Teaching collaborative archaeology and heritage management in Sudan

Over the past seven years, archaeological outreach activities and participatory research have increasingly been incorporated into different archaeological projects in Sudan while sites have faced growing threats from economic activities, mining, and climate change. To respond to such disciplinary shift and challenges in site protection, a training course on collaborative archaeology and heritage management planning was designed and offered to Sudanese archaeologists and students at Old Dongola in early 2021. This article assesses the course based on evaluations submitted by participants and the instructor’s self-reflection and observations. It explores an improved approach to capacity building in the two specialized fields in the context of Sudan, and concludes with the proposition that the approach and objectives of collaborative archaeology should be foregrounded in courses of this kind. Rather than just offering training per se, courses should be set up in collaboration with local communities and produce, by design, meaningful outcomes for communities, while training the participants.