The Archaeological Mission of Chieti University in Cyrenaica: Aims, Results and Possibilities

The paper illustrates the projects of the Archaeological Mission of Chieti University since 1997, involving several teams on different fields and including both Libyan, Italian and Spanish scholars, technicians, restorers, workers and senior students. The first project which is presented in the paper is the arrangement of the Pavilion of the Sculptures at Cyrene, and it saw the involvement of a large Italo-Libyan team , working for several years in cataloguing, cleaning, restoring, and then projecting the arrangement of the statues and the layout of the exhibition. The second project of the team has topographic bases and started from our original study of the rocky ‘rural’ sanctuary , but was soon transformed into a project of intra-site GIS, mapping and studying the extraordinary patrimony in ‘rupestrian’ architecture, both funerary and belonging to remote sanctuaries, with particular attention to the areas to the east (Ain Hofra/Bu Miliou areas) and to the west (Baggara hill and Budrag) of Cyrene, which represent also the most dangerous zones for robbery and vandalisms. A third and more recent project started in 2007 and it is the wider mapping of the chora of Cyrene and the excavation of Lamluda as site sample, as layers of a ‘Macro-GIS’ of the region to the east of Cyrene. Again the aim is to record as much as possible, in order to know the location of the so called ‘minor sites’ in the region, which are particularly numerous and unknown; however, they were, from the late Classical to the Islamic periods, vital sites for the management of the local economy, for the export of the local products, both in regional and Mediterranean circuits, as well as crucial points for the main road network and for the ancient limes. A myriad of villages, rural settlements, gsur, fortified basilicas, mansions, farms have played an important economic and political role for the territory, certainly with differentiated hierarchic functions, looking at their distribution and relationship, and closely linked both with the main towns and centres, as Cyrene, Darnis and so on, but also with the main ports. The surveys and excavations at Lamluda, for instance, have demonstrated that the site had a long and interesting life, with the earlier finds dating to the Hellenistic period, and probably belonging to a Libyan settlement closely interacting with the neighbouring Greek areas, but certainly exploiting autonomously the territory in this area, then transformed, in Roman times, into a settlement with strong urban features, such as a regular planning based on the interaction of a main cardo with a decumanus maximus, and with a large ‘forum’, open towards south and acting as ‘market’ along the main road network. In late Roman-Byzantine period and certainly with the early Islamic phase, the town planning saw strong changes, with the construction of fortified buildings, changing again the layout of the village. Lamluda, as also Mgernes, Jebbra, GabelYounis, OmSellem and so on, are great examples of larger villages managing the agricultural exploitation of the region, which has to be considered the main centres for the local economy for a long period, thanks to their position in fertile areas, along the main road network, at the crossing point between the axes connecting the area of Cyrene with the east centres, and the roads linking, running along the main S/N widian, the desert south to the coastal sites to the north, and cutting in this point the three main terraces of the Djebel Akdar.