Hunters of the Mountain. The Archaeology of Jebel Gharbi, NW Libya, From Final Pleistocene to Early Holocene

Two mountain ranges shape the geography of northern Libya: to the east, Jebel el Akhdar - the Green Mountain - rises in Cyrenaica a short distance from the coast, while the corresponding structure to the west, Jebel Gharbi (or Nefusa in Berber) covers the sublittoral belt of Tripolitania and forms a link between the Mediterranean coast and the Sahara desert. The Jebel preserves the remains of Roman farmsteads linked to the Roman limes which is marked by military posts along the caravan route from the coast to Ghadamès, Gheriat el Garbia and Bu Njem. Local architecture preserves the ancient Berber nuclei, the “old towns”: small acropolises perched against the limestone Jebel, almost embedded in the rock. The Jebel’s earliest human settlements, part of the North African prehistoric sequences. [...]