Extensive British excavations were carried out at Sabratha in 1948–51 under the joint direction of John Ward-Perkins and Kathleen Kenyon. No definitive report on the work done has since been published, and following the deaths of both directors this task has now been assigned to the writer. An interim account is given of the excavations which took place, drawing particular attention to the evidence for the development of the town as a whole, and of the forum area in particular. It is hoped that the surviving documentation will enable the completion of a substantial report.

were subjected to cluster analysis and multivariate statistics using standard computer library packages available at the Oxford University Computing Service. These methods are described in more detail where appropriate.Approximately 300 sherds were analysed during the project, but of these only about 120 were selected for discussion here, broadly divided into two categories. The complete set of results and a full description of the wares concerned is to be published elsewhere (Kenrick, forthcoming). The first category consists of Hellenistic black-glazed wares, which had been divided into various classes by visual inspection. Some of these classes were attributed tentatively to Attic and south Italian sources on the basis of form and fabric. The sherds analysed in this category were drawn from three of these groups, as follows:

The ‘small finds’ (miscellaneous objects of bone, metal and stone; ceramic objects other than vessels, lamps or sculpture) from the excavations carried out at Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi (1971–75), constitute a neglected category which was ready for publication ten years ago, in the projected final volume of the excavation reports. Since other reports which should have accompanied it in that volume are still far from being submitted, it has been decided to present the small finds in the form of a journal article instead.The conclusions which may be drawn from the 462 catalogued items in terms of trade connections, or of patterns of activity in the places where they were found, are generally limited, but have been noted where possible.

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.

During recent years this journal has published a complete review by Monsieur Roger Guéry of the stamps found on terra sigillata in Algeria up to the date of Algerian independence. The present article reviews the conclusions to be drawn from this material concerning the importation of 'terra sigillata from Italy. The ware has made its first appearance in Algeria by the mid-Augustan period, but the most prolific datable finds belong to the last three quarters of the first century AD. About a third of this material was manufactured at Arezzo and about a sixth of it at Pisa : other sources are also represented but many still remain unknown. The list of potters contains several new names of interest.