Presentation

The ALTAVA Collective is a multidisciplinary group composed of researchers and specialists from complementary fields: archaeology, anthropology, geology, architecture, archival science, photography, history, and heritage.

Born from a shared desire to document, protect, and promote Algeria’s cultural and natural riches, the collective is both scientific, civic-minded, and engaged.

Our members share the same principle: acting in the field. Whether mapping a ruined site, photographing a forgotten artifact, collecting oral memories, or digitizing family archives, we believe in a dynamic science, close to local realities and rooted in the territories.

ALTAVA operates as a flexible collaboration space between experts, institutions, students, and local communities. It is not just about producing knowledge, but transmitting it, sharing it, and making it a lever for heritage awareness.

Altava was an important Roman city in western Algeria, a crossroads of Berber, Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic cultures. Now a quiet village, its name evokes the layers of civilizations that shaped this territory but whose memory has faded. By adopting this name, the Collective affirms its commitment to restoring value and visibility to forgotten heritages through study, transmission, and collective action.