Environment, Archaeology, and Oil: The Messak Settafet Rescue Operation (Libyan Sahara)

Abstract

Looking at the satellite images of Central Sahara, anyone would be amazed by a large, heavily black region: it is the Messak (or Amsach, in Tamasheq) Settafet Plateau, part of the Hamada of Murzuq (Fig. 1). Unfortunately, insuffi cient knowledge of this area exists in the archaeological literature. The region was already well known in the mid-nineteenth century, when Heinrich Barth crossed wadi Mathendousc, in the southern fringes of the plateau, and discovered the first rock engravings of the area (Barth, 1857). Decades after that pioneering and isolated journey, this rugged landscape was closely studied by rock art scholars (e.g., Graziosi, 1942; Le Quelleq, 1998; Lutz and Lutz, 1995; Van Albada and Van Albada, 2000), but little attention has been paid to the palaeoenvironmental and archaeological features of the region (e.g., Cremaschi and di Lernia, 1998). The dominant and distinguishing landscape of the Messak is nothing but its astonishing black color, formed by a thin, some microns-thick, film?the desert varnish, or patina?whose nature and age have been recently assessed (Cremaschi, 1996). Apart from its magnificent rock art gallery, probably among the richest in the world, which led UNESCO to include this territory and the adjacent Acacus moun tains on the World Heritage List in 1985, this area features an impressive concen tration of stone monuments: megalithic structures, tumuli, and rings (Cremaschi