Maldives Heritage Survey Overview

The Maritime Asia Heritage Survey (MAHS) works to digitally document historical and archaeological sites across the coastal and island world of Southern Asia through field survey work in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Brunei, and Vietnam. The seasonal monsoon cycles of this region have for centuries facilitated the circulation of people, materials and ideas across this vast seascape and created a complex mosaic of diverse local cultures. Today, many of the important sites, monuments and objects associated with the rich history of the region are increasingly under threat: exposed to environmental stress from cyclones, tsunami, coastal erosion, land subsidence and rising sea-levels; rapid and unplanned development and construction; and in some instances deliberate acts of vandalism.

To document this endangered heritage, the MAHS field teams uses digital technologies including GIS, RTK mapping, aerial and terrestrial LiDAR, digital photography, 3D modelling, video, CAD and IIIF standard manuscript digitizations to produce robust records in on online archive for the benefit of historians, local communities, governments, and heritage management professionals. The project is led by R. Michael Feener at the Kyoto University Center for Southeast Asian Studies. All records and other digital heritage assets produced by and/or integrated into the MAHS are made open-access available online here and permanently archived in the library systems of Kyoto University and the University of Oxford. The Maldives Heritage Survey, presented here, was the pilot phase of the MAHS, and was based at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies from 2018-2020. The pilot phase of our work, and the ongoing Maritime Asia Heritage Survey have been funded by grants from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing & Peter Baldwin.

For open-access to our complete dataset of archaeological sites and historical artifacts from the Maldives, Indonesia, and other countries of the region, pease visit us at: https://maritimeasiaheritage.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp resources on Maldivian history.