2. Dr Robert Bewley

Dr Robert Bewley

bewley
EAMENA Project Director & Co-Founder
+44 (0)1865 611660
eamena@arch.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests

Archaeology, aerial survey, field survey, heritage, endangered archaeology, prehistoric settlement, Middle East, North Africa.

 

Geographic Areas

Dr Bewley has worked in Britain, Europe and the Middle East and North Africa on aerial and field surveys, excavations and aerial archaeology training workshops. 

Current Activities

Bob Bewley is the Co-founder and Project Director of the EAMENA project (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East & North Africa), a project based at the University of Oxford in partnership with the University of Leicester and Durham University.

Formerly Director of Operations at the Heritage Lottery Fund, and Head of Survey and Aerial Survey at English Heritage (and before that the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England), Dr Bewley has worked in Britain, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on aerial and field surveys, excavations and aerial archaeology training workshops.

He is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, London, and Co-Director of the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project (with Professor David Kennedy).

  • From above and on the ground: Geospatial methods for recording endangered archaeology in the middle East and North Africa

    Rayne, L, Bradbury, J, Mattingly, D, Philip, G, Bewley, R, Wilson, A
    2017
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    Journal article
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    Geosciences (Switzerland)
    © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The EAMENA (Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa) project is a collaboration between the Universities of Leicester, Oxford and Durham; it is funded by the Arcadia Fund and the Cultural Protection Fund. This paper explores the development of the EAMENA methodology, and discusses some of the problems of working across such a broad region. We discuss two main case studies: the World Heritage site of Cyrene illustrates how the project can use satellite imagery (dating from the 1960s to 2017), in conjunction with published data to create a detailed set of database records for a single site and, in particular, highlights the impact of modern urban expansion across the region. Conversely, the Homs Cairns case study demonstrates how the EAMENA methodology also works at an extensive scale, and integrates image interpretation (using imagery dating from the 1960s to 2016), landuse mapping and field survey (2007–2010) to record and analyse the condition of hundreds of features across a small study region. This study emphasises the impact of modern agricultural and land clearing activities. Ultimately, this paper assesses the effectiveness of the EAMENA approach, evaluating its potential success against projects using crowd-sourcing and automation for recording archaeological sites, and seeks to determine the most appropriate methods to use to document sites and assess disturbances and threats across such a vast and diverse area.

  • Endangered archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA): Approach and possible solutions

    Bewley, R
    2017
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    Chapter
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    Post-Conflict Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: Rebuilding Knowledge, Memory and Community from War-Damaged Material Culture

  • The Badia from above successes, limitations, and potential

    Bewley, R, Repper, R
    2017
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    Journal article
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    Near Eastern Archaeology
    The Aerial Archaeology in Jordan project (AAJ) has conducted an annual programme of aerial reconnaissance in Jordan, including the badia region, since 1997 (Kennedy and Bewley 2004). This project was inspired by and built on the ground-breaking but isolated aerial surveys conducted by Antoine Poidebard and Sir Aurel Stein in the region half a century prior, and the stunning photographs captured by the Royal Air Force that inspired the '"father" of aerial archaeology, O. G. S. Crawford. It took many more years for the significance of these discoveries to become apparent, and even now we are only beginning to understand the depth and breadth of the archaeology of this region (see Kennedy 2011 and Kennedy, Banks, and Houghton 2014). The annual programme of photography has gradually captured a record of a landscape crowded with features from multiple periods. As aerial archaeologists we see and record many more landscapes and sites than we could ever hope to follow up by field visits or excavations. Therefore our work, by its very nature, is collaborative, and anything we record is shared (responsibly) for others to use. This article highlights not only the achievements of aerial reconnaissance in understanding the complex and concentrated archaeology of the badia, but also the importance of collaboration with other archaeologists. Moreover, access to information through resources such as the Aerial Photographic Archive for the Archaeology of the Middle East (APAAME) website (www.apaame.org), is imperative in making sure the importance of these landscapes and what is captured through the camera, survey or research, is not lost, overlooked, or forgotten.

  • Using satellite imagery to record endangered archaeology

    Rayne, L, Bewley, RH
    2016
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    Other
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    Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society Archaeology Special Interest Group (RSPSoc Archaeology SIG) Newsletter

  • Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa: Introducing the EAMENA Project

    Wilson, AI
    2016
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    Chapter
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    CAA2015. Keep the Revolution Going: Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
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