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SOCIETY FOR LIBYAN STUDIES

ANNUAL REVIEW 2020-21

running foot | 1

About the Society for Libyan Studies	4
Council and Ofcers	5
President’s Letter	6
Director’s Letter	7
Obituaries	9
Notes from Libya	10
Research Grants	11
Society-afliated Projects	15
Events	17
Publications 2020–21	21
Library and Archive	23
The Year in Figures	27
Financial Report	28

ABOUT THE SOCIETY FOR LIBYAN STUDIES

The address of the Society is:

c/o The British Academy, 10–11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH.

The Society maintains a website at http://www.societyforlibyanstudies.org. The General Secretary may be contacted by email at gensec@societyforlibyanstudies.org

The Society is a Registered UK Charity, no. 259262, founded in 1969 with the object of promoting studies in regard to Libya. To this end, it seeks through its activities:

to support and undertake research relating to the history, antiquities, culture, languages, literature, art, institutions, customs and natural history of Libya;
to organize and promote missions to Libya for these purposes;
to cooperate with other organisations sharing the same fields of interest;
to arrange for the publication of research in these fields;
to hold lectures and meetings, to publish an annual journal (Libyan Studies) and other publications which will enhance and promote public knowledge of all aspects of Libyan culture and society.

The Society is governed in accordance with Rules first adopted in 1969 and subsequently modified in 1974, 1982, 2010, 2019 and 2020. The Society is recognised by the Charity Commission as an unincorporated association. The President is elected at the Annual General Meeting for a term of four years; the Director is elected for a period of three years, which may be extended to a maximum of five years; the Assistant Director, the Treasurer, the Head of Mission and the Editor of the Society’s journal are elected annually and may be re-elected without limit; the remainder of the Council is composed of up to eight Ordinary Members who are elected annually and may be re-elected, subject to a maximum continuous period of service of four years. In proposing Ordinary Members for election, the Council seeks to secure as wide a range of skills within its fields of interest as possible. The Officers and Council, who constitute the trustees of the charity, confirm that they have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the Society’s aims and objectives and in planning future activities and setting the grant-making policy for the year.

The Society receives the major part of its funds from the British Academy. This relationship is currently governed by a Letter of Agreement between the parties, dated 17 November 2016 and relating to the period from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2020. Apart from various forecasting and reporting requirements, this letter specifies that the funds provided by the Academy (received in turn from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) are to be used ‘to benefit the UK research endeavour’. This corresponds only in part to the objects of the Society (‘to promote studies in regard to Libya’). It is therefore incumbent upon the Council to confirm that the grant payments from the British Academy have been applied in accordance with both the terms of the Letter of Agreement between the Academy and the Society, and the aims and objectives of the Society as stated in its rules and declared to the Charity Commission for England. Council confirms that, in respect of the accounts presented herewith, this is so.

4 | About the Society for Libyan Studies

COUNCIL AND OFFICERS

The Officers and Council on 31 March 2021 were as follows:

Officers

President: PROFESSOR ROBERT FOLEY, MA, PhD, ScD, FBA, FSA, FLS Vice Presidents: PROFESSOR GRAEME BARKER, MA, PhD, CBE, FBA, FSA SHIRLEY STRONG, MBE Director: CORISANDE FENWICK, BA, MA, PhD, FSA Honorary Treasurer: OLIVER KIMBERLEY, MA, ACA Assistant Director: NICCOLÒ MUGNAI, BA, MA, PhD Head of Mission: PAUL BENNETT, MBE, BA, Hon. D.Litt, FSA, CIFA Honorary Archivist: EMERITUS PROFESSOR CHARLOTTE ROUECHÉ, MA Editor, Libyan Studies: VICTORIA LEITCH, BA, MPhil, DPhil

Council: PROFESSOR DAVID ATKINSON, BSc, PhD SALEM EL-MAIAR, MPhil, FRGS SAM NIXON, MA, PhD CHARIS OLSZOK, MA, PhD NICHOLE SHELDRICK, MA, DPhil General Secretary: PAULINE GRAHAM Honorary Librarian: DAWN WRIGHT, BA, DipLib Publications Manager: VICTORIA LEITCH, BA, MPhil, DPhil

Research Grants Committee

The Director The Honorary Treasurer The Assistant Director The Head of Mission PROFESSOR KEVIN MACDONALD, BA, PhD, FSA (Committee Chairman) SAUL KELLY, BA, PhD

Publications Committee

The Director The Honorary Treasurer The Assistant Director The General Secretary Editor of Libyan Studies Publications Manager PROFESSOR JONATHAN HILL, MA, PhD

Council and Officers | 5

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

1969 – the year that the Society for Libyan Studies was founded – was a very different place, both in Libya and Britain. Libya was about to enter the Gadaffi years, with all the things that entailed for both Libyans and for relationships with other countries, while the UK was building towards joining what was to become the EU in 1973. Archaeology, research, and academic life was also very different. The SLS was not the product of thinktanks and retreats to work out strategic goals, let alone corporate missions; it was founded by a committed group of scholars, individually and jointly keen to work with Libyans and to support research in Libya.

The origins of the SLS are of its time – independent people, taking the initiative, and building an institution to achieve goals beyond their own. And the SLS has thrived as such – a community of scholars, a community of people who love Libya, and a community of Libyans concerned with their heritage and culture.

The British Academy is the major funder of the Society, and the SLS has developed and adapted in partnership with it. This is no place to recall all the changes that have taken place over the last 50 years, but one of them has been that the SLS has moved from being an isolated learned society to becoming part of a larger group of loosely linked institutes. The British Institutes of Research abroad – scattered across Europe, Asia and Africa – were all brought more fully under the umbrella of the British Academy, the UK’s leading institution for the humanities and social sciences. The SLS is the smallest of these, and – appropriately enough for a desert society – rather nomadic, and certainly lacking the grand courtyards of the British School at Rome.

We are currently living in a time of renaissance for the BIRI – the collective noun for the British International Research Institutes. This is partly due to activities well beyond the SLS’s control, most specifically Brexit, and the Government’s greater concern for its global image and impact. But it is also due to a much greater sense of community and shared interest among the different BIRI. Directors of the institutes meet regularly –to discuss how to develop one of the great success stories of British research, its overseas impact and collaborations with scholars from many countries. Under the recent leadership of Professor Charles Tripp, the British Academy’s BIRI are now stronger and better supported than before. As part of it, a more collective presentation of the BIRI is now underway, and will be unveiled shortly.

This has been a year of change for the Council. Professor David Atkinson stepped down as Chair of the Society and was replaced by Dr Corisande Fenwick (formerly Honorary Secretary) as our new Director and Dr Niccoló Mugnai as our new Assistant Director. Professor Loredana Polezzi has stepped down from Council and is replaced by Salam Maier. David Atkinson (former Chair, University of Hull) also continues on Council. The changes in the titles of our Officers – the Chair has become the Director, and the Honorary Secretary has become the Assistant Director – have been brought in to align ourselves more closely with practices across all the BIRI.

I hope that as a Society we retain the intellectual and scholarly independence that marked our founders, but we should also take the opportunity to celebrate that our success has brought us into wider partnerships, not just in Libya and across North Africa, but also with our sister institutions.

6 | President’s Letter

DIRECTOR’S LETTER

As I write this shortly after the national lockdown was lifted in the UK, it seems remarkable that the Society for Libyan Studies has been operating online for more than a year. As this Annual Review makes abundantly clear, 2020–21 has been a very rich year for the SLS despite the challenges posed by Covid-19 and national lockdowns. The range of activities is extraordinary for a small research institution with limited resources. We have supported UK scholars to conduct research in Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia and the Canary Islands via our grant scheme, as well as establishing a new partnership with the MaLiCH project which aims to remove three of Libya’s World Heritage Sites from the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger. Our publications go from strength to strength with a new series called Short Histories of North Africa , the first of which has now been published ( Desert Drivers by A. Goudie). Thanks to a very generous donation, we were also able to deliver Arabic translations of P. Kenrick’s Libyan Archaeological Guides:

Cyrenaica to Tunisia and Libya. While we have deeply missed our usual London lectures, our new Youtube channel with English and Arabic lectures and our online lecture series have proved very successful and attracted much larger audiences from around the globe.

We have also made significant progress on one of our strategic priorities – the digitisation of the SLS Archive. The SLS has a long and distinguished history of archaeological research in Libya and over the past few years we have been cataloguing and digitising our substantial physical archive of photographs, plans, notes and other materials housed at the University of Leicester, and developing, with King’s College London, the Heritage Gazetteer of Libya (https://www.slsgazetteer.org/). This year, we were able to fund a series of posts for early-career academics to continue this work during the lockdown. In Leicester, Dr Ahmed Buzaian as John Dore Scholar, has digitised photographs from Sabratha, Ghirza, Lepcis and Cyrene, while at UCL, Dr Valeria Vitale as Kenyon Fellow led a team of 10 UCL students to enhance the gazetteer over the summer. Subsequently Raluca-Ioana Lazerescu as Kathleen Kenyon Intern has continued to update and improve our virtual resources on Libya’s heritage. We are seeking funds to continue this work so that this exceptional resource on Libyan cultural heritage can be made accessible to all.

We must, however, also look to the future. The activities of the SLS are funded primarily by the public purse and we, along with other institutions serving the humanities and social sciences, continue to face a number of challenges as our relevance and value-for-money are questioned. For the year ahead at least, we are shielded from government funding cuts, but it is becoming increasingly urgent that the SLS is able to demonstrate its value as a key player in the UK’s overseas research infrastructure and its role in supporting cutting-edge research in the humanities and social sciences in Libya and the wider North African region.

In this context, it is vital that the SLS shows itself able to propose a vision for the future that is dynamic, forward looking and creative, consolidating its traditional strengths in the history, archaeology and heritage of Libya and North Africa whilst continuing to expand its reach in the humanities and social sciences. We have already

Director’s letter | 7

welcomed Dr Niccolò Mugnai (University of Oxford) as our new Assistant Director; he brings new research capabilities and energies to the SLS as we seek to grow our outreach and engagement activities, as well as to generate income and new partnerships. This year, we will be consulting widely with members and friends of the SLS to explore new possibilities and I invite you to share your thoughts on how we can grow our membership and fundraising activities, increase the visibility of the SLS and its activities, and ensure its sustainable future.

In these strange and uncertain times, the year ahead will undoubtedly bring new challenges. We are extremely grateful to all our new and existing members for their continued support of the SLS and its activities, whether through renewing subscriptions, donating or helping to raise the international profile of the SLS. Our members have been continuously generous in their support and encouragement throughout the lockdown. I am very much looking forward to welcoming members to events in London in the near future.

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8 | Director’s Letter

OBITUARIES

It is with great sadness that the Society lost two founder members in April 2021.

Tony Allan

Professor Emeritus at King’s College London and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, passed away on 15 April 2021, he was born in January 1937. He was a pioneer in the study of water issues in semi-arid regions and on the role of global systems in ameliorating local and regional water deficits. He was named the Stockholm Water Prize Laureate in 2008. Tony’s interest in North Africa dates back to his PhD on water management in Libya, completed in 1971. He has been a key figure through much of the history of the Society. He served on the Council from the beginning as the appointee of the Royal Geographic Society and was Chairman from 1976 to 1978 and continued to be on Council until in 2010.

Anthony Thwaite

The well-known poet and critic, passed away on the 22 April 2021 at the age of 90. He served on the Council from 2007– 2011. Anthony had a deep love for Libya which is recounted in his book The Deserts of Hesperides , first published in 1969 and which was subsequently reprinted by the Society’s Silphium Press in 2015. Having spent his National Service near Leptis Magna he was encouraged both as a poet and as an amateur archaeologist to return to Libya, and in 1965 he took two years unpaid leave to return with his wife Ann and his family where he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Libya in Benghazi. In the early 2000’s he joined the Eusperides expeditions, assisting the finds specialists and maintaining team spirit. He was greatly loved by all the team, Libyan colleagues and students, members of the Department staff and our friends in the Benghazi community. Many of his poems dwell on Libya and its heritage, including Sigma which he chose to read on Radio 4 when the BBC celebrated his 90th birthday last year.

Obituaries | 9

NOTES FROM LIBYA

From our Head of Mission, Professor Paul Bennett

Libya remains in a state of political change, however, there have been several encouraging events. First, Dr Hafed Walda has been appointed Ambassador to the Permanent Libyan Delegation to UNESCO. A graduate of the University of Benghazi and King’s College London, where he became a member of staff, and a former member of SLS Council, he has consistently promoted the interests of Libyan heritage. Second, on 14 February this year, the Libyan Government signed the UNESCO 2003 Convention safeguarding intangible heritage. This is a significant act which signals governmental recognition of the importance of cultural heritage to the nation. Finally, in mid-March a new museum was opened at Tocra. The previous museum built in 1972 was in a decayed and dangerous state but housed an outstanding and nationally important collection of Greek pottery found during excavations on the foreshore in 1963–5. The museum building provides a new, secure and stable home for the collection, together with other remarkable finds from ancient Taucheira. Other museums in eastern Libya have recently opened their doors to the public or are planning to do so – a clear sign of peace and progress.

There are several rising stars in Libyan archaeology whose careers have been developed through their connection with the SLS and the University of Leicester. These include Dr Ahmed Buzaian, Dr Muna Haroun Abdelhamed and Dr Mohamed Adrbba who gained their doctorates in archaeology from the University of Leicester recently. Their theses will be published by the Society as Open Access volumes. Another graduate of Leicester University is Dr Ahmad Emrage who was selected as Fulbright Scholar late in 2019 and spent a year teaching at the University of Oberlin, Ohio, USA. Back in Benghazi now he is teaching and conducting new fieldwork along the coast (the Cyrenaican Coastal Survey), leading a team of members of the Department of Antiquities, assessing the impact of new development on archaeological sites. The project, managed by MarEA (Maritime Endangered Archaeology) based at Southampton, Oxford and Dublin, is funded by the Arcadia Foundation, with a grant from SLS and includes remote sensing by satellite imagery and ground-truthing by the Libyan team.

Although it remains impossible for us to enter Libya at this time, the Society continues to sponsor a number of projects (see Society-affiliated Projects on page 15) that have been designed to assist our Libyan colleagues in the DoA and in Libyan Universities to stimulate new beginnings for Libyan Heritage, with meaningful protections and valorisation of the past as an asset for future prosperity and the wider research community.

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10 | Notes from Libya

RESEARCH GRANTS

In 2020–21, the SLS awarded nine grants for a total of £30,347 to UK scholars at different career stages for research in Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and the Canary Islands. Our grant scheme is funded through our grant from the British Academy; we were able to increase the amount available for disbursement by drawing on our contingency funds. Travel restrictions due to Covid-19 have resulted in a significant decline in the number of applications from early-career scholars and disciplines beyond archaeology. We are therefore introducing a series of ‘writing fellowships’ for early-career scholars which provide funds to support the uninterrupted writing-up of PhD or postdoctoral research for publication.

TRAVEL GRANTS

Dr Roger Blench (University of Cambridge) – £770 Settlement of the Canary Islands

This travel grant will allow Dr Blench to visit the Canary Archipelago to put together a coherent model of the historical relations between the archipelago and the North African coast. The objective is to visit the main museums, including those attached to archaeological sites, and explore and photograph relevant archaeological and ethnographic materials, which will be compared with the material culture of the Maghreb.

Fortified granaries at Cenobio, Gran Canaria (photo R. Blench)

Research Grants | 11

Dr Andrew Dufton (University of Edinburgh) – £800 The cycle of North African urban renewal under Rome

This travel grant to visit key Tunisian sites will support Dr Dufton’s preparation of a monograph examining urban decay and renewal in Roman North Africa. Regional data for city origins and administrative status will be compared to detailed urban biographies of individual cities and examples of neighbourhood-level regeneration efforts drawn from past excavation reports.

PILOT PROJECT AWARDS

Dr Louise Rayne (Durham University) – £3,000 Ancient water management in Jufra Oases

This grant supports a new project investigating the layout, morphology and chronology of ancient foggaras (groundwater collecting conduits) in the Jufra oases of Libya, to model the size of the agricultural areas they would have supplied. Foggaras near the towns of Hon and Waddan will be mapped in detail using satellite imagery and elevation models; knowledge of their chronology will be improved using field survey and scientific dating.

Ancient foggaras at risk of destruction from modern agricultural expansion south-east of Waddan, Jufra (Landsat images courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey)

Dr Eleni Zimi (Oxford) – £2,300

Chemical analysis and scanning electron microscopy on black glazed pottery from Euesperides in Cyrenaica (6th to mid-3rd centuries BCE)

This grant provides funds for analyses on the clay fabric of undecorated black-glazed pots from the site of Euesperides, in order to scientifically confirm the imports of Athenian, Corinthian and Aegean fine wares; to characterize the clay of fine wares identified as local or regional (Cyrenaican); and to create a clay fabric database for imported and regionally made pottery in Cyrenaica.

12 | Research Grants

Dr Michael Brass (UCL) – £4,810

Expedition to the southern Gezira (Sudan): mobility, identity and interaction of pastoral peoples with the Nile Valley

This grant will provide funding for the 2021 season which focuses on excavating new burials and habitation levels ranging from 2000 years ago to the late 6th millennium BC, the latter continuing the first securely recorded Mesolithic occupation in the southern Gezira. Materials will be compared with those from the central Sahara, and new opportunities will be discerned to address issues of health, identity, interconnectivity and lifestyle pathways for the Eastern Sahara/Sahel.

Prof. David Mattingly (University of Leicester) – £2,997 Oasis civilization: extending historic era radiocarbon dating in Wadi Draa, Morocco

The award funds seven AMS radiocarbon dates on samples gathered from a larger ERC and AHRC funded project on the archaeology of the Wadi Draa in southern Morocco. The aim is to date key Protohistoric socio-economic and technological developments in this part of the Sahara, and to establish more accurate knowledge of the main stages of further oasis and urban expansion in the Medieval period.

Dr Julia Nikolaus (Ulster University) – £3,000 The Cyrenaica Coastal Survey (CCS)

The award supports a pilot study on the threats and damages to archaeological sites along the coast of Cyrenaica, between Apollonia (Sousa) and Teucheira (Tocra), using remote sensing techniques as well as physical land and underwater survey. The aim is to conduct a comprehensive condition assessment of both terrestrial and submerged archaeological sites.

Drone image of small hilltop site that is severely threatened by the urban expansion of the modern town of Sousa (photo F. El Gumati, CCS)

Research Grants | 13

RESEARCH AWARDS

Dr Claudia Näser (UCL) – £7,470

Piety, power and representation. A new type of church architecture in a fortification context in Late Medieval North Africa

The award supports the completion of an excavation of a Late Medieval Nubian church (c. AD 1150–1500) on the island of Kurta in the Middle Nile Valley, currently under threat from looting and associated destructions. Kurta represents the second example of a hitherto unknown type of church, built in a highly exposed position on top of the fortification walls of a Medieval fortress.

Emerita Prof. Charlotte Roueché (KCL) – £5,200 Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania: 2021 edition

This award funds the preparation of a corpus of all published inscriptions from Roman Tripolitania, building on IRT 2009 and adding some 200 further texts. Every entry will be linked to the Heritage Gazetteer of Libya; there will also be a full up-todate epigraphic bibliography and translations of the new texts. The corpus will be prepared in EFES, in parallel to IRCyr 2020, to create a stable resource which is simple to maintain.

14 | Research Grants

SOCIETY-AFFILIATED PROJECTS

MANAGING LIBYA’S CULTURAL HERITAGE

Managing Libya’s Cultural Heritage (MaLiCH) is a three-year project funded by the ALIPH Foundation with the Society for Libyan Studies as one of the key partners. Since March 2020 the project team, led by Dr Will Wootton at King’s College London, has been working with the Libyan Department of Antiquities (DoA) and the Ghadames City Promotion and Development Authority (GCPDA) to produce the documentation necessary to remove three of Libya’s World Heritage Sites from the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger. To achieve this aim, we are building capacity amongst their staff and planning emergency interventions at the sites in line with their management plans.

TRANS-SAHARA PROJECT

The European Research Council funded Trans-SAHARA project, directed by Professor David Mattingly, reached its conclusion during the year with the publication of the final pair of the four-volume Trans-Saharan Archaeology series (see below). This co-publishing venture between the Society and Cambridge University Press has proved a great success and was celebrated at the AGM meeting in December 2020.

BULLA REGIA

This flagship project sponsored by the Society and directed by Dr Corisande Fenwick and Dr Moheddine Chaouali aims to reconstruct the urban development of Bulla Regia from its Numidian origins to its abandonment in the Middle Ages and to understand the diet, nutrition, health, lifestyle, origins and mobility of its late antique inhabitants through excavations, bioarchaeological analysis. The planned final season in September 2020 was cancelled due to Covid-19 and it is hoped that we will be able to complete the excavations in 2021–22. In the interim, the project team have been conducting isotopic and a DNA analysis on samples in the UK and working on the analysis of the mosaics uncovered.

HAUA FTEAH

The now completed Haua Fteah excavations directed by Professor Graeme Barker, partly sponsored by the Society, are at the publication stage. In 2020 an article was published on sedimentary and human responses to aridity in Mediterranean caves (Farr, L., R. Inglis & G. Barker); and in 2021 a video conference for the Society, The Little Ice Age in the Southeast Mediterranean and Southern West Asia (C. Hunt). The main volumes are in preparation.

Society-affliated Projects | 15

EUESPERIDES

Work on the publication of the Society-sponsored Euesperides excavations directed by Professor Paul Bennett and Professor Andrew Wilson are underway. The first monograph publication will be the finewares, followed by the overall excavation reports and other finds. These publications are now vital to underpin the importance of the archaeological levels of the Greek city of Euesperides (the first Benghazi), to demonstrate to the local authority, to landowners and local people why they are worth saving. An additional part of the project is the conservation of the archives, presently held at Tocra. The archives span a period from the sixth century BC to the tenth century AD, and constitute an unparalleled teaching resource, and need to be saved for future generations of archaeologists.

TRAINING IN ACTION

A project directed by Professor Anna Leone of Durham University, Will Wootton King’s College London and Corisande Fenwick University College London, with support from King’s College, London, Institute of Archaeology, University College, London, Insitut National du Patrimoine de Tunisie, Azzaytouna University, Tarhuna, Libya, the University of Benghazi, Libya and the Department of Antiquities, Libya. The project sought to provide training for members of the Department of Antiquities of Libya and Tunisia, combining documentation, conservation and the management of archaeological remains. Over the course of this immensely successful project, seventy-two individuals received training, with twenty-seven to an advanced level. This was the first stand-alone training project in the two neighbouring countries, combining an integrated approach to cultural resource management. The project serves as a model for the region with a long-term legacy that we hope others will adopt. An overview of the project and its outcomes was published in Libyan Studies 51 .

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16 | Society-affliated Projects

EVENTS

From Dr Niccolò Mugnai, the Society’s Assistant Director

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the Society’s programme of lectures. However, while this situation posed some challenges, it also offered a valuable opportunity to increase the visibility and reach of our events. Our lectures were hosted online via Zoom. Although online talks cannot replace live events and their importance to foster in-person scholarly debate, they provided a new type of lecture experience, which was met with favour by both speakers and the audience. Attendance has significantly increased. The recording of lectures also allowed the Society to upload them onto our YouTube channel, so anyone who missed them has the opportunity to watch them via the respective links on the Society’s website. Building upon these positive experiences, we plan a mixed format for future lectures once all Covid-19-related restrictions are lifted, where traditional live events can be complemented by a series of online talks.

The diversity of these talks – in terms of the breadth of topics they engaged with, and the historical and geographical frameworks they encompassed – reflects the broad remit of the Society, from archaeological and historical research, to contemporary socio-political debates.

The following lectures were held via Zoom Webinar in the period December 2020 to March 2021:

3 December 2020 (Society’s Annual Lecture)

Prof. David Mattingly (Professor of Roman Archaeology, University of Leicester) Desert Landmarks? Rethinking State and Society in the Ancient Sahara

Professor David Mattingly ’s SLS Annual Lecture marked a milestone in the progress of knowledge of the ancient Sahara, celebrating the completion of publica-

Wadi al-Ajal as seen from the Ubari sand sea (photo D. Mattingly).

Events | 17

tion of four volumes in the Trans-Saharan Archaeology Series, jointly published by the Society for Libyan Studies and Cambridge University Press. In the past decade, our understanding of ancient Saharan societies and their connections with the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan African world has been completely transformed by cutting-edge archaeology. These volumes, and the overview of their contents that was presented during the Annual Lecture, reflect an up-to-date vision of the state of the field and an agenda for future study on important Saharan themes: Trade, Burials, Migration, Identity, Sedentarisation, Urbanisation, State Formation, and Mobile Technologies.

1 9 January 2021

Dr Niccolò Mugnai (Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Oxford) Lepcis Magna, the City of White Stone: Shaping and Perceiving Ancient Urban Spaces

As part of his current post-doctoral research, Dr Niccolò Mugnai ’s talk on the city of Lepcis Magna moved beyond the well-studied monumental projects of the Severan period and engaged with the earlier phases of the city’s urban development. His presentation focused on the visibility of Lepcis’ public edifices and how people in antiquity approached, lived and experienced them, as the cityscape evolved from

Lepcis Magna, Arch of Trajan (photo R. Burns, Manar al-Athar).

18 | Events

Augustus to the Antonines (late first century BC to mid-second century AD). Attention was paid to the role of private and public patronage, highlighting – and critically questioning – how social status was showcased through the buildings’ layout and their architectural, sculptural and epigraphic apparatuses.

9 February 2021

Dr Alice Alunni (Independent Researcher – Development Consultant) National Belonging and Everyday Nationhood in the Age of Globalisation: An Account of Global Flows in 21st Century Libya

Shifting to present-day Libya, Dr Alice Alunni delivered a thought-provoking lecture on the change unleashed by the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) revolution from the 1990s onwards, and how this and the flows of Libyan people in and out the country affected the way the political elite, civil society and diaspora imagined the nation in the 21st century, before and in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. The aim of her presentation was to cast light on the role of globalisation in shaping everyday practices of nationhood, and the individual’s sense of belonging to a nation in relation to nationalism as a political ideology and everyday phenomenon.

Men pushing a car decorated with rebel flags in Benghazi (photo S. Ponomarev, Shabab Libya Facebook page).

2 March 2021

Dr Lorena Gazzotti (Alice Tong Sze Research Fellow, University of Cambridge) (Un)making Illegality: Border Control, Racialised Bodies and Differential Regimes of Illegality in Morocco

The movement of people in the contemporary world was the focus ofthe talk by Dr Lorena Gazzotti on regimes of illegality in Morocco. Drawing upon her recent doctoral and post-doctoral research, in this talk she argued that ‘illegality’ is a label which is racially altered and expanded by border bureaucrats, who use it to

Events | 19

Fence dividing Melilla (Spain) and Nador (Morocco) (photo L. Gazzotti).

differentially police the presence of migrant bodies pre-emptively visualised as legal or illegal. Whereas black people undergo pervasive containment procedures, white privilege allows white migrants to be oblivious of the border, even when their administrative situation is not compliant with migration law.

19 March 2021

Dr Sam Nixon (Curator and Head of the Africa Section, British Museum) and Prof. Youssef Bokbot (Professor at the Department of Prehistory, INSAP Rabat) The Djbel Bani Archaeology Project (Morocco): Current Research and Future Prospects

Remaining within the borders of Morocco – but moving back to archaeological research – Dr Sam Nixon and Professor Youssef Bokbot concluded this cycle of talks with an account of their work as part of the Djbel Bani Archaeology Project, a collaborative research in the Moroccan pre-Sahara led by a Moroccan-British team. The project features multiple strands of research: a study of the evolution and nature of early pre-Saharan oases, networks of trade and metallurgical production, and regional and trans-regional migration. Their joint presentation included an overview of the varied prehistoric and protohistoric features within the regional landscape, as well as a range of cultural heritage initiatives linked to the archaeology being investigated.

The site of Ksar Chaïr in the Tata region of southern Morocco, surveyed in 2020 by the Djbel Bani Archaeology Project (photo J. Wexler).

20 | Events

PUBLICATIONS 2020–21

LIBYAN STUDIES JOURNAL

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ISSN 0263-7189
Libyan
studies
A JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN AND MEDITERRANEAN CULTURES
volume 51 [.] 2020
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With the publication of Libyan Studies 51 in November 2020, the SLS continues its partnership with Cambridge University Press. Dr Victoria Leitch is the Editor, but in a new move the journal now invites Guest Editors every year to bring themed sections and thus different specialisations to each issue. The world of academic journal publishing is changing fast, and the Society continues to ~~e~~ xplore, with CUP, ways of reaching out to a wider audience, making technological changes to the design template to streamline and modernise the production process. The journal has now published its first Open Access articles, including one by a Sudanese archaeologist, who was able to profit from CUP’s ‘Aid and Donation’ programme to put his article on Open access for a year, for free – this has had a fantastic reaction from his colleagues in Sudan, and has put Libyan Studies firmly on the map in this part of North Africa. The Society has also now agreed to be part of the Plan S Transformative Journals Programme, which will enable authors to submit articles in a Plan-S compliant manner (Plan-S is a European initiative to publish research funded by public bodies in Open Access).

BOOKS

The Society’s monograph series, produced in e-form and print-ondemand, suffered the effects of the pandemic in 2020 though the closure of libraries and excavation sites, meaning that authors were unable to finish manuscripts as quickly as planned. N. Sheldrick’s Building the Countryside moved into production in 2020 but will not be published until later in 2021. In the Silphum imprint, a new series was launched Short Histories of North Africa with the idea of presenting compact pocket histories at a low price – the first publication was launched in December 2020, Desert Drivers by A. Goudie, a race through the astonishing tales of the intrepid characters who crossed the Sahara in the early 20th century. Finally, Urbanisation and State Formation , edited by M. Sterry and D. Mattingly, and Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara , edited by C. Duckworth, A. Cuénod and D. Mattingly, came out in 2020,

Publications 2020–21 | 21

co-published with Cambridge University Press. These books complete the four-volume series looking at ancient Saharan history and archaeology, and was celebrated though the online AGM lecture in December 2020, presented by Professor David Mattingly. Covid-19 restrictions come and go, but 2021 promises to be a busy year for monographs as academics find new ways of carrying out research under difficult circumstances.

OPEN ACCESS

The Society continues its commitment to producing Open Access publications. The journal, Libyan Studies , published with Cambridge University Press, remains, from 2016, a hybrid Open Access journal, meaning that it publishes some articles available only to subscribers, plus Open Access articles which may be accessed on-line by anyone without charge. The Society is also continuing to make many of its older publications available as Open Access ebooks, with a total of 21 publications now online.

ARABIC PUBLICATIONS

The recent outreach initiative to translate works into Arabic saw the successful delivery of printed copies of P. Kenrick’s Libyan Archaeological Guides: Cyrenaica to Tunisia and Libya, and it is now available online, with special thanks to Marigold Norbye and Olwen Macnay for their generous donation, to the American Embassy and the British Council for helping with distribution in N. Africa, as well as our friends and colleagues in Tunisia and Libya.

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22 | Publications 2020–21

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVE

This year has very much enhanced our move towards providing virtual resources - and also demonstrated how necessary that is.

LIBRARY

Our library is held by the School of Oriental and African Studies; it had been our plan for 2020/21 to work on digitising the more valuable and fragile items. In practice, access to the library has been impossible for most of the year due to Covid-19 restrictions. So while the value of the project became even more evident, it was not possible to put it into action. It was, however, possible to enhance the Society’s Library catalogue (currently in Zotero) with location references from the Gazetteer and this work was undertaken by our second Kenyon Fellow (see below). She also undertook additional work on Zotero in order to provide an overview of digitally available material – increasingly useful with restricted access to libraries. Further work will tackle the addition of HGL identifiers to the Zotero database. It is our intention to use the catalogue in due course as the basis for a larger bibliography, similarly annotated, to be presented with the Gazetteer and the Archives catalogue.

PHOTOGRAPHIC LIBRARY

Another initiative this year was to create a shared photographic library in Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/groups/slsphotolibrary/ which has now been aligned with the Gazetteer (see above). Our hope is that members would contribute. We did have some expressions of interest: the challenge is that most of the most valuable images are in analogue form, and most of our members do not have access to resources for scanning images. We have been considering whether to organise virtual events during which members might contribute images and metadata.

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26 | Library and Archive

THE YEAR IN FIGURES

MEMBERS – 207 OF WHICH 56 ARE FROM OVERSEAS:

Australia Greece Poland Austria Israel Sweden Canada Italy Switzerland Cyprus Japan Turkey France Libya USA Germany Malta

OPEN ACCESS BOOK DOWNLOADS FROM 29 COUNTRIES:

Australia Italy Russia Austria Jamaica South Africa Belgium Libya Spain Brazil Malaysia Sweden Canada Malta Switzerland China N. Macedonia Tunisia Denmark Netherlands Turkey France Poland United Kingdom Germany Portugal USA Greece Romania

TOTAL ATTENDEES AT LIVE LECTURES: 398

17 online presentations in English and Arabic on YouTube channel

1000+ streamed views

SOCIETY WEBSITE

During the past 12 months (31 March 2020 to 31 March 2021), the Society website has seen a significant and sustained increase in visitor numbers and in all associated key engagement metrics, compared with the previous year.

7900 unique website visitors (80% increase on previous year)

21,400 page views (75% increase on previous year)

1575 Facebook followers (26% increase on previous year)

1216 Twitter followers (21% increase on previous year)

The Year in Figures | 27

FINANCIAL REPORT

THE SOCIETY FOR LIBYAN STUDIES
STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES YEAR	ENDED 31 MARCH	2021
	2020–21	2019–20
	£	£
INCOME
British Academy Grant	74,429	70,594
Business Development Fund Grant	15,251	14,960
Subscriptions	5,914	5,408
Journal sales	2,200	2,230
Book sales and postage	5,958	7,250
Bank interest	466	704
Donations/gift aid	0	8,777
Miscellaneous	1,765	147
TOTAL INCOME	105,983	110,070
EXPENDITURE
Research grants	30,347	27,555
Library/Research collections	14,260	29,310
Archive: cataloguing and conservation	14,260	26,593
Archive digitisation	0	2,717
Communications and outreach	11,752	10,874
Events inc 50th Anniversary	2,100	3,427
Publicity and outreach	4,320	430
Website maintenance/development	5,242	3,250
Lecture/meeting expenses	90	3,767
Publications	44,815	57,390
Digitisation old books	1,107	1,456
Storage/despatch of books	279	748
Print-on-demand costs	1,133	6,442
Royalties on book sales	675	250
Publications Manager	15,970	10,704
Journal production	3,015	3,881
Production of monographs/silphium books	4,596	2,945
Special projects	15,992	30,964
Other costs	2,048	0

28 | Financial Report

Establishment	18,884	19,758
Bank charges	194	331
General Secretary’s remuneration	11,566	11,409
Insurance	0	175
Ofce expenses	1,124	1,343
Accountancy	6,000	6,500
Travel	0	491
UK	0	491
TOTAL EXPENDITURE	120,058	145,378
DEFICIT FOR THE YEAR	-14,075	-35,308
THE SOCIETY FOR LIBYAN STUDIES
BALANCE SHEET AS AT 31 MARCH 2021

THE SOCIETY FOR LIBYAN STUDIES BALANCE SHEET AS AT 31 MARCH 2021
	31/03/2021	31/03/2020
	£	£
ASSETS
Virgin Money Account	79,813	94,349
NatWest Current Account	7,705	25,263
PayPal Account	605	2,808
Total Cash	88,123	122,420
Debtors	2,200	0
Stock of publications, valued at cost	11,112	12,366
Total Assets	101,435	134,786
LIABILITIES
Creditors due within one year	3,850	11,087
Accrued income	273	0
Grants allocated but not yet paid out	2,997	14,755
Total Current Liabilities	7,120	25,842
NET ASSETS	94,315	108,944
*Represented by:*
General Fund	35,066	32,814
Stock Fund	11,112	12,366
Publications Fund	48,137	63,764
TOTAL FUNDS	94,315	108,944

Financial Report | 29

NET MOVEMENT IN FUNDS YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2021

NET MOVEMENT IN FUNDS YEAR ENDED 31	MARCH 2021
	2020–21	2019–20
	£	£
General Fund brought forward	32,814	54,725
Stock Fund brought forward	12,366	13,151
Publications Fund brought forward	63,764	77,161
Total funds at start of year	108,944	145,037
Defcit for the year	-14,075	-35,308
Movement in stock	-1,254	-785
Write of old research creditor to reserves	700	0
TOTAL FUNDSat end of year	94,315	108,944

Reserves policy

The Society has few financial commitments which cannot be terminated at short notice, since it has no direct employees and does not own or rent premises; it has not therefore been considered necessary to retain a reserve for potential winding-up costs.

At any one time the Society may be holding grants which have been awarded but not yet taken up by their recipients, and for practical reasons some of these (typically awarded in February for projects to be undertaken in the summer) are usually held over the end of the financial year (31 March). Such sums are shown above as a restricted reserve.

The Society has historically set aside funds for publications arising (usually several years later) from fieldwork that it has supported. These are shown as a Publications Reserve, with the intention that they may be used to support (any) publication costs, but not new fieldwork.

Book collection

The Society held 947 items in its books collection, which is housed in the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (‘SOAS’) University of London. The library is currently closed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Society did not have an active acquisition policy for its book collection during the year under review; it received volumes by gift and by exchange and works sent for review were generally also added to the collection.

Oliver Kimberley Chartered Accountant, Honorary Treasurer

30 | Financial Report

INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S REPORT TO THE COUNCIL OF THE SOCIETY FOR LIBYAN STUDIES

Charity number 259262 registered in England & Wales

I report to the Council on my examination of the accounts of the Society for Libyan Studies (‘the Society’) for the year ended 31 March 2021.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity trustees of the Society you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the Act’).

I report in respect of my examination of the Society’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145 (5) (b) of the Act.

Independent examiner’s statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:

accounting records were not kept in respect of the Trust as required by section 130 of the Act; or
the accounts do not accord with those records; or
the accounts do not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a ‘true and fair view’ which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination.

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Colm Walls Chartered Management Accountant, Honorary Independent Examiner 36 Lancet Lane, Maidstone, Kent ME15 9SA

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Financial Report | 31

MEMBERSHIP

To join the Society for Libyan Studies, please contact the General Secretary. Membership is open to all and runs from April to April. Key benefits include being part of a long-standing academic community, plus:

Free copy of Libyan Studies the Society’s annual journal
The opportunity to purchase Society publications at significantly discounted prices
Attendance at Society events, meetings, lectures and the Annual General Meeting
Access to the Society Library (SOAS)
Access to the Society Archive (University of Leicester)

CONTACT

General Secretary: Mrs Pauline Graham The Society for Libyan Studies c/o British Academy 10–11 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AH gensec@societyforlibyanstudies.org

Social Media

https://www.facebook.com/societyforlibyanstudies

[https://twitter.com/LibyanStudies]

www.societyforlibyanstudies.org

32 | running foot

2021-03-31-accounts