Julian Jansen van Rensburg
My research interests include cultural heritage management, maritime archaeology and ethnography, rock art studies, GIS applications in archaeology, landscape archaeology, island and coastal archaeology, and Indian Ocean trade networks in Antiquity and the Islamic Period.
More specifically, I am interested in:
• How we address cultural heritage conservation and management in terms of local communities, and the importance of dialogue in capacity building, training, advocacy and education.
• The role of island and coastal communities in our understanding of the transmission and development of cultural traditions, ideologies and technologies.
• Utilising rock art and rock art sites to investigate concepts of place and space within the landscape.
• Utilising the remote sensing of satellite imagery and aerial photography for investigating archaeological landscapes, terrestrially with an emphasis on agricultural and water management systems and marine with an emphasis on tracing networks of trade.
I have over 20 years of experience of archaeological fieldwork that includes directing archaeological fieldwork projects throughout the Middle East and Europe, and have served as Principal Investigator or Co-PI/Collaborator on numerous grants and projects.
Trustee of the International Association for the Study of Arabia https://www.theiasa.com/
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/find-explorers/julian-jansen-van-rensburg
https://twitter.com/JansenvanRens
https://www.soqotraculturalheritage.org/
More specifically, I am interested in:
• How we address cultural heritage conservation and management in terms of local communities, and the importance of dialogue in capacity building, training, advocacy and education.
• The role of island and coastal communities in our understanding of the transmission and development of cultural traditions, ideologies and technologies.
• Utilising rock art and rock art sites to investigate concepts of place and space within the landscape.
• Utilising the remote sensing of satellite imagery and aerial photography for investigating archaeological landscapes, terrestrially with an emphasis on agricultural and water management systems and marine with an emphasis on tracing networks of trade.
I have over 20 years of experience of archaeological fieldwork that includes directing archaeological fieldwork projects throughout the Middle East and Europe, and have served as Principal Investigator or Co-PI/Collaborator on numerous grants and projects.
Trustee of the International Association for the Study of Arabia https://www.theiasa.com/
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/find-explorers/julian-jansen-van-rensburg
https://twitter.com/JansenvanRens
https://www.soqotraculturalheritage.org/
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Book by Julian Jansen van Rensburg
Papers by Julian Jansen van Rensburg
Indian Ocean between Africa and Arabia, is home to ~60,000 people subsisting through fishing and semi-nomadic pastoralism who speak a Modern South Arabian language. Most of what is known about Soqotri history derives from writings of foreign travellers who provided little detail about local people, and the geographic origins and genetic affinities of early Soqotri people has not yet been investigated directly. Here we report genome-wide data from 39 individuals who lived between ~650 and 1750 ce at six locations across the island and document strong genetic connections between Soqotra and the similarly isolated Hadramawt region of coastal South Arabia that likely reflects a source for the peopling of Soqotra. Medieval Soqotri can be modelled as deriving ~86% of their ancestry from a population such as that found in the Hadramawt today, with the remaining ~14% best proxied by an Iranian-related source with up to 2% ancestry from the Indian sub-continent, possibly reflecting genetic exchanges that occurred along with archaeologically documented trade from these regions. In contrast to all other genotyped populations of the Arabian Peninsula, genome-level analysis of the medieval Soqotri is consistent with no sub-Saharan African admixture dating to the Holocene. The deep ancestry of people from medieval Soqotra and the Hadramawt is also unique in deriving less from early Holocene Levantine farmers and more from groups such as Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherers from the Levant (Natufians) than other mainland Arabians. This attests to migrations by early farmers having less impact in southernmost Arabia and Soqotra and provides compelling evidence that there has not been complete population replacement between the Pleistocene and Holocene throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Medieval Soqotra harboured a small population that showed qualitatively different marriage practices from modern Soqotri, with first-cousin unions occurring significantly less frequently than today.
Book Chapters by Julian Jansen van Rensburg
Iranian Center of Archaeological Research (ICAR) and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham. It is based on a lecture delivered
at the 10th Gathering of Iranian Archaeology in Bandar Abbas in December 2008. We are indebted to Dr Mohammad Mortezai,
the director of the Iranian Center of Archaeological Research (ICAR), for his kind permission to reprint the papers delivered at
this international conference, with some amendments, in this volume. We are also grateful for his advice and help since the
first year of the project, in 2005. We would like to thank Dr St John Simpson for his invitation to include this contribution to his
Sasanian Archaeology, as well as for his advice and support throughout the project. We are very grateful to Dr Seyed Taha Hashemi,
the vice-director of the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation (ICHHTO) and the head of the Research Department
of the ICHHTO, and to Dr Hassan Fazeli, then the director of the Iranian Center of Archaeological Research (ICAR), for their kind
permission to continue with our joint project from 2006 to 2009 and for their kind and essential help. We are very grateful to Mr
Sayed Mohammed Beheshti, then the director of the Centre of Research of the ICHHTO, and the late Dr Massoud Azarnoush, then
the director of the ICAR, for their permission to commence our joint project in 2005 and their interest and support. To Dr Fazeli
we are also very grateful for his kind invitation to present our research at the conferences in Tehran and Bandar Abbas. We are
indebted to Dr Seyed Mehdi Mousavi, then the vice-director of the Research Department of the ICHHTO, for granting permission
to process samples in the UK. We would like to thank Mr Fereidoon Faali, the director of the Golestan ICHHTO, for his help, advice
and personal interest in our work. The help offered by Mr Karim Alizadeh, Mrs Leyla Kashiha, Mrs Leyla Safa’ie, Mrs Mojgan
Seyedin and Mrs Azam Tohidlou, members of the international section of the ICAR, has been invaluable. We are also indebted
to Mr Fereydoun Unagh, the director of ICHHTO at Gonbad-e Kavus, and members of the local ICHHTO office for facilitating our
research project in many ways. Without the exceptional efforts of the team none of this could have been achieved. In addition to
the authors of this and previous reports, we are most grateful for the excellent drawings compiled by Maryam Hussein-Zadeh,
Mohaddeseh Mansouri Razi and Mrs Esmaili-Sade. We are also grateful to Mr Abdolhussein Badpa, the driver of the Gorgan Wall
base, and would like to acknowledge the essential contribution by many academic supporters (notably Dr Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
and Dr John Curtis), our workmen and drivers, space does not allow to list. We are most grateful for the generous support by the
ICHHTO, the AHRC, the British Institute of Persian Studies, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Iran Heritage
Foundation, the Stein Arnold Exploration Fund of the British Academy and the support received from Edinburgh University’s
School of History Classics and Archaeology.
Indian Ocean between Africa and Arabia, is home to ~60,000 people subsisting through fishing and semi-nomadic pastoralism who speak a Modern South Arabian language. Most of what is known about Soqotri history derives from writings of foreign travellers who provided little detail about local people, and the geographic origins and genetic affinities of early Soqotri people has not yet been investigated directly. Here we report genome-wide data from 39 individuals who lived between ~650 and 1750 ce at six locations across the island and document strong genetic connections between Soqotra and the similarly isolated Hadramawt region of coastal South Arabia that likely reflects a source for the peopling of Soqotra. Medieval Soqotri can be modelled as deriving ~86% of their ancestry from a population such as that found in the Hadramawt today, with the remaining ~14% best proxied by an Iranian-related source with up to 2% ancestry from the Indian sub-continent, possibly reflecting genetic exchanges that occurred along with archaeologically documented trade from these regions. In contrast to all other genotyped populations of the Arabian Peninsula, genome-level analysis of the medieval Soqotri is consistent with no sub-Saharan African admixture dating to the Holocene. The deep ancestry of people from medieval Soqotra and the Hadramawt is also unique in deriving less from early Holocene Levantine farmers and more from groups such as Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherers from the Levant (Natufians) than other mainland Arabians. This attests to migrations by early farmers having less impact in southernmost Arabia and Soqotra and provides compelling evidence that there has not been complete population replacement between the Pleistocene and Holocene throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Medieval Soqotra harboured a small population that showed qualitatively different marriage practices from modern Soqotri, with first-cousin unions occurring significantly less frequently than today.
Iranian Center of Archaeological Research (ICAR) and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham. It is based on a lecture delivered
at the 10th Gathering of Iranian Archaeology in Bandar Abbas in December 2008. We are indebted to Dr Mohammad Mortezai,
the director of the Iranian Center of Archaeological Research (ICAR), for his kind permission to reprint the papers delivered at
this international conference, with some amendments, in this volume. We are also grateful for his advice and help since the
first year of the project, in 2005. We would like to thank Dr St John Simpson for his invitation to include this contribution to his
Sasanian Archaeology, as well as for his advice and support throughout the project. We are very grateful to Dr Seyed Taha Hashemi,
the vice-director of the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation (ICHHTO) and the head of the Research Department
of the ICHHTO, and to Dr Hassan Fazeli, then the director of the Iranian Center of Archaeological Research (ICAR), for their kind
permission to continue with our joint project from 2006 to 2009 and for their kind and essential help. We are very grateful to Mr
Sayed Mohammed Beheshti, then the director of the Centre of Research of the ICHHTO, and the late Dr Massoud Azarnoush, then
the director of the ICAR, for their permission to commence our joint project in 2005 and their interest and support. To Dr Fazeli
we are also very grateful for his kind invitation to present our research at the conferences in Tehran and Bandar Abbas. We are
indebted to Dr Seyed Mehdi Mousavi, then the vice-director of the Research Department of the ICHHTO, for granting permission
to process samples in the UK. We would like to thank Mr Fereidoon Faali, the director of the Golestan ICHHTO, for his help, advice
and personal interest in our work. The help offered by Mr Karim Alizadeh, Mrs Leyla Kashiha, Mrs Leyla Safa’ie, Mrs Mojgan
Seyedin and Mrs Azam Tohidlou, members of the international section of the ICAR, has been invaluable. We are also indebted
to Mr Fereydoun Unagh, the director of ICHHTO at Gonbad-e Kavus, and members of the local ICHHTO office for facilitating our
research project in many ways. Without the exceptional efforts of the team none of this could have been achieved. In addition to
the authors of this and previous reports, we are most grateful for the excellent drawings compiled by Maryam Hussein-Zadeh,
Mohaddeseh Mansouri Razi and Mrs Esmaili-Sade. We are also grateful to Mr Abdolhussein Badpa, the driver of the Gorgan Wall
base, and would like to acknowledge the essential contribution by many academic supporters (notably Dr Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
and Dr John Curtis), our workmen and drivers, space does not allow to list. We are most grateful for the generous support by the
ICHHTO, the AHRC, the British Institute of Persian Studies, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Iran Heritage
Foundation, the Stein Arnold Exploration Fund of the British Academy and the support received from Edinburgh University’s
School of History Classics and Archaeology.
conjunction with GOAM Yemen and a team of local archaeologists from the Soqotra Heritage Project (SHP). The survey of the
Islamic Jebel Hawari hill fort utilized an innovative methodological approach to generate a 3D model that helped rapidly to
capture the complexity of the stratigraphic archaeological record. Utilizing this approach in conjunction with the historical and
archaeological record has allowed us to propose four chronological and architectural phases that, contrary to previous studies,
are wholly associated with the al‑Mahrah stationed on Soqotra, and not with the Portuguese. While further work is ongoing the
Islamic Fortification Project on Soqotra has provided us with a unique opportunity to further our understanding and knowledge
of Soqotra’s Islamic period.
art and rock art sites. Additionally, these technologies are creating a new set of practical challenges related to the curatorship and management of these digital rock art archives.
In this session we aim to draw attention to these alternative methodologies and the challenges that rock art researchers are facing by focusing on a series of themes related to:
Recording and dissemination of rock art
Digital curatorship of rock art
Rock art heritage management
Rock art outreach
The intention of this session will be to bring together speakers that are using new, innovative and alternative ways to deal with rock art and provide a platform from which they are able to share the challenges and changes these methodologies have brought. We envisage that
this session will provide a stimulating setting for enriching discussions and allow for interesting heuristics that can help challenge and transcend many of the common regional and conceptual departmentalisations plaguing rock art studies.
In this conference we aim to address these challenges by going beyond the limits of seeing place as small, culturally significant locales within a specific temporal setting. Instead we explore how place has been subject to temporal, social and ideological changes brought upon by the appropriation of visual signs by specific cultures that prevailed in different regions at different times. The rather broad term “visual signs” is consciously chosen to include every means of visual marking or transformation of the environment that includes but is not limited to rock art, modified and anomalous natural features, and architecture. To achieve these aims we encourage participants to envisage how these different kinds of visual signs were positioned within the physical and morphological features of the landscape; how the landscape was chosen or modified to accommodate them; what value or information these signs provided for the place in which they were created, and how they have been socially, culturally and spiritually appropriated through time.
Ultimately, our concern is to provide a platform for interested researchers from all disciplines to contribute new methodologies and interpretative approaches to the understanding of places and place-making. We envisage that the interdisciplinary nature of this conference will provide a stimulating setting for enriching discussions and helping promote studies of visual signs, place and landscape within a multidisciplinary research arena. This will, in turn, allow for interesting heuristics that can help challenge and transcend many of the common regional and conceptual departmentalisations plaguing academic discourse.
Program