An Engraved Landscape Rock Carvings In The Wadi Al Ajal Libya

An Engraved Landscape is a contextual analysis of a substantial new corpus of engravings from the Wadi al-Ajal, situated in the Central Saharan region of south west Libya. The wadi is renowned as the heartland of the Garamantian civilization, which emerged from local mobile Pastoral communities in the 1st millennium BC, and dominated trans-Saharan trade and politics for over a thousand years. Extensive archaeological and palaeoenvironmental investigations in recent years have provided detailed insight into the later prehistory and protohistory of the wadi and surrounding areas. However, prior to the fieldwork detailed in this work, only a handful of carvings had been recorded in the wadi. This work is based on systematic survey, conducted between 2004 and 2009, which recorded around 2,500 previously unknown or unpublished engraved and inscribed rock surfaces. All forms of engraving, whether figurative or surface markings, were viewed as significant residues of human interaction with the rock surface and were recorded. The resulting database provides an opportunity to analyze the engravings in relation to their changing physical and cultural contexts, and the discussion offers a fresh interpretation of Saharan rock art based on this substantial new evidence. An Engraved Landscape also captures in detail a unique heritage resource that is currently inaccessible and threatened. This record of the fragile engravings provides an important source of information for researchers and students.

An Engraved Landscape is a contextual analysis of a substantial new corpus of engravings from the Wadi al-Ajal, situated in the Central Saharan region of south west Libya. The wadi is renowned as the heartland of the Garamantian civilization, which emerged from local mobile Pastoral communities in the 1st millennium BC, and dominated trans-Saharan trade and politics for over a thousand years. Extensive archaeological and palaeoenvironmental investigations in recent years have provided detailed insight into the later prehistory and protohistory of the wadi and surrounding areas. However, prior to the fieldwork detailed in this volume, only a handful of carvings had been recorded in the wadi. This volume is based on systematic survey, conducted between 2004 and 2009, which recorded around 2,500 previously unknown or unpublished engraved and inscribed rock surfaces. All forms of engraving, whether figurative or surface markings, were viewed as significant residues of human interaction with the rock surface and were recorded. The resulting database provides an opportunity to analyse the engravings in relation to their changing physical and cultural contexts, and the discussion offers a fresh interpretation of Saharan rock art based on this substantial new evidence. An Engraved Landscape also captures in detail a unique heritage resource that is currently inaccessible and threatened. This record of the fragile engravings provides an important source of information for researchers and students. The Gazetteer is presented in Volume 2.

Like previous series entries, this volume covers rock art research and management all over the world over a 5-year period, in this case 2015-19. Contributions once again show the wide variety of approaches that have been taken in different parts of the world and reflect the expansion and diversification of perspectives and research questions.

The rock art sites of the Tadrart Acacus in southwestern Libya were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985, largely owing to the activities started in 1955 by Fabrizio Mori, founder of the Libyan-Italian Mission in the Tadrart Acacus and Messak. Since the beginning, the Department of Antiquities of Tripoli and Sebha, Libya, and Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, have worked in the region nearly without interruption until 2011. This book presents the archive of the rock art sites, identified and recorded by the Italian Mission and by independent scholars, as described and critically assessed by the authors within the framework of the ASArt-DATA project (the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme). The contributions introducing the catalogue contextualize the environmental, archaeological, and cultural aspects of the engravings and paintings. They include chapters addressing the historical, cultural, and diplomatic issues involved in the long-term bilateral scientific cooperation.

This ground-breaking volume pushes back conventional dating of the earliest sedentarisation, urbanisation and state formation in the Sahara.