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LIVING AND DOCUMENTED CULTURE · 04

The desert as a layered archive

Images and objects from a changing Sahara

Paintings, pottery and tombs allow the study of changes in climate, displacements and contacts.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction; not a photograph of the original nor documentary evidence.

Image of The desert as a stratified archive
DECLARED VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION · AI-GENERATED IMAGE · TRACEKEEPERS

Generated reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis

Declared visual reconstruction; not a photograph of the original nor documentary evidence.

History and context

A chariot scene is not by itself a map of a trade route.

Evidence and interpretation

Synthesis based on ISAC · Archaeology of Fazzan and irrigation landscapes; UNESCO · Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus. The comparison serves to formulate questions, not to fill gaps in the record with certainties.

Catalogue facts

Civilisation or trajectory
Garamantes of Fezzan
Scope
Visual and Material Arts
Main area
Wadi al-Ajal and Garama/Jarma, in the Fezzan of present-day south-west Libya.

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .

Decoration that requires a wider map

Maria Carmela Gatto’s study identifies rouletted decoration on Garamantian pottery, a technique that had not previously been recognised so far north. By comparing vessels from Wadi al-Ajal and Wadi Tanzzuft with Saharan and Sahelian assemblages, it examines the possible circulation of craft techniques. The important detail is the repeated action on the clay, as well as the resulting motif. A technical method can be transmitted between workshops or communities and adapted to different materials. The proposed connections remain open because a decorative resemblance does not, by itself, describe who travelled or when.

Location and territory

Physical world map with routes of human evolutionPresent-day world coastline from Natural Earth in an equirectangular projection. The overlaid markers let you explore each milestone.Map base: Natural Earth 1:110m · public domain · present-day reference coastline

REGIONAL AREA

Fezzan Oases and trans-Saharan corridors; changing network, not fixed frontierFezzan Oases and trans-Saharan corridors; changing network, not fixed frontier. The footprint indicates the orientative centre of the area, not a frontier nor an exact point.

Sources and references

Consult the sources of this cultural synthesis

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