Sada Mire

Doctor
Sada Mire
Born 1977 July
Education Masters and Ph.D. in archeology
Organization Horn Heritage Organization
Awards 2011 Sweden Supertalent Awards

Dr. Sada Mire (born 1977) is a Swedish-Somali archaeologist, art historian and presenter[1] who currently serves as assistant professor at the faculty of archeology, Leiden University.[2] She is a public intellectual[3] and heritage activist who has argued that cultural heritage is a basic human need in her 2014 TEDxEuston talk.[4] She is the only active archaeologist working in Somaliland, a region in northern Somalia where she became the Director of Antiquities in 2007. Originally from the Somali capital of Mogadishu, Mire fled the country at the start of the civil war at the age of 15. She then traveled to Sweden seeking asylum. She has since returned to the Horn of Africa as an archaeologist, making some notable discoveries.

Early life

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1977, her father was a police official who was killed due to being a possible political threat when Mire was 12.[5] After this traumatic experience, in 1991, she fled Somalia with her mother and siblings on a relative's lorry during the Somali Civil War. Mire and her identical twin, Sohur, emigrated to Sweden where an older sister lived and received asylum. The twins later moved to the United Kingdom to study.[6] Mire studied at Lund University before receiving a Bachelor's degree at SOAS, University of London and a Masters and Ph.D. in archaeology at University College London.[7]

Career

She has conducted field research in northern Somalia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Kenya, and Egypt, and has worked for the United Nations Development Program. A TED-speaker,[8] she has participated on the editorial boards, including African Archaeological Review.[9]

Motivated to learn the history of Somalia, her homeland which was once a colonial country in Africa, she took up a fellowship under the department of art and archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (also head of the department of antiquities in Somaliland, in north-western Somalia). She launched an ambitious programme of archeological explorations in 2007.[7]

Mire, leading a team of 50 helpers, has discovered prehistoric rock art in Somaliland at almost 100 sites; at least 10 of these are likely to receive World Heritage status. The Dhambalin site, which is located approximately 40 miles (64 km) from the Red Sea, contains rock art in sandstone shelters, which are inferred as about 5,000 years old, of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, as well as giraffes, which no longer exist in northern Somalia.[7][10] The NGO, Horn Heritage, partially funds her work for Somali Heritage.[11][12]

Education work

In order to educate her people on the cultural heritage of their country, to continue with the archaeological explorations and get UNESCO World Heritage Sites status for some of the rock art sites she has discovered, she has established the "Horn Heritage", a non-profit organization to fund her work.[7] She was also involved in establishing Somalia’s Department of Tourism and Archaeology.[13]

"Cultural heritage, including archeological knowledge, is a basic human need"[14]

Mire argues that cultural heritage is a basic human need. Her work bridges archaeology and anthropology of the Horn of Africa in investigating the pre-Islamic and pre-Christian indigenous religions and traditions of the Horn of Africa.

Sada Mire discussed the misuse of archaeology for politics and intentional destruction of heritage sites by ideological groups for example India.[15] For her geographical area of fieldwork, she has argued that archaeologists need to move away from the nation as this is a new construct and study the continuity of influence across different indigenous peoples in the horn of Africa, hence proposing regional perspective on the archaeology of the Horn of Africa.[16]

Theoretical Contribution Heritage and Archaeology

Sada Mire pioneered theorisation of indigenous heritage management systems in Africa with her seminal article "Preserving knowledge, not objects: a Somali perspective for Archaeological Research and Heritage Management" (African Archaeological Review, 2007). She addressed the almost completely unreported looting and destruction of Somalia's heritage after the start of the Somali civil war. She advanced a theoretical approach she terms "the Knowledge-Centered Approach"[17] arguing that objects and monuments are not necessarily important but knowledge, skill and memory as practiced and symbolised in the landscapes. Her approaches have been discussed by other scholars locally appropriate theoretical frameworks.

Other activities

Mire regularly engages in high profile debates on World Heritage. In 2011, Mire proposed to UNESCO the digital preservation of Somali potential World Heritage. She's a speaker of the 1rst UNESCO Debate organized by UNESCO Netherlands at the RMO, September 2016

She was a speaker at the Europe Lecture and a respondent to UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, June 2016

Brazil's Futura (TV Channel) aired in 2014 a documentary titled 'Sada and Somaliland'

Mire is the presenter and screenwriter of the MOOC titled 'Heritage under Threat'

Bibliography

Articles

References

  1. ↑ "Coursera - Free Online Courses From Top Universities". Coursera. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  2. ↑ "Sada Mire - Leiden University". Leiden University. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  3. ↑ "Aftermath of war and marriage, The Forum - BBC World Service". BBC. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  4. ↑ "Watch "Cultural heritage: a basic human need - Sada Mire at TEDxEuston" Video at TEDxTalks". TEDxTalks. Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  5. ↑ Barth, Amy (June 19, 2011). "5 Questions for the Woman Who Found Somalia's History". Discover Magazine. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  6. ↑ "Here today, gone tomorrow? Saving Somaliland's heritage". CNN. May 10, 2011. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Sada Mire: Uncovering Somalia's heritage". BBC News. 20 September 2011. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
  8. ↑ "Travels in Space, Time & Imagination at the TEDSalon in London". TED. November 14, 2011. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  9. ↑ "Sada Mire". ucl.academia.edu. Retrieved 25 May 2013.
  10. ↑ Alberge, Dalya (September 17, 2010). "UK archaeologist finds cave paintings at 100 new African sites Scientist unearths 5,000-year-old rock art, including drawing of a mounted hunter, in Somaliland". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 May 2013.
  11. ↑ Hegarty, Stephanie (September 11, 2011). "Sada Mire: Uncovering Somalia's heritage". BBC. Retrieved 27 May 2013.
  12. ↑ "A CNN HERO". Retrieved 2016-09-28.
  13. ↑ "Meet Sada Mire, The World's Only Active Somali Archaeologist". The Mary Sue, LLC. Retrieved 28 May 2013.
  14. ↑ Abraham, Curtis. "Somali archaeologist: We need culture in a time of war". New Scientist. Retrieved 2016-10-16.
  15. ↑ "Ayodhya konflikten- hur länge ska arkeologerna tillåta att den inomdisciplinära debatten tystas av politiska hänsynstagande? [Originally published in Swedish, lit. 'The Ayodhya Conflict – How long will the archaeologists let the interdisciplinary". Retrieved 2016-10-16.
  16. ↑ "UCL African Studies".
  17. ↑ Mire, Sada (2011-04-01). "The Knowledge-Centred Approach to the Somali Cultural Emergency and Heritage Development Assistance in Somaliland". African Archaeological Review. 28 (1): 71–91. doi:10.1007/s10437-011-9088-2. ISSN 0263-0338.
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