1. This article is adapted from a chapter of my dissertation, which is titled “‘Bastions of the Cross’: Medieval Rock-Cut Cruciform Churches of Tigray, Ethiopia.” My fieldwork in Tigray was faciliated through the Tigray Tourism Ministry under the direction of Ato Dawit Kebede. In Rome, the staff at the foreign affairs archive provided me expedited consular processing. Roberto Ferrari of AREF Brescia generously shared with me all of Giuseppe Miari's remaining personal archive. I thank Stephen Murray, Avinoam Shalem, and Matthew Gillman for reading earlier drafts of the present essay, and JSAH editor Keith Eggener, the anonymous peer reviewer, and the rest of the editorial staff for shepherding me through the publication process.
2. “Opere Publiche: sono in corso i lavori segnalati nelle relazioni dei mesi precidenti. Fra giorni saranno iniziati, a cura della locale Sezione OO.PP i lavori di restauro a due importanti Conventi della circoscrizione e precisamente al convento di Gunde Gunde (distretto di Sease) ed a quello di Enda Abreha Azbeha (distretto di Aiba Ghemad). Per la importanza dei due conventi, l'interessamento dei governo ha suscitato favorevolissima impression.” Giuseppe Barbate, “Relazione administrativo mese di giugno 1939 XVII, Adigrat governate,” in “Relazione amministrativa marzo–giugno 1939 (raccolta relazioni dattiloscritte afferenti tutti i settori di vi te della colonia),” Busta 1010, Inventario dell'Archivio Eritrea (1880–1945), Archivio Storico Diplomatico, Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Farnesina, Rome (hereafter Inventario dell'Archivio Eritrea). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
3. The Amhara are the Amharic-speaking ethnic group of the central Ethiopian highlands. Tigrayans, like Muslims and slaves, had been marginalized under Ethiopian sovereigns from the central highlands since Menelik II; in 1943, two years after the restoration of the Ethiopian Empire, they rebelled against their government. See Haggai Erlich, “Tigrean Nationalism, British Involvement and Haila-Sellasse's Emerging Absolutism—Northern Ethiopia, 1941–43,” Asian and African Studies 15 (1981), 191–227; Momoka Maki, “The Wayyane in Tigray and the Reconstruction of the Ethiopian Government in the 1940's,” in Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, ed. Svein Ege et al. (Trondheim: NTNU, 2009), 655–63.
4. On domestic architecture in Tigray, see Diane E. Lyons, "Building Power in Rural Hinterlands: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Vernacular Architecture in Tigray, Ethiopia," Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 14, no. 2 (June 2007), 179-207
5. Naigzy Gebremedhin, "Some Traditional Types of Housing in Ethiopia," in Shelter in Africa, ed. Paul Oliver (New York: Praeger, 1971), 106-23. The foundational text on the subject is Lidio Cipriani, Abitazioni indigene dell'Africa Orientale italiana (Naples: Edizioni della Mostra d'Oltremare, 1940).