Archaeological Theory

LHEAAPS aims to reconstruct the past adaptive strategies of East African pastoralists, and their relative resilience to environmental shocks under different systems of land management, rangeland access, and population and livestock densities across Kenya. The research is designed to generate knowledge that has applied value geared toward enhancing the socio-ecological and cultural resilience and sustainable livelihood strategies of contemporary pastoral societies in the face of current global challenges.

The project has four main research questions:

The 10th-5th centuries BCE (the first centuries of the Iron Age) witnessed significant societal transformations across the Mediterranean. Populations grew in many regions, the first genuine economic integration of the basin occurred through maritime interaction and overseas settlement, and, for the first time, communities characterisable as urban and state-like are identifiable from the sea’s eastern littoral (where they had a deeper Bronze Age history) through to its Atlantic border.

The aim of this project will be to investigate the nature and impact of Roman imperialism on the frontiers of North Africa (specifically the Maghreb), especially in considering the role of Roman imperialism on the political economy of the region and its impact on both pre-existing communities and the formation of new communities in the provinces. The notion of frontier is wide-ranging and is inspired by Border Studies, and considers the impact of the frontier in community-formation at both the border and the provincial cores of the Roman Maghreb.