Читать книгу The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya, Final Reports, Volume VIII - Donald O. White - Страница 13

Introduction

I first encountered Richard Goodchild 44 years ago on the beach of Marsa Susa where he laid out his conditions for licensing the University of Michigan to excavate Cyrene’s port city of Apollonia.² This led to 17 years of fruitful collaboration between the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Ancient and Mediaeval Archaeology (succeeded in 1973 by the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) and the Libyan Department of Antiquities until the Libyan authorities terminated the activities of the American mission in 1981. An interval of 23 years ensued before Susan Kane and I were invited to return to Tripoli in the summer of 2004. During our visit, Dr. Ali Khadouri, then president of the Libyan Department of Antiquities, issued us a license to return in 2005 to begin the remedial investigation of the sanctuary’s physical site and storerooms, and to initiate an expanded survey of the extramural grounds which lie to the immediate south, east, and west of the core sanctuary.

Under the fresh name of the Cyrenaican Archaeological Project, or CAP, the project was to be jointly sponsored by Oberlin College and the University of Pennsylvania Museum and directed by Susan Kane, with me as interim associate director. This ushered in a brief Prague spring in which funds were quickly raised in the United States to enable the Department of Antiquities to take up the much needed repairs of the large retaining wall separating the Middle from the Lower Sanctuary. It also allowed Kane to organize a joint Libyan-British survey team, the latter from the University of Birmingham led by Vincent Gaffney and Gareth Sears, in order to initiate in June 2006 survey work on CAP’s expanded concession.³ Since that time, however, the political momentum has unfortunately once again swung away from improved relations between Tripoli and Washington, which has had the effect of once again postponing resumption of work on the physical site and storage facilities. At this time, it remains uncertain when this will occur.

The changes which occurred in the course of so many years of enforced absence can be measured in different ways. When the actual digging ended in 1979, computers, digital imaging, laser survey instruments, ground penetrating radar, and the like had yet to reach Libya. Some may recall Julian Whittlesey’s then state-of-the-art “bipod” designed for vertical photography; ours did not make it out of the warehouse for lost and misplaced goods at the Benghazi airport before it was smashed. Aside from it, the expedition’s most exotic specimen of scientific equipment was an 8" by 10" Brobdignagian glass plate camera skillfully operated by our highly talented staff photographer, Nick Merrick. Efforts to stock and maintain a conservation laboratory during the 1970s were blocked with regularity by import regulations prohibiting the import of chemicals as basic as muriatic acid. The list could go on to serve no particular purpose. Today, archaeology has of course fundamentally changed in nearly every respect one can think of, and, halted when they were, the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s methods seem almost comically outdated, if not as obsolete as the dodo.

During the nearly three decades–long suspension of activity, it was impossible for any of the project’s team of research investigators to regain access to their materials. This has had a predictably negative impact on the orderly flow of publication. I was personally able to complete the first volume of the site’s final publication series during a 1980–1981 sabbatical year at Oxford.⁴ Blocked from returning to Cyrene after that, my next two decades were spent excavating and then publishing a Late Bronze Age island on the northwest coast of Egypt.⁵ After the second volume dealing with the sanctuary’s first 600 years of architectural and archaeological development appeared in 1993,⁶ two more monographs followed.⁷ But this still leaves the final studies by

S. Kane, E. Fabbricotti, and J. Uhlenbrock of the sculptures, lamps, and terracotta figurines to be accounted for. The site’s coarse wares were given to J. Riley who subsequently opted not to participate in the University of Pennsylvania Museum series.

What is left to be published remains central to the dating and interpretation of the sanctuary architecture’s Imperial period development, the central topic of this study. Fortunately, the dates of the individual objects selected for publication were communicated to me by the various authors for inclusion in the following sections dealing with context and date and will be footnoted where appropriate, with the exception of the coarse ware pottery for which a publisher remains to be named. The current volume presents a slightly different format from what was adapted for the Volume V study of the pre-Imperial period architectural development, but will use the same abbreviations to refer to the still pending studies.⁸

A second difference between the1984 and 1993 studies and the present text is the relatively smaller number of stratigraphical cross-sections accompanying the text. The reason for this is that the entire Lower Sanctuary area, together with the exterior footings of the Middle Sanctuary’s eastern peribolos wall, were not excavated in any depth. One of the goals of any future investigation of the site should be to clear north from the forward face of the T20 retaining wall to the wadi drain. It is worth repeating that it was along the drain that Ettore Ghislanzoni laid his Decauville railroad line prior to 1915 to facilitate the clearance of what he must have considered to be one of the site’s most promising areas.⁹

As far as the actual physical site goes (Pl. 1), the lost years have led to problems whose solutions will require time and money in order to bring the sanctuary into compliance with current standards for site preservation. The zone is once more covered with coarse grasses, thistles, and other forms of undesirable undergrowth. Where they could not be consolidated with cement or re-covered with earth, the exposed walls have predictably deteriorated. More troubling, our July 2004 visit¹⁰ unexpectedly interrupted a looter in the act of prying a piece of marble from the floor of a small man-made cave that he had opened in the center of the S17 Southwest Building. A rapidly organized search across the site turned up six or seven robber pits spread over the Middle Sanctuary grounds and against the wall faces of the Unit 1, 2, and 3 terraces which run east of the main sanctuary.¹¹ It quickly became obvious that illegal excavation had proceeded unchecked since the University of Pennsylvania Expedition’s departure in 1981 and will continue until the whole of Cyrene’s archaeological zone can be brought under some kind of effective surveillance.

Another negative effect of our absence has affected the storage facilities allocated by the Department for our excavated finds. In either late 1999 or early 2000, a gang of thieves, still not caught, broke into the University of Pennsylvania’s storerooms through a broken window and removed 14 marble heads,¹² a limestone statuette of a seated figure,¹³ and a small relief. While the heads’ present locations are largely a matter of speculation, it seems likely that they were transported into Egypt and from thence to western Europe and beyond. Apart from the relief, returned to Libya through the welcome interventions of Jerome Eisenberg and Andrè Laronde,¹⁴ the other pieces seem to be permanently lost to us. How many other types of objects were stolen at the same time will only be determined when we are able to carry out a thorough inventory of our storage areas.

The last serious consequence of our prolonged absence has been that the effects of wind and water erosion, probably worsened by the activities of looters, have exposed previously undocumented walls south of the S20 Propylaeum’s two recessed courts (S21 and S30) in the vicinity of Walls W20 and W23. It is CAP’s intention to record these walls on the site’s evidential plan if and when work resumes in the future, but this remains undone at the time of publication.

In a more positive vein, during the last 25 years the University of Urbino Expedition led by Mario Luni partially excavated and restored a major walled temenos at the head of Wadi Bel Gadir ca. 400 m. southeast of the Demeter and Persephone Sanctuary. Accessed by its own tetrastyle propylaeum, it centers on what Luni has identified as an imposing early 5th century B.C. Doric temple serviced by a coaxially positioned altar for burnt offerings. Luni believes that the resident deity of the Urbino sanctuary is Demeter, based on what seems, at least for the moment, somewhat tenuous circumstantial evidence.¹⁵ When combined with the existence of other extramural sacred as well as secular structures known for some time to exist in the lands south of Wadi Bel Gadir, the implications of Luni’s discoveries raise many interesting possibilities for the future understanding of the entire southern chora region.

Setting aside the far-reaching regional changes that have taken place over the past quarter century, in some quarters learned opinion would argue that “current approaches to archaeology have moved beyond a narrow concern with big monuments.”¹⁶ In other words, the detailed investigation of an archaeological site with an extended history as exemplified by the sanctuary under discussion should be viewed as obsolete. Without passing judgment on this one way or another, it is surely an attitude which reflects an increasingly common point of view, just as one increasingly hears how the printed page is destined to be replaced by electronic publication. It may very well be true that the majority of long-term excavation projects generating large numbers of finds and requiring years to complete and publish will only take place in the future when they can be supported by direct government subsidy. If this proves to be the case, all of us who have participated in the field work and publication of this project can only feel doubly privileged.

Practical Desiderata: Chronology of the Site’s Objects

The publication of the site’s related artifacts has continued apace since White 1993. What remains to be published are the sculptures, terracotta figurines, and lamps. When the reader encounters an object in the following chapters not accompanied by a footnote, they should refer to Appendix I in White 1993:187–95 where the sanctuary’s earliest and latest finds are listed according to area, trench, and stratum. The Appendix identifies by an abbreviation followed by an asterisk those types of objects which had not yet received their final publication but whose authors had conveyed to me by personal communication the chronological spread of their materials within each stratigraphical context.

Illustrations

In order to limit production costs this volume has not undertaken to reproduce the photo plates and graphic figures which have already appeared in White 1984 and White 1993 except where their inclusion has been judged absolutely necessary. Their previous appearances will, however, be referenced in the footnotes.

Location of the Site’s Areas and Trenches

Plans locating the site’s trenches by their official nomenclature have appeared in Lowenstam et al. 1987:xii, Warden et al. 1990, xxxi, and Buttrey and McPhee 1998, 70. The site’s evidential or stone-by-stone plan was reproduced as an oversize 16” by 24” foldout at the back of White 1984, while its survey and grid system has been described in detail in White 1984:56. Once again for purposes of this volume, the main point to remember is that the Demeter and Persephone Sanctuary grid is located by referring to the upper lefthand corner of each square. Each grid square is bounded by four grid points, e.g., E-10, F-10, E-11, and F-11. The proper reference here would be F11. Trenches that extend into more than one square are referred to as, for example, E11/F11.

2. What he stipulated was that the University of Michigan had to agree to publish what its previous excavators had brought to light at Apollonia prior to 1965, as well as our own activities which, as chance would have it, were abruptly terminated by the “1967 Seven Day War.” For more on this, see Goodchild et al. 1977. In return for our accepting these terms, he promised to license Michigan to excavate its choice of sites outside of the line of the city walls at Cyrene. This eventually enabled me to acquire the Department of Antiquities’ permission to take on the Wadi Bel Gadir sanctuary in 1969, a year after Goodchild’s premature death prevented his joining forces with our expedition. Why I had to wait to meet him on Apollonia’s beach in order to learn of his conditions is another story.

3. Kane and White 2007, 45–46.

4. White 1984 which has been followed by three additional studies: Schaus 1985, Lowenstam et al. 1987, and Warden et al. 1990.

5. White et al. 2002, vols. I and II.

6. White 1993.

7. Buttrey and McPhee 1998; Kocybala 1999.

8. White 1993, 187–95, Appendix One.

9. White 1984, 11–12, fig. 15.

10. In which I was accompanied by Donato Attanasio, Susan Kane, Abdulgadr al-Muzeini, the Controller of Antiquities, Mohamad Aghilla Bukassim, and Mohamad Bu Sherit.

11. White 1984, 44–46, figs. 40–42.

12. Kane nos. 102, 103, 106, 108, 110, 121, 130–132, 137, 139, 140, 142, 143.

13. Kane no. 1.

14. The expedition also has received offers of help in recovering the heads from Jean-Davis Kahn.

15. Luni 2001, 1541n9, 1549. Kane and White 2007.

16. J. McInerney, rev. of J.L. Davis (ed.), “Sandy Pylos. An Archaeological History from Nestor to Navorino,” in IJCT 7 (2000/2001), 583.