In 2011, researchers scanning satellite images over Libya spotted faint desert shapes; field surveys helped reveal more than 100 Garamantian farms, villages and forts in the Sahara
For many years, outsiders saw the deep heart of Libya's southwestern desert as barren, hostile territory with little to offer archaeologists other than sporadic Roman allusions to unruly desert tribes. Since international researchers had little access to the area and the region's pre-Islamic history was rarely a state priority, this impression remained largely unquestioned for decades. Uncovering what had been concealed beneath the sand for two millennia would take modern satellite technology paired with whatever narrow access to the ground researchers could manage.
A study team from the University of Leicester led by Professor David Mattingly spent years sifting through high-quality satellite data of the Fezzan area, some of it collected originally for oil sector assessments, as well as aerial photographs shot decades earlier in the 1950s and 1960s, before finally securing a narrow window to test their findings on the ground in early 2011. The imagery that emerged from this research was shocking to the team. Scattered across the desert were faint geometric forms that turned out to be the remains of fortified farms, walled villages and many fortified towns, constructions that, unlike the partially excavated Garamantian capital nearby, had never been systematically surveyed or recorded.
Faces behind the fortresses
The villages were built by the Garamantes , an indigenous Saharan people known previously only through hostile Roman and Greek texts that depicted them as rebellious nomads on the edge of empire. The satellite evidence suggested a rather different story. They discovered the mud brick remains of castle-like compounds, walls still four metres high, and cairn cemeteries, wells and faint traces of field systems and irrigation networks that once supported oasis farming in a landscape that now receives virtually no rainfall. The study itself, known as Trans Sahara, was supported by a European Research Council
Over a hundred fortified farms, towns and forts were listed in all, most of which date to between the first and fifth centuries AD, a time that saw the Garamantes very much as near neighbours to the Roman Empire rather than outside its awareness entirely. The findings showed an organised state with towns, a written language and technologies capable of supporting agriculture in some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, as well as an active role in opening up trade routes across the Sahara that linked the Mediterranean world with regions further south.
Confirming the finding on the ground
Satellite pictures could indicate that the structures are ancient, but a real expedition would be the only way to validate them. The chronology revealed by the aerial evidence was corroborated by samples of Garamantian pottery acquired during a field survey the researchers were able to do in early 2011, before the team had to leave the country due to the civil strife that finally led to the overthrow of Gaddafi's administration. As the political situation calmed in the years that followed, further ground surveys were undertaken, confirming the pre-Islamic antiquity of the ruins and the remarkable level of their preservation.
The capital of the Garamantes, the ancient city of Garama, today the site of Jarma, had already been partially excavated. But the newly identified settlements in the vicinity were so extensive that they changed the view from a single important city to an entire network of interconnected communities. Later, the research information service of the European Commission itself, CORDIS
There was also a symbolic significance to the discovery for Libyan heritage authorities beyond archaeology, as these were the first significant towns in the region not constructed by outside colonial forces such as the Greeks or Romans. The search of satellite pixels results in the restoration of a whole civilisation.
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