In fact, the geographic areas covered by this bibliography vary according to the period. For prehistoric art, we give examples in the whole Horn of Africa, which is the scale at which the specialists of this region are working. To follow the historical evolution of the Ethiopian political space, production within what is now Eritrea is sometimes included, particularly for Aksumite and medieval times, but this bibliography cannot be considered comprehensive for more recent arts in Eritrea. Christian art forms have been studied more than other material, but in this bibliography they will be proportionately less represented in order to provide sources for various other fields that have received less scholarly attention. Therefore, this bibliography reflects neither the number of surviving artworks nor the number of the studies done. Furthermore, there is no general overview of all the topics addressed in this bibliography, but such overviews are sometimes existing for subtopics. It must be noted that while Ethiopian names are composed of a personal name followed by the name of a person’s father, in publications and library catalogs the personal name is sometimes taken on as a surname, while sometimes the father’s name is used in this way. Systems of transcription also vary, so diverse spellings will appear in this bibliography.
Even if the articles published in these proceedings are of very different quality, they may be mined for information. Intervals between the conferences have been irregular. To date, ten conferences have met, and proceedings were published for six of them. The third one was held in Addis Ababa in November 1993, and the proceedings were announced but never appeared. The eighth conference was held in Addis Ababa in November 2009, the ninth in Vienna in September 2013, and the tenth in Maqale (Ethiopia) in December 2015.
