̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Giulio Lucarini

̽��ֱ��Monuments Men of Libya

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 08:20:20 +0000

True heroes, generous hearts: these are the Libyan archaeologists who, with Daesh at their heels, have accomplished the feat of completing the excavation of the Haua Fteah cave in Cyrenaica, one of the most important prehistoric sites of all Africa. When, in 2013, the team of international researchers involved at the site was forced to suspend work, nine Libyan archeologists - two women and seven men - successfully completed the excavation by themselves, securing its secrets for posterity. Thus the history of human population along the North African coast over the last 100 thousand years can now be written.

Haua Fteah is, in fact, the largest karst cave in the Mediterranean (measuring 80 x 20 metres) and is open to the sea a short distance from the city of Susa, the ancient Apollonia. It is a sort of natural hangar, inhabited uninterruptedly by humans from prehistoric times until the present. Investigated for the first time between 1951 and 1955 by Charles McBurney - an archaeologist from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - the same university resumed the research in 2007 under the direction of Professor Graeme Barker, in collaboration with the Libyan Department of Antiquities and an international team of scholars, including myself.

Beginning at the earliest levels, at about 15 meters below the current surface and relating to the Middle Palaeolithic, the cave takes us on a breathtaking journey through time. We first move through the levels dating back to 70,000 years ago where the only human remains found so far at the site - two fragments of Homo sapiens lower jaw - were uncovered: a moving testimony to the arrival of our ancestors along the North African coast. We can then examine the layers of the Upper Paleolithic on our way to the Neolithic, when the first species of domesticated animals and plants of the Levantine regions made their appearance in North Africa. Continuing our journey towards the surface, through layers dating from the Classical Period and thence more recent ones, we arrive at the present day. Like a wonderful freeze frame which has lasted thousands of years, the cave is still in use to this very day - as a livestock shelter - by families of shepherds. It is greatly respected by the local population.

Despite the instability that has followed the collapse, in 2011, of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, we continued to work at Haua Fteah - albeit with considerable difficulty - until September 2012 when the US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was assassinated in Benghazi. ̽��ֱ��terrible news reached us while we were actually digging in the cave. We were struck by a deep sense of loss, but also with concern for our own safety. We left Libya a few days later and, after months of indecision and another very brief campaign in 2013, Graeme Barker reluctantly decided to suspend the excavation. Daesh had definitively taken control of the city of Derna, just 60 kilometers east of Haua Fteah, and the risk to our safety was really too great.

However, our Libyan colleagues continued to monitor the massive open trench, and a short while later they informed us that its walls, exposed since 2007, were not going to last for long. To safeguard and bring to a conclusion the work of years, the excavation had to be completed as soon as possible. “We can do it ourselves,” said Ahmad Saad Emrage, archaeologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Benghazi. “We can still work safely enough. We will be accurate and fast.” So, without any delay, the ‘command’ of operations fell to Ahmad and his team of local archaeologists: Fadl Abdulazeez, Akram Alwarfalli, Moataaz Azwai, Saad Buyadem, Badr Shamata, Asma Sulaiman, Reema Sulaiman and Aiman Alareefi.

Who are these ‘Fantastic 9’? They are, first and foremost, passionate archaeologists and serious professionals. Ahmad and Fadl are the ‘fathers’ of the group, always ready to guide and encourage the younger ones; then there is Moataz, the tireless ‘gentle giant’; then two young daredevils, Akram and Saad, who, after a day of excavation, love to dive from the beautiful cliffs of Lathrun; also Badr and Aiman, who make sure the rest of the troop always has tea in their cups and sheesha to puff on; and then the two sisters, Aasma and Reema, who have iron will. Nine different individuals, nine different histories, united by an immense passion for their homeland, Libya, and by a single unwavering desire: to save their country and its history.

̽��ֱ��first excavation campaign began on May 9th 2015 and was supposed to last for two months, but it was suspended after only four weeks. Ahmad told me that “after work started with no particular problem, the situation had rapidly deteriorated. Local sources had reported to us that Daesh militants had recently been seen in the Susa area. When passing through the town we would often hear gunfire and screams. We were afraid, but we did not want to stop. During the raids against the Daesh positions in Derna, Libyan air force planes and helicopters flew over the cave. We were by no means certain that they were all aware of our presence in the area, and, for fear of being mistaken for terrorists, we would run to take shelter in the back of the cave every time we heard the noise of an approaching aircraft. I remember one day when I was carrying the long plastic tube we used to store the stratigraphy drawings of the excavation over my shoulder; on hearing the sound of an approaching helicopter, Fadl grabbed the tube and threw it away from us, for fear it could be mistaken for a rocket launcher. We were extremely tense, and when the helicopter finally moved away, we looked at each other and burst into laughter.”

“We were increasingly afraid but we continued to work. One day, however, a friend came running, shouting that the night before he had seen masked men in the vicinity of the cave, almost certainly Daesh militiamen. And shortly afterwards the Susa police arrived and forced us to stop work. It was not easy to convince the boys that we could not go on. ‘We can still do it - they kept repeating – we’ll be even more careful and fast’. Reluctantly, however, we collected the equipment and left the cave.”

But that was not the end by any means. Two months later, thanks to the liberation of Derna from Daesh militia, the 'Fantastic 9' returned to the cave and finally managed to complete the excavation. “Do not call us heroes,” Ahmad exclaimed when I told him that I would recount their adventure. “We just did what had to be done, as archaeologists and as Libyans.” However, in a country like Libya that sees its archaeological heritage so dramatically at risk, our colleagues’ achievement was exceptional in its significance: it showed that the Libyans have not given up, that they wish to reclaim their own cultural heritage and determine its fate themselves.

Inset images: Top: the Haua Fteah trench (credit: Cyrenaica Prehistory Project). Bottom: Saad Buyadem and Fadl Abdulazeez (credit: Cyrenaica Prehistory Project).

Dr Giulio Lucarini is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge. Excavation at Haua Fteah has been principally funded by the European Research Council, with supplementary funding from the Society of Libyan Studies, the project’s sponsor.

This article was first published in Archeostorie. Journal of Public Archaeology.

With Daesh militia at their heels, a handful of brave Libyan archaeologists completed the excavation of the Haua Fteah cave in Cyrenaica, North Africa. Cambridge archaeologist Dr Giulio Lucarini tells their story.

“We can do it ourselves,” said Ahmad Saad Emrage, archaeologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Benghazi. “We can still work safely enough. We will be accurate and fast.”

Cyrenaica Prehistory Project

Members of the project at the end of the 2012 season

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Let’s go wild: how ancient communities resisted new farming practices

amb206 — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 11:01:15 +0000

A box of seemingly unremarkable stones sits in the corner of Dr Giulio Lucarini’s office at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research where it competes for space with piles of academic journals, microscopes and cartons of equipment used for excavations. These palm-sized pebbles were used as grinding tools by people living in North Africa around 7,000 years ago. Tiny specks of plant matter recently found on their surfaces shine light on a fascinating period of human development and confirm theories that the transition between nomadic and settled lifestyles was gradual.

̽��ֱ��artefacts in Lucarini’s office come from a collection held in the store of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) just a couple of minutes’ walk away. In the 1950s the well-known Cambridge archaeologist Sir Charles McBurney undertook an excavation of a cave called Haua Fteah located in northern Libya. He showed that its stratigraphy (layers of sediment) is evidence of continuous human habitation from at least 80,000 years ago right up to the present day. Finds from McBurney’s excavation were deposited at MAA.

In 2007, Professor Graeme Barker, also from Cambridge, started to re-excavate Haua Fteah with support from the ERC-funded TRANS-NAP Project. Until 2014, Barker and his team had the chance to spend more than one month each year excavating the site and surveying the surrounding Jebel Akhdar region, in order to investigate the relationships between cultural and environmental change in North Africa over the past 200,000 years.

Now an analysis of stone grinders from the Neolithic layers of Haua Fteah (dating from 8,000-5,500 years ago), carried out by Lucarini as his Marie Skłodowska-Curie Project ‘AGRINA’, in collaboration with Anita Radini ( ̽��ֱ�� of York) and Huw Barton ( ̽��ֱ�� of Leicester), yields new evidence about people living at a time seen as a turning point in human exploitation of the environment, paving the way for rapid expansion in population.

Around 11,000 years ago, during the early phase of the geological period known as Holocene, nomadic communities of Near Eastern regions made the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled farming existence as they began to exploit domesticated crops and animals developed locally. ̽��ֱ��research Lucarini is carrying out in Northern Libya and Western Egypt is increasingly revealing a contrasting scenario for the North African regions.

In a paper published today, Lucarini and colleagues explain that the surfaces of the grinders show plant use-wear and contain tiny residues of wild plants that date from a time when, in all likelihood, domesticated grains would have been available to them. These data are consistent with other evidence from the site, notably those from the analysis of the plant macro-remains carried out by Jacob Morales ( ̽��ֱ�� of the Basque Country), which confirmed the presence of wild plants alone in the site during the Neolithic. Together, this evidence suggests that domesticated varieties of grain were adopted late, spasmodically, and not before classical times, by people who lived in tune with their surroundings as they moved seasonally between naturally-available resources.

Lucarini is an expert in the study of stone tools and has a particular interest in the beginning of food production economies in North Africa. Using an integrated approach of low and high-power microscopy in the George Pitt-Rivers Lab at the McDonald Institute, and in the BioArCh Lab at the ̽��ֱ�� of York, he and his colleagues were able to spot plant residues, too small to be visible to the naked eye, caught in the pitted surface of several of the stones from Haua Fteah. Some of the grinders themselves exhibit clear ‘use-wear’ with their surfaces carrying the characteristic polish of having been used for grinding over long periods.

“It was thrilling to discover that microscopic traces of the plants ground by these stones have survived for so long, especially now that we’re able to use powerful high-power microscopes to look at the distinctive shape of the starch granules that offer us valuable clues to the identities of the plant varieties they come from,” says Lucarini.

By comparing the characteristic shape and size of the starch found in the grinders’ crevices to those in a reference collection of wild and domestic plant varieties collected in different North African and Southern European countries, Lucarini and Radini were able to determine that the residues most probably came from one of the species belonging to the Cenchrinae grasses. Various species of the genus Cenchrus are still gathered today by several African groups when other resources are scarce. Cenchrus is prickly and its seed is laborious to extract. But it is highly nutritious and, especially in times of severe food shortage, a highly valuable resource.

“Haua Fteah is only a kilometre from the Mediterranean and close to well-established coastal routes, giving communities there access to commodities such as domesticated grain, or at least the possibility to cultivate them. Yet it seems that people living in the Jebel Akhdar region may well have made a strategic and deliberate choice not to adopt the new farming practices available to them, despite the promise of higher yields but, instead, to integrate them into their existing practices,” says Lucarini.

“It’s interesting that today, even in relatively affluent European countries, the use of wild plants is becoming more commonplace, complementing the trend to use organically farmed food. Not only do wild plants contribute to a healthier diet, but they also more sustainable for the environment.”

Lucarini suggests that North African communities delayed their move to domesticated grains because it suited their highly mobile style of life. “Opting to exploit wild crops was a successful and low-risk strategy not to rely too heavily on a single resource, which might fail. It’s an example of the English idiom of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Rather than being ‘backward’ in their thinking, these nomadic people were highly sophisticated in their pragmatism and deep understanding of plants, animals and climatic conditions,” he says.

Evidence of the processing of wild plants at Haua Fteah challenges the notion that there was a sharp and final divide between nomadic lifestyles and more settled farming practices – and confirms recent theories that the adoption of domesticated species in North Africa was an addition to, rather than a replacement of, the exploitation of wild resources such as the native grasses that still grow wild at the site.

“Archaeologists talk about a ‘Neolithic package’ – made up of domestic plants and animals, tools and techniques – that transformed lifestyles. Our research suggests that what happened at Haua Fteah was that people opted for a mixed bag of old and new. ̽��ֱ��gathering of wild plants as well as the keeping of domestic sheep and goats chime with continued exploitation of other wild resources – such as land and sea snails – which were available on a seasonal basis with levels depending on shifts in climatic conditions,” says Lucarini.

“People had an intimate relationship with the environment they were so closely tuned to and, of course, entirely dependent on. This knowledge may have made them wary of abandoning strategies that enabled them to balance their use of resources – in a multi-spectrum exploitation of the environment.”

Haua Fteah continues to pose puzzles for archaeologists. ̽��ֱ��process of grinding requires two surfaces – a hand-held upper grinding tool and a base grinding surface. Excavation has yielded no lower grinders which made have been as simple as shallow dish-shaped declivities in local rock surfaces. “Only a fraction of the extensive site has been excavated so it may be that lower grinders do exist but they simply haven’t been found yet,” says Lucarini.

̽��ֱ��uncertain political situation in Libya has resulted in the suspension of fieldwork in Haua Fteah, in particular the excavation of the Neolithic and classical layers of the cave. Lucarini hopes that a resolution to the current crisis will allow work to resume within the next few years. He says: “Haua Fteah, with its 100,000 years of history and continuous occupation by different peoples, is a symbol of how Libya can be hospitable and welcoming. We trust in this future for the country.”

Inset images: Giulio Lucarini analysing the artefacts at the microscope, George Pitt-Rivers Laboratory, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (Aude Gräzer Ohara); Upper grinder found in the Neolithic layers of the cave, with plant residues stuck inside a crevice (Giulio Lucarini); Anita Radini collecting plants and algae for reference collection in Fezzan, Libya (Muftah Haddad); Cenchrinae starch granules from the Haua Fteah archaeological tools (a-c) and modern starch granules of Cenchrus biflorus (d) scale 20 µm (Anita Radini); Cenchrus ciliaris L., Burkina Faso (Arne Erpenbach, African plants - A Photo Guide www.africanplants.senckenberg.de).

Analysis of grinding stones reveals that North African communities may have moved slowly and cautiously from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to more settled farming practices. Newly published research by Cambridge archaeologist Dr Giulio Lucarini suggests that a preference for wild crops was a strategic decision.

Rather than being ‘backward’ in their thinking, these nomadic people were highly sophisticated in their pragmatism and deep understanding of plants, animals and climatic conditions

Giulio Lucarini

Haua Fteah, Cyrenaica, Libya. ̽��ֱ��cave’s entrance.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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̽��ֱ��“wonderful rubbish” of the Gilf Kebir desert

amb206 — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Captured by the camera, she looks enviably elegant with her sketching paper and paint brush. Working in the baking heat of North Africa in 1933 a young German artist called Elisabeth Pauli created meticulous records of the vivid paintings made at least 6,000 years ago in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers in Gilf Kebir, an area on the border of Egypt and Libya famed for its rock art.

On the same expedition out in the Eastern Sahara were the Hungarian aviator and desert explorer László Almásy, the renowned German ethnographer Leo Frobenius, and his colleague Hans Rhotert, who published the results of the expedition in 1952 in the volume Libysche Felsbilder. It was Almásy whose rip-roaring adventures across North Africa and beyond provided the inspiration for the main character in Michael Ondaatje’s prize-winning novel ̽��ֱ��English Patient, made into a film by Anthony Minghella.

̽��ֱ��watercolour sketches that Elisabeth Pauli made, and the striking photographs that show her at work in the Gilf Kebir, belong to the Leo Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt am Mein. Copies of both sets of images feature in an exhibition, Leo Frobenius et L’Art Rupestre Africain, opening today (17 June 2014) at the Goethe Institute in Paris.

̽��ֱ��remarkable discovery of some of Pauli’s original materials in the Cave of Swimmers by a team of Egyptian and Italian archaeologists – among them Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently a researcher at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� - adds an extra dimension to the story of human encounters told by these images.

Shown for the first time at the Goethe Institute are Lucarini’s photographs of the tubes of watercolours Pauli used, and the drawing pins (or thumb tacks) that held the paper on which she skilfully recorded what she saw, in the newly-discovered site which takes its name from the swimmer-like forms of the humans depicted.

“These artists’ materials date from a time when many archaeologists were enthusiastic amateurs and intrepid travellers. Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert drove across the sea of sand in open cab pickups,” said Lucarini. “In an era before accurate colour photography, Pauli’s watercolours show us with a high degree of accuracy the startling beauty of the human and animal figures painted in the cave.”

In 2010 Lucarini was the Field Director of the Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir, run by the Italian-Egyptian Cooperation Programme, working on the conservation of the art in the Cave of Swimmers in the first phase of pioneering efforts to preserve a remote rock art site. ̽��ֱ��intervention in the Gilf Kebir was supported and promoted by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the framework of a long-lasting activity that the Italian Development Cooperation leads in Egypt for the protection of threatened areas.

Overseen by Professor Barbara Barich of the Sapienza ̽��ֱ�� of Rome and ISMEO, the archaeologists and restorers were undertaking the delicate task of stabilising an area of cave art that was becoming increasingly eroded. As a preliminary to starting the work, the team cleared the floor of the cave beneath the drawings. Rock art sites have proved a magnet for tourism with its attendant litter and, with no control on access, many have also been extensively vandalised.

“We needed to sweep the floor clear of debris introduced by visitors so that we would immediately be aware of any material loosened from the painted surface in the process of the conservation work,” said Lucarini. “ ̽��ֱ��chief restorer Maria Cristina Tomassetti and I came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.”

Within minutes, Lucarini was almost certain that he was holding in his hands the watercolour tubes and drawing pins that Elisabeth Pauli had used and discarded in 1933. What could have been swept into a black bin bag, along with the detritus of visiting tourists, for disposal back at Dakhla Oasis, were items that told a poignant story about the history of the exploration of the site.

“ ̽��ֱ��labels on the six watercolour tubes we found have survived and are marked with the name of Dr F Schoenfeld, the founder of a company called LUKAS, which still manufactures artists’ supplies in Düsseldorf. ̽��ֱ��tubes also carry the names of the colours: caput mortuum, ultramarine, Chinese white, brown ochre and raw umber. These shades tally closely with Pauli’s paintings and the predominant colours of the rock and the figures which were made using mainly red and yellow ochre and white kaolin,” said Lucarini.

̽��ֱ��heads of the dozens of artist’s drawing pins that Lucarini picked up in the cave bear the name Günther Wagner with an eye-catching logo of a pelican feeding four chicks. Once he had access to the internet back in Dakhla Oasis, he was able to trace them to the Pelikan company, a firm which still makes writing and craft materials.

He said: “I was thrilled to discover that Pelikan publishes a wonderfully detailed history of its logo on its website. In 1938 the logo was changed slightly and the number of pelican chicks was reduced from four to two which allowed me to date the manufacture of the drawing pins to the time slot that Pauli was working in the Cave of Swimmers."

Also found on the cave floor were two fountain pen nibs, a Haus Neuerburg aluminium cigarette box of the type used by German troops, and a spent soda capsule.

“It would be romantic to believe that the capsule was used by Almásy to make a drink to celebrate his discovery of the cave in 1933,” said Lucarini. “But any idea of romance is eclipsed by the threats faced by Cave of Swimmers and other sites in the Egyptian Western Desert and the whole Sahara that offer us such an immediate and vivid connection with our ancestors.”

̽��ֱ��eight decades that have elapsed since the inter-war years in which Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert publicised their finds have seen the unfolding of a bitter-sweet story for the priceless artworks of the Eastern Sahara. Gilf Kebir has attracted increasing numbers of tourists whose incursions into archaeological sites are largely unregulated and all too often damaging.

Vandalism by a small number of people determined to destroy and disfigure works of art has become a growing problem with caves and shelters defaced by graffiti. Among the sites affected is the Wadi el Obeiyid Cave, in the Farafra Oasis, which was first investigated by Barich in 1995.

“Archaeological projects working in the Sahara must make safeguarding these sites an absolute priority. Professor Rudolph Kuper and colleagues from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cologne, have been working in the Gilf Kebir for many years and have been pioneers in desert protection programmes,” said Lucarini.

“ ̽��ֱ��only way to safeguard these amazing sites is through extensive and long-term educational programmes that teach local communities, and especially the new generations, about their unique heritage and inform guides and other groups about the importance of artworks not only in the Gilf Kebir but in the whole Sahara."

Lucarini says that the Paris exhibition celebrating Frobenius’s work was the perfect opportunity to reveal photographs of his finds from the Almásy expedition to the public for the first time. “As items I see these artists’ materials as a kind of ‘wonderful rubbish’,” he said. “They are a symbol of early desert exploration and, if they have any role today, it is to help raise public consciousness about the fragility of the desert and about the capacity of humankind to create such magnificent pieces of art.”

Inset images: Elisabeth Pauli copying the rock art paintings in the Gilf Kebir (Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt am Mein), watercolour tubes and drawing pin used by Elisabeth Pauli, rock art painting in the Cave of Swimmers, restoration work in progress (all photos: Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Porject in the Gilf Kebir).

A chance find in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers adds a colourful twist to an exhibition in Paris celebrating the work of ethnographer Leo Frobenius in raising awareness of the rock art of Africa. ̽��ֱ��discovery by Italian archaeologist Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, underlines the vital importance of safeguarding the heritage of the Gilf Kebir.

We came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.

Giulio Lucarini

Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir

View of the desert from the Cave of Swimmers

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