In the summer of 1827 Colonel Hanmer Warrington, British Consul General in Tripoli, sent his son H. G. Warrington to Cyrene to search for antiquities which the Bashaw of Tripoli had offered to Britain. The article contains copies of the original letters on this subject and gives a description of the antiquities which were discovered during his excavations in the Apollo Sanctuary. Also given is the subsequent history of their journey from Cyrene to London, and then to Edinburgh, where they are now exhibited.

Libya is one of the few countries in the Middle East to have a full coverage of Urban Plans and two generations of Master and Layout Plans have been provided by foreign consultants. The aim of urban planning in Libya is to provide urban amenities and infrastructures to all towns large or small and this article reviews how this has developed.

Recent surveys conducted by the Italo-Libyan Joint Mission of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in the region of Wadi Tanezzuft (Libyan Sahara) revealed a huge number of sites characterised by the presence of stone tumuli and other megalithic constructions, usually associated with funerary rituals. During the 1999-2000 field seasons, one of these sites—site 96/129—was subjected to systematic excavation, revealing the construction technique of these monuments and showing evidence of human burials. It sheds new light on the funerary practices and anthropological features of the ancient populations of the region. Radiocarbon determinations placed this site at the very end of the Late Pastoral culture, some 3000 uncalibrated years bp. The skeletal material generally shows a good state of preservation and has been the object of a first morphological appraisal. The population of site 96/129 comprised long-limbed and relatively gracile humans, with labour-related afflictions; their dental dimensions consistently follow the trend of dental reduction known for post-Pleistocene human populations. Of great interest are the relationships with the emergence of Garamantian civilisation. Some traits of the funerary practices show the existence of a local heritage, whose roots may be sought in prehistoric times, in particular the position of the corpses and features of grave goods. On the other hand, the presence of multiple burials, the evidence of burnt animal bones, together with small concentrations of ashes in the monuments seem in contrast with the known funerary practices of prehistoric Pastoral sites of the Acacus and surroundings. Such evidence is compared with the regional analysis of megalithic architecture in the Tanezzuft valley, and discloses a tantalising perspective on the cultural trajectories and related biological pulsation in the area.

Chieti University's team in Libya has been mapping and studying the extraordinary patrimony in rupestrian architecture, looking at both funerary and sacred spaces. Particular attention has been paid to the rock-cut sanctuaries in the areas to the east (Ain Hofra/Bu Miliou areas) and to the west (Baggara and Budrag) of Cyrene, which also represent the most problematic zones for looting and vandalism. Therefore, the principal need for these areas has been to plan a project of mapping and recording that is as systematic as possible for this huge patrimony. The resulting data, coming from surveys, non-invasive geo-prospecting, laser scanning of the main monuments, diagnostic mapping of the damaged monuments, as well as from the excavations, have been recorded in a multilayer GIS. In combination with the surveys, a series of excavations have also been organised in several areas in order to have stratigraphic information from sample areas, which have been chosen on the basis of both their typology/monumentality and the degree of risk of damage and looting. These sanctuaries are generally located on the steep slopes of deep canyons, typically associated with water springs, wild landscape, chthonian cults and also, therefore, funerary areas. They are generally monumentalised and emphasised by rock-cut architecture. Among the most interesting finds are the sanctuaries of Budrag and Ain Hofra, with votive inscriptions, rocky altars and shrines. Particularly interesting is the discovery of a rocky high-relief statue of Dionysus, attesting a possible open-air sanctuary in the area of Baggara. It is a unique example of rocky sculpture in Cyrene and it could be one of the best-preserved examples from the Greek world. Distinguishable by their topography, architectonic features and distance from the town, these rocky sanctuaries attest to a reciprocal osmosis between Greco-Roman and Libyan cultural, artistic and ritual elements. The levels of hybridisation and reciprocity vary from case to case and from period to period, suggesting different degrees of Greco-Roman impact, which seem to be, generally speaking, inversely proportional to the distance from Cyrene, giving space and voice to the cults and rites of the local tribes.

This report summarises the work of the third season of the Fezzan project which took place in January 1999. The main environmental findings of the project team of specialist geographers are providing confirmation of dramatic climatic and environmental change over the last 100,000 years and give more precise dates for some of these changes. The excavations in Old Germa (ancient Garama) have continued through Islamic levels, with elements of five main phases of buildings now having been recorded. Additional standing structures, including one of Germa's main mosques, have been surveyed. Field survey around Germa has revealed further new settlement sites of prehistoric, Garamantian and Islamic date. Of particular importance is a series of lithic and pottery scatters relating to neolithic occupation along the edge of the Ubari Sand Sea, to the north of Germa. Further investigation of the irrigation channels (foggaras) has revealed significant new information about their size, construction and probable date. The report concludes with a brief preliminary analysis of changing settlement patterns over time.

A central archaeological and historical problem is that of population. It is reflected in the question often posed by the student or visitor of an ancient city: how big was X?; how many people lived here? The reply is unlikely to be more than an informed guess and, in most cases, a mere hazard, exposing a fundamental lacuna in historical knowledge. The problem of population size is not simply of casual interest; it affects almost every aspect of a balanced picture of life in ancient times.

Explicit classical allusions to population figures survive in only a very few cases (Alexandria, for example, had more than 300,000 free inhabitants in the first century B.C., according to Diodorus). In their absence it is extremely difficult to assess the number of inhabitants of a city at a given time, a situation further complicated by the fact that in Roman times a city comprised not just a built-up area, perhaps defined by walls, but also a neighbouring territory which it owned. The inhabitants of the territorium were liable to be counted with the city dwellers, thus producing a definition of urban population which differs radically from our modern concept.

Despite the inherent difficulties, demographic studies have periodically occupied the attention of a number of archaeologists and historians, and in recent years two major works have appeared. In The Economy of the Roman Empire Richard Duncan-Jones devotes an important chapter to the size of cities. After reviewing the various methods used to calculate the size of urban populations, he puts forward figures of his own, based principally on the interpretation of epigraphic evidence. As one of his examples has a specific Libyan connection, it is worth summarising here. The town concerned is Oea (modern Tripoli). Duncan-Jones applies an approach first outlined in 1886 by J. Beloch, in examining ancient records of large-scale gifts for public feasts or cash hand-outs (sportulae). These records provide important clues to the size of the urban population at the time of the benefaction. In the case of Oea, two pieces of evidence have been preserved. The first is given by Apuleius in the Apologia, a speech prepared for his defence (in a trial at Sabratha) against a charge of winning his Oean wife, Pudentilla, by magic.

Al-Tijānī was a highly-placed scholar and man of letters at Tunis. At the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D., the eighth century A.H., he made a devious and slow journey from Tunis to a point between Tripoli and Misurata, returning much more directly. On the way he employed his considerable leisure to correspond with his acquaintances, often in verse, and still more to collect, by diligent inquiry, the material for the account which he wrote of his adventure. The journey itself became the thread upon which were strung descriptions of each place he visited, first the topography, then the history, the men of religion, and finally the poets illustrated by generous quotations from their works. In this way he managed to provide a great deal of information, at first and second hand, about the route and its interest, contemporary and antiquarian, for an educated gentleman with a taste for literature and literary composition. Some of this information is known to us from other sources; al-Tijānī belonged to the classical Arab literary tradition of the Maghrib as it grew by constant repetition. Some of it is new, because the author drew on works which have not otherwise survived. The rest is al-Tijānī's own contribution, his invaluable tale of what he did and saw. The resultant work, known as the Riḥla or Journey of al-Tijānī, was published in a French translation by Alphonse Rousseau in the Journal Asiatique in 1852–3; this excluded the poetry and a great deal of anecdote, which the translator considered to be ‘sujet de nul intérêt’. The translation itself is not always accurate; nevertheless it is valuable as a guide. The full Arabic text was published at Tunis in 1927, and in a critical edition in 1958.

This report presents the preliminary results of the final season of the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Survey, that took place in October 1989. The fieldwork was divided in two parts. The first part of the work concentrated on the settlements in the Wadi Buzra, a northern tributary of the Wadi Sofeggin, especially at Souk el Awty. The major monument here consists of a substantial church (published elsewhere by D. A. Welsby in this volume), which was investigated by architectural survey and limited excavation, as were the surrounding late Romano-Libyan farms. The modern name of the settlement suggests that it may have been an important centre in Islamic as well as the Romano-Libyan periods, but the excavation did not obtain conclusive chronological evidence. The second part of the fieldwork was in the Wadi Umm el-Kharab, a southern tributary of the Sofeggin. Here, the team carried out a detailed study of a series of fortified farms of the later Romano-Libyan period, to compare with the open farm of the earlier Romano-Libyan period in Wadi el Amud previously studied by the project. An analysis of the constructional details of the major farms was integrated with excavations to recover stratified dating evidence from within the farms and faunal and botanical evidence from associated middens, and with a survey of the water-control systems of walls down the length of the wadi. The study indicates that the wadi was settled by people living in open farms and nucleated settlements in the first four centuries AD, but that by the fifth and sixth centuries AD these were replaced by fortified farms. There is evidence that the occupants of the fortified farms cultivated the wadi within an integrated economic system characterised by centralised food storage, rather than as independent units.

The fourth season of the Fezzan Project continued the interdisciplinary approaches of previous seasons. Geographical and environmental work focused principally in sampling sediments for scientific dating and with integrating ground observation with remote sensing data. Excavations continued at Old Germa, where the site has now reached Garamantian levels. In a separate development, the tentative identification has been made of an early mosque at the site, in an area adjacent to the G1 excavation trench. Substantial results were gained from work aimed at enhancing the important data recorded by Charles Daniels in his earlier excavations and survey in the Wadi al-Hayat. The enhancement of the Daniels' survey archive was integrated with completion of the wider prospection being undertaken by the new project. This survey included fieldwalking, standing building survey, analysis of the foggara irrigation systems and recording of rock art scenes. Finds work comprised the finalisation of a pottery type series for the Germa area, the study of small finds from the recent survey work, botanical analysis and completion of lithics recording. A programme of radiocarbon dating is now being undertaken to improve the phasing of sites and monuments. The first two volumes of final reports are now in preparation.

The North African region is experiencing water scarcity that is getting more severe with time. The regional annual average per capita water availability has been reduced from 2285 cubic meters in 1955 to 958 cubic meters in 1990 and is expected to reach 602 cubic meters by the year 2025. To meet the present and future water demands of the region the available options are limited to either long distance water transfers from the southern aquifers to the coastal areas or to investing in large scale seawater desalination technology. Economic analysis revealed that the cost of long distance water transfer can escalate to more than 0.83 US Dollars per cubic meter. When sustainability considerations are taken into account this figure may reach up to 2.35 US Dollars per cubic meter. While these figures were competitive with the cost of seawater desalination twenty years ago, the situation has been recently shifted in favor of seawater desalination which dropped from 5.5 US Dollars in 1979 to less than 0.55 US Dollars in 1999. It is concluded that sustainable development of North Africa will depend in the future on large scale desalination as a last resort. Presently, planned water transfer projects should be substituted by this fast growing technology as the best option.

The fourth season of the current project at Euesperides (Benghazi) took place in Spring 2002. Excavations continued in Areas P, Q and R, accompanied by limited augering work to determine the limits of surviving archaeology to the south of the Sidi Abeid mound. Excavations in Area P revealed part of a courtyard house from the penultimate phase of the site, with a probable andron and gunaikon. Its destruction is dated to after 261 BC. In Area Q work concentrated on the dismantling of street deposits and associated flanking houses from the later phases of the city's life; a soakaway drainage feature under the street was also investigated. The sequence of city wall circuits and their post-abandonment robbing was clarified. In Area R excavations established the structure of the mound of deposits deriving from the production of purple dye from Murex trunculus shellfish, and its relationship to the robbed-out walls of the courtyard building within which this activity occurred. The processing of ceramic finds underlines the active trading contacts enjoyed by Euesperides, with most of the fine pottery and a fifth of the coarse pottery being imported from overseas, and transport amphorae ranging in origin from the Straits of Gibraltar to the northern Aegean. The coin finds confirm that the city was abandoned after the death of Magas (258/250 BC); and it appears that the Herakles types, common at the site, were minted there under Thibron (323–322/322 BC).

This summary report on Archaic Greek pottery from Euesperides, Cyrenaica, describes 60 diagnostic sherds of Eastern Greek, ‘Parian’, Laconian, Corinthian and Attic origin. The material all comes from the earliest occupation levels of the Sidi Abeid sector of the ancient site. However, the question of the exact date of the earliest settlement at Euesperides is complicated by a continuing controversy about the dating of Archaic Greek pottery in general. Only when these more general problems are resolved can a firmer date be assigned on the basis of the identifications in this catalogue.

Sediments of ?Pleistocene and Holocene age infilling an ancient irrigation channel adjacent to the Wadi Gobbeen in Tripolitania are described. The irrigation channel is part of a Romano-Libyan floodwater-farming system. Techniques for estimating the hydrological characteristics of floodwater-farming systems are applied to the irrigation channel to provide an indication of the water-carrying capacity of ancient floodwater-farming systems in the Libyan pre-desert.

This article analyses the occurrence of apparently Roman names at Lepcis Magna and seeks to identify the processes of cultural assimilation taking place between the Libyphoenician population and Rome. Three main categories of change in naming practice (proposed by Herzog in the 1890s) may be recognised and suggest a number of possible explanations, other than Italian settlers, for the appearance of particular names at Lepcis. First, Roman names may have been adopted from the ruling emperor, or a senatorial patron or other suitably eminent Italian family, most commonly on the acquisition of Roman citizenship. This practice will often totally have eradicated the individual's original Libyphoenician nomenclature. The Lepcitani notably favoured aristocratic cognomina. Second, Punic or Libyan names at Lepcis may have been replaced by similar sounding Latin ones, e.g. the adaptation of Himilis to Aemilius and Amilcar to Amicus. Third, the Latin name may sometimes be a literal translation of the Punic or Libyan one. While noting a number of interesting examples of the latter two cases, the analysis here concentrates on the first category. It is concluded that there is little clearcut evidence for Italian settler families at Lepcis. Most of the names can be explained in terms of the assimilation of the indigenous population into the Roman pattern of personal nomenclature and illustrates the interesting choices available to them. The evidence at a number of points adds further weight to the strong probability that the paternal ancestry of the Emperor Septimius Severus was African.

This article adopts a broad view of geography to examine some of the roles which geographical knowledges, of various kinds, played in constituting Libya in the Italian geographical imagination. After problematising geography as a situated form of knowledge with a long tradition of pro-imperial activities, it considers some of the ways in which geographical discourses laid the foundations for Italian imperialism in Libya. In particular the article considers how Italian geography played a crucial role in the ‘colonial science’ by which Fascist Italy attempted symbolically and intellectually to capture Libya and recast it as a controlled, knowable colonial domain.

A summary account of the Byzantine bath-house at Tocra is given. Goodchild excavated this well-preserved structure in the 1960s, but died before producing a published account. Although the evidence of some late features had been removed then, a structural analysis of the building is still possible, showing three main periods of construction and use probably extending into the early Islamic period.

In July of this year a three week study of ancient ports in the Libyan Pentapolis was undertaken by Robert Yorke, John Little and David Davidson. The principal achievement was the surveying of the remains of the harbours of Tolmeita and Tocra, with a brief investigation of the remains at Apollonia providing useful comparative material. Visits were also made to Zawiat el Haniya (? Ausigda), Zawiat el Hammama (Phycus) an d Driana (Hadrianopolis) but these proved, as expected, to have limited underwater remains.

Previous accounts of the ancient harbour at Tolmeita failed to agree on the exact location of the port but this controversy would now seem to have been resolved as a result of the discovery of submerged quays, roads and buildings and the underwater remains of protective harbour moles attached to the small islands in the bay to the East of the promontory. All these structures are now in an advanced state of decay as a result of wave action over the centuries but the main outlines are still apparent underwater.