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2 - Dying to Be Garamantian

Burial, Migration and Identity in Fazzan

from Part I - Burial Practices in the Central Sahara

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2019

By
David J. Mattingly ,
Martin Sterry  and
Nick Ray
Edited by
M. C. Gatto ,
D. J. Mattingly ,
N. Ray  and
M. Sterry
M. C. Gatto
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
D. J. Mattingly
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
N. Ray
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
M. Sterry
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Theprevious chapterintroduced the Garamantes, an ancient Saharan people, whose story can be traced archaeologically through the first millennium BC and first millennium AD (see also Figs 1.1and1.2 for location maps). This chapter presents evidence on the funerary practices of the Garamantian heartlands in the Wadi al-Ajal in the Libyan Fazzan (Central Sahara). The Wadi al-Ajal is a long and thin oasis depression running for c.150 km from al-Abyad (to the south-west of Fazzan’s modern capital at Sabha) to Ubari. Our work has been particularly focused on the area around Jarma (ancient Garama, the Garamantian capital about 40 km east of Ubari). The burials in these Garamantian heartlands differ in certain significant ways from those recorded by the Italian mission at Aghram Nadharif and Fewet, and an interesting aspect of the discussion we shall develop below seeks to explain this difference.

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Burials, Migration and Identity in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond , pp. 53 - 107
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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