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This paper seeks to examine the role of the built environment as a tool of nineteenth-century British colonial expression within the Red Sea island town of Suakin, Sudan. Within Suakin and its environs, four major European focal points were examined through the use of archaeological survey and excavation. These were; (1) waterfront development (2) centers of colonial management, (3) terrestrial and maritime communication and (4) defense. The central argument of the paper is that economic and social control was maintained through the creation of new urban morphologies and European domination of existing urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a substantial literature on the use of oral history in archaeology, but there has been little consideration of the kinds of oral history and memory produced by the practice of archaeology. Through the personal narratives of a range of people involved in excavation during the 1960s in Britain, this paper explores understandings of what has been described as an archaeological 'sub-culture'. It examines the ideas and interests that motivated peoples' engagement in the 'digging circuit' at this time, and looks at how these were implicated in the archaeology that was produced. We argue that such accounts do not simply expose the 'subjective' context in which archaeological knowledge of these sites emerged but constitute an explicit and vital challenge to established accounts of archaeology in Britain at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alderley Sandhills Project (ASP) was designed to archaeologically explore the transformative roles of industrialization and de-industrialization on the working communities of rural England. Collection of oral histories was an intrinsic element of fieldwork, with project participants including elderly former residents and neighbors of the excavated cottages. Their narratives provided a crucial source for understanding social meanings of the archaeological objects and places within this study site, particularly over the inter-war decades of the early twentieth century. Drawing from elements of this multi-year project, this paper will explore the dynamic maintenance of community life through the composition of social memories, and the materiality of social belonging, to illuminate the inner world of the Hagg Cottages of Alderley Edge, Cheshire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mombasa’s strategic position on the Swahili Coast and fine harbours were key factors in its emergence as a prosperous city state during the early second millennium AD. These same attributes drew the attention of rival powers in the struggle to control the lucrative Indian Ocean trade network, particularly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing from a rich legacy of cartographic and documentary sources created in the course of Mombasa’s turbulent history, this paper presents the results of a coastal archaeological survey undertaken in 2001 as part of a wider collaborative maritime project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]