The rock-cut tombs of Cyrene's Northern Necropolis have survived to the present day in a pitifully ruinous state because of the looting that has taken place since antiquity and because of their frequent re-use as dwellings or stables. An important archive of typewritten reports, photographs, sketches, and correspondence pertaining to this necropolis is preserved principally in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and documents the first officially-sanctioned archaeological excavation at Cyrene. This was conducted by an American archaeological mission lead by Richard Norton from October 1910 to the end of April 1911 and was jointly sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The documents, particularly those that chronicle the excavation of four tombs and their associated finds, represent an important resource for our understanding of the history of the exploration of this necropolis. They not only offer information on individual monuments, but they also illustrate the typological range of artefacts selected for funerary ritual from the late Classical period into the second century AD, but principally during the Hellenistic period. Additionally, the documents reveal particular funerary practices, such as the successive re-use of tombs that took place at least from the late Hellenistic period onwards.

Two brief reconnaissance visits to archaeological sites in Cyrenaica in November 2010 and April 2012, for the purpose of a new archaeological guidebook, led to a variety of observations concerning rural sites which have been little discussed since the 1950s. The predominant theme was a need for a wide-ranging and detailed reassessment of the chronology and nature of rural settlement. This was carried out in Tripolitania in the 1980s by the UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey, but nothing comparable has been done in Cyrenaica. Sites previously regarded as Byzantine or early Arab have yielded early Roman pottery, and many once taken to be military, with strengthened defences, now seem more likely to be civil and to have been shored up following earthquake damage.

This article is a reassessment of an inscription dated to 473 H. / AD 1080–81 from Qasr al-Hammâm, in the hinterland of Lepcis Magna. The inscription is contextualised within the historical literature of the period and a new reading is proposed; following a careful analysis of the architecture it is suggested that the original plan of the qasr is of medieval date rather than earlier. The inscription appears to corroborate the reliability of Ibn Khaldoūn regarding the settlement of the āl-Sālim tribe in the vicinity of Lepcis: the late eleventh century ‘Émir Sālim’ referred to by Khaldoūn is in all probability the same man as the emir mentioned in the inscription.

Based on the papers of former Italian statesman Aldo Moro and on several secondary sources, this article investigates the Italo-Libyan relationship between the rise to power of Qadhafi in 1969 and the mid-1970s. Qadhafi initially pursued a policy of confrontation with the former colonial power: he expelled the remaining Italian citizens in Libya, asked for post-colonial compensations and a revision of the 1956 treaty.

Gradually, however, a new relationship developed: Italy badly needed Libyan oil, especially in view of the closing of the Suez Canal because of the Arab-Israeli wars, while Qadhafi needed to secure a fixed amount of oil revenues in order to build up domestic and international support for his revolution. Italian companies were also granted public works which were meant to improve Libyan infrastructure while Libyan oil profits could be invested in Italian stocks. Finally, Italy would provide Qadhafi with weapons and support for his regime, as the revelations about the ‘Hilton Assignment’ demonstrate. The author argues that this relationship gave both actors a wide freedom of manoeuvre within the context of the Cold War.

The looming water crisis in Libya necessitates taking immediate action to reduce the agricultural water demand that consumes more than 80% of the water supplies. The available information on water use efficiency and crop water productivity reveals that this proportion can be effectively reduced while maintaining the same, if not more, total agricultural production at the national level. Crop water productivity, which is depressingly low, can be doubled through implementing several measures including relocating all major agricultural crops among different hydroclimatic zones and growth seasons; crop selection based on comparative production advantages; realisation of the maximum genetically determined crop yields; and several other measures of demand water management. There is an urgent need to establish the necessary institutional arrangements that can effectively formulate and implement these measures as guided by agricultural research and extension services incorporating all beneficiaries and stakeholders in the process.

A project is being set up at Shahat to involve the local community in the protection of the archaeological heritage, by educating and informing the community through a series of lectures in secondary schools and guided on-site visits.

UK government policy is firmly directed, through the agencies which control university and research funding, towards a situation in which much academic output will be made accessible to all on the Internet without payment. This has far-reaching consequences for all academic publishers, including the Society, by no means all of which have yet been taken into account by the policy-makers. Members of the Society need to understand the issues and to consider how best to adapt to changing circumstances and to defend its position where necessary.

The paper reports on the sixth season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project (CPP) undertaken in September 2012. As in the spring 2012 season, work focussed on the Haua Fteah cave and on studies of materials excavated in previous seasons, with no fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the Gebel Akhdar. An important discovery, in a sounding excavated below the base of McBurney's 1955 Deep Sounding (Trench S), is of a rockfall or roof collapse conceivably dating to the cold climatic regime of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 (globally dated to c. 190–130 ka) but more likely the result of a seismic event within MIS 5 (globally dated to c. 130–80 ka). The sediments and associated molluscan fauna in Trench S and in Trench D, a trench being cut down the side of the Deep Sounding, indicate that this part of the cave was at least seasonally waterlogged during the accumulation, probably during MIS 5, of the ~6.5 m of sediment cut through by the Deep Sounding. Evidence for human frequentation of the cave in this period is more or less visible depending on how close the trench area was to standing water as it fluctuated through time. Trench M, the trench being cut down the side of McBurney's Middle Trench, has now reached the depth of the latest Middle Stone Age or Middle Palaeolithic (Levalloiso-Mousterian) industries. The preliminary indications from its excavation are that the transition from the Levalloiso-Mousterian to the blade-based Upper Palaeolithic or Late Stone Age Dabban industry was complex and perhaps protracted, at a time when the climate was oscillating between warm-stage stable environmental conditions and colder and more arid environments. The estimated age of the sediments, c. 50–40 ka, places these oscillations within the earlier part of MIS 3 (globally dated to 60–24 ka), when global climates experienced rapid fluctuations as part of an overall trend to increasing aridity and cold.

A group of 25 new AMS radiocarbon dates for historic-era sites in Fazzan is presented. These provide further confirmation of the construction of numerous fortified villages and castle-like structures (qsur) in two of the main oases belts of Fazzan during the Garamantian period, primarily in the third – sixth centuries AD. Further precision is also provided on the dating of a Garamantian and early Islamic urban centre called Qasr ash-Sharraba and the early modern capital of Fazzan at Murzuq.

The first reconnaissance survey of the Wadi ash-Shati, the northernmost line of the oases of the Fazzan, was carried out in 2007 and 2008. This survey aimed to locate archaeological sites of the Garamantian and historic periods in a region that, despite being on record as the most populated of the Fazzan in the historic period, was never previously systematically surveyed. Following the field survey, further examination of high-resolution satellite imagery was carried out. This allowed for the discovery of more sites and the detailed tracing of a number of cemeteries that were only partially surveyed during fieldwork. The report presents the first cross-chronological map of the Wadi ash-Shati and some interpretations of the history of occupation of the area. The future investigation of specific sites, a structured dating programme and further, more detailed, study of historic sources will provide a fuller understanding of this region.