Revisiting Aksumite culture

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to reexamine and evaluate current cultural frameworks employed in the discourse on Aksumite culture. The critical study of these frameworks (involving the scrutiny of radiometric, numismatic, historical and archaeological evidence) reveals that only a few are reliable. A revised cultural framework constructed from reliable sources shows that Aksumite culture has undergone an unbroken sequence of social development from the late second millennium BC to the late first millennium AD, with manifestations of the culture appealing several centuries earlier than previously thought. Moreover, models of Aksumite state formation are examined in light of this new framework, and reveal the importance of local processes in the rise of the Aksumite state.