Sada Mire
Sada Mire is a Swedish-Somali archaeologist, and public intellectual known for her work on the archaeology and heritage of the Horn of Africa. She is Associate Professor of Heritage Studies at the University College London Institute of Archaeology and founder of the , a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage in the region.
Early life and education
Mire was born in Hargeisa, in what is now Somaliland, and raised in Mogadishu. After her father, a senior police official, was killed during the collapse of the Somali state, she fled the civil war with her family and gained asylum in Sweden as a teenager. She later moved to the United Kingdom, completing a BA at SOAS, University of London, and an MA and PhD in archaeology at University College London.Career
Mire has conducted archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork in Somaliland, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Egypt and Europe. In 2007 she became Director of Antiquities in Somaliland, helping to establish the Department of Tourism and Archaeology and launching systematic surveys of archaeological sites. She subsequently taught at University of Leiden Faculty of Archaeology before joining UCL as Associate Professor in Heritage Studies.Working with local teams, Mire has recorded nearly one hundred heritage sites in Somaliland, including the rock art complex at Dhambalin, dated to around 5,000 years ago and considered a potential World Heritage Site candidate. Through Horn Heritage Foundation, founded in 2011, she has supported mapping, legal reform, training and digital documentation projects aimed at protecting and disseminating Somali and wider Horn of Africa heritage.
Scholarship and public engagement
Mire’s research focuses on indigenous religious traditions, ritual landscapes and heritage management in the Horn of Africa. She is noted for a “knowledge-centred approach” to heritage, which emphasises skills, practices and memories as well as monuments and objects. Her book Divine Fertility: The Continuity in Transformation of an Ideology of Sacred Kinship in Northeast Africa develops what she calls the Archaeology of Peace, exploring how concepts of peace and fertility underpin long-term institutions and state formation in the region.Alongside academic publications, Mire has contributed to public debates on culture and conflict through essays, interviews and lectures, including a 2014 TEDx talk and a British Academy Global Perspectives lecture on heritage in a divided world. She has appeared in documentaries for CNN, PBS and other broadcasters, and in 2017 was named one of 30 international thinkers and writers highlighted by the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts.
Education work
In order to educate her people on the cultural heritage of their country, to continue with the archaeological explorations and get UNESCO World Heritage Sites status for some of the rock art sites she has discovered, Mire has established the "Horn Heritage", a non-profit organization to fund her work. She was also involved in establishing Somalia’s Department of Tourism and Archaeology. Through her charity Horn Heritage and with partners, Mire initiated and implemented digital 3D and virtual reality projects for Somali heritage, so that anybody anywhere could access her rock art work. In 2006, Mire created the first website dedicated to Somali Heritage and Archaeology.Mire has run national and international media campaigns to fight the looting and destruction of Somali archeological sites. One of her direct messages to the Somali public warning against looting was broadcast by BBC Somali.
Mire's designed a MOOC on
Theoretical contribution to heritage and archaeology
In her 2011 NewScientist interview article titled 'We need culture in times of war', Mire argued "Cultural heritage, including archeological knowledge, is a basic human need". Her work bridges archaeology and anthropology of the Horn of Africa in investigating the pre-Islamic and pre-Christian indigenous religions and traditions of the Horn of Africa.Mire discussed the misuse of archaeology for politics and intentional destruction of heritage sites by ideological groups for example India. For her geographical area of fieldwork, she has argued that archaeologists need to move away from the nation as this is a new construct and study the continuity of influence across different indigenous peoples in the horn of Africa, proposing regional perspective on the archaeology of the Horn of Africa.
Mire is considered to have pioneered the study of indigenous heritage management systems in Africa with her article "Preserving knowledge, not objects: a Somali perspective for Archaeological Research and Heritage Management". She addressed the looting and destruction of Somalia's heritage after the start of the Somali civil war. She advanced a theoretical approach she terms "the Knowledge-Centered Approach" arguing that objects and monuments are not necessarily important but knowledge, skill and memory as practiced and symbolized in the landscapes. Her approaches have been discussed by other scholars in the application of locally appropriate theoretical frameworks.
Mire has founded a new subfield in archaeology, the Archaeology of Peace, as first explored in her award-winning book Divine Fertility . Mire uniquely explored the Archaeology of Peace by investigating through an interdisciplinary approach the indigenous ideology, traditional laws, governance and thought in the archaeology of life in Northeast Africa. Mire found that ancient sites, artefacts and landscapes continue to impact on social cohesion, diversity and peace making through practices and materiality. Her groundbreaking research on the Archaeology of Peace started with exploration of pre-Christian and pre-Islamic Northeast Africa’s regional beliefs and practices. The book argued that peace is a prerequisite for gaining sacred fertility, which is important for the growth of humans, animals and crops and which has led to the major state formation that took place in this region in the past 3000 years. Mire argues that there is an ideology of peace within the Horn of Africa and identifies the indigenous concept of peace, nagi/nagaa, which continues in transformation through practices, religions and rituals.
According to Mire’s website she is conducting a research project titled ‘. This project uses cultural heritage and archaeology as a departure point to tackle global issues in terms of war and famine in the Horn of Africa. It uses cultural notions of peace- and fertility making and their manifestations as a base for its data.
In her 2020 British Academy Mire Global Perspectives lecture ’ Mire spoke to the current global political atmosphere of division and how some world powers and the most powerful democracies of the world are in crisis. Mire talks about how division can be tackled by understanding deep history and the past.
Mire’s creation of the subfield of Archaeology of Peace was inspired by her experience of genocide, persecution and war in Somalia. In her 2018 Hague Talk Mire talks about her need to understand beyond the labels of Christianity and Islam in order to understand the deeper history that connects people in the Horn of Africa and the archaeology of cohesion to tackle the current narratives of division.
Using archaeology to solve modern problems, Sada Mire founded Horn Heritage Foundation which is based in The Hague. In an article titled ‘Using Archaeology to Solve Modern Problems’, The Hague City Magazine described Mire:
“When talking to Sada Mire, it is clear from the start how important cultural heritage is, and as Sada herself put it: “For me, cultural heritage is a basic human need.” Sada is an archeologist and a former assistant professor of archeology at Leiden University. She is originally from Somaliland but she spent her foundational years in Sweden after her family fled from civil war in 1991. Her international journey then continued to London, UK where she finished her bachelors, masters and her PhD. She has been a presenter at both Tedx and at Hague Talks. Her journey may not seem typical for an entrepreneur but Sada is anything but a typical entrepreneur. Blending academia, humanitarianism, and entrepreneurship, Sada's unique brand fits both with her personal mission and The Hague’s commitment to peace and justice…Mire talks about her need to understand beyond the labels of Christianity and Islam in order to understand the deeper history that connects people in the Horn of Africa and the archaeology of cohesion to tackle the current narratives of division.
She recently published a book, Divine Fertility, as a result of a decade of research on the Horn of Africa where she studied an often overlooked area that is troubled by war and turmoil. The region had been peaceful for 400 years with war breaking out only within the last 40 years. Sada utilizes archaeology to examine how recent consciousness can only think of the war that has prevailed for 40 years rather than how and why it had been a peaceful region for so long. The more Sada talks about the impact the past can have on the present and how her organization can work to facilitate our collective journey, the more her excitement becomes infectious.
Other activities
In 2011, Mire proposed to UNESCO the digital preservation of Somali potential World Heritage. She was a speaker of the first UNESCO Debate organized by UNESCO Netherlands at the RMO, September 2016. Mire spoke along Dutch philosopher Stephan Sanders.Mire has spoken on several BBC Radio programs including BBC World Service Forum panel on the Aftermath of war and marriage.
She was a speaker at the Europe Lecture and an "eminent" respondent to UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, June 2016.
In September 2018, Mire participated to Hague Talks "How can we Invest in Sustainable Peace?"
Mire was a speaker at the Swedish National Heritage Board and on BBC World Service radio documentary "Stories on the Rocks", December 2018.