Libyan excavations have added depth to modern archaeology



Libyan excavations have added depth to modern archaeology


Written by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès

According to Blas de Robles, underwater archaeology is no different
from terrestrial archaeology; they use similar techniques even if
underwater excavations are more complicated to undertake and require
special equipment and even specific skills.

February 23, 2009: The French writer Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès tells
how he pursued his dream of uncovering “fragments of raw beauty long
since forgotten” from the depths of the sea, an emotional experience
very different from a treasure hunt.

Between 1986 and 2001, the novelist took part in underwater
archaeological excavations off the coast of Libya, exploring that
“unseen part of ourselves” which must be carefully and respectfully
protected.

It all began in 1985. Not long returned from his first terrestrial dig
with the French archaeological mission in Libya — one of the
privileges of friendship — Claude Sintes [Director of the Museum of
Ancient Arles] wasted no time in sharing his experiences with me:
coming from Apollonia, he had seen Cyrene, Sabratha and Leptis Magna —
Greek and Roman remains surpassing in size everything we knew or could
have imagined.

He said he had no idea that whole towns lay buried under the sand of
the seashore in such wondrous and magnificent settings.

But even better was the fact that hardly anyone had ever thought of
exploring the seabed off this coastline. Everything was still exactly
where it had been in the seventh century BC! Imagine the fabulous
finds there might be!

Ancient shipwrecks for certain — because the shores of the Gulf of
Sidra had always been among the most inhospitable coastlines in the
world — but also buildings swallowed up by the sea and statuary and
materials of all kinds… Furthermore, he had secured permission to
organize an underwater archaeological campaign for the following
summer!

He dealt with the technical side himself, but there was still the
question of recruitment. The Libyan regime did not license small
trading operations, so it was extremely difficult to arrange for the
expedition’s supplies.

As for the conditions of the excavations and the accommodation, they
would be even worse: “Spartan” seemed rather a mild euphemism to
describe the situation. Therefore, he had to be able to have a
technical team in which he had complete confidence, and people he
could count on to be available at all times.

I had an adequate knowledge of archaeology and genuine experience of
the sea, and I was used to living in confined spaces: if I wouldn’t
mind doing the cooking as well as working on the digs, then I would be
the first recruit…

So that is how it all began. I jumped with joy when I agreed to go — I
would even have done the cleaning if it had meant going with him to
Libya — but I never suspected that my contribution, and that of all
the other members of the team, would actually begin with precisely
that kind of work.

In August 1986, after a three-day journey, we were ready to get down
to work. The first day was spent making our site headquarters
habitable. It was a dilapidated house from the Italian colonial period
infested with scorpions and huge dark brown cockroaches.

The next day, an initial reconnaissance of the site with mask and
snorkel confirmed the observations of the American archaeologist
Nicholas Flemming; as he had noted in 1957 after his first survey, the
buried structures of the port of Apollonia were clearly visible and
without doubt they justified the excavations we were going to
undertake.

On a more personal level, they immediately prompted me to discover a
universe I had hitherto believed to be the preserve of literature. In
a single leap I had been transported to the worlds of Jules Verne and
H.G.Wells — the worlds of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and
The Time Machine came together in the joyous feeling of knowing for
certain that I was swimming over the abandoned city of Atlantis!

I had come to my love of Greece through an acquaintance with the pre-
Socratics, and I fell in love with Antiquity through baptism in the
warm waters of Apollonia.

Practised in hunting with a harpoon since my early adolescence, I had
regarded the depths of the sea – the fields of laminaria, the rocky
caverns covered with spiky coral, the wavy formations of sand – merely
as the hiding places or clearly designated locations of my prey.

These all too familiar underwater landscapes assumed a
phantasmagorical dimension in reality: in one direction, there would
be an alignment of Cyclopean blocks dovetailed together; in another, a
square tower, and beyond that banks of oars for triremes sculpted in
the rock, and in two metres of water a fish tank described by
Vitruvius [the 1st century B.C. Roman architect], with its fitments
for octopuses and morays…

Everywhere, between each stone, each structure that was more or less
discernible beneath its covering of algae, there lay visible, and
easily within reach, dozens, indeed hundreds of objects that were
deserving of places in museums or at least in archaeologists’
archives: the bellies and bottoms of amphorae from all periods,
stamped Rhodian handles from the 6th century B.C., Roman cups, broken
decorative vases…

A world was lying there, set as in the aftermath of a disaster, and on
display for the pleasure of those willing to take an interest in it.
All that remained of Apollonia, the Greek port of ancient Cyrene sung
of in olden times by Pindar or Callimachus, was a tongue of red land
bristling with Byzantine columns, a theatre on a hillside and various
later developments.

But a few metres from the coast, awaiting visitors, was a city that
had been swallowed up like Pompeii. An incredible prize for the
scientist and a gift from the gods for the dreamer I have never ceased
to be.

Underwater archaeology is of course no different from terrestrial
archaeology; they use similar techniques even if underwater
excavations are more complicated to undertake and require special
equipment and even specific skills. In our case, the working
conditions were particularly complex.

In the absence of a boat we had to transport bottles and equipment to
the beach on foot. To reap the most benefit from our time there we had
agreed to do two dives a day. Three hours in the morning, followed by
refilling the bottles on the shore, and another three hours in the
afternoon.

We then had to take all our equipment back to the stores, clean it and
maintain it, compile an inventory of what we had found… and then cook
dinner.

Including the land-based team I had about a dozen mouths to feed every
evening; the mission had a container of melted cheese, powdered orange
juice, spices and biscuits… As it was impossible to obtain any staples
in the State shops, we bought from our Libyan friends the sugar, pasta
and rice I needed to put together the stopgap recipes concocted by my
mother.

Although our daily menu was regularly improved by fish — the grouper
we caught on Fridays — I still marvel at how we managed to avoid a
general mutiny! Especially as we only had water from a tank. It was
also best not to think about it too much when you had to remove the
mosquito larvae from your glass before you drank from it.

After dinner, there was an account of the day’s digs and then we drank
mint tea on the terrace, keeping an eye out for scorpions scuttling up
towards the light.

In fifteen years of missions, the list of our misadventures would be
enough to put anyone off contemplating a career as an archaeologist:
the snake under the sheets, the scorpions in the shoes, fishing with
hand-grenades not far from where we were diving, warning shots from a
heavy machine-gun when we got too close to a restricted zone,
shortness of breath in stormy seas and many other such. Surprising as
it may seem, none of our misadventures ever lessened the joy of taking
part.

After the 1986 mission our results were so encouraging that the
underwater team secured permission to study the port of Leptis Magna.

Prospecting the following year led to our surveying a submerged jetty,
and that significantly altered our understanding of the town’s
importance in the Severian period [from the end of the second to the
beginning of the third century].

Meticulous study of the port of Apollonia made it possible not only to
understand the way it had developed from its Greek origins to its
abandonment in the seventh century but also to determine the sinkage
coefficient of the land involved in its partial engulfing. This work
led to the discovery of a Hellenistic wreck and to the unearthing of
innumerable pieces of pottery, coins and statuary.

My initial motivations for engaging in this kind of work included a
spirit of adventure, friendship and the writings of Albert Camus
[Nobel Prize for Literature, 1957] on Tipasa and Djemila — two
Algerian sites on Unesco’s World Heritage List — but I was never
attracted by the idea of a “treasure hunt” as such. Although I did
once find a very rare gold solidus and the excitement was
breathtaking, it was not at all because of the object’s monetary
value.

It was because of the way in which this small shiny disc was spinning
in the blue water, reflecting the sun like a mirror, and because of
the inexpressible joy of having brought up from the depths of the sea
a fragment of raw beauty long since forgotten.

It is a process that is, ultimately, very close to that which is
involved in writing, and of which to my mind one of the most truthful
metaphors is provided by the French novelist Serge Brussolo’s Le
Syndrome du scaphandrier in which day after day a hunter of dreams
plunges into the darkness of sleep; from this parallel universe he
comes up with ectoplasms of various kinds, strange fictions which take
root in reality and manage to acquire a real existence.

Dramatic irony
Fifteen years on, another discovery demonstrated even better the
reasons for my perseverance. During the underwater excavation of the
Roman fish tanks of Apollonia, Claude Sintes and I had the good
fortune to dig up a statue of Dionysus.

Once we got it on to dry land it was examined and then it became clear
that it matched a statuette of a satyr found in 1957, and which
Nicholas Flemming is seen holding, as if it were a newborn child saved
from the sea, in a photograph taken after one of his dives. Almost 50
years later we had just reconstituted a “drunken Dionysus” who had
crossed the ages and seemingly given some dramatic irony to his
surname “twice-born”.

Archaeology renews bonds. More than any other discipline it brings
together and reconciles the living who have been separated over the
centuries. The sub-aquatic heritage is more directly accessible and
often better preserved and more homogeneous than its terrestrial
counterpart.

Furthermore, it is unexplored. When we think, for example, of the
still mysterious 1,500 kilometres of Libyan coast, we are readily
persuaded that this invisible part of ourselves must be protected with
every bit as much care and respect as the part that has already come
to light.

Blas de Roblès is a French writer, philosopher and archaeologist, born
in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, Algeria, in 1954, is the author of Libye grecque,
romaine et byzantine.

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http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=397600&Title=Libyan%20excavations%20have%20added%20depth%20to%20modern%20archaeology

http://www.temehu.com/Cities_sites/Apollonia.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordontour/3171786554/
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