Uncover the Archeology of Peace
Peace leaves traces. In the Horn of Africa, those traces are everywhere — in the rock art etched into sandstone hillsides, in the sacred springs where disputes were once settled, in the customary laws still alive in living memory. The Archaeology of Peace is a framework for reading those traces, and for understanding what they tell us about how communities have sustained themselves across millennia.
Conceived and developed by Dr Sada Mire, Associate Professor of Heritage Studies, UCL Institute of Archaeology, and published in Divine Fertility (UCL Press, 2020).
Practices
- Customary law
- Rituals
- Conflict resolution
- Consensus-making
Material culture
- Archaeological objects
- Ethnographic material
- Rock art sites
- Sufi saint shrines
Landscape
- Sacred landscapes
- Mountains
- Springs
- Trees
The Nagi Project
The project successfully produced a groundbreaking documentary film on the indigenous heritage and archaeology of peace in the war-torn Horn of Africa. The team, led by Dr Sada Mire, documented the ritual practices performed during the Dirre Sheikh Hussein pilgrimage and at Sof Omar caves in Oromia region of Ethiopia, as well as Sitti mountain, illuminating the role of customary law and elders in conflict resolution in Somali culture. It also documented Aw-Barkhadle and Laas Geel sites of Somaliland, associated with the pre-Islamic origin of the concept of nagi. The film also featured interviews with heritage scholars, traditional leaders, and local site custodians.
Sacred olive tree at Daalo sacred olive forest
Ritual enclosure of Lalibela
The Sacred enclosure at Aw Barkhadle
Mausoleum of Sheikh Saylici in Saylac
Understanding Our Past
The Archaeology of Peace
Dr Mire is Associate Professor of Heritage Studies at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the founder of Horn Heritage, an NGO dedicated to research, education, and the protection of cultural heritage across the Horn of Africa and its diasporas.Â
Her scholarly work sits at the intersection of archaeology, anthropology, and heritage studies, with a particular focus on pre-Islamic and pre-Christian belief systems, sacred landscape, and indigenous frameworks for understanding the past. Her book Divine Fertility: The Continuity in Transformation of an Ideology of Sacred Kinship in Northeast Africa (UCL Press, 2020) sets out the Archaeology of Peace in full — a framework she has been developing since 2005.
