The three-year MAHSA project will document the endangered archaeology and cultural heritage of the Indus River Basin and the surrounding areas and publish this information in an Open Access Arches geospatial database.
The core purpose is to co-create a resource that will serve as the primary mapping tool and research repository for the archaeological and endangered cultural heritage of the region.
Sustainability of the platform and data is a cornerstone of the project. Made possible through close collaboration with heritage partners in India and Pakistan, the aim is to establish a platform that meets local needs and also lays the foundations of what is hoped will become a management database for local heritage stakeholders.
Project team and partners
MAHSA is hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, in collaboration with two key project partners: the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC) and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (UPF). MAHSA will also work with collaborators and heritage professionals in both Pakistan and India.
Background to the project
Pakistan and western India are extremely rich in archaeological and cultural heritage sites, which span in date from the earliest villages, through several phases of urbanism, the rise and fall of numerous historical states and empires, and up to the colonial and modern periods.
Archaeological materials on the surface of a site, Haryana, India.
Today, many areas are densely occupied and undergoing rapid development, and while archaeological and cultural heritage sites and monuments in Pakistan and India are protected in principle, in practice they are often viewed as impediments and obstacles.
Many sites are at risk, typically from factors including erosion, large-scale development, looting, and perhaps most significantly, the expansion of extensive irrigation agriculture and the concomitant levelling of large tracts of land. Site destruction has been observed in the field and is ongoing, and the level and rate of site lost is not being monitored.
Past and current research
Since the 1950s and 1960s, academic books and journals have published lists of archaeological sites discovered in western India and Pakistan, and scholars have attempted to compile these data and use it to draw conclusions about the ancient societies in South Asia.
Excavations at Masudpur I, Haryana, India.
Since 2008, Cambridge-based researchers have reviewed the published archaeological settlement data for the Indus River Basin as a whole. Ground-truthing in northwest India has demonstrated that there are significant inaccuracies with much of the current primary site location data. Systematic approaches have not been common and there are substantial gaps in spatial coverage. These factors combine to limit our understanding of the distribution of archaeological and cultural heritage in the region, and make it difficult to manage and protect this resource.
An open digital workflow
The MAHSA approach combines remote sensing, historic mapping and machine-based algorithms to collect, assess, refine, systematise and import archaeological and cultural heritage site data, making it possible to identify sites that have not previously been documented, highlight sites that are in danger, and monitor the impact of development and agriculture.
To do this, the project team is:
- Comprehensively assessing, collating and systematising the published legacy data on archaeological site locations, and the associated field data, research, and bibliographic information for all known archaeological sites in Pakistan and western India
- Identifying and documenting previously unidentified sites, using historic maps, remote sensing and automated site detection methods
- Cross-checking and expanding the data on site locations through identifying ‘signatures’ of both known and previously unidentified and unrecorded archaeological and cultural heritage sites. These will be identified through systematic analysis of historical maps, publicly available satellite and remote sensing imagery, digital elevation models provided by the German Space Agency (DLR), and automatic site detection algorithms
- Collaborating with local stakeholders to provide training in GIS, methods of site detection, recording of sites on the ground, and detailed site documentation.
Photos (top to bottom): C.A. Petrie, 2014 & 2018