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Aerial Views: Great Mosque
The BIEA image archive contains thousands of images which are the record of excavations and reconnaissance surveys in eastern Africa. These are scanned from original photographs and slides held at the BIEA in Nairobi. As some of the photographs are already quite old, the quality may vary. In some cases, the images may duplicate published images in the BIEA memoir series.
The majority of the images relate to flagship projects in which the BIEA had an important role. Major excavations at Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania (Chittick 1974) and at Aksum, Ethiopia (Munro-Hay 1989; Phillipson 1997, 2000) make up the majority of the images. It is hoped that collections will soon be expanded to include the Somali coast, as well as excavations at Manda, Kenya.
A selection of documents have also been included here. These are part of the archives at the BIEA and include site notebooks and correspondence. They may be of interest to future researchers and provide an insight into the archaeological process.
The excavations pictured here are fully published, and further information on the sites in question can be found in the relevant volumes. In each case, the excavations were conducted in collaboration with the relevant national authorities, and artefacts from excavations - including those pictured here - have mostly been returned to the countries of origin. All of the finds from Aksum have been returned, and can be viewed in the Addis Ababa museum. Artefacts from Kilwa Kisiwani can be seen in the National Museum of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam; a small reference collection also exists at the BIEA Nairobi base.