Earthen architecture, which constitutes one of the
world’s most diverse and universal forms of cultural heritage, is also one of the most challenging to preserve. Earthen architecture is found on all continents and dates from all periods of history. Sites range from ancestral cities and settlements in Mali, the royal palaces of Abomey in Benin, and monuments and mosques in Iran to Buddhist temples on the Silk Road in China and Spanish missions in California. Earthen architecture is particularly prevalent in Africa, where it has been a building tradition for centuries.
The many historic and contemporary earthen buildings
in Mali made that country the ideal setting for Terra 2008, the Tenth International Conference on the Study and Conservation of Earthen Architectural Heritage. This volume contains the proceedings of that confer- ence, organized jointly by the Getty Conservation Institute and the Mali Ministry of Culture.
Leslie Rainer, a wall paintings conservator and senior
project specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute, is coauthor of Palace Sculptures of Abomey: History Told on Walls. Angelyn Bass Rivera, a conservator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and principal of Conservation Associates, is coeditor, with Leslie Rainer, of The Conservation of Decorated Surfaces on Earthen Architecture: Proceedings from the International Colloquium, 22-25 September 2004, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, U.S.A. David Gandreau is an archae- ologist and researcher at the Center for the Research and Application of Earth Architecture (CRATerre) in Grenoble, France.