A proposal for the use of Core and Buffer Zones to protect the heritage of the Cyrenean landscapes

The ancient landscapes surrounding Cyrene, which have been incredibly well preserved for centuries, have suffered more destructions in the past 7 or 8 years than in the whole of the last millennium. Urban encroachment, strong demographic pressure, unsustainable exploitation of resources and unplanned growth of infrastructures and services are threatening the archaeological heritage of this splendid site. The Department of Antiquities (DoA) has always struggled against these phenomena, but today the destructions are so great that the DoA is often powerless to act. This paper continues previous works on the damage to the Cyrenean necropoleis after 2011(Abdulkariem and Bennett, 2014; Al Raeid et al. 2016; Menozzi, Di Valerio et al. 2017; Menozzi, Tamburrino et al. 2017) and proposes strategies to help, on the basis of a preliminary report organised by the Mission of the University of Chieti in collaboration with the Departments of Antiquities of Cyrene and Tripoli, as requested by UNESCO. This preliminary step towards further improvements and needs to be discussed with other institutions and missions. The first part presents a proposal for controlling the core and buffer zones around Cyrene; the second part is an update on the recent damages to the necropoleis.