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