SURVEY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES OF WOLYTA ZONE

Abstract

This thesis presents some of the results of archaeological research on survey of Archaeological sites; I have conducted in Wolayta zone of southern part of Ethiopia. The Wolayta zone has reached by rock shelters, material remains which focused up on the life and culture of ancient people. At this moment rock art tourism in a public interest had increasing time to time. Despite the fact that, the existence of rock shelters in Wolayta were open the door for tourist attraction. However, such developing rock shelter tourism an archaeological sites of Wolayta zone have not been comprehensively researched. Thus, the objective of this thesis was to investigate the archaeological sites and potential of Wolyta zone. In order to reconstruct this thesis both primary and secondary sources have been collected, analyzed, interpreted and integrated into the thesis as input information. The data were gathered through observation and interview. During conducting this thesis I faced with some challenges. Some of these include; the shortage of finance and unwillingness of some individuals to be interviewed and the lack of sufficient written primary source over the issue. However, I constructed this thesis by systematically crosschecking the existing literature with oral traditions. Therefore, this thesis investigated two rock shelters (MochanaBorago and GalatoGongolo) and fifteen steles or monuments. The steles or monuments what are known as “Sodoshucha” or “Sodo Stone” is believed the original historical property of the earlier Wolayta people. Therefore, based on my sources I tried to reconstruct survey of Archaeological sites of Wolayta.