Professor Paul Lane

I am an anthropologically and historically oriented archaeologist, who specialises in the later Holocene archaeology of sub-Saharan Africa. I have lived in and undertaken archaeological and/or ethnoarchaeological research in Mali, Kenya, Tanzania and Botswana and I have also undertaken field research in South Sudan. I anticipate launching new projects soon in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Senegal, Nigeria and Zambia. My interests include landscape historical ecology, the archaeology of colonial encounters, the use and role of analogy in archaeological interpretation, the materialisation of memory, maritime archaeology, and the transition to food production in Africa. I am a former Director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and former President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, and before joining the department I was Professor of Global Archaeology at Uppsala University, where I still supervise PhD and MA students and host one of my research projects.

I am currently engaged in field projects focussing on i) how societies, landscapes, ecosystems and Protected Areas in the Serengeti Basin have responded to climate change and societal use over the past 300 years, to better understand how they may respond in the future – see ARCC project webpages; ii) collaborative research between archaeologists and pastoralist community organisations on the long-term history of indigenous water management and well digging in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia – see Well Being project details; and iii) the co-production of community heritage networks in Tanzania – see CONCH project for details. I  co-direct a Sida-funded training programme between the Department of Archaeology & Ancient History, Uppsala University and the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique on the theme of Biocultural heritage in Mozambique: Developing new heritage industries. I am also a co-Investigator on one of the AHRC’s Global Challenges Research Fund projects – Rising from the Depths, which aims to identify ways in which maritime cultural heritage can directly benefit coastal communities in eastern Africa – see the RFtD website for details.