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In southern Ethiopia, the sacred ancestral landscapes, Bayira Deriya, often ignite Boreda elder’s memories about resettlement, drought, conflict, and disease. Likely in the 13th century, Boreda ancestors ascended from the eastern lowlands to find refuge in the Bayira Deriya forested plateaus. These mountaintop landscapes also harbored a commanding view over the Rift Valley, from which many Boreda successfully defended their sovereignty during a series of 15th to 19th-century incursions. By the early 20th century, the confluence of disease and colonization by the Ethiopian state led to the abandonment of mountaintop communities and resettlement in the valleys. Forests bloomed in and around Bayira Deriya’s historic settlements, defensive architecture, and graves. Boreda elders frequently recalled pilgrimages to these sacred forests to propitiate ancestors imbued with the power to relieve grief and anxiety associated with infertility, illness, human peril, and drought. Many Boreda elders today lament that abandoning their ancestral rites and indigenous ritual-technological practices has again turned their land to ash! They blame migration from rural valleys to towns, the persistence of drought (since 2016), locust swarms (circa 2020), and the death of countless elders (Covid-19) on those who have abandoned their ritual practices at Bayira Deriya landscapes. 

Boreda Indigenous knowledge prescribed that humans respect all entities with whom they co-inhabit, including stone. Humans, stone, and water’s reciprocal relationships prompted their participation in each other becoming fetuses, infants, children, youth, married adults, mature adults, elders, and ancestors. Life was a co-production between humans and non-humans, such that stone and water could inflict harm or bring well-being to humans. Non-human beings, such as flaked stone tools, were evidence of engaging in correct interaction ‘practice’ (time, place, and actor) with other beings – a process of mutual respect and responsibility and one in which there was no end or final “product”. 

We begin the special issue with an Editorial that focuses on the origin of the workshop and our Stone Stories. Each scholar conveyed at the workshop a personal story that epitomized their relationship with stone. Each story is a unique journey demonstrating how we listened and learned from childhood experiences, elders, and Indigenous communities. Our paths demonstrate how scholars can learn to put aside their Western perceptions and reconceive the world through other ontologies. 

The homeland of the Boreda people—the highlands of southern Ethiopia—sits on the western edge of the Rift Valley, which has long been considered the birthplace of humanity. In Boreda oral traditions, caves birthed the first Boreda people and stories of Dinkinesh (Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis) intertwine with accounts of cave dwellings, stone tools, and the making of leather clothing. Caves today are perceived to be one of the three wombs of the earth according to Boreda Indigenous ontology, Etta Woga. Equated with hollows of fig trees and houses, caves are reproductive liminal spaces. Here, Boreda implore ancestors and nature spirits through technological, therapeutic, and ideological rituals to protect, heal, and transform humans. Caves are part of a network of ancestral sacred grounds that include other significant landscape formations such as high peaks, springs, and forests. Together the interaction of rock (caves), earth (mountains), water (springs), and trees (Fig) on sacred ground is held as evidence that all these elements are beings that have the agency to impact human lives. In turn humans have the responsibility to care and nurture these sacred grounds.