THE ANCIENT SITE OF KWIHA (TIGRAY) Jean-François Breton

The town of Kwiha, some 10 km East of Mekelle, shows continuous human occupation from the  Bronze Age (ca. third millennium) throughout Axumite times to the medieval period. Archaeological evidence suggests that the rock shelter in Kwiha, excavated in 1940, was the place where obsidian lithics and later ceramics were produced. Kwiha and its surroundings were occupied during the  Axumite period (and maybe during the pre-Axumite period?). To the North-East of the city, a stone building with carved pillars maybe a church (Enda Qirqos) or a domestic building, and to the North-West, three long stone pillars remain from an important building. 

Because Kwiha is situated on the trade route linking the Afar depression with its traditional salt-mines,  it was a trading center, probably from Ancient times, and throughout the medieval period, there were  Muslim and Arab trading communities living side by side with the Christian community. From the Muslim, cemetery comes a substantial number of Islamic steles ranging from the 10th cent. to the 13th  century. 

A rock shelter was excavated in the 1940s by Lieutenant-Colonel F. Moysey while he was serving with the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. A whole sequence of the ceramic-bearing  lithic assemblage was recovered from the site. The rock-shelter at Kwiha contains an interesting series  referable on account of the presence of pottery, and the typology of the stone industry, to the Late  Stone Age. The assemblage consists predominantly of microlithic but contains largely utilized blades,  burins, and scrapers reminiscent of the Hargeisan culture of the northern Somali plateau.

The ceramics found at the site consist of reddish non-decorated pots that were in use in the prehistoric period. The assemblage also contained limited faunal remains14. Following Moysey's excavation, the material was taken to Nairobi, where it is currently stored in the foreign collections of the National Museum of Kenya. Although the samples are small, possibly incomplete, and constrained by the lack of contextual information, it is still important because it represents one of the few stratified sequences in Tigray.

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