Centre for Endangered Archaeology and Heritage

Research

The Centre for Endangered Archaeology and Heritage hosts and collaborates with several research projects, working in diverse contexts from Morocco to Sri Lanka. Read more about some of these projects below:

BILNAS Archive

The British Institute for Libyan and Northern African Studies (formerly known as the Society for Libyan Studies) has its physical archive curated under the auspices of the Centre. The bulk of the archive relates to the records of a number of British led archaeological projects in Libya since the Second World War. As well as papers, correspondence, notebooks, and site records, there is also a substantial body of photographs and plans and maps.

The current archivist, Anne Marie Williamson, has begun work on digitising elements of the archive as a means of making its contents more accessible for researchers.

Historical Archaeology and Heritage in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

In collaboration with:

  • University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka
  • University of Exeter (Penrhyn and Streatham Campuses)
  • Museum of London Archaeology, London. 

This project is situated in Jaffna, the northern peninsula of Sri Lanka. This region was hugely impacted by the 1983-2009 civil war, and is home today to many of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority group. Many people in the Jaffna region have little connection to the dominant discourses of Sri Lankan archaeology and heritage, so this project aims to use them to address issues of identity, belonging and place that will contribute to peace-building and sustainable future communities.

Using historical archaeology, we aim to develop community-based approaches to exploring Jaffna’s heritage of the last 500 years: a period of multiple histories and rich material culture, and episodes of repression and conflict. The project will focus on the everyday archaeology of coastal communities and draw on oral traditions and living memory alongside natural and built environments.

British Period Archaeology and Heritage, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

In collaboration with:

  • Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
  • Department of Archaeology, Hazara University, Pakistan
  • American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Funded by:

  • Higher Education Council Pakistan
  • British Council Pakistan

The north-western region of Pakistan was a late addition to British India when it was annexed by the British after the Second Sikh War (1848-9). Standing between Imperial Russia and British India, the region was of primary importance to the British as an area of strategic control, and played a very different role to other parts of British India, particularly in what is now modern India.

This project is exploring the archaeology and heritage of what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and our results thus far show that, far from being remote and solely about defence, leisure amenities (in the form of e.g. summer retreats), communications infrastructure (for example roads, bridges, post offices) and health facilities (such as a leprosy hospital) were all characteristic parts of this region. They represent both a considerable monetary and physical investment, and show how embedded the British were in this challenging region.

Alongside this, our results also show very clearly that this border area was a landscape of power and control. The British built numerous military structures in this region such as forts and pickets, and we are very interested in using GIS to map and explore such structures, and think through not only how they were used to achieve British aims, but also their legacy and re-imagination today; they are still being used by the Pakistan military and play a role as heritage structures, contributing to KP identity creation.   

EAMENA Project

The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project was established in 2015 to respond to the increasing threats facing heritage sites in the Middle East and North Africa.

A collaboration between the Universities of Leicester, Oxford, and Durham, as well as heritage agencies across the MENA region, the project uses an interdisciplinary methodology of remote sensing, fieldwork, and digitisation of historic data to record and monitor archaeological sites and landscapes and the threats that they face. These data are recorded in an online database which is freely available for use by researchers, students, heritage professionals, and other stakeholders.

David Mattingly leads the EAMENA project at Leicester, with Nichole Sheldrick the Senior Researcher. The project is funded by Arcadia and the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund.

Oasis Civilisation

The OasCiv project is directed by Professor David Mattingly, with Professor Cori Fenwick at UCL, and in collaboration with Professor Youssef Bokbot of the Moroccan heritage service, INSAP (Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine).

The project concerns the making of oasis civilisation in the Wadi Draa valley in the Moroccan Sahara. Hitherto little explored archaeologically, the project follows up on a pioneering survey (The Middle Draa Project 2015-2018) that has established a new baseline of knowledge of the region’s heritage and the threats that it faces. The OasCiv project focuses on excavation of key sites identified in the survey, especially those relating to the late Iron Age and medieval evolution of the oasis – today the Wadi Draa contains one of the most extensive oases in the Sahara.

The project work is funded by the AHRC.

Back to top
MENU