The novel scale of documentation achieved by the EAMENA project shows that the biggest threats are climate change and the scale and speed of development. The MENA region is highly sensitive to climate change which impacts not just individual sites, but entire landscapes, and so requires a change in the focus of documentation from sites to endangered cultural landscapes. Moving the focus and documenting these increasingly fragile landscapes supports the reconstructions of historic climate and future climate modelling.

The project has already had a significant impact in the region, as can be seen in the adoption of HERs based on the EAMENA database in a number of countries (Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, the Kurdish Region of Iraq), and in the use of EAMENA ACD tools in North Africa. Implementation in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) has led to the development of a follow-on project that has been funded by the ESRC Impact Accelerator Account at Durham University to support the integration of a mobile recording app, and the development of further national policy integrating the database in planning projects.

Over 200 professional archaeologists from the region have now been trained in EAMENA’s methods. The British Council’s investment (almost £4 million successfully levered from the Cultural Protection Fund (CPF) thanks to the Arcadia foundational grants) in EAMENA on cultural heritage protection throughout the region is another clear indicator of the success of the project, training many government antiquities staff in our methodology. EAMENA’s MOOC courses, developed at Durham, offer free open-access training materials on remote sensing for endangered archaeology. Furthermore, these courses have been translated into multiple languages of the region, including Arabic, Persian, and Kurdish, which was made possible by a Durham University Research Impact Fund Award. To date there are over 6000 active users of the MOOCs.

Arcadia’s decision to fund similar projects throughout much of the world is another measure of success. Being one of the largest Arches-user archaeology projects, EAMENA has actively participated in supporting the internationalisation of the platform, refining resource models, and contributing to sustainability plans for Arches users. The final phase of the project will ensure that the work conducted can be wrapped up tidily to ensure it has longevity. We are establishing a model that regional heritage authorities and research projects can follow for documenting and managing endangered heritage.

Our leading role in heritage protection in conflict has recently been recognised by the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in their invitation for us to partner them and coordinate international responses to assessing the damage to cultural heritage and supporting subsequent reconstruction and conservation. Our work on protecting heritage from climate change is recognised in the partnership with ICOMOS-Jordan. We have also been consulted by various international organisations such as UNITAD, UNOSAT, EUAM, ALIPH and The Docket (Clooney Foundation for Justice) about our work documenting destruction to cultural heritage in conflict (e.g. Destroying the Soul of the Yazidis report).

The academic impact of the project is growing, with increasing numbers of research publications and presentations at conferences, such as Sacred Landscapes in Oxford (2023), the BANEA conferences in Oxford (2020) and Glasgow (2024), ICAANE in Copenhagen (2023), and ICHAJ in Jordan (2022).

Our Arches database is central to our documentation, providing a resource that is accessible and based in the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) principles. EAMENA aims to promote best practices in FAIR and serves as a reference platform for managing heritage and archaeological data, accommodating contributions from multiple projects across different chronological, spatial, and thematic dimensions in an open, cumulative, and transparent framework. The database is built around international standards and adheres to well-defined licensing frameworks, including data versioning, to facilitate publication of data papers and other outputs. https://eamena.org/open-access-policy