Happy to announce that my new article on the DiverseNile project’s use data from a 1970s survey of the research area by André Vila and colleagues has just been published with Journal of Global Archaeology. In the paper, I discuss the (re)-use and integration of historical data into the DiverseNile project. This includes the geo-referencing of published plans and making effective use of the bespoke typology of sites used by Vila and his team. The use of historical data is widespread in archaeological research but it is not always problematised effectively from a methodological perspective, as I showcase in the paper.

The scope of the 1970s survey make it in an invaluable starting point for much of the research conducted by the DiverseNile team. However, integrating historical data which has to be re-assessed and sometimes altered to reach its full potential is not always straightforward. It is also crucial to consider such work within its historical context in order to fully integrate the results, as I discuss in the article.  Unfortunately, the remoteness of some of the sites, as well as the ongoing war in Sudan, means that we must increasingly rely on existing archaeological data to study this particular region.

 Reference:

Ward, C. (2024) “Between Legacy and Innovation: Archaeological Data Re-use and Integration, a Case Study from Northern Sudan”, Journal of Global Archaeology, 2024(05), pp. 214–235. doi:10.34780/3zczgz54.