Paul Lane is Director of the Marie Curie HEEAL project. He is an archaeologist with over twenty years’ research experience in Africa. He did his undergraduate degree at Cambridge, where he specialised in later European prehistory. He returned to Cambridge to do his doctoral research, which consisted of an ethnoarchaeological study of space and time among the Dogon in Mali, West Africa, receiving his PhD in 1986. After a few years working in industrial archaeology and countryside interpretation in the UK, he took up a lectureship in archaeology at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1989. In 1992, moved to a post at the University of Botswana, where he taught archaeology and museum studies and with colleagues was responsible for setting up and developing the first degree programme in archaeology at the university, remaining there until mid-1997. Prior to coming to York, he was Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa, based in Nairobi, for eight years from 1998-2006, where he conducted research on the transition to farming around Lake Victoria, histories of soil erosion in northern Tanzania, the historical archaeology of Luo settlement, the maritime archaeology of the Indian Ocean coast, and the archaeology of pastoralist societies on the Laikipia Plateau, Kenya.;

Research

Research Themes

Research Groups

HEEAL Project Coordinator
Coastal Prehistory
Historical

Current and recent research projects

Historical Ecologies of East African Landscapes (HEEAL): This four-year project is funded by the EU through a Marie Curie Excellence Grant. It focuses on the environmental and social consequences of the intensification of agriculture, herding and the emergence of specialised hunting from c. 1500 AD in eastern Africa, so as to refine current understanding of the historical ecology of the region’s changing landscapes. In addition to the new data generated by three PhD projects and analysis of existing historical, archaeological, ethnographic and environmental data sets, it is anticipated that this project will entail landscape-scale surveys of settlement patterns, land use, place names and natural resources.

Research Interests

Lane's main research interests are in the organisation and use of space and time in pre-industrial societies, the historical ecology of African landscapes, cultural perceptions of place, the materialisation of memory, maritime archaeology, the transition to farming in Africa, and indigenous archaeologies. In his spare time, he also works on aspects of the European Mesolithic, and until he moved to Kenya he assisted on the Vale of Pickering Research Trust’s annual surveys and excavations on a regular basis.

Academic and professional distinctions

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; Advisory Board Member, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Advisory Board Member, Fergusson Centre, The Open University; Contributing Editor, The Review of Archaeology; Editorial Board Member, Afrique et Historie; Member of Council, Pan-African Association of Prehistory & Related Studies.

References

Books

(with Andrew Reid) African Historical Archaeologies. (2004)London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press, 408 pages.

Other RECENT Publications

In press
The use of ethnography in landscape archaeology. In B. David and J. Thomas (eds) The Handbook of Landscape Archaeology. Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA (WAC Research Handbook Series).
The social production of cloth and clothing among the Dogon of Mali. Anthropos 103/1 (2008).
Whither historical archaeology in Africa? Review of Archaeology 28/2.
(with Douglas Johnson) The archaeology and history of slavery in South Sudan in the 19th century. In A.C.A. Peacock (ed.) The Frontiers of the Ottoman World. London: Proceedings of the British Academy.
The use of ethnography in landscape archaeology. In B. David and J. Thomas (eds) The Handbook of Landscape Archaeology. Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA (WAC Research Handbook Series).

2007

The transition to farming in Eastern Africa: new faunal and dating evidence from Wadh Lang’o and Usenge, Kenya. (with Ceri Ashley, Oula Seitsonen, Paul Harvey, Sada Mire, and Frederick Odede). Antiquity 81: 62-81.
(with Rory Quinn, W. Forsythe, C. Breen, D. Boland and A. Lali Omar) Process-based models for port evolution and wreck site formation at Mombasa, Kenya. Journal of Archaeological Science 34: 1449-60.

2006

Household assemblages, lifecycles and the remembrance of things past among the Dogon of Mali. South African Archaeological Bulletin 61: 40-56.
Present to Past: Ethnoarchaeology. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer (eds) Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage, pp 402-24.
(with Ceri Ashley & Gilbert Oteyo) New dates for Kansyore and Urewe wares from northern Nyanza, Kenya. Azania XLI: 123-38.

2005

Barbarous tribes and unrewarding gyrations? The changing role of ethnographic imagination in African archaeology. In A.B. Stahl (ed.) African Archaeology. A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 24-54.
The material culture of memory. In W. James and D. Mills (eds) The Qualities of Time. Oxford: Berg (ASA Monographs), pp. 19-34.
(with David Taylor, V. Muiruri, A. Ruttledge, R. Gaj McKeever, T. Nolan, P. Kenny, & R. Goodhue) Holocene vegetation dynamics on Laikipia Plateau, Kenya. The Holocene 15: 837-46.

2004

The ‘moving frontier’ and the transition to food production in Kenya. Azania 39: 243-64.
(with Bertram Mapunda) Archaeology for whose interests – archaeologists or the locals? In N. Merriman (ed.) Public Archaeology. London: Routledge, pp. 211-23.
(with Tim Schadla-Hall) The many ages of Star Carr: do ‘cites’ make the ‘site’? In A. Barnard (ed.) Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology. Oxford: Berg, pp. 145-61.
Banani Kokoro: habitat, architecture et organisation sociale. In R. Bedaux and J.D. Van der Waals (eds) Regards sur les Dogon du Mali. Leiden: Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde & Gand: Editions Snoeck, pp. 75-82.
(with Rogier Beadaux) L’attitude des Dogon vis-à-vis de déchets. In R. Bedaux and J.D. Van der Waals (eds) Regards sur les Dogon du Mali. Leiden: Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde & Gand: Editions Snoeck, pp. 83-91.

2003

(with Colin Breen) Archaeological approaches to East Africa’s changing seascapes. World Archaeology 35: 467-89.
African Archaeology in Britain: A commentary on current trends and contexts. In P. Mitchell, A. Haour and J. Hobart (eds) Researching Africa’s Past: Contributions from British Archaeologists. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, pp. 142-52.

2001

The archaeology of Christianity in global perspective. In T. Insoll (ed.) Archaeology and World Religion. London: Routledge, pp 148-81.
African archaeology today. Antiquity 75: 793-6.

Paul Lane