Cultural heritage: a basic human need - Sada Mire

[archaeologist]

In an article referred to in the thread Medieval Chinese skeletons found in Kenya, a Somali archaeologist, Sada Mire is mentioned. Here is a video where she shares her experience of archaeology in Somalia and how Islam, and also their nomadic life, to a degree has made people detached from archaeological monuments. But still many carry an intangible cultural heritage.

Very interesting lecture 

[archaeologist]

Another video where Sada Mire tells more about herself and her work.

Sada Mire came to Sweden as an unaccompanied child refugee. In her keynote, Sada will talk about how her journey in time and space impacted the way she sees the past, the present and the future. Sada’s way to exploring Somali and African history was a journey that started first with understanding Swedish heritage, history and current-day society. She will discuss journeys and progress that shaped her and her views on social sustainability, time and heritage.

Sada Mire is visiting professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and today the only active Somali archaeologist in Somalia and Somaliland. In addition to contributing to the establishment of Somaliland's Department of Archaeology, she has founded the humanitarian organization Horn Heritage, which works for cultural heritage and sustainable development in the Horn of Africa.

Her work has been portrayed by many international media, and by herself in many academic as well as popular science contexts. Now it's our turn to take part in her story, which we follow up with an interview conducted by Karin Altenberg, writer, trained landscape archaeologist and investigator at the National Heritage Agency.

[djehuti]

I read Mire's paper here on the wagar and stelae when it was first published. I even sent her an email inquiring if the wagar relates to the ancient Egyptian use of sekhem wands/fans and paddle dolls and the ritual action of fanning.

One thing I admire about Mire is how she bridges the gap between archaeology and ethnology which is strange paradox since the two should be intimately tied-- archaeology informs ethnology of past cultures using their material remains. One main issue with archaeology is its bias in sedentary cultures and the lack of focus on nomadic ones. It seems the first archaeologists who brought attention to nomadic cultures and the sophistication they possessed were mostly from the Soviet Union and post-Soviet region like the late Viktor Sarianidi and Andrey Belinski who studied the ancient nomadic civilizations of the steppes. I am curious by what those Somalis meant when they say the ancient megaliths don't have anything to do with their ancestors and were a "big boned people". Is this a cultural memory of previous inhabitants??

[archaeologist]

She seems to have written many interesting articles, among other about rock art. I am a bit surprised that I did not run into her when she lived and worked here in Sweden. But if she comes to the vicinity of where I live to hold a lecture or a seminar I will indeed go there.

Some of her writings listed on Google Scholar


Here is an interesting article about living rock art traditions

Kenya's Samburu warriors still practise a rock art tradition that tells their stories

[djehuti]

Originally posted in Egyptsearch:

Mapping the Archaeology of Somaliland: Religion, Art, Script, Time, Urbanism, Trade and Empire

Megalithic sites and Decorated Stelae Cemeteries


Rock art sites and Himyarite and Sabaean inscription sites


Christian Burials and Ruined pre-Islamic and Islamic towns


Megaliths



rock art



Aside from Sabaean and Himyrarite scripts, I've come across one source that mentions the existence of an indigenous Somali script called Sumado that is compared to Egyptian hieroglyphs.



Though I see more of a resemblance to Arabian wusum symbols.

[anansi]

Just to make certain DJ, the above are not natural rock formation? and thanks for the links.

[djehuti]

^ That happens to be one of the results I found when I googled Somali megaliths which was very limited. I don't know if it was ES or somewhere else that I saw photos of menhir in Somalia that I no longer can find.

Here is another sources- www.alamy.com/stock-photo-ancient-graves-boroma-somaliland-somalia-37132505.html

[djehuti]

Here are some more examples of what possibly be megaliths: Goob ka mid ah goobaha dalxiis ee somaaliland
Though some look natural, the boulders perched on top of a couple suggests otherwise.

[archaeologist]

Regarding the mapping of archaeological sites in the Horn of Africa, here is an interesting article (by another author) about mapping with the help of remote sensing tools.

We can define remote-sensing as the general method of obtaining information of a phenomena or objects without having physical contact with them. This method is applied by different and numerous techniques. One of them, and among the most used, is photointerpretation, which focuses on the analysis and the interpretation of images, for example satellite-aerial images. The first use of photointerpretation for archaeological analysis was carried out in Europe in the early twentieth century and, as a consequence of the developments in aviation since the end of the First and the Second World War, it has been gaining popularity. The use of photointerpretation is crucial in subdisciplines such as landscape archaeology, and it is also as a very powerful tool for the location of archaeological sites as well as for the understanding of the history of the present landscapes. When applied to the huge forested areas of central Europe, however, this technique has huge limitations, which can be partially curbed by the use of alternative tools such as LiDAR or 3-D laser scanning. Yet, such is not the case of north-eastern Horn of Africa, where vegetation is scarce and widely scattered and sedimentation limited. Furthermore, the excellent contrast of the pictures and the chromatic contrast of sites such as cairns, tombs and forts, characteristics of the archaeological record produced by the nomadic societies, make them very visible to the human eye. These unique features make of this area the perfect laboratory for the mapping of archaeological sites using images.

Remote sensing and the mapping of the north-eastern Horn of Africa.

[djehuti]

Of relevance to this topic is this paper: The Advent of Herding in the Horn of Africa: New data from Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland
ABSTRACT:
Although early food production is not as well-studied in the Horn of Africa as in other regions of the world, recent archaeological and archaeozoological studies have yielded new data suggesting that pastoral societies emerged at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE – two millennia later than in the neighbouring regions of the Sahel, NW Kenya, and Yemen. Understanding the processes through which herding began in the Horn is a complex task due to region's geographic position between multiple possible sources areas for livestock, and its immense environmental diversity caused by variations in topography and rainfall. Considering new evidence from Djibouti, Somalia, and southwest Ethiopia in tandem with prior data from multiple parts of the Horn, this article proposes that the diffusion of herding occurred via different processes in different areas. Data from northern and western parts of the Horn suggest slow migration of Sudanese groups and/or dense contacts with transfer of techniques and practices, beginning in foothills near today's Sudan border and, at least in the North, slowly spreading deep into the highlands of the Horn. In the eastern part of the Horn of Africa, herding practices and pottery technology may have come from Yemen via contacts across the Red Sea, or from Sudan via contacts through the coastal plain of Eritrea and/or the northern highlands of the Horn; because ceramics are absent or of specific local design it is likely that herding began via selective adoption of domestic animals rather than through in-migration of pastoralists. In the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, livestock and pottery (with no foreign influence) appear much later, at the end of the 1st millennium BCE. Several environmental factors may have helped maintain southwest Ethiopia as a cultural isolate where people had only a late interest in switching their subsistence to food production and where incorporation of livestock and ceramic production took place in longstanding, highly conservative, technological and economic systems.

Sites


Dates of Sites

[zarahan]

Any similarities between Somali megaliths and Egyptian types over and above general construction?
Calendars? Rituals? astro alignments?

[djehuti]

^ None that I know of. I am more familiar with the Ethiopian megaliths than I am with the Somali ones and unfortunately the latter is only recently being investigated and not known as much as the former. Even with the Ethiopian megaliths, I don't know of the calendrical connections if there are any though I do know they are positioned in geodetic lines. As far as calendars I know the Ethiopian Orthodox/Tewahedo Calendar is the same as the Coptic Calendar which is based on the ancient Egyptian solar calendar and using the same New Year's Day of September 11.

As for the Somalis, I know they've traditionally used a dual calendar like the ancient Egyptians-- a solar one and a lunar one-- though strangely their solar calendar bears more of a resemblance to the calendar of the Syrian Orthodox Church (which the Greek and Roman Churches use) which is in turn derived from the Jewish Sadducean a.k.a. Enochian Calendar.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_calendar

Interestingly, the Somali New Year's Day of July 21 corresponds most closely to the Egyptian Sothic Calendar New Year's Day of July 19.

Here's a great paper: The Somali Calendar: An Ancient, Accurate Timekeeping System (2011)