Farming the Desert: Synthesis

by David Mattingly

. 1996, bright clean copy, inscription on title page, no other markings, Professional booksellers since 1981

404 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

Specialist in the archaeology of the Roman empire. Fellow of the British Academy since 2003.

Reviews

[Gary Reger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Farming the Desert, Volume One: Synthesis" reports the results of work done by British archaeologists in the pre-desert territory of present-day Libya. After the archaeological work done by Italians in the 1930s (see "Sahara Italiano, I, Ferzan e Oasis di Gat" [1937]), this project, directed by Graeme Barker (who should be listed as the author/editor, not David Mattingly, although he contributed to or wrote most chapters), was an effort to understand the fortified gsur that populate the landscape and the ways people used the land, especially from the first to fifth centuries CE.

Sponsored by UNESCO, the project addressed not just the archaeology, but also the geography, climate, and biology of the landscape -- it was therefore a model of comprehensive investigation of a landscape. The researchers also examined the (often unpublished) work of their predecessors, incorporating those results into their research. The result is a monumental volume, an invaluable contribution not only to understanding the Libyan past but also to semi-arid and arid land archaeology in general.

Libya today, of course, is a disaster: endless civil war, breakaway groups, a dangerous and expensive route for central African refugees hoping to reach Europe. One of the members of this project, David Mattingly, continued to work in Libya, moving farther south into the Fezzan; he is still overseeing the publication of the results of that work and of younger scholars interested in the Libyan desert past. One can onlu hope that eventually Libya will become a stable, safe country where further work can be done -- there is surely much to do.