Mapping Africa's

Year-by-year highlights

We have made steady progress towards meeting the objectives. This collective work has led to a strong sense of community dedicated to the championing of heritage data from different perspectives, practical experiences, and backgrounds in Africa. Here we present some of our memorable highlights from Phase 1 of the project.


2020 – 2021


September (2020)
The launch
MAEASaM officially launches: Arcadia funds two major projects to map endangered archaeological heritage in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa | Department of Archaeology (cam.ac.uk).


December (2020)
First in a series of free online workshops
Remote Sensing in Archaeology (Part I), run with the MAHSA project – MAHSA-MAEASaM Youtube.


January (2021)
Alpha, Beta, go… Arches v.5
The first MAEASaM instance of the alpha version of Arches database v.5 is set up.


April (2021)
Beginning digitisation
Just over 6,000 sites based on remote sensing surveys and legacy records digitised since project launch.

Case study on indigenous wells
Collaborative case study on the identification and monitoring of traditional wells in Kenya and Ethiopia using remote sensing techniques.


May (2021)
Going digital
Half day online workshop on digital databases in heritage management and archaeological research, run with MAHSA – Going Digital Workshop.


August(2021)
www.maeasam.org goes live
Project website is launched in the public domain with an average of 1,233 visitors per month since – Learn more about Https.


October (2021)
All about historical maps
The third in our series of workshops introduced the uses of historical maps to understand past landscapes – Historical maps to document archaeology workshop.


November (2021)
Heritage From Above
The first weekly instalment of our heritage quiz #heritagefromabove: can you spot the feature? is posted on our project social media channels (Instagram, Facebook and X).