Abstract:The EAMENA (Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa) project is a collaboration between the Universities of Leicester, Oxford and Durham; it is funded by the Arcadia Fund and the Cultural Protection Fund. This paper explores the development of the EAMENA methodology, and discusses some of the problems of working across such a broad region. We discuss two main case studies: the World Heritage site of Cyrene illustrates how the project can use satellite imagery (dating from the 1960s to 2017), in conjunction with published data to create a detailed set of database records for a single site and, in particular, highlights the impact of modern urban expansion across the region. Conversely, the Homs Cairns case study demonstrates how the EAMENA methodology also works at an extensive scale, and integrates image interpretation (using imagery dating from the 1960s to 2016), landuse mapping and field survey (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) to record and analyse the condition of hundreds of features across a small study region. This study emphasises the impact of modern agricultural and land clearing activities. Ultimately, this paper assesses the effectiveness of the EAMENA approach, evaluating its potential success against projects using crowd-sourcing and automation for recording archaeological sites, and seeks to determine the most appropriate methods to use to document sites and assess disturbances and threats across such a vast and diverse area.
Two seasons of work have now been conducted by British and French survey teams, in conjunction with members of the Libyan Antiquities Department, under the charge of Dr. Abdullah Shaiboub. The objectives of the survey are to locate, survey and analyse the extensive remains of the ancient agricultural settlements that can be found in the wadis of the hinterlands of Tripolitania and the Sirtica. Within the framework established by the Department in cooperation with Unesco lies the archaeological aim of recording the evidence for periods when extensive areas of the pre-desert were, for whatever reasons, cultivated in ways that are not similarly practised today. In the longer term the programme is designed to locate those areas where modern farming might be re-established. Archaeology is thus brought into line with the aims of the modern world.For the purposes of this report we intend to concentrate on the period which we call the Romano/Libyan in which the great majority of those farming settlements flourished. The prehistoric evidence is in any case mainly of the palaeolithic period, on which there is a separate section.The preferred zone of settlement in Tripolitania has traditionally been the well watered coastal plain and the adjacent limestone hills of the Tarhuna Gebel as far south as the town of Beni Ulid, for these regions have more than 200 mm of rain a year, regarded as the threshold for settled farming without irrigation. Prehistoric settlement concentrated here, and mixed farming has probably characterised this zone from the fourth millennium b.c. In the Roman period the coastal cities like Sabratha and Leptis Magna were supported by prosperous farms on the plain and in the Gebel. In the Islamic period, too, the same region was densely settled.
Copper mining and smelting were important activities in various predesert wadis during the Iron Age, Nabatean, Roman, and Byzantine periods in southern Jordan and major spoil tips together with slag heaps remain as a legacy of such enterprises. Barley has grown in the area for a prolonged period and currently wild barley plants are affected by toxic cations, which reduce their yields. It is considered that such plants provide an adequate model to assess how similar plants would have performed, in terms of productivity, in the past. The population of miners/slaves, guards, etc., would have been subject to bioaccumulation of heavy metals, which conceivably would have led to detrimental effects on their health. Inhalation and ingestion of particulate pollutants cannot be discounted. It is argued that the population may have been further weakened as a consequence of food shortage, due to reduced plant productivity, as cereals are important foods for both humans and the animals upon which they are dependent. A sizeable mining community could only have been maintained by large-scale importation of food or a massive intensification of agricultural activity.
The Garamantian civilization flourished in modern Fezzan, Libya, between 900 BC and 500 AD, during which the aridification of the Sahara was well established. Study of the archaeological remains suggests a population successful at coping with a harsh environment of high and fluctuating temperatures and reduced water and food resources. This study explores the activity patterns of the Garamantes by means of cross-sectional geometric properties. Long bone diaphyseal shape and rigidity are compared between the Garamantes and populations from Egypt and Sudan, namely from the sites of Kerma, el-Badari, and Jebel Moya, to determine whether the Garamantian daily activities were more strenuous than those of other North African populations. Moreover, sexual dimorphism and bilateral asymmetry are assessed at an intra- and inter-population level. The inter-population comparisons showed the Garamantes not to be more robust than the comparative populations, suggesting that the daily Garamantian activities necessary for survival in the Sahara Desert did not generally impose greater loads than those of other North African populations. Sexual dimorphism and bilateral asymmetry in almost all geometric properties of the long limbs were comparatively low among the Garamantes. Only the lower limbs were significantly stronger among males than females, possibly due to higher levels of mobility associated with herding. The lack of systematic bilateral asymmetry in cross-sectional geometric properties may relate to the involvement of the population in bilaterally intensive activities or the lack of regular repetition of unilateral activities.
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