La Missione archeologica di Chieti in Libia: passato, presente e futuro

The Archaeological Mission of Chieti in Libya: Past, Present, and Future · The Archaeological Mission of the University of Chieti has been working in Libya with an independent contract from the DoA since 1997 and has carried out several projects related both to the Museum in Cyrene, with the study and cataloging of sculptural materials, and to the territory, with excavations, restorations, surveys, and gis mapping of villages and gsur. The first project was focused on the study, the diagnostic analyses, the restoration, and the exhibition of sculptures in the Cyrene Museum, which began in 1997 and was completed by 2000. The study and excavation of rock-cut sanctuaries was the second project, in this case a field project of landscape archaeology, starting in 2000, and is completed for the sanctuaries of Budrag and Ain Hofra, while new excavations have been opened at the rock-cut Sanctuary of Dionysus in Baggara. The gis and risk mapping in the necropolises of Cyrene started between 2000 and 2001, also thanks to Bachelor’s and Doctoral theses by team members. The surveys and excavation of agricultural villages in the chora of Cyrene, on the other hand, began in 2007, with a joint Italo-Libyan team from the DoA and several students and colleagues from the Universities of Al Bayda and Benghazi. Recently, a new collaboration with the DoA of Tobruk and Giarabub has led to an agreement to map and study the territory of Tobruk and the necropolises of Giarabub for a joint and open-source gis. In addition to fieldwork and joint training with the DoA and local universities, joint Master’s and Doctoral degrees and non-invasive archaeometric analyses have also been carried out.