Antiquity 2021 Vol.

95 (381): e16, 1–9

https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.45

Project Gallery

The Maldives Heritage Survey

R. Michael Feener1,2,* , Patrick Daly3, Michael Frachetti4, Ibrahim Mujah5,
Maida Irawani6, Jovial Pally Taran6, Ahmad Zaki6, Fathimath Maasa6,
Mohamed Shamran6, Multia Zahara6, Mariyam Isha Azees6, Krisztina Baranyai6,
Paula Levick6, Hala Bakheit6, Jessica Rahardjo2 & Gabriel Clark4
1
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan
2
Faculty of History, University of Oxford, UK
3
Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
4
Spatial Analysis, Interpretation and Exploration Laboratory, Washington University in St Louis, USA
5
National Center for Cultural Heritage, Maldives Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage, Malé, Maldives
6
Maldives Heritage Survey, Oxford, UK
* Author for correspondence: ✉ [email protected]

The Maldives Heritage Survey was established to document cultural heritage vulnerable to human and envir-
onmental threats in the Maldives. An open-access online database is being produced to inform academic stud-
ies, support heritage-management plans and create a permanent archive of digital heritage resources.

Keywords: Maldives, Indian Ocean, Buddhism, Islam, climate change, heritage, photogrammetry, lidar

The Maldives Heritage Survey is a collaboration between the Oxford Centre for Islamic Stud-
ies, the Earth Observatory of Singapore, SAIELab at Washington University in St Louis, and
the National Center for Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage
in the Maldives. The Maldives is an Indian Ocean archipelago of low-lying coral atolls that
consists of 1192 islands, fewer than 200 of which are currently inhabited. The islands have
been an important site on the historic maritime crossroads facilitating the circulation of peo-
ples, goods and ideas across the Indian Ocean world—with significant commercial and cul-
tural connections to Africa, Arabia, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and China. These islands
have at various points been the location of Buddhist monastic communities, a Muslim sul-
tanate beginning in the twelfth century (and visited by Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth), and a
brief Portuguese occupation in the sixteenth, as well as in turns a Dutch and a British pro-
tectorate before the establishment of the modern state in 1968 (Feener 2021).
Beyond its broad outlines, the history of these islands is little known due to the lack of
documentary sources available for its study. Since the pioneering work of Bell (1922), the
ceramic sherd collection by Carswell (1975), and the more systematic excavations done by
Skjølsvold (1991) and Mikkelsen (1991, 2000) following in the wake of Heyerdahl’s
(1986) ‘Maldive Expedition’, little archaeological work had been done until a recent wave
of new activity in the field by Haour et al. (2016, 2017), Jameel (2017), Pradines (2018)
and Jaufar (2019). An open-access library offering a fuller bibliography of publications is

Received: 30 November 2020; Revised: 22 December 2020; Accepted: 12 January 2021

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 R. Michael Feener et al.

available on the Maldives Heritage Survey website. These excavations and architectural
studies have produced a new level of detailed knowledge about several early Islamic sites.
As a complement to these precision-focused investigations, our work provides the first ever
comprehensive survey of the tangible cultural heritage of the Maldives. This enables us to
map the spatial distributions of Buddhist, Islamic and other historic and archaeological
sites across the entire country.
Completing this work is urgent as the low-lying islands of the Maldives face existential
threats from climate change and other forms of environmental stress, as well as vulnerabilities
to human acts of vandalism and destruction. These factors have motivated our work to locate,
document and make an inventory of endangered tangible cultural heritage and to create an
open-access and permanently archived record of the Maldivian past.
We conducted two years of full-time field survey from April 2018 until 2020. We sur-
veyed 152 islands across six atolls (Figure 1) and documented over 292 sites with 1171 struc-
tures, 5761 small objects, in addition to digitising 410 manuscripts in Dhivehi and Arabic
(Table 1). Sites were located using a combination of archival research, consultation with
local communities and systematic field-walking. We documented each site with a combin-
ation of mapping and measurement, photography, field notes and oral histories. We used
photogrammetry and a Faro Focus lidar station to record high-resolution 3D data for complex
architectural features and select objects. The current condition of each site was evaluated and
possible threats from environmental and other sources identified. Alongside the primary
fieldwork, we also worked with institutions outside the Maldives to digitise relevant materials
from their collections. Records for each site, structure and object, along with archives of digi-
tised manuscripts, 3D visualisations and other resources, are open access on the project web-
site. Full datasets for lidar scans of sites and structures are also made freely available through
OpenHeritage3D. Project data are permanently archived within the Oxford Research Arch-
ive of the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library system.
Our work has contributed significantly towards generating new knowledge about the
history of the Maldives, contextualising the limited work that had been done previously
at a small number of select sites by creating a new map that spatialises historical patterns
of settlement and the establishment of Buddhist and Islamic ritual sites across the
archipelago. For purposes of illustration in this brief note we present some of our key findings
by atoll.

Laamu
On the island of Gan a large artificial mound site had been documented by Bell (1922) in one
of the rare earlier archaeological explorations of the Maldives. While Bell and his team iden-
tified nine structures on this site (Figure 2), our work there documented the ruins of dozens
of additional structures and earthworks, allowing us to map the actual extent and spatial
organisation of this major Buddhist ritual complex for the first time (Figure 3).
On the same island a coral stone boulder carved with a kala head on one face (Figure 4)
and Sanskrit inscription of a Buddhist mantra on its reverse (Figure 5) was recovered for the
Maldives National Museum.
An interactive 3D model of this piece can be accessed on the project website.

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 The Maldives Heritage Survey
Figure 1. Atolls in the Maldives included in the Maldives Heritage Survey (map by the Maldives Heritage Survey, courtesy of Google Earth).
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 R. Michael Feener et al.

Table 1. Database records created by the Maldives Heritage Survey, 2018–2020.

Name of atoll Islands Sites Structures Objects Manuscripts
Laamu 70 100 374 1179 –
Gnaviyani 1 35 131 338 –
Kaafu 16 43 118 993 1
Seenu 21 32 378 1735 2
Haa Alif 36 59 139 655 81
Haa Dhaalu 8 23 31 114 23
Ashmolean Museum – – – 747 –
Maldives National Archives – – – – 303
Total 152 292 1171 5761 410

Figure 2. Site plan by Bell (1922), rotated for north orientation.

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 The Maldives Heritage Survey

Figure 3. Site plan of the pre-Islamic mound site on Laamu Gan (LAM-GAN-2) by the Maldives Heritage Survey (2018).

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 R. Michael Feener et al.

Figure 4. Face of the coral stone head from Laamu Gan (LAM-GAN-1-SO1; photograph by the Maldives Heritage
Survey).

Gnaviyani
On Fuvamulak we documented another large Buddhist sanctuary comprised of stupas and
other ruins in the vicinity of a large artificial mound. We also mapped early mosques and
Muslim burial grounds around the Buddhist site, thus revealing a topography of religious
change on the island.

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 The Maldives Heritage Survey

Figure 5. Reverse of the coral stone head from Laamu Gan (LAM-GAN-1-SO1) with Sanskrit inscription
(photograph by the Maldives Heritage Survey).

Seenu
On the island of Hulhumeedhoo we surveyed Koagaanu—the largest historic cemetery in the
Maldives. It contains 1535 carved coral gravestones, five mosques and numerous other struc-
tures, including the shrine mausoleum of a saint traditionally credited with the Islamisation
of the island in the twelfth century.

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 R. Michael Feener et al.

Haa Alifu
In the northernmost atoll of the country the ruins of saints’ shrines and recital halls for
Islamic devotional texts read to celebrate the birth of the Prophet were documented. The
ritual activities that defined these sites were once widespread across the Maldives and
the broader Indian Ocean world, but have almost completely disappeared in the country
since the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Kaafu
New field-survey work in this atoll was combined with the enhancement of existing
documentation and integration of that data into our open-access online archive. This
has allowed us to build upon Mikkelsen’s (2000) work at the Buddhist site on Kaashidhoo.
In Malé we integrated heritage documentation produced by teams from the Maldives National
Defence Ministry and Water Solutions Ltd for the great Friday Mosque into our database and
provided additional contextual information on this and other sites in the nation’s capital.

Discussion
Our work in the Maldives has furthered knowledge of the spatiality of historical religious
transformations in the Maldives, and has provided the most comprehensive documentation
yet of structures at a number of Buddhist ritual mound complexes. Another major contribu-
tion of the project has been the recording of vanishing traces of sites and structures associated
with earlier forms of Islamic religious practice in the country. Tomb shrines and dedicated
halls for the ritual recitation of devotional texts were once common across these islands
and much of the broader Indian Ocean world, but have been largely abandoned over the
past half century in the face of new visions of Islamic reform.
Beyond specifically religious sites, our survey also recorded vernacular architecture and
related aspects of material culture to provide an invaluable resource documenting the
changing dynamics of daily life and local cultural practices through to the present day.
Over the past three years we have made considerable progress towards our goal, but much
work remains to be done. Between 2020 and 2025 we will complete our survey of the
Maldives and begin to expand operations to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Brunei and Vietnam
under the new rubric of the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey, with continuing support
from the Arcadia Fund. This will allow us to produce a comprehensive archive of the rich
cultural heritage of interconnectivity across Maritime Asia, which will be made freely
available online and permanently archived in secure digital repositories.

Acknowledgements
This work comprises Earth Observatory of Singapore contribution 346. We are grateful to
Jost Gippert and Arlo Griffiths for deciphering the Sanskrit inscription in Figure 5.

Funding statement
The Maldives Heritage Survey was supported by the Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of
Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin (project 3984).

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 The Maldives Heritage Survey

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