What is the future for Egypt's mud brick heritage

Abstract

As climate change begins to be felt across northern Africa, a pressing question is how the mudbrick buildings that feature so prominently at heritage sites in this region will be affected by weather that is becoming more extreme and less predictable. At the Amarna Project, we are taking the first steps towards incorporating climate perspectives into our research program at Amarna in the Egyptian Nile Valley, asking how the extensive sample of mudbrick buildings at this site might offer data on this problem. Our developing methodology is first to assess how Amarna’s mudbrick buildings (including those that have undergone conservation) have been affected by environmental processes to date through on-site survey, archival research, and local community engagement, and then to consider how digital modelling might offer a tool for tracking and predicting ongoing climate impacts. In part, this work builds out of a pilot project, Akhenaten’s city: Protecting Amarna’s urban heritage, which is reviewing strategies for safeguarding Amarna’s mudbrick houses and includes the re-clearance and re-study of a sample of houses excavated in the early 1900s, large-scale photogrammetric scanning of Amarna’s housing areas, and community archaeology.