped protect charcoal and other archaeological materials within the site. The sample was recovered based on dry sieving through a 2 mm mesh. Charcoal fragments larger than 4 mm were selected for laboratory analysis because they preserve anatomical features more clearly. Each fragment was manually fractured to expose the three anatomical planes of wood: transverse, tangential longitudinal, and radial longitudinal sections.

The main comparative materials included microscopic slide reference collections of Ethiopian Afromontane woods from Goethe University Frankfurt and Addis Ababa University. Identification was also supported by InsideWood and the Xper-based Ethiopian Afromontane wood anatomy database developed by Bodin et al. (2024).

After identification, the taxa were linked to ecological information. The vegetation classification of Friis et al. (2010) was used as the main reference for relating identified taxa to vegetation formations.

Preliminary Results and Insights from the Kumali Charcoal Assemblage.

Because this study forms part of an ongoing PhD thesis, the full quantitative results, complete taxonomic table, and detailed stratigraphic interpretation are not presented here. However, selected preliminary observations can already show the research potential of the Kumali charcoal assemblage.

At the present stage of analysis, 53 taxa/types have been recorded, of which 40 have been identified or tentatively identified to a taxonomic level useful for ecological interpretation. The remaining 13 types remain unidentified because of small size, poor preservation, anatomical distortion, overlap between taxa, and limited availability of reference material for the moist Afromontane forests of southwest Ethiopia.

At Kumali, charcoal from hearth-related deposits and charcoal dispersed through scattered/non-hearth occupation deposits provide different kinds of evidence. Charcoal samples from hearth-context appear to represent a more specific burning context and may preserve a narrower fuelwood signal, while charcoal samples from scattered/non-hearth context reflect a broader depositional context shaped by repeated occupation and longer-term accumulation. Based on this difference, the two contexts should not be interpreted in the same way.

The identified charcoal also suggests that Kumali was connected to a diverse woody landscape. Some taxa point toward moist Afromontane Forest or forest-edge environments, while others indicate riverine vegetation, secondary growth, disturbed vegetation, woodland, or more open ecological settings. Examples such as Ilex mitis, Rubiaceae types, Hypericum spp., and cf. Dracaena spp. illustrate the ecological diversity represented in the assemblage.

Conclusion

The Kumali charcoal assemblage shows that archaeological charcoal can provide an important site-level archive for studying woody vegetation, fuelwood use, and human-environment interaction in the moist Afromontane forest of southwest Ethiopia. Although the full taxonomic and quantitative results remain part of an ongoing PhD thesis, the preliminary observations already indicate that the assemblage is rich, contextually varied, and linked to a broader woody landscape. The next stage of the research will refine the taxonomic identifications, compare the assemblage across stratigraphic and depositional contexts, and examine how the Kumali cultural sequence relates to forest dynamics during the Mid–Late Holocene.

 

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