Cave activity and troglodytic culture in Lalibela and its surroundings : structuring the territory
The primary aim of this thesis is to draw up an inventory and map of the troglodytic settlements that can be observed in the landscape of Lalibela and the surrounding region. The Lalibela site is a group of cave monuments and churches, long attributed to King Lalibela alone (12th-13thcentury ). For the past decade, a Franco-Ethiopian team led by Marie-Laure Derat has been working on the churches of Lalibela, with the aim of understanding the evolution of the site in its still poorly documented regional context. In this context, a sequencing of the churches is proposed, revealing a primitive phase described as troglodytic. At the same time, various surveys have been carried out in the region, revealing a slow degree of anthropization and an apparently low concentration of rock structures around Lalibela. This raises the question of the occupation of the landscape around Lalibela in new terms: what evidence is there of medieval occupation associated with such an exceptional site? To answer this question, we'll be looking at occupations in the valley bottoms and plateaus, also known as "amba", that make up the landscape of the region. The aim is to understand how spaces were organized in the Lalibela region, which, according to written sources, played a central political role under the Zagwe dynasty of Ethiopian rulers.
Thesis co-directed by François-Xavier Fauvelle (Collège de France) and Marie-Laure Derat (CNRS, Laboratoire Orient & Méditerranée, Paris).
CNRS research fellow (INSHS), alternating between the TRACES Laboratory in Toulouse and the French Center for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa.
1st registration in October 2019.
