The project integrates field and laboratory research across six major dryland regions of Africa and Asia, with active fieldwork carried out in Botswana, Kenya, Oman, Ethiopia, Morocco, and Pakistan. To date, more than 9,000 sediment samples have been collected from 32 inhabited settlements, 19 abandoned settlements, and 5 archaeological sites, complemented by off-site control samples to establish regional geochemical baselines. These data form the largest comparative dataset ever assembled for ethnographic and archaeological pastoral contexts.A key methodological achievement has been the development of a comparative baseline approach for portable X-Ray Fluorescence (pXRF) analysis, allowing reliable distinction between natural soil variation and anthropogenic chemical signatures. Laboratory analyses are performed with a Bruker CTX 800 portable benchtop pXRF, complemented by phytolith and organic residue studies. All datasets are integrated through multivariate geostatistical modelling, enabling spatial interpretation of activity areas, taphonomic processes, and diagenetic transformations.CAMP has also pioneered the application of compositional data analysis (CoDA) to archaeological sediments, addressing long-standing statistical limitations in geochemical datasets. This compositional approach, formalized in the concept of Anthropic Activity Markers 2.0 represents a significant step forward in the quantitative interpretation of archaeological soils.
Beyond its methodological innovations, CAMP contributes to a broader re-evaluation of drylands as dynamic centres of resilience and innovation, rather than marginal environments. The project’s results have been presented at major international conferences and published in leading journals, while its open-access outputs—including a pXRF calibration, geostatistical code, and a repository of anthropogenic chemical signatures—will form a lasting resource for the wider research community.
