This paper examines the impact on Cyrene of the Jewish Revolt of AD 115/6. Cyrene was particularly vulnerable to attack because of its status as regional capital and its inland location. The task of regeneration fell to Hadrian. Besides reconstructing buildings key to the resumption of Roman public life, Hadrian sent colonists to Cyrenaica, and exhorted the surviving population to assume the burden of reconstruction. By the late Antonine era, the population was restored and Cyrene entirely redeveloped in a striking amalgam of the latest fashions in architectural design and a deliberately conservative evocation of the city's Dorian origins.

This note reports on a paper presented at the American Institute of Archaeology 107th Annual Meeting (Montreal January 2006). The theme of the American Institute of Archaeology Annual meeting was ‘Management and Preservation of Cultural Heritage’. The Euesperides Project presented a paper on Euesperides (Sidi Abeid, Benghazi), the Archaic Greek settlement founded in the sixth century BC. Although the site was declared a protected area for its historical and archaeological importance, it still lacks effective protection. The site, important also from a naturalistic point of view, is used as an illegal rubbish dumping area and is awaiting a long-promised wall to prevent indiscriminate access to it.

The paper stressed that many sites in Libya are in need of preservation and protection, even more so after the opening of the country to tourism. The need to develop new infrastructure, if not carefully planned in respect of the cultural heritage, may result in indiscriminate development, as witnessed at Apollonia, where a harbour was being built near the site, obliterating the ancient port. The paper discussed also the Project's proposal presented to the local authorities, concerning the realization of an archaeological park and museum of the history of Benghazi. These projects are important not only to attract tourists, but above all for the local schools and educational programmes directed to inform the younger generations about the importance of their past.

The recent history of Middle Eastern new town formation and the concepts which underlie it are briefly outlined. New town developments in Libya are reviewed, from the colonial experiments of Italy, through the oil industry expansion in the 1960s, to the recent government sponsored schemes. A number of case studies are provided to illustrate the specific environmental and social factors which planners need to take into account in Libya. Some preliminary comments are offered on the success and failure of twentieth century new towns in Libya.

This paper is the sequel to an earlier article published in this journal and gives revised interpretations of the results of stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of samples of marble from Lepcis Magna in the light of subsequent refinements to the isotopic data base. Ten results have been changed, and 16 results, unassigned in 1984, may now be identified.

Recent work on the highly significant Donatist religious schism in late Roman Africa is reviewed, supported by an Appendix tabulating a draft chronology of Donatism. Particular attention is paid to the controversy surrounding the date and origins of the schism. The ‘revolutionary fringe’ of the Donatist movement, the Circumcellions, is also discussed, with specific reference to arguments concerning the social status of this group. A third section outlines the participation of Tripolitanian bishops of both Catholic and Donatist persuasion at the great Conference of Carthage in AD 411. The social historical importance of the extensive documentation is illustrated at several points by reference to illuminating insights into life in late Roman Africa.

Drawings made in 1958 of the Beida Sanctuary peristyle afford a basis for comment on characteristic architectural developments in Cyrenaica, seen as part of the Oriental Hellenistic world.

Since this complex is dated epigraphically to Hadrianic times it offers information on the chronological compass of forms and motifs which are well established at a much earlier period (3rd century BC). Notable features are the mixing of elements from different orders and the use of the cordiform angle pier often in association with the Rhodian-type peristyle.

The emergence of these devices can be seen in the Apollo Temple at Bassae, and they are subsequently formalised in the so-called Argolid School. This style was spread about the Hellenised Orient in the wake of Alexander's conquests. It can be seen particularly in Ptolemaic Alexandria, but owing to the destruction of almost all the free-standing building at Alexandria the bulk of the evidence comes from the Ptolemaic provinces, notably Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Southern Palestine/Arabia.

The details of the Balagrae peristyle also show the retention of some old established Cyrenaican regional manners (Doric Capital with moulded abacus, simplified Ionic Capital, etc) and the complete absence of any specifically Roman innovations either of design or construction.

The limestone relief, discovered near the motel in New Shahat in 1984, is one of a group of votive reliefs of the later Hellenistic period (2nd-1st centuries BC). The group, from various Libyan sites, depict Libyan sanctuaries, and are of especial interest in reflecting the close relationship between the Greek and native populations of Cyrenaica. The new find is unusual in devoting a large space to two pastoral scenes. They represent an aspect of the cult of a deity, probably Demeter, who was believed to bestow the Libyan people with meat, milk, hair, wool and other products. With these earthly goods Demeter brought the promise of fertility. Women feature prominently in the relief, as in her cult.

Lo stanziarsi dei Greci in terra di Cirenaica nella seconda metà del VII secolo a.C. e la loro ininterrotta permanenza nella regione fino al tramonto della civiltà antica hanno dato luogo ad una mirabile fioritura di civiltà che noi conosciamo grazie alle testimonianze archeologiche, alla letteratura e alla cospicua messe dei documenti epigrafici: uno sviluppo civile tanto più sorprendente, per la sua ampiezza e ricchezza, ove si consideri l'isolamento in cui la popolazione greca è venuta a trovarsi — dal punto di vista geografico — rispetto alla restante nazione greca e ove si pensi alla forte e continua pressione cui la stessa fu sottoposta, d'altra parte, ad opera della popolazione indigena. Infatti i Greci non furono i soli ad abitare la regione: essi occuparono, arrivando, una terra già abitata da una popolazione libica, mentre successivamente — in età ellenistica — sopraggiunse una forte comunità ebraica; infine è da registrare una presenza romano-italica, pure abbastanza consistente, documentata per via epigrafica (vd. sotto) a partire dal I sec. a.C.

La superiore civiltà greca esercitò un forte influsso sulla popolazione libica, o almeno su una parte di essa, e su quella ebraica, che furono più o meno profondamente ellenizzate: tanto che è possibile rintracciare — attraverso l'onomastica — una varia presenza di individui libici ed ebraici nell'epigrafia greca della Cirenaica (Masson 1976; Lüderitz 1983), che ne attesta anche l'avvicinarsi ad alcune istituzioni cittadine. Per contro non abbiamo, almeno finora, una autonoma produzione epigrafica Ubica o semitica dalla regione.

It has been known since 1954 that a pottery kiln site is situated about 100 metres to the North West of the West Gate of Roman Tocra, in the area known locally as ‘Howa El-Faquar’ (Area of Potsherds).

While looking for tombs in the East face of the small quarry in this area (see Fig.l), Wright discovered in 1954 part of a wastage dump from a kiln. The general direction of the tip lines led him to consider that one of the kilns was situated on a ‘small but salient mound’ (see Pl.1) nearby. He published a selection of pottery from the dump and, after some discussion, based on lamp evidence, he placed the date of the group at around A.D.100.

As this area is now outside the area controlled by the Department of Antiquities and is being ploughed by local farmers, it was thought expedient to examine the area through limited excavation for several reasons. A date of around A.D.100 seemed too early in the light of a study of the coarse pottery from the recent excavation at Sidi Krebish in Benghazi: a late second or early third century A.D. date seemed more appropriate. It was hoped that further excavation at Tocra would shed more light on this. In addition, few kilns have been excavated anywhere in North Africa to date and the potential of the Tocra site for structural and organisational information about the pottery industry is very great. It was also considered an excellent opportunity to study in detail a large group of contemporary pottery and to quantify the relative proportions of the different types.

Permission was kindly granted by Mr. Masoud Shagluf, Controller of Antiquities for Western Cyrenaica, and a two week excavation took place in August 1974.

The identification of a headland anchorage at Janzur and the finding of ceramic material offshore in 2009 led the Department of Antiquities in Tripoli to agree to an underwater scoping survey, the results of which are discussed. The site adjacent to the anchorage was subject to a large waterfront development and during groundwork a number of kilns and other structures related to the anchorage were revealed. The implications of this and neighbouring sites are discussed in regard to trade and industry in antiquity. Concerns regarding modern development are discussed and some proposals are mooted.

Recent scholarship on North African cities has done much to dispel earlier assumptions about late antique collapse and demonstrate significant continuity into the Byzantine and medieval periods. Yet urban changes did not affect North Africa evenly. Far less is known about the differing regional trajectories that shaped urban transformation and the extent to which pre-Roman and Roman micro-regions continued to share meaningful characteristics in subsequent periods. This article provides a preliminary exploration of regional change from the fourth to the eleventh century focused on a zone in the Central Medjerda Valley (Tunisia) containing the well-known sites of Bulla Regia and Chimtou. We place these towns in their wider historical and geographical setting and interrogate urban change by looking at investment in public buildings and spaces, religious buildings and housing, and ceramic networks. The process of comparison identifies new commonalities (and differences) between the sites of this stretch of the Medjerda River and provides a framework for understanding the many transformations of North African cities over the long late antiquity.

On the surface, the old city of Tripoli appears to have survived without serious damage to its morphological and architectural character into the modern period. But the entire function of the castle and suk has changed radically since the early years of the present century, beginning with the arrival of the Italian colonial regime in 1911. Even earlier, in the mid-nineteenth century, an important change is to be seen in the removal of the Karamanli Bashaws as rulers of Tripolitania and the institution of Ottoman control, from which time Tripoli ceased to be the seat of political power and an independent centre of corsair activity. Under Turkish administration there were but few changes in the structure of Tripoli and its environs, though illustrations of the period suggest that a number of official institutions set up buildings outside the old city and a slow but perceptible move began to establish settlements around the city walls. The pace of development of modern Tripoli was much accelerated by the Italian colonial occupation, though the larger part of this ‘new’ Tripoli was occupied by and served the needs of the Italians rather than the indigenous population. The population of Tripoli was reported as 13 841 in 1914 (di Agostini: 1917), entirely contained within the old city, and these social groups remained in their traditional areas in many cases until the violent upheavals caused by the collapse of the Italian colonial administration and the coming of political independence to Libya. Rapidly rising personal incomes in the period after 1961, resulting from the diffusion of oil wealth and particularly the concentration of economic activity in the hands of the merchants and the urban population of large, led to abandonment of the greater part of the old city of Tripoli. The old Arab and Jewish quarters alike are now taken over for temporary accommodation for recent (and often foreign immigrants) and for storage of goods. It may well be that physical decay of the city has been retarded but that the functional decay of the area is far advanced. Possibly this may be viewed as a fitting epitaph on a city that historically never succeeded in establishing clear and lasting control over its hinterland.

This paper examines the intentions, successes and failures of remarkable Romano-Libyan floodwater farmers who settled the arid Libyan pre-desert and used complexes of walls to manage the occasional floodwater as well as the desert's soils, sediments and biota. The paper presents and analyses a near ‘total’ data-set on the determinable locational properties of these ancient walls within one wadi — the 10 km long Wadi Umm el-Kharab. The organisation of these wall systems is shown to alter along the wadi according to changes in topographic, geomorphic and hydrological factors, as well as in relation to what are regarded in this paper as design and settlement factors. The organisation of the walls changes at confluences and distinctive topographic features. An analysis of the shape of enclosed areas indicates that the wadi can be divided into three broad sectors, each of which can be identified by differences in the shapes of the areas enclosed by walls. The enclosed shapes, as well as the general properties of the walls themselves do not vary in any simple linear manner along the wadi. Precise field mapping, as well as statistical displays of wall-related data, indicate the presence of similar ‘gaps’ in both the frequencies of settlement and of walls along the wadi. These gaps are, in part, explicable as the secondary consequences of hypothesised past flood-management problems associated with the confluences within the wadi system. They are also interpreted in this paper as some type of land use or other territorial ‘break’ created between the ancient community groups who occupied the wadi. This study has demonstrated the existence of distinct ‘preferences’ in the distances between walls, the areas enclosed between walls, and the thicknesses of walls. Overall, the types of organisation, and presumed functions of walls in this wadi are similar to those established from elsewhere in the Libyan pre-desert, but the balance is different in the Wadi Umm el-Kharab. The emphasis of wall-design in the Wadi Umm el-Kharab appeared to be upon the containment and management of floodwater, rather than the maximisation of the input of waters to the wadi floor, as deduced elsewhere. The long-term robustness and the environmental sophistication of these wall-systems are evident.

In 1881 the Italian explorer Giuseppe Haimann and his wife made a two-month journey through the Gebel Akhdar from Benghazi to Derna, travelling under the auspices of the Società d'Esplorazione Commerciale of Milan and Haimann's report first appeared in the Bollettino della Società Geografica in 1882. Haimann's sober assessment of Cyrenaica's potential contrasts favourably with the later accounts of Italian journalists and other visitors who in the early twentieth century had their own reasons for presenting Turkish North Africa to the Italian public as a veritable Paese di Bengodi – a Land of Cockaigne. But 30 years before the Italian intervention of 1911, Haimann had come to the conclusion that Cyrenaica – ‘in ancient times so civilised and prosperous’ – might be restored to new life if agriculture, industry and commerce ‘were to be given an effective impulse’.

Richard Goodchild was much concerned for the men who had preceeded him in connection with the discovery and rebirth of Cyrene. It seems, therefore, a fitting contribution to his memory to deal in their memories: the memories of Cyrene evoked by antipodal circumstances such men came to experience in their subsequent careers. The curtain is raised on half a dozen of these men who took all the chances offered by the 19th-century world, so full of opportunity for the talented and resolute.

In 1820, when he had already been six years in Tripoli, the British Consul General, Colonel Hanmer Warrington, acquired a small country estate about a mile beyond the city walls. The move had political implications that he may not have considered or appreciated at the time. But the fact that for a quarter of a century (1820-46) Consul Warrington lived most of the year, and eventually all the year, in this so-called ‘English Garden’ in the oasis-suburb of the menscia brought this influential, larger-than-life figure into much closer, personal contact with local dissident and opposition figures than he would ever have done had he been always shut up in town. In the decade 1832-42 Consul Warrington's official diplomatic position in Tripoli, together with his informal role as doyen of the menscia residents, placed him in a unique position to meddle and mediate in the affairs of the Regency of Tripoli. Such was the case under the semi-independent Karamanli regime and, after 1835, under the Ottoman Turkish administration ruling direcdy from Constantinople. Although the rewards of this risky policy might have been spectacular for Warrington and for Great Britain (and they were nearly achieved in 1842), such success was elusive.