Catherine D'Andrea is a Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. Her recent research focuses on early agricultural peoples and the rise of complex societies in Horn of Africa. She is involved in ongoing archaeological projects as a palaeoethnobotanist and ethnoarchaeologist, having initiated surveys and excavations in northern Ethiopia. Currently, she directs the Eastern Tigrai Archaeological Project (ETAP), which is an interdisciplinary group of archaeologists and geographers from Canada, Ethiopia, Italy, France, and the USA. At the site of Mezber, her team has examined the dynamics of early state formation in northern Ethiopia, particularly during the Pre-Aksumite period (1600-400 BCE), investigating the role of indigenous African versus autochthonous (Sabaean) cultural influences in the origin and development of early Pre-Aksumite polities. Recent excavations at Ona Adi focus on the transition from the Pre-Aksumite to Aksumite periods in Eastern Tigrai. Her research group is consulting with rural farming communities to formulate plans for using local archaeological and cultural resources to support local tourism. This initiative aims to assist rural people in achieving goals of sustainable economic development, education, poverty reduction, and food security. Additionally, her palaeoethnobotanical work has drawn attention to marginalized and poorly understood crops cultivated in Africa, including pearl millet, t’ef, fonio, cowpea, and emmer wheat. T’ef and fonio are proposed as alternate domesticated cereals in a syndrome that differs from the accepted scheme based on Near Eastern cereals, and her research has been informed by years of ethnoarchaeological field studies of crop processing methods practiced by traditional (non-mechanized) farmers in northern Ethiopia, enabling her to blend scientific and traditional knowledge to elucidate the domestication history of African cereals.