A Deal with the Rainmaker | Nigeria

Despite months of planning, more often than not, variables conspire to decide the actual start date of a project. This was the case for our most recent project in Nigeria which ended up taking place during the rainy season. One benefit of working at a sacred site, is that the priests can put in a good word and miraculously not a drop fell on the equipment.

The sacred grove Osun Osogbo is one of the last sacred Yoruba forests in Nigeria. It was once common practice for sacred forests and shrines to be established next to villages.

The site today contains statues to Yoruba deities spread throughout the forest

Statue of Alajere dancing for Osun

Local artist and conservator Nuredeen Akanji with a photo showing Susanne Wenger, himself as a child and his father Adebisi Akanji

For this project drones, laser scanners and DSLR cameras were used to document three shrines at the site.

Series of statues known as the Marketplace

Arch of the flying tortoise

An artisan standing in front of the house of Susanne Wenger

Sangodare Ajala, the adopted son of Susanne Wenger and spirtual leader of the Sacred Art movement

The Osun shrine is the central shrine of Osun worship and is located adjacent to the holy river.

The Iya Moopo shrine is dedicated to the goddess of women’s occupations.

Supporting wooden pillars of the Ogboni Earth cult shrine

A blessing is performed by the priest of Osun.

The North coast of Peru

Chan Chan was the largest city in all of Precolumbian America, and it was hard to take in the scale when you walked around the site. Today, in many areas, the mud-brick architecture has melted away due to rains. For this project, we documented two walled complexes known as Tschudi and Rivero.

Excavations are ongoing at Chahuac An within the UNESCO World heritage site of Chan Chan

The mud reliefs at Chan Chan depict marine imagery like sea birds and fishing nets

Working underneath the covered funerary complex at Palacio Rivero

Looking out toward the walled complex of Palacio Tschudi

Providing a workshop on 3D documentation for Heritage

THe adjacent complex of Huaca de la Luna is well known for the polychromatic imagery

A nightjar hides among the ruins at Chan Chan

Embracing Limbo in Tamil Nadu | Mahabalipuram, India

Documenting the Shore Temple in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Mahabalipuram.

Sunrise over the Shore Temple in Mahabalipuram. Built in the 6th to 7th centuries CE the temple is being damaged by salt moisture due to the proximity to the beach

Worshippers greet the sunruse at the Shore Temple

Known as Krishnas butterball this large granite boulder is one of many monuments that can be visited in Mahabalipuram

The Descent of the Ganges also known as Arjunas penance is a giant open air rock relief

Mahabalipuram is a fishing village and every morning a fleet of boats heads out for the daily catch

A tractor is utilized to push the boats into the surf in the morning

I enjoyed hanging out with this guy as he reeled in his dinner every afternoon

Quite the fragrant but also extremely loud job

Making curry powder in Tamil Nadu

Iorana Rapa Nui

Picking sweet potatoes, collecting sea urchins, learning to shore fish with a simple fishing line, and hearing the stories of the people who call this island home are just some of the many reasons this island and the friends I have made here have captured my heart. I was honored to be part of one of the first outside groups to work with Ma'u Henua and the Chilean government to document some of the ahu, or stone platforms, that are located dangerously close to steep cliffs.

Rano Kau crater on Rapa Nui

View of Ahu Tongariki, one of the restored ceremonial platform sites on the island.

Documenting the quarry area of Rano Raraku where the majority of the islands statues were carved from volcanic tuff.

Saint figure at the beach near Hanga Roa, the only settlement on the island

The cemetery at Hanga Roa

Ponchi from Ma’u Henua taught us how to fish from the shore with a simple line and bait.

Shore fishing with Ponchi as he gets drenched with a wave

Moai at the Tongariki site

Working at the lone moai site of Ahu Ature Huki

Crematorio Ovahe is one of the sites most affected by rising sea levels.

Using drones to document Ahu Ature Huki, one of the first moai to be raised in the late 1950’s.

On all the platform sites Ma’u Henua staff captured the sacred areas with photogrammetry.

Reviewing data collected from work at Anakena beach

The Poike peninsula is one of the least visited parts of the island and getting to work out here was a real treat.

Walking through a historic garden in Rapa Nui. Stones were used in agriculture as they helped retain soil moisture.

Documenting the cave paintings at Ana Kai Tangata

Cave paintings from Birdman cult at Ana Kai Tangata.

Visiting Southern Bangladesh

From Dhaka, we traveled south to work at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bagerhat, known for the many finely made Islamic brick monuments that continue to be places of faith and pilgrimage today. Due to the low-lying topography of Bangladesh, the majority of the country is threatened with rising sea levels and increasing frequency of tropical storms. In Bagerhat, the freshwater is slightly brackish due to saltwater infiltration, and this salt in the groundwater has a negative impact on the brick monuments.

Climbing to the top of the Chunakhola mosque in Bagerhat

The villagers came to hold the not so sturdy bamboo ladder while we climbed up with the equipment

The 60 Dome Mosque or Shait Gombuj Masjid

Despite the name of the mosque there are actually over eighty domes on the mosque.

The frescoes of Ohrid | North Macedonia

It is easy to see why Ohrid has been inhabited for millennia. The natural beauty and unique ecosystem of Lake Ohrid, combined with the impressive number of historic buildings and architectural heritage, are astounding. Our work focused on the 11th-century church of St. Sophia, which contains an incredible array of frescoes. Read more about the project and check out some of the products produced in my interview.

Lake Ohrid and the Church of St. John the Theologian

Looking across to the Albanian side of Lake Ohrid

Utilizing photogrammetry to document the frescoes within the main nave

Conducting the workshop in Ohrid

The Ohrid trout is an endemic species to the lake

An Armenian Welcome

I traveled to Armenia in October 2017 as part of the MyArmenia program which aims to raise awareness of the cultural heritage of Armenia. The project was funded by USAID and implemented by the Smithsonian institution.

My Grandfather's House: A Pilgrimage to Carlin, NV

My Grandfather and I have drastically different political views but we both share a love for the Nevada backcountry and good recipes. This labor day weekend, I decided to make the eight hour drive to see him. He drove me all around his corner of Nevada and I had him show me on his favorite dirt roads and fishing holes so I could mark them with a GPS. We cooked rabbit, deer and fish that he caught and we went picking elderberries from the Ruby Mountain wilderness.

Getting stuck in a snowstorm in lovely Lebanon

In January 2017, I visited Lebanon as part of Project Anqa, an initiative to preserve threatened heritage in the Middle East. You can read more about the work with UNESCO here. I had a few days at the end of my trip to travel around Lebanon and decided to visit a friend and her family in the Bekaa province, near the border with Syria. Although we had planned to just get lunch together, a freak snowstorm closed all the roads back to Beirut. The same day Donald Trump signed his refugee ban blocking immigrants from Syria and six other nations from entering the United States, my friend and her Syrian husband came and rescued me from the side of the road and graciously hosted me for two days while the roads were cleared.

The thinnest place

Besides family and friends, the hardest part of living in the Bay Area is being so far away from my favorite Central Coast spot. The county park which includes Guadalupe State Beach and Point Sal is rich in both biodiversity and cultural sites. Although I have hiked to this beach hundreds of times, I always see something new; a shell that I can't identify, some new animal track on the dunes or the beach itself being sculpted into different shapes by the waves. Getting to this beach takes some effort and because of this most days you get it entirely to yourself.

The Last Blacksmith in San Francisco

I met Tony Rosselini while working as an archaeological monitor at the building next door to his blacksmith shop. While he doesn't do much work at the forge these days he gave me a tour of his workshop where he has been working for the past forty years. While skyscrapers keep going up in downtown San Francisco, when you step through the doorway of the Klockars Blacksmith building you feel like you are stepping back in time. If you are in downtown San Francisco I highly encourage you to visit as there are plans to turn the building into a cannabis dispensary.

Nevada Documentary Film Project: Lincoln County

In March 2016 I traveled to a remote part of rural Nevada to work on a documentary film project about the archaeology of the region. Our work focused on several large dry lake beds but we also explored a cave and were entertained by the many wild horses that lived in the area. The late winter rains kept the sage and wildflowers blooming which made for some nice pictures. We stocked up on supplies from Pioche, an early gold rush town with the second longest running newspaper in the state of Nevada.