The fourth season of the Burials and Identity component of the Desert Migrations Project in 2010 focused on completion of excavation work at two main cemeteries (TAG001 and TAG012) and smaller-scale sampling work at a number of nearby cemeteries. The investigation of a number of burials in a semi-nucleated escarpment cemetery TAG063 produced interesting new information on Proto-Urban Garamantian funerary rites, dating to the latter centuries BC. The excavations at TAG001 were extended to two areas of the cemetery characterised by different burial types to the stepped tombs that were excavated in 2009. A second type of fairly monumental burial was identified, but these had been heavily robbed and it was not possible to demonstrate conclusively that these pre-dated the stepped tombs. Most of the other burials excavated were simple shaft burials and were relatively sparsely furnished with imported goods, in comparison with the larger tombs, though quite a lot of organic material was identified (matting, wood, gourds, textiles and leather). At TAG012, a series of additional mudbrick tombs was emptied. All had been robbed, but pockets of the original fill and associated finds survived intact, yielding some interesting assemblages. The majority of these tombs appear to be Late Garamantian, though some contained artefacts from much earlier times.

The past two decades have seen dramatic changes of perspective and an explosion of new information in the broad fields covered by this overview. Within the constraints of space allowed it is not possible to cover all aspects or to mention all relevant publications. References to pre-1969 work have been kept to a minimum, except where dramatic revision of older views is now necessary.

The traditional picture of the Roman frontier in Tripolitania owes an incalculable debt to the pioneering work of Richard Goodchild. Much of his observation remains of the highest value (accessible particularly through the volume of collected articles (edited by Joyce Reynolds), Goodchild 1976), but in the 40 years since his initial work on the limes Tripolitanus (1949a/b; 1950a/b; Ward-Perkins and Goodchild 1949) the available body of data has increased greatly and the conceptual framework for interpreting it has changed considerably (the scale of the reappraisal may be judged by comparing Brogan and Smith 1957 and 1985). The most controversial aspects of Goodchild's work concern the date of the development of a frontier in Tripolitania and the interpretation of the fortified farms which are so characteristic of the zone: ‘…no traces of a pre-Severan limes have yet been found. In this respect it may be significant that the linear fossata which Baradez has proved to constitute the central feature of the Numidian limes, and which he tentatively dated to the Hadrianic period, have not yet been found in the area of modern Tripolitania … Apart from … the outer fortresses of Gheriat el-Garbia and Bu Ngem … the military works of the limes Tripolitanus seem to have consisted almost exclusively of fortified farmhouses occupied by Libyan limitanei.’ (Goodchild 1950 = 1976, 44).

Survey and excavation by the Burials and Identity team of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focused in 2011 on the so-called Royal Cemetery of the Garamantes close to the Jarma escarpment, a few km south of Old Jarma. This Late Garamantian cemetery contains two distinct zones (GSC030 and GSC031) of monumental rectangular stepped tombs, which were plaster-coated and fronted by massive offering tables and stelae. Previous dating evidence has suggested they span the fourth to sixth centuries AD. However, many questions remain about the cemetery and the overall recording of the monuments had hitherto been left incomplete. The 2011 work focused on the excavation of one of the larger monuments in GSC030 and several of the smaller tombs in the neighbouring GSC031, along with an overall survey of both cemetery areas and a detailed record of the stelae and offering tables still present in considerable numbers. In addition, the team made a survey along the escarpment between the Royal Cemetery and Zinkekrā, completing and uniting the various surveys carried out by the DMP around Zinkekrā, Watwāt and the Jarma Escarpment. A survey of foggaras and settlement in the ad-Dīsa embayment was also undertaken.

In arid and semi-arid regions runoff-fed agriculture has been common for millennia. Recent geographical and archaeological investigations in the north-eastern part of ancient Marmarica (north-western Egypt) revealed a dense network of water harvesting systems associated with settlements and production sites dating back to Ptolemaic times. The environmental conditions and the ancient water management strategies are characterised by minimal intervention but maximised effect and optimised utilisation of the scarce water (100–150 mm seasonal discharge) and soil resources of the region.

This study documents the sediments, pollen, seeds, molluscs, vertebrates and mineral magnetism of deposits found in an abandoned water supply system at gasr Mm 10 in the Wadi Mimoun in the pre-desert of Tripolitania. These new data suggest (1) at or close to an episode of probable abandonment of that gasr, the growth of cereals (and perhaps general agricultural activity) still occurred on the wadi catchment upstream of the gasr, and (2) the vegetation of the adjacent wadi floor was richer in species (which included olive) than occurs today.

The paper reports the preliminary results from the short season of fieldwork that the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project was able to undertake with a small Anglo-Libyan team in September 2013. The work concentrated on continuing the excavation of Trench M down the southern side of the Middle Trench and of Trench D on the southern side of the Deep Sounding below it, the eventual objective being to link these so as to provide a high quality dataset of sedimentary and cultural data from the top to the bottom of the Pleistocene occupation deposit (some 12 m). The ~1 m of sediments investigated in Trench M in the 2013 fieldwork includes carbonate crusts possibly formed in oscillating sub-humid to arid climatic pulses, perhaps likely during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4, around 60,000–70,000 years ago. One of these crusts formed the base on which a hearth-like structure had been built. In Trench D evidence for human occupation appears to decline moving up the profile, coinciding with sedimentary evidence of more frequent disruptive climatic events possibly associated with latter stages of MIS 5.

Building upon Brass’ previous research on Jebel Moya, which included a comprehensive reanalysis of the pottery from Wellcome's 1911–14 expeditions curated at the British Museum, new research activities by the University College London–University of Khartoum–NCAM Expedition to the Southern Gezira project have included locating and examining for the first time the Late Mesolithic sherds from Jebel Moya curated at the National Museum in Khartoum. Representative samples from the sites of Shaqadud Midden and Shaqadud S21 at the British Museum have also been re-examined. The aims of these activities were threefold: to test the reliability and cohesiveness of and patterning in the Shaqadud collection through the expanded application of attribute analysis, to determine if Caneva's observations of décor patterns on Jebel Moya's Late Mesolithic sherds could be replicated and to obtain better visibility into the nature of its pottery assemblage from this time, and to use the resulting data to test the viability of the central Sudan being a fulcrum of cultural interchanges during the late sixth and early fifth millennium BC. We conclude that there was a piecemeal establishment of networks along which there was diffusion of ideas and animals, and perhaps low numbers of people, into the central and south-central Sudan.

The Fezzan Project is investigating the last 10,000 years of human settlement, landscape evolution and climatic change in the Germa region in southern Libya. The second season in February–March 1998 comprised interdisciplinary research in archaeology and geography, centred around excavation and survey work carried out at the site of Old Germa. To date, three phases of mud brick buildings have been partially explored. In addition, wider geomorphological study and archaeological survey and fieldwalking were carried out elsewhere in the Germa/Twesh oasis and around el-Hatiya. Numerous sites were discovered, including a new hillfort of Zinchecra type and several valley centre ‘villages’ of Garamantian/Roman date. Artefactual studies were carried out on pottery and lithics, animal bones and seeds. Further work on the subterranean irrigation features, the foggaras, have confirmed their pre-Islamic origins.

Since the beginning of archaeological fieldwork in the Fazzan in the 1930s, the focus of research has remained mainly on the Wadi al-Ajal/Wadi al-Hayat and the ‘Garamantes’. While recent work in the Ghat region has identified ‘Garamantian’ sites much further west than previously known, in the Wadi Tanezzuft, very little is known of other parts of the region, notably the southern oases and their towns with their rich medieval and post-medieval heritage.

While preparing materials from the Charles Daniels archive for publication, a brief review of the archaeology of the southern Fazzan identified some 130 sites in the region. While detailed studies are still lacking, there was clearly a significant ‘Garamantian’ presence in many of the southern oases, with several sites in the Wadi an-Nashwa, a significant settlement at Ghuddwa and further cemeteries in the Dujal area and probably at Tsawah. Despite Daniels' reservations, it is clear that a large settlement at Sharaba dated back to the Garamantian period. There is little evidence from the major towns to the east, although Roman imports found at Zuwila suggest that it was at least integrated into ‘Garamantian’ trade networks. Some indications of potentially significant cultural differences between Garamantian remains found in this region and those of the Wadi al-Ajal were also noted.

The potential for medieval and post-medieval archaeology in the region is also very considerable, with the presence of numerous qsur and other settlement sites which await systematic recording. The presence of some groups of foggaras in the region is also of interest and these certainly merit further investigation.

This article presents evidence for the exploitation of marine resources at Sabratha, including the salting of fish and production of garum, as well as purple dyeing from the Murex shellfish. These activities may in certain periods of the city's history have been of some importance to Sabratha's economic life, alongside the export of olive oil from the city's hinterland. There is evidence also of various minor crafts and service activities of the sort perhaps to be expected in many Roman towns — bakeries, ceramic manufacture, and glass production.

Speaking of Tripoli, the fourteenth-century writer al-Tijāni says: ‘when the Zughba killed Sacīd ibn Khazrūn in the year 429’. Sacīd was the Zanāta lord of the city, and al-Tijānī is explaining that the venerable faqīh Ibn Munammar was driven into exile because, when Sacīd was killed, he opened the gates to a cousin of the dead man who was promptly expelled by a brother. The reference to the Zughba is thus contained within an account of the dynasty of the Banū Khazrūn which is itself contained within a biographical notice of the jurist Ibn Munammar. There is no further explanation of the killing, and no mention of it by any other writer apart from Ibn Khaldūn, who has borrowed the story from Al-Tijānī, and repeats it twice. This presents a problem. The Zughba were Arabs, a branch of the Banū Hilāl. In that case they should not have been at Tripoli at all, as Ibn Khaldūn observes, because the Banū Hilāl did not enter Ifrīqiya until they were sent from Egypt to punish the Zīrīd sultan al-Mucizz ibn Bādīs for breaking his allegiance to the Fāṭimid caliph in Cairo, and recognising the cAbbāsid caliph in Baghdad. That would have been some time after 1048, more specifically, after 1050, when the man who is usually held responsible for the invasion, al-Yāzūrī, became the Fāṭimid wazīr. The story of the invasion at the behest of al-Yāzūrī is accepted by the principal modern authority, Hady Roger Idris, who tries to explain the reference to the Zughba at Tripoli in 1037–8 by suggesting that a fraction of the tribe may have accompanied their relatives the Banū Qurra, a people settled to the west of Alexandria, when these were sent by Cairo to support an attack upon the Zīrīds of Ifrīqiya by an Ifrīqiyan pretender, Yaḥyā ibn cAlī ibn Hamdūn, in 1001–2. The Banū Qurra had helped Ya…yā to attack Tripoli, but had then returned to Egypt. Idris wonders if this hypothetical fraction of the Zughba had not stayed behind in the neighbourhood of the city.

This article provides a brief summary of the aims, methods and results of a programme of training carried out by the EAMENA project in partnership with the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the Libyan Department of Antiquities. The focus was on the use of freely available satellite imagery for archaeological site identification and monitoring, on compiling and maintaining spatial databases - including the on-the-ground location of sites with the use of a GPS - and on the observation of patterns of preservation and threat within Geographical Information Systems to inform heritage management decisions at both regional and national levels. Three pairs of workshops took place in Tunis in 2017, 2018 and 2019, with interim support being given to participants by a Training Manager and Research Assistant based at the University of Leicester. The work was part of a larger scheme offered to heritage professionals across the Middle East and North Africa by the EAMENA project thanks to a grant received from the Cultural Protection Fund. In general this training has been very well received. Not only has it successfully achieved the propagation of desirable and much needed skills within partner institutions, it has also raised awareness of issues affecting the protection of cultural heritage within the broader community.

A provisional typology for the Islamic glazed and domestic pottery from the excavations of the Fatimid mosque at Ajdabiyah is presented. The bulk of this pottery is likely to belong to the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D. In addition, attention is drawn to the results of a programme of petrological analysis of the fabrics. Functional and typological variation was found to relate to fabric variation.

Working with the Libyan Department of Antiquity, the Mission of the University Roma Tre in Lepcis Magna undertook, in April-May 1997 and 1998, an intensive topographic research in a broad coastal sample of the Lepcis Magna territory, west of Khoms and around the Roman villa of Sīlīn (site 29)(Fig. 1). The survey, in an area of about 20 square Km Dounded to the East by wādī al-Ṭūra/al-Fānī and to the West on wādī Jabrūn was conducted by a mixed Italian-Libyan team, consisting of five archaeologists on average; the sample depth was fixed to the South at 3 km from the coast line. The map S. 2190 III, Al-Quṣbat, on a scale of 1:50.000 was used as cartography.

One of the problems faced by archaeologists engaged in field surveys is the need to gain an overall view of a study area together with data on the character of its terrain. Air-photographs have for 50 years or more provided a valuable source of such data but they are often difficult to obtain or too expensive to commission. Satellite imagery has since the early 1970s been available and it is suggested that such imagery together with well tried methods of terrain analysis and land evaluation could provide the basis of economical strategies for archaeological surveys. It is also demonstrated that such an approach can help in predicting the level of settlement in different types of terrain.

This paper reports on the non-destructive analysis of 42 samples of copper alloy and glass from sites in Libya, using semi-quantitative μXRF, carried out as part of the work of the Trans-Sahara Project funded by the European Research Council. These are among the first chemical analyses to be performed on metals and glasses of any period found in Libya, and the results – though preliminary – raise some interesting possibilities. In particular, we discuss some possible indications with regard to the practice of recycling glasses, as evidenced through heterogeneous, malformed glass beads with variable quantities of lead. A glass mirror from Ghirza was also found to be backed in lead, and was probably the result of a glass-making technique still practised in recent times in India. The metal analysis has revealed evidence of a pre-Islamic trade in brass in the northern Sahara, as well as showing the presence of objects made from the mixing of different types of scrap metal, a process probably taking place at the Garamantian metalworking site of Saniat Jibril among other locations. The importance of further analysis of available Libyan and other North African metal artefacts and glasses for the contextualisation and extension of these findings is emphasised.

The Garamantes were the inhabitants of Southern Libya. Their capital Garama (‘clarissimum … caput Garamantum’) lies partly under the now deserted mud-brick Arab town of Germa in the Wadi el Agial some hundred miles west of Sebha. The oldest pottery so far recovered from the site dates to the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C., but earlier occupation, stretching back to the ninth century B.C., has been found on the nearby fortified spur-site of Zinchecra. The surrounding escarpment slopes, which form the southern side of the wadi, are dotted with literally thousands of graves, which vary from simple crouch-burials in shallow cists, sometimes covered by a stone cairn, to elaborate stepped ‘chouchet’-type monuments of stone or mud brick, square or circular in shape, mud-brick pyramids 10–15 feet high and even ashlar-built mausolea of which the so-called ‘Germa mausoleum’ is the most complete surviving example. The sedentary agricultural practice of the people is attested by the many hundreds of foggaras (underground water channels with down-shafts, akin to the Qanats of Persia) which tap the aqueous strata against the escarpment side and carry their water into the wadi centre. The foggaras and burials, taken together, show that approximately eighty miles in length of the Wadi el Agial were intensely cultivated and inhabited, and recent work has shown that sites similar to Zinchecra and Garama existed at various points along this eighty-mile length, the Garamanticae Fauces, or Valley of the Garamantes.

Work in the Wadi Bergiug, Murzuch-Zuila area of oases to the south has shown that similar remains exist there, while it can reasonably be argued that the third great band of oases, the Wadi Chatti on the north of the el Agial, almost certainly contained similar occupation.

A geological reconnaissance of the Beni Ulid — Wadi Merdum region of the pre-desert of Tripolitania shows that at least twenty, stratigraphically distinct geomorphic events can be recognised from field exposures, field mapping and the analysis of Spacelab metric camera photography. The earliest events are provisionally attributed to the early Cenozoic and include uplift, tilting, faulting, the formation of karstic and karst-tectonic landforms, and erosion by meandering river systems. Some of these valleys were infilled with lava flows from the south-south-west in the ?late Palaeocene/early Eocene. Re-excavation of the ancient landscape by rivers followed. Pleistocene deposits of powerful, often braided rivers occur in the wadi floor. The wadi sides are clothed in complex sequences of alluvial fans, screes, windblown, waterlain and anthropogenic deposits, sometimes with weathering horizons and calcretes of uncertain stratigraphic significance. The plateaux contain large alluvial basins, palaeosols, soils and weathering horizons of uncertain age. Accelerated soil erosion caused by human activity appears to have been important in the area — slope deposits of scree and midden between 4 and 8 metres in thickness have accumulated beneath one gasr during a 500 year period. The most recent deposits identified are complex aeolian deposits at the wadi edge and the interdigitating series of floodloams and aeolian sands on the wadi floors.

The second season of the Desert Migrations Project took place in January 2008, with work following several substrands. The Burials and Identity component of the project is the subject of this report. Excavation and survey work were concentrated in the Watwat embayment, expanding on, and completing the work begun in 2007. Forty burials have now been excavated from the approximately 2,500 surveyed by the project team in a series of different cemeteries and burial zones within the closed valley that cuts back into the escarpment of the Massak, approximately 3 km southwest of Jarma. The most exciting discovery this year was the recovery of two mummified bodies from the UAT008 cemetery, along with further well-preserved textiles, including some exquisitely woven multi-coloured fragments. Another major discovery was a richly furnished Garamantian burial (UAT050.T5), containing numerous imported vessels (fineware, glass and amphorae) from the Roman world. Additional excavations included two child burials from GSC048, located in a modern quarry due south of Jarma, and a preliminary investigation of one of the Taqallit cemeteries, located approximately 30 km to the west (to be the subject of the main excavation effort in 2009).

Geoarchaeological surveys were conducted in northern Cyrenaica in 2009 as part of the TRANS-NAP project. A major objective of the project is to understand the relationship between regional environmental changes and human occupation patterns in northern Cyrenaica over approximately the past 200,000 years. This paper focuses on the results of surveys of the pre-desert and desert ecological zones in the south of the project's study region. The type, density and distribution of Palaeolithic sites were a particular focus of field research in the area. We report data from 42 archaeological sites in the pre-desert and desert zones, concentrating in particular on sites associated with palaeolakes and fan deposits. Analysis of the data reveals several patterns whereby particular archaeological signatures are associated with particular landforms. There is also a broader pattern across the region where sites assigned to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) period are considerably more common than those characteristic of the Late Stone Age (LSA). It is argued that this geographic area is particularly sensitive to changes in global climate and that past occupation patterns during the Palaeolithic were strongly driven by changes in the region's hydrological regime.