The 1988 season of the Society's work at Tolmeta concentrated on drawing the key pottery from the 1978/79 excavations in the North-east Quadrant. These drawings are currently being processed to refine the chronology of the structural phases on this part of the site, and it is hoped that the results will be published in the 1991 volume of Libyan Studies. The opportunity was also taken in 1988 of further examining in some detail stratigraphic sections in House G. A carbon sample taken from one of the rooms has now been C14 dated to the period AD 680-780. Thus settled life in the city would seem to have continued well into the Islamic period.

The description and analysis of particle size distributions using log skew Laplace distributions is a new technique designed to overcome various mathematical and computational problems associated with other approaches. This paper presents an application of the method. In particular, it describes fitting log skew Laplace distributions to modern and ancient shoreline sands from Lepcis Magna (near Horns), Tripolitania, with the purpose of discriminating between modern environments and so classifying the ancient samples. Satisfactory discrimination was not always achieved between some of the modern ‘calibration’ shoreline sand samples of known provenance — possibly as a result of the presence of multimodal distributions. One layer in the harbour-infill sequence, previously of unknown provenance, was shown to have collected at, or close to, an ancient shoreline which developed within the ancient harbour. The majority of the ‘ancient’ samples of unknown depositional environments which were excavated from exposures in the Romano-Libyan harbour-infill sands, were shown by this analysis to be of neither beach nor aeolian origin. This conclusion supports field observations which suggested that the greater part of the harbour-infill sequence represented reworked dune palaeosols, developing dune soils and fluvial and lagoonal facies.

The archive of the Society for Libyan Studies, housed at the University of Leicester, is home to a rich collection of excavation reports, notes, photographs, typescripts, maps, plans and letters by prominent scholars that worked in North Africa. Amongst the material are the records of Olwen Brogan, Charles Daniels, John Ward-Perkins, John Dore and the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey. The aim is to draw attention to the research potentials in the archive, and to encourage scholars to visit this important collection to engage with the material that is unpublished or merits re-interpretation. A future digital format for the archive is proposed, to make it accessible to a much wider academic audience worldwide.

In this first season several exploratory trenches were sunk with encouraging results. There is a considerable depth of stratigraphy over the whole town, sufficient, it would seem, to preserve substantial remains, and there is evidence of considerable occupation in the medieval Islamic period, as well as some material of Greek and early Roman date. In the 1990 season, it is planned to open a much larger area and begin the systematic controlled excavation of the Islamic levels, and it is hoped that, in the coming years, the combined expertise of this Anglo-Libyan venture will bring to light the town whose importance is hinted at in the historical sources.

The problems of how to define small urban centres are considered and different criteria are assessed (size, function, status, etc). The evidence derived from Libyan censuses is examined and a classification of urban centres in Libya is proposed.

A group of handmade pottery from the Eastern Marmarica (north-west Egypt) can be associated with the indigenous population of the region, subsumed as nomadic Libyans. A discussion of its type and fabric – mainly shell-tempered – leads to questions about its chronology as well as the ethnic and cultural background of the producers and users of these wares. Stratified finds and a diligent assessment of the reliability of associated pottery from surface find-spots will seek to fix the chronology of Northern Libyan Desert Ware (NLDW).

A conch shell fragment from a colourless glass fishbeaker was found during excavations at the Garamantian site of Saniat Gebril in the Wadi el-Agial, Fezzan. Fishbeakers are blown vessels with separately made sea creatures added in rows to the external surface. Complete examples of such vessels come from Rome, Cologne and Trier, with fragments from the Lebanon, Egypt, Italy and ? Spain. A diatretum beaker from southern Hungary is decorated with similar marine creatures. When dated the beakers are ascribed to the fourth century AD. It seems likely that the fishbeaker originated in the eastern Mediterranean area and may be associated with some pagan cults, and Christianity for whom the fish was a popular image. Early Christianity flourished in Antioch and Alexandria, both cities in areas associated with glass making. Egypt is the most likely source for the Fezzan beaker. Not the only Roman luxury glass found in the area, it is however notable that such a sumptious and no doubt expensive vessel should be found in a relatively isolated, and desert part of the Roman world.

The third season of excavation of a Roman town house adjacent to the theatre of Lepcis Magna took place in September 1996. The whole ground plan of the house had not previously been exposed and this was the primary task of the 1996 fieldwork. It appeared that the first building was constructed of well-dressed stone with interior mud-brick walls in the first half of the first century AD and continued in use until either the later first or the beginning of the second century AD. The site was then abandoned until the fourth century when the building was reoccupied, and the interior layout changed. Final abandonment seems to have taken place in the fifth century. The cisterns and well of the house were also examined, and probably what are the first waterlogged archaeological deposits from North Africa were sampled. They include large amounts of organic domestic waste.

Ceramic assemblages of late coarseware and first-century coarse and fineware were studied by Isabella Welsby Sjöström and Paul Reynolds. Sally-Ann Ashton worked on the wall-plaster, architectural marble fragments, and other finds, including ivory and bone, bronzes, and sculpture. The animal bone of all three seasons was examined by Jane Sidell, and included much butchered material. Sheep/goat were the most common animal found, and cattle and pig were a great deal more common than had been expected for North Africa. Keith Wilkinson discusses the palaeoenvironmental material and future hopes for its scientific examination.

During 1997 a Lepcis Magna web site has been opened to provide up to date news of the project. A virtual museum provides illustrations of many of the important finds, and an illustrated account of the excavation can be heard in the virtual lecture theatre. Its address is: www.alnpete.co.uk/lepcis/.

The store rooms of the Department of Antiquities at Apollonia contain pottery from excavations at Apollonia and Ras el Hilal, together with a few stray finds from other sites (including some from the sea collected by the Royal Air Force Aqualung Society in the 1950s and early 1960s). The bulk of this material dates in the later Roman period (i.e. sixth century A.D. onwards), but includes a little earlier Roman and some Hellenistic pottery. There is a representative selection of coarse wares, including amphoras, as yet unpublished. These are mainly in fragmentary condition but their typological range conforms with that from the well stratified and dated excavations at Berenice-Benghazi (Riley, in press).

Publication of the more complete of these amphoras seems justified as there is a relative scarcity of published information on Roman amphoras from the eastern Mediterranean, at a time when many eastern types are being recognised in western Mediterranean excavated contexts (Panella, 1974; Hayes, 1976a; Riley, 1981). In addition, a brief consideration of the other amphoras helps to illustrate the diversity of trade in liquid agricultural produce within the eastern Mediterranean region. No locally made amphoras were noted on the Apollonia stone: all were imported into Cyrenaica.

The Hellenistic period is represented by Rhodian (Inv. Nos. 321, 322 and 1582) and Knidian (Inv. Nos. 141 and 723) amphora fragments. There are several sherds of early Imperial amphoras, and attention has been drawn to these by Panella (1974). These include a first to second century A.D. Aegean type (ibid., 477, Ostia Form LXIII; Apollonia Box 2036, from Ras el Hilal); a Spanish garum amphora of the same period (ibid., 513, Ostia Form LXIII; Apollonia Inv. No. 256); several Tripolitanian amphoras of the first and second centuries A.D. (ibid., 562, Ostia Form LXIV; Apollonia Inv. Nos. 253, 254, 315 and 317); and a common Aegean amphora of the third and fourth centuries A.D. (ibid., 597, Ostia Form VI).

With financial aid from the Society for Libyan Studies I was able to visit Libya on special leave from the British Museum between 21 April and 11 May. The object of the visit was to examine early Islamic epigraphic material, in particular any that might contribute to a knowledge of the archaeology of Ajdabiyah and contemporary sites. One week was spent in Tripoli as a guest of the Department of Antiquities, one week with Dr Whitehouse's team at Ajdabiyah and several days at Cyrene, Tolmeita and in other parts of Cyrenaica.

At Tripoli Museum a fine collection of Kufic gravestones collected in and around the city was examined. These can be divided into two chronological and stylistic groups. The earliest pieces of the period of Aghlabid and Fāṭimid domination (third–fourth centuries A.H./ninthtenth centuries A.D.), are roughly incised rectangular or irregular slabs of stone or marble. The Kufic is plain, ornament being generally limited to bifurcation of the terminals; however, elements of foliation are discernible, notably on an example dated 248/862 (Rossi, Iscrizioni arabi e turchi del museo di Tripoli (1953) no. I). By contrast, those inscriptions which belong to the Khazrūnid and Muwaḥḥid periods (fifth-sixth centuries A.H./eleventh–twelfth centuries A.D.) are carved in relief on finely shaped marble blocks of a distinctive elongated type. The lettering is in the floriated style with additional decorative devices such as loops and right-angled bends in the uprights. Borders are adorned with vine-leaf or geometric motifs. The apparently abrupt transition to this evolved type of funerary monument is striking evidence of the high cultural level attained in Tripoli soon after the rise to power of an independent local dynasty.

Since 2007, the Archaeological Mission of Roma Tre University has conducted surveys in the territory of Lepcis Magna, in a peri-urban area between Ras el-Mergheb and Ras el-Hammam. To date, 168 sites have been surveyed. From the analysis of this data collection can be drawn a synthesis of the landscape's evolution from the Hellenistic to the end of the Ottoman period (including the analysis of battlefields and military structures related to the Italo-Turkish War and World War I). As elsewhere in Tripolitania, the Roman productive and settlement system was based on the villae and farms with torcularia for olive (and wine) production. However, the ancient suburban landscape was here characterised by local limestone quarry activities and funerary monuments, the research on which has given significant new data. The Late Antique and medieval periods, with their conjunctures of growth and contraction, as well as the Karamanli/Ottoman phase have been analysed for their agricultural peculiarities and forms of settlement. The Late Antique and medieval defensive system (gsur, the Ras el-Hammam and Ras el-Mergheb castles) and the Ottoman religious landscape (marabouts or ‘shrines’, today almost completely demolished) have also been taken into consideration.

This paper updates the present knowledge of ceramic productions in the Western Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages through the example of al-Andalus. The study of pottery production is a key element for recognizing the process of Islamization, the formation of al-Andalus, and the important social and economic changes that took placed in the Mediterranean between the seventh and ninth centuries. From a historical point of view, the early Middle Ages is a transcendental moment of change: patterns and socioeconomic models of the ancient world began to fade, and the evolution towards the development of feudal societies and, in parallel, the emergence of Islamic culture started. In the Iberian Peninsula, the arrival of the Arab-Berber army in AD 711 and its rapid conquest over a few years generated a process of social change know today as Islamization, which encompasses two centuries (eighth and ninth), and culminates in the tenth century with the standardization of a culture that is recognized from that moment on as Islamic culture. In this paper, the central elements of ceramic production in early al-Andalus are analysed, including the coexistence of diverse manufacturing techniques, the gradual disappearance of standardized productions, regionalization of production centres, and the incorporation of new forms and techniques such as glaze.

An underwater survey off the southwest coast of the island of Gozo revealed a well-preserved shipwreck 110 m below the surface. The site belonged to a previously unknown wreck with a cargo of volcanic millstones and ceramic amphorae dating to the 7th century BC. This article presents the first results of thin-section analysis taken from the pottery objects, and concludes that the ship was carrying a heterogeneous cargo of amphora-borne goods from the Maltese islands, North Tunisia, and possibly Sicily, making it the earliest, known shipwreck in the central Mediterranean; and provides the earliest evidence for Maltese external trade in the central Mediterranean.

Study of borehole data in the foothill region of the Jabal Nafusah shows that the Suq al Jum'ah palaeowadi, which cuts the jabal east of Gharyan, comprised a major drainage channel which extended in the subsurface far out from the jabal into the southern part of the Jifarah Plain. The channel is filled with sands and gravels. Basalt lava flows, channelled along the valley in outcrop for 36 km, extend for a further 48 km in the subsurface. The palaeowadi was possibly initiated in the Pliocene and appears to have been completely filled and abandoned by the end of the Pleistocene. During Holocene rejuvenation of the drainage system, the Wadi al Majanin developed as the major wadi in the region. It did not, however, excavate the palaeowadi but instead followed a different but roughly parallel northward trend.

Trench 330. Below recent structures the remains of two (possibly related) complexes of buildings were uncovered. Building I was a sunken, probably rectangular, courtyard bounded by a colonnade. Building II was mud brick. Seven major phases were identified. Pottery suggests a terminus post quem in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries AD.

Trench 340. Below very recent features was a brick barrack block, which probably dates to the 1930s. Below this was a building constructed on mud brick, of at least two principal phases, probably of similar date to Buildings I and II in Trench 330.

The Finds. Twenty-three coins were recovered. Two are probably comparatively early in date (Abbasid or Fatimid). Considerable quantities of pottery were recovered (see Appendices I and II). Other finds of note were a glass weight, probably of Fatimid date, and a small head carved in bone.

This article discusses the origin of the three dynastic settlements, which the Ptolemies (re) founded in Cyrenaica: Arsinoe-Taucheira, Ptolemais near Barca and Berenike near Euesperides. The evidence for the dating of the foundation of Ptolemais is re-examined and a papyrological text introduced, which has so far been ignored by previous scholars. This text unambiguously attests citizens of Ptolemais near Barca as early as 252 BC in Egypt. It refutes the commonly accepted argument that all three Ptolemaic cities were founded under Ptolemy III Euergetes (246-221 BC) and within the same framework of administrative-political concerns. It will be suggested that Ptolemy I Soter had the motifs, opportunity and resources to found Ptolemais as early as the end of the fourth century BC. Several papyri further emphasise that despite the almost simultaneous demise of Euesperides and rise of Berenike nearby, ethnic designations for these two cities were simultaneously in use throughout Ptolemaic Egypt until at least the end of the third century BC.

The Gargaresh Formation, of Quaternary age, is shown to be comprised of six members each of which is made up from cross-bedded calcarenite dunes of aeolian origin resting on localised lenses of marine gravels and shallow-dipping, cross-bedded calcarenites of littoral type. The surfaces on which the marine deposits at the base of each member rest, are surfaces of discontinuity cut by wave action. Landwards, the surfaces are shaped by fluvial and aeolian erosion, soil formation and solution and delimit an equivalent number of members in quartzose silts of fluvio-aeolian origin making up the Jeffara Formation. Shorewards the Jeffara silts grade into, interdigitate with and, commonly, lap onto the marine deposits so that that within each depositional unit there is an overall sense of progradation reflecting advance of continental facies in response to falling sea level. A progressive seawards stacking of dune deposits with decreasing age suggests that progradation appears to have occurred at formational level also. However, while this may be true, the various elevations of the fossil beach deposits suggest that decreasing age of sea level high stands is not matched by decreasing altitudes, instead, high stands both higher and lower than present day sea level were involved in the overall drop. The possibility that variation in beach elevations may, however, reflect the influence of tectonic uplift and/or downwarp is also noted.

This paper presents the first study of phytoliths from the Saharan region. Phytolith analysis shows the potential of reconstructing grassland dynamics during the Holocene, refining our knowledge of palaeoecosystems in the Ubari sand sea, Libya. The lake sediments studied range in age between 3,273–9,440 cal. BP. Tree cover was very low around 3,273–3,436 cal. BP and 6,678–6,796 cal. BP, and the landscape was dominated by C4 grasslands around 6,678–6,796 cal. BP, shifting to a more mixed C3-C4 grassland community around 3,273–3,436 cal. BP. These differences may be caused by the older sample being deposited during the onset of a brief arid period, but a similar phytolith assemblage could arise due to a more pronounced seasonality in the climate, with C3 grasses dominating late and early in the growing season when the climate is cooler and less arid, and C4 grasses becoming dominant in the hot, dry summer season.

The ‘small finds’ (miscellaneous objects of bone, metal and stone; ceramic objects other than vessels, lamps or sculpture) from the excavations carried out at Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi (1971–75), constitute a neglected category which was ready for publication ten years ago, in the projected final volume of the excavation reports. Since other reports which should have accompanied it in that volume are still far from being submitted, it has been decided to present the small finds in the form of a journal article instead.

The conclusions which may be drawn from the 462 catalogued items in terms of trade connections, or of patterns of activity in the places where they were found, are generally limited, but have been noted where possible.

Du Ier au VIIème siècle ap. J.-C, pendant la pÉriode romaine et byzantine, la Libye a connu une vie agricole originale et intense. Ce fait de civilisation n'attire l'attention des savants que depuis peu d'annÉes. Même si l'importance des vestiges archÉologiques n'avait pas ÉchappÉ aux voyageurs europÉens (Pacho 1828, 236) et arabes (El Hachaichi 1912, 60), les jugements Émis sur la valeur agricole de la Libye relevaient d'opinions prÉconçues, soit pour vanter l'intÉrêt du pays, soit au contraire pour le minimiser, dans le contexte de l'Époque coloniale (de Martino 1912, 145). De plus, tout l'intÉrêt Était orientÉ vers la façade côtière, sans beaucoup de considÉration pour l'immense zone intÉrieure.

Une mise au point s'avère donc nècessaire, en partant des donnÉes physiques et humaines observables, en cherchant à retrouver des formes d'amÉnagement, des types d'exploitation, afin de dÉterminer les grandes lignes de l'Évolution historique (Laronde 1986).

Différentiation zonale

Il convient de rappeler d'abord que la Libye s'Étend sur 1.760.000 km2 environ, et que sa façade mÉditerranÉenne mesure 1900 km de longueur. En fait, l'Étendue des zones dÉsertiques fausse toute apprÉciation objective et a conduit à des opinions très divergentes et toujours arbitraires; il faut donc recourir à une analyse des donnÉes physiques pour commencer. La morphologie se caractÉrise par la prÉdominance des plaines, des plateaux et des vallÉes, les communications sont gÉnÉralement aisÉes, en dÉpit de l'ampleur des distances.