The Ethiopian highland region has long been recognized as having an important role in the development of agriculture and civilizations. Much interest exists in the roles of climate and land use change on the rise and fall of civilizations in the Ethiopian highlands. Although the study of ancient plant remains has long been a means to reconstruct past climate, there have been few efforts to reconstruct past vegetation of the highlands of Northern Ethiopia. There fore, the main objective of this study was to reconstruct changes in vegetation through analysis of charcoal anatomy in buried soils and obtain inferences about shifts in past climate and land use. Soil samples were taken from exposed soil section of gullies and charcoal was extracted by flotation method. Radiocarbon dates from the charcoal ranges from 127 Cal yr B.P to 7892 Cal yr B.P. Thirty four samples with a total of 372 pieces of charcoal were analyzed and eleven species were identified. A modern reference collection was established in order to make these identifications. A higher percentage of older than younger charcoal was from gymnosperms. However rapidly regenerating angiosperm (particularly acacia) was abundant even in charcoal that was older than the earliest dates published for the beginnings of agricultural practice. This study underlines the importance of charcoal analysis in reconstructing palaeoenvironmental conditions, by identifying vegetation types in time and space. This indicates the role of climate change and human impact on vegetation change in northern Ethiopia from the early Holocene up to now