In Gedeo Country, southern Ethiopia, the tumulus of Tuto Fela has yielded two groups of steles, some phallic and some anthropomorphic. The latter belong to a monument formed by the successive addition of the tombs of which they are the markers. The phallic steles, which could have been re-employed for this use, originate from an earlier period of the monument characterized by tombs dug into the substratum. This first period has been dated to between the 11th and the 13th centuries AD. It was possible to verify some of the hypotheses proposed for Tuto Fela through the study of the neighboring site of Chelba Tutitti, which has phallic steles only.

In southern Ethiopia, the tradition of standing stones upright probably goes back more than a thousand years. Most peoples of this region gradually abandoned this custom when they adopted Islam or Christianity between approximately the 13th and 14th centuries. Others, however, such as the Konso and their neighbors to the south, the Gewada, or the Arsi and Hadiya on both sides of the large lakes of the Rift Valley, continued this practice until recently in association with the death of certain individuals (Joussaume, Cros, in press).

The tumulus of Tuto Fela

The tumulus of Tuto Fela, located at 2000 m altitude on the eastern border of the Rift Valley, is more or less oval shaped and approximately 40 m long and 20 m wide, with a maximum thickness of 1.5 to 2 m. It is situated on a slight north-east / south-west incline and is composed of numerous rhyolitic stones buried in the vegetation with a few emerging raised stones that are sometimes decorated with an engraved face above superimposed crossed lines. Most of the steles were in fact broken. Seventeen of the most representative ones were collected by the Frobenius mission and transported to Frankfurt, Germany, where they remain today (Joussaume, 2007). The excavation of a surface of 150 m2 of the approximately 800 m2 occupied by the tumulus was realized during five sessions between 1993 and 1997. The excavation team was composed of around twenty persons, including two anthropologists (C. Bouville and J.-P. Cros), one pottery specialist (S. Barbier), one topographer (R. Bernard) and three archaeologists (B. Poisblaud, B. Poissonnier and R. Joussaume), with help from representatives of the Ethiopian administration and local workers. The complementary studies were realized in the following years at the National Museum of Addis Abeba.

The monument was formed by the lateral and vertical amalgamation of small, juxtaposed stone tumuli that protected the bodies of one to four adults, which were more or less stacked up in a contracted flexed position. These bodies sometimes appear to have been tied up or even possibly placed in a sack. They were successively deposited in the tombs, which were thus sometimes reopened several times. It therefore appears that there was a space arranged in the pile of stones, with a corbelled cover or enclosure of branches, to receive the corpses.

The deceased were accompanied by grave goods, includng several stereotypical ceramic vases with a rounded bottom and a neck. These vases were often decorated with dots or lines on the upper part (figure 5). There are very clear differences between the forms and decoration of these pottery items (figures 6-7) and those of the site of Tiya in the Soddo region, which is another cemetery, this one with steles with swords, that we have also studied (Joussaume, 1995), and which appears to be contemporary with the Tuto Fela tumulus (12th-14th century). It thus appears that these two sites are associated with two different populations with different funerary customs. At Tiya, the bodies were deposited in more or less deep cylindrical pits located toward the back of the decorated stele that indicates the merit of the person who is buried there, and who was sometimes joined by his wife in the tomb. Here, children were usually not buried with the adults.

Among the other remains recovered around the Tuto Fela tombs are a few small multicolored glass beads, spiral copper alloy rings, iron bracelets, a few fragments of polished stone axes and numerous obsidian artifacts (segments, trapezes, scrapers and flakes), whose direct association with the burials cannot be confirmed, though it is probable. Moreover, we find this same assemblage of obsidian tools, especially segments and trapezes, in association with the phallic steles of the site of Chelba-Tutitti, located a few kilometers to the south-west of Tuto Fela.

Probably more than a thousand bodies were deposited in this tumulus. They were mainly adults, but the comparatively small surface area studied prevents us from knowing if children were excluded from this vast group of tombs, or if they were placed in another part of the cemetery: because our excavations were limited to the central part of the monument, we do not know if our observations apply to the entire site. There could have been social distinctions in the distribution of bodies, with some sectors reserved for a particular type of person. These are the types of questions that remain to be answered.