Material knowledge in Kenya will be documented by Monika Baumanova. Thanks to the British Museum

Documentation of endangered building practices on Kenya coast will be undertaken by Monika Baumanova from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies of Faculty of Arts UWB. The two-year project is supported by the British Museum. UWB is the first Czech institution to gain such project.

The project is awarded by the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme of the British Museum in London and financed by Arcadia foundation. It will document building technologies and knowledge linked to the thousand-year old tradition of building of fossilized coral on the East African coast. Fieldwork will take place in collaboration with the local community in Lamu, Kenya – one of the last places, where houses of this type of limestone are still built.

The project will provide valuable information for anthropology, archaeology and history of architecture. Documentation will include recording interviews with master builders and workmen, video records of building practices and photo documentation including 360degree camera.

The data will become part of an open access database and will serve future research and the public. For example, they will help interpret the culture of hundreds of East African precolonial towns, where this technology was widely used, and preserve this part of global cultural heritage.

You can read about the prestigious project on the webpages of the British museum (EMKP).