A message from Paul Lane, MAEASaM Principal Investigator
For the last three and a half years, the project has been working with our collaborators and partners across Africa to build a geospatial database of archaeological sites and monuments in sub-Saharan Africa designed in such a way as to facilitate analysis and monitoring of known archaeological sites at local, regional, national, and transnational scales of enquiry. Concurrent with this, the project has been working with national partners to expedite the digital archiving of legacy data – essentially paper records documenting the results of previous archaeological surveys and excavations lodged with the national authorities – to make such records more easily accessible and searchable, while also creating security copies that will ensure the information in these increasingly fragile paper records is not lost. By taking advantage of the opportunities provided by freely available high-resolution satellite imagery and intergrating these with georeferenced historical maps and legacy records, the project has also undertaken large-scale surveys across different African countries locating many previously undocumented sites – several of which have been verified on the ground by our teams. An impressive amount of work has been accomplished – especially given that the project launched during a global pandemic that placed severe restrictions on mobility.
This newsletter sets out all those achievements. But there is still a lot more work to be done, not least to make our instance of the Arches database live as we work with national authorities on how to best make it accessible to various stakeholders, including the general public. I am delighted to report that Arcadia, the project’s funder during Phase 1, recently confirmed their willingness to support the project for another five years, allowing us to expand its reach to include other African countries. I’d like to acknowledge here the generous support provided by Arcadia and the faith Arcadia’s Board have put in the project. At the same time, our funding success is also due to the hard work and dedication of all the MAEASaM project team members, partners and collaborators – all of whom I’d like to thank, singling out especially Dr Stefania Merlo, overall Project Manager, Dr Faye Lander, Regional Project Manager for southern Africa and newsletter editor, and Ms Christine Matthews, our fantastic Project Administrator. THANK YOU ALL!
