Building on my doctoral research into the archaeology and ethnography of farming mong the Pokot, alongside the interdisciplinary African Farming Network and the ongoing Marakwet Heritage Project, this new research attempts to situate 20th-21st century development interventions within a longer-term understanding of the Marakwet landscape, northwest Kenya. The research is funded by a three year Leverhulme/Newton Trust Early Career Research Fellowship award starting in January 2014.
Utilising primary archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archival material, alongside secondary palaeoenvironmental data, it will analyse the successes and failures of a range of past development interventions including small-scale repairs to pre-colonial irrigation, experimental crop-development plots and new modern irrigation schemes. These interventions will be evaluated in relation to long-term understandings of settlement, demography, kinship, land-tenure, irrigation management and cropping regimes and it is hoped that this will allow for the making of recommendation for more effective future intervention.
My doctoral research and that of the Marakwe Heritage Project (including Professor Moore’s 30 year ehtnographic research), provides a rich existing data set pertaining to the long-term history of the Pokot and Marakwet community and landscape which allows for the unique contextualisation of development practices.
Marakwet team at intake of new Red Cross irrigation pipeline
return to my research projects
Relevant Publications:
Davies, M.I.J. In press. The temporality of landesque capital: farming and the routines of Pokot life. In Håkansson, T. and Widgren, M. (eds). Landesque capital: the historical ecology of enduring landscape modifications. Left Coast Press, Historical Ecology series.
Davies, M.I.J. 2013 (June). Forced moves or just good moves? Environmental decision making among Pokot farmers, northwest Kenya. In Davies, M.I.J. and kirote, F.M. (eds). Humans and the environment: new archaeological approaches for the 21st century. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Davies, M.I.J. 2012. Some thoughts on a ‘useable’ African archaeology: settlement, population and intensive farming among the Pokot of northwest Kenya. African archaeological review 29:319-353.
Davies, M.I.J. 2010. A view from the East: an interdisciplinary ‘historical ecology’ approach to a contemporary agricultural landscape in Northwest Kenya. African studies 69:279-297.
Davies, M.I.J. 2008. The irrigation system of the Pokot, northwest Kenya. Azania 43:50-76.
Davies, M.I.J. and M’Mbogori, F.N. (eds). 2013 (June). Humans and the environment: new archaeological perspectives for the 21st century. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Davies, M.I.J. and Moore, H.L.M. 2012. The Marakwet Community Heritage Mapping Project: Report on the second season of fieldwork. unpublished report McDonald Institute.
Davies, M.I.J. and Moore, H.L.M. 2011. The Marakwet Community Heritage Mapping Project: Report on the first season of fieldwork. unpublished report McDonald Institute.
Dr Matthew Davies 