Accessibility statement
School visit - Baawa, 12th July 2008

HEEAL: Historical Ecologies of East African Landscapes

Overview

Funded by a European Union Marie Curie Excellence Grant, HEEAL is a four year project which aims to study the historical ecology of east African landscapes over the last 500 years through a combination of  archaeological, historical, ethnographic and palaeo-environmental research.

In particular, the project is investigating evidence for the presence, nature and extent of human-induced environmental change in eastern Africa and aims to relate these changes to contemporary and historical perceptions of African landscapes.     
 
The project is structured around six interrelated sub-projects exploring the intensification of herding and the emergence of specialised hunting; the environmental and social consequences of intensive agriculture; the perception of landscape history and its effect on policy; the historical ecology of the 19th-century caravan trade; the geoecology of the Pare Mountains; and the bioarchaeology of the ivory trade.

The project complements the work of the York Institute of Tropical Ecosystem Dynamics (KITE).

Related projects

  • KITE York Institute for Tropical Ecosystem Dynamic
  • CELP York Centre for Ecology, Law and Policy
  • SEALINKS Bridging Continents Across the Sea: Multi-disciplinary perspectives on the prehistoric emergence of long-distance maritime contacts
  • PLATINA - People Land and Time in Africa 

Key documents