£10.3 Million Awarded to Continue Mapping Endangered Archaeological Heritage in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Department of Archaeology and University of Cambridge Development and Alumni Relations are pleased to announce that the Arcadia charitable foundation has awarded grants totalling £10.3 million to continue the work of the Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM) project and the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project.

Archaeological sites and monuments around the world are increasingly threatened by human activities and the impacts of climate change. These pressures are especially severe in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where local heritage agencies are often short-staffed and under-resourced; where existing sites and monuments registers are often incompletely digitised; and where many sites are not yet documented and large areas remain archaeologically under-studied. Alongside the intensity of natural and human threats, these factors combine to make the implementation of planning controls, impact assessments, mitigation measures and long-term monitoring especially challenging.

The five-year funding of £5.7 million to the MAEASaM project supports the continuation of its mission to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across Africa, building on the work accomplished thus far with our in-country partners in Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Sudan, Senegal, Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia and Botswana. The funding will also allow the project to expand its collaborations with other national heritage agencies in Africa, including Mozambique, Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to develop innovative approaches to better integrate heritage concerns into national planning and development control activities

During Phase 1 of the project, the MAEASaM team managed to assess a total area of 1,024,656 square kilometres using a combination of historical maps, Google Earth and medium-resolution satellite imagery, resulting in digital documentation of some 67,748 sites and monuments. Concurrent with this work, the team created digital records of 31,461 legacy sites, from unique information sets spanning almost a century of archaeological fieldwork on the continent. The accuracy of a sample of these records were also assessed via 11 field verification campaigns, helping establish the current status of these sites and levels of endangerment from anthropogenic and natural processes, while also locating many previously undocumented sites. Training, skills enhancement and knowledge transfer activities were also delivered via both in-person and online events, often in collaboration with MAHSA, and team members presented their work at 15 international meetings and via numerous social media and website posts.

Professor Paul Lane, Principal Investigator of the MAEASaM project, said: “I am truly delighted by the news of this award and would like to take this opportunity to thank Arcadia for their continuing support. As well as allowing expansion of the project to cover other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, this further 5 years of funding will enable the creation of a repository of digital assets and a sustainable system for more rapidly and easily assessing, researching, monitoring and managing archaeological heritage, accessible to heritage professionals, researchers and students across the continent.”

Similarly, the five-year grant of £4.6 million to the MAHSA project supports its continuing mission to document endangered archaeological heritage in Pakistan and India, working alongside collaborators in both countries to support their efforts to protect and manage the rich heritage of the region. Over the next 5 years, MAHSA will continue to develop and populate its Arches database, creating a resource to make heritage data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. MAHSA will consolidate the work it has begun in the Indus River Basin and surrounding areas, and will also expand its documentation efforts to include the coastline areas of both India and Pakistan, Baluchistan in Pakistan and the Ganges River Basin in north India.

During Phase 1, the MAHSA team georeferenced in excess of 1,300 historic Survey of India map sheets, covering over 890,000 square kilometres, and have reconstructed over 192,696 square kilometres of ancient hydrological networks. This groundwork has made it possible to digitise over 10000 legacy data records, and many of those records have been enriched. In addition, they carried out 5 collaborative archaeological surveys both as part of their training programme, and as part of new collaborative research with stakeholders in both India and Pakistan. They have engaged in policy-level dialogue with different government organisations in Pakistan and India, with an aim of working towards the development of a sustainable solution for the inclusion of heritage in urban and agricultural development strategies.

Professor Cameron Petrie, Principal Investigator of the MAHSA project, said: “I am extremely proud of what the collaborative MAHSA team have achieved during Phase 1, and the support from Arcadia for Phase 2 will allow us to continue making a transformational contribution to the documentation and understanding of the archaeological heritage of Pakistan and India. We are clarifying existing archaeological site locations datasets and collecting new ones at a scale never before attempted in South Asia.”