Summary
The borderland between Sudan and Ethiopia, unlike many in Sub-Saharan Africa, is an ancient one. Different societies, communities and States have perceived it and experienced it in different, often incompatible ways: as a permeable, fluid space or as a neat boundary. In this talk, I will examine not so much the diverse conceptualizations of the borderland, as its practical materializations: how people actually make the borderland as a crossroads, as a border or as a frontier. I will adopt a non-linear, long term perspective to make sense of the last two thousand years in the area.