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The Western Sahara Project is a field-based geoarchaeological project led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in cooperation with the government of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), in the territory of Western Sahara in north-west Africa. The Project is jointly directed by staff from the Schools of World Art and Museology and Environmental Sciences. The Project is interdiscplinary in nature, involving specialists in archaeology, anthropology, past environmental change, climate, geomorphology, geology and ecology. Although led by UEA, the Project involves collaboration with a number of institutions both within and outside the UK.
AIMS
The Western Sahara Project aims to enhance our understanding of the human past in a part of the Sahara in which very little reserach into archaeology and past environmental change has been carried out, as a result of the territorial conflict between Morocco and the Polisarioindependence movement. The project aims to develop cultural and environmental chronologies, and to understand how past environmental changes affected human populations, throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene periods, with an emphasis on the Holocene and, in particular, on the transition from humid to arid conditions in the Middle to Late Holocene. Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental findings are related to the wider North African context, and the work of the project provides an opportunity to compare archaeological and palaeoenvironmental results with data from the central and eastern Sahara generated by projects such as the Fezzan Project, the Italian-Libyan Archaeological Mission in the Acacus and Messak, and the ACACIA project.
BACKGROUND
The Project was initiated by Margaret Raffin and Nick Brooks in 2002, at the invitation of the Minister of Culture of the SADR, following a visit to region by Margaret Raffin. Short seasons of fieldwork were conducted in September-October 2002 (reconnaissance survey, Northern Sector), March 2005 (reconnaissance survey, Southern Sector), November 2005 (excavations, Northern Sector), and November 2006 (environmental assessment and reconnaissance, Northern Sector). From 2007, seasons of detailed archaeological survey and excavation will take place in the region around Tifariti (Northern Sector) in the spring. These will be complemented by shorter seasons of fieldwork focusing on reconnaissance and environmental assessment and sampling in the autumn. The autumn reconnaissance surveys are designed to accommodate a small number of inexperienced volunteers.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
Project fieldwork focuses on the following activities:
1. Detailed archaeological survey work, involving the identification of past human occupation sites through assessment of surface archaeolgical remains such as lithics and ceramics, and the relating of these occupation sites to other foci of human activity such as funerary sites and assemblages of rock paintings and engravings. The aim of these activities is to build up a picture of how prehistoric peoples used and related to the landscape, and to develop local and regional cultural chronologies.
2. Excavations, including (i) excavations at occupation sites to assess the relationship between archaeological and geomorphological contexts and recover and analyse subsurface remains, and (ii) the excavation of funerary monuments, in order to establish cultural chronologies and understand the cultural contexts within which these monuments were constructed.
3. Environmental survey and the sampling of indicators of past environmental conditions, aimed at recovering material for dating and establishing chronologies of past environmental change.
4. Reconnaissance survey, the main purpose of which is to identify and record new archaeological sties in order to identify patterns in the distribution of sites, for example of different types of funerary monuments which might be associatd with distinct cultural groups or archaeological periods.
All of the Project fieldwork takes place in the Polisario-controlled "Free Zone" of Western Sahara with the full cooperation of the local authorities.
Page updated 14 July
2008
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