The ‘Burials and Identity’ team of the Desert Migrations Project carried out two main excavations in the 2009 season, at the monumental Garamantian cemeteries of TAG001 and TAG012, by the Taqallit headland. In addition, a detailed survey was made of cemeteries and other sites on the west side of the Taqallit headland, to set the two main cemetery excavations in context. A total of over 2,100 individual burials was recorded in this small area of a few square kilometres. This cemetery survey was combined with further research on the well-preserved foggara systems in this area, which originate at the escarpment among the cemeteries and run in a north-westerly direction towards the valley centre, where some additional Garamantian settlement sites were also located. The foggara research also involved excavation at four locations to try to elucidate issues relating to the dating of these.

A total of 22 burials was investigated at TAG001, an imposing cemetery of stone-built stepped tombs that had been badly damaged by illegal bulldozing in the 1990s. Although these had been subjected to robbing at some point in the past, many preserved considerable parts of the skeletons buried within and some surprisingly complete artifact groups. Of particular importance are a series of Garamantian necklaces in ostrich eggshell, carnelian and glass beads, which we were able to lift in perfect sequence and restring. At TAG012, about 2 km north of the Taqallit headland, we excavated an area of a mudbrick cemetery, exposing 12 square/rectangular tombs. Two further burials were excavated at the dispersed cemetery TAG006, in both cases involving tombs that had an interesting stratigraphical relationship with foggara spoil mounds.

The fourth season of the Burials and Identity component of the Desert Migrations Project in 2010 focused on completion of excavation work at two main cemeteries (TAG001 and TAG012) and smaller-scale sampling work at a number of nearby cemeteries. The investigation of a number of burials in a semi-nucleated escarpment cemetery TAG063 produced interesting new information on Proto-Urban Garamantian funerary rites, dating to the latter centuries BC. The excavations at TAG001 were extended to two areas of the cemetery characterised by different burial types to the stepped tombs that were excavated in 2009. A second type of fairly monumental burial was identified, but these had been heavily robbed and it was not possible to demonstrate conclusively that these pre-dated the stepped tombs. Most of the other burials excavated were simple shaft burials and were relatively sparsely furnished with imported goods, in comparison with the larger tombs, though quite a lot of organic material was identified (matting, wood, gourds, textiles and leather). At TAG012, a series of additional mudbrick tombs was emptied. All had been robbed, but pockets of the original fill and associated finds survived intact, yielding some interesting assemblages. The majority of these tombs appear to be Late Garamantian, though some contained artefacts from much earlier times.

The Desert Migrations Project is a new interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional collaborative project between the Society for Libyan Studies and the Department of Antiquities. The geographical focus of the study is the Fazzan region of southwest Libya and in thematic terms we aim to address the theme of migration in the broadest sense, encompassing the movement of people, ideas/knowledge and material culture into and out of Fazzan, along with evidence of shifting climatic and ecological boundaries over time. The report describes the principal sub-strands of the project's first season in January 2007, with some account of research questions, methods employed and some preliminary results. Three main sub-projects are reported on. The first concerns the improved understanding of long-term climatic and environmental changes derived from a detailed palaeoenvironmental study of palaeolake sediments. This geo-science work runs alongside and feeds directly into both archaeological sub-projects, the first relating to prehistoric activity and mobility around and between a series of palaeolakes during wetter climatic cycles; the second to the excavation of burials in the Wadi al-Ajal, exploring the changing relationship between material culture, identity and ethnicity across time, from prehistory to the early Islamic period (the span of the main cemetery zones). In addition, some rock art research and a survey of historic period sites was undertaken in the Wadi ash-Shati and Ubari sand sea.

Survey by the DMP Burials and Identity team around the Tāqallit headland in 2009–2010 has revealed in exceptional detail a well-preserved Garamantian landscape, comprising extensive cemeteries, foggara irrigation systems and numerous oasis settlements. However, this remarkable survival of the Garamantian landscape was found in 2010 to be under direct and imminent threat of destruction. This report describes the landscape features recorded and the steps taken to try to preserve the evidence from obliteration in the face of modern agricultural development. Important new information was recorded about the date and furnishing of some key types of Proto-Urban tombs, linking with a refined view of the relationship of these cemeteries to contemporary foggara construction and the creation of pioneer farming settlement in the Tāqallit region. Significant additional details of the foggara systems were recorded through a combination of satellite image interpretation, surface observation and selective descent into rock-cut shafts. The discovery of an unexpected number of ancient settlements and structures of Garamantian date represents another major achievement of the work. The composite picture of the Garamantian landscape encompassing cemeteries, foggaras and settlements is arguably the most complete yet recorded in the FP/DMP work.

Survey and excavation by the Burials and Identity team of the Desert Migrations Project (DMP) focused in 2011 on the so-called Royal Cemetery of the Garamantes close to the Jarma escarpment, a few km south of Old Jarma. This Late Garamantian cemetery contains two distinct zones (GSC030 and GSC031) of monumental rectangular stepped tombs, which were plaster-coated and fronted by massive offering tables and stelae. Previous dating evidence has suggested they span the fourth to sixth centuries AD. However, many questions remain about the cemetery and the overall recording of the monuments had hitherto been left incomplete. The 2011 work focused on the excavation of one of the larger monuments in GSC030 and several of the smaller tombs in the neighbouring GSC031, along with an overall survey of both cemetery areas and a detailed record of the stelae and offering tables still present in considerable numbers. In addition, the team made a survey along the escarpment between the Royal Cemetery and Zinkekrā, completing and uniting the various surveys carried out by the DMP around Zinkekrā, Watwāt and the Jarma Escarpment. A survey of foggaras and settlement in the ad-Dīsa embayment was also undertaken.

This article concerns a series of 20 samples submitted for AMS radiocarbon dating from historic sites in the Libyan Sahara. The sites had been identified initially from remote sensing analysis, then visited on the ground in 2011 and organic samples suitable for a dating programme obtained. With the help of an award from the NERC-AHRC National Radiocarbon Facility, this initial suite of dates has been provided. The results are important in several ways. They demonstrate very clearly that settlement in this hyper-arid desert landscape reached its densest pattern in the late Garamantian era, broadly the fourth-fifth centuries AD. In the Islamic era that followed, though the overall population appears less dense, our dates throw light on several possible phases of settlement renewal.

Reconnaissance survey in the Murzuq area, some 150 km south-east of Jarma, was carried out as part of the 2011 field programme of the Desert Migrations Project, with separate funding from the Leverhulme Trust for this element of work entitled the ‘Peopling the Desert Project’. This survey was designed to provide field verification of details of settlement systems identified and mapped from high-resolution satellite images in an area of c. 600 km2 immediately east of the oasis town of Murzuq. Examination of high-resolution QuickBird and Ikonos satellite imagery has permitted identification of a large dossier of more than 200 sites (fortified buildings known as qsur, other settlements, cemeteries, wells, fields/gardens and linear irrigation works called foggaras). The majority of these sites have never been previously noted or mapped and the date of the sites was unknown at the outset, though they clearly pertained to the historic periods. While further study of the finds and scientific dating evidence is required, the initial results of the brief field visit have major implications for our understanding of Garamantian and early Islamic settlement in south-eastern Fazzan.

The second season of the Desert Migrations Project took place in January 2008, with work following several substrands. The Burials and Identity component of the project is the subject of this report. Excavation and survey work were concentrated in the Watwat embayment, expanding on, and completing the work begun in 2007. Forty burials have now been excavated from the approximately 2,500 surveyed by the project team in a series of different cemeteries and burial zones within the closed valley that cuts back into the escarpment of the Massak, approximately 3 km southwest of Jarma. The most exciting discovery this year was the recovery of two mummified bodies from the UAT008 cemetery, along with further well-preserved textiles, including some exquisitely woven multi-coloured fragments. Another major discovery was a richly furnished Garamantian burial (UAT050.T5), containing numerous imported vessels (fineware, glass and amphorae) from the Roman world. Additional excavations included two child burials from GSC048, located in a modern quarry due south of Jarma, and a preliminary investigation of one of the Taqallit cemeteries, located approximately 30 km to the west (to be the subject of the main excavation effort in 2009).