These two volumes present the results of fieldwork conducted by Tertia Barnett from 2004–2009 in the Wādi al-Ajāl (Libya). The first volume provides a general synthesis in three sections: 1) presentation of Saharan rock art in general; history of discoveries and research; climate, environment and human activities in the Holocene Sahara; state of knowledge on the chronology. 2) Presentation of the method adopted for collecting data; results of the surveys; subjects and themes observed. 3) Analysis of the location of the engravings; study of their relationship with the ‘cultural landscape’; concluding remarks. Two appendices are devoted to pre-pastoral and pastoral sites, and to the 3D modelling of several engraved panels respectively. The second volume makes available the totality of the observed data, describing each panel individually. For each one, the inventory indicates its number and geographic position, then gives a detailed description, specifies its orientation, its location in the valley and its degree of inclination, before indicating the stylistic affiliation of the engravings observed. The two books are enhanced by a large number of photographs, surveys and maps, in a very careful presentation and a pleasant layout.
The author begins with a very well-informed presentation of the state of research, taking into account the work published in French, which is rare enough to be highlighted in English-language publications. Stylistic and livelihood changes are related to major climatic phases and environmental changes. Barnett then presents the images panel by panel, thus avoiding ambiguities linked to the notion of a ‘site’. No element has been neglected, and the cups, grooves or simply ‘marked’ areas have been noted in the same way as the recognisable images. The latter make up 77.5 per cent of the total, of which a majority (63 per cent) represent domestic animals.
The stylistic classification adopted in the work is that of Bubaline, Pastoral, Caballine and Cameline (p. 58), although the ‘Bubaline’ is in fact a ‘Pastoral’. The hypothesis of an ‘archaic style’, which would be prior to 6000 BC and therefore older than all the others, has never been clearly demonstrated. Nobody denies that there are traces or remains of images underlying engravings in the Mesāk style, but to deduce from this the existence of an ‘archaic’ phase would be a bit hasty. Like most current researchers, Tertia Barnett places the vast majority of Saharan rock images between about 6000 BC and 1000 AD (p. 65).
She also introduces a new ‘style’, the so-called ‘Wallpaper style’, which she presents as specific to Wādi al-Ajāl. Unfortunately, this ‘style’ is not defined anywhere in the book, and it seems to have been recognised only by the existence of panels with repetitive pecked engravings (pp. 84, 87, 90). It cannot be considered that their characteristics would be sufficient to delimit a style. Moreover, one may question the validity of inferences based on the position of such an ill-defined style in relation to others that are defined in an equally debatable manner. The criteria used are those that have been repeatedly criticised in recent decades, and that evoke the existence of “naturalistic”, “semi-naturalistic”, “extended semi-naturalistic”, “stylised” and finally “schematic” figures (p. 82). All these categories are very blurred, and it is impossible to establish clear-cut boundaries between them. In Wādi al-Ajāl, the figures in Wallpaper style are said to be older than the Bubaline and Pastoral engravings, yet they include domestic cattle, which is problematic, as the author readily admits. Moreover, in general, the densest concentrations of Bubaline-style engravings are to be found in exactly the same places as the Wallpaper-style images (p. 226). To explain this, the author imagines that the Wallpaper-style images of livestock were engraved by local hunter-gatherer communities meeting for the first time with the pastoralist immigrant groups who brought domestic livestock into their region. Rather than imagining such a scenario, is it not simpler to envisage that the stylistic classification used leads to aporias because it is poorly constructed? As it appears that images of domestic livestock account for 74 per cent of the species represented in the ‘Wallpaper style’ (p. 115), it is hard to see how it would differ from the so-called ‘Pastoral’ group.
As always, the images are difficult to interpret. A scene showing an archer aiming at a giraffe is supposed to “portray a symbolic conflict between humans and supernatural forces, in the guise of giraffes, the outcome of which (e.g. rainmaking) determines the well-being of the community and their cattle” (p. 122). This seems possible, of course, but before imagining such explanations, would it not be appropriate to first explain to us why we should not simply see it as a banal giraffe hunting scene?
As far as cups and hollows are concerned, and in the absence of new data explaining their use, it is impossible to choose an interpretation: grinding of seeds or other vegetable matter, minerals, salt, pigments etcetera. In the present state of our documentation, there is nothing to justify the ritual hypotheses “revolving around water, blood, rainmaking or extraction of rock dust for apotropaic or medicinal use” (pp. 184–85).
Some anthropomorphic figures are the subject of even riskier interpretations. For example, one of them, seen as a “mythical or cosmological being”, is said to have a “human body with an insect-like head and appendages, including multiple stick-like limbs, antennae, and a wing” (p. 128 & fig. 7.20a–b). In addition, there is “a strong resemblance between the phallus of this image and the abstract nasse motifs commonly associated with Tazina engravings” (p. 128). But if one looks at the published image, it appears rather that this is nothing more than a very ordinary human figure. The cephalic ornaments, which could be feathers, have no reason to be called ‘antennae’—especially in the entomological sense of the term. The so-called ‘wing’ is an object suspended from the shoulder, and the ‘phallus’ is all the more reminiscent of the skulls hanging from the belts of a number of the Mesāk anthropomorphs, as it contains two eyes…whose presence on a phallus would be very difficult to explain! This image therefore seems to be one of those engravings that link the Ajāl and the Mesāk immediately adjacent to the south.
Among the documents inventoried are 906 panels bearing Libyan-Berber inscriptions, making Ajāl “one of most densely inscribed areas currently known in the Sahara” (p. 161). As the book often presents them in a single, poorly legible photograph without transliteration, it would be very useful to publish a third volume documenting them in detail.
The situation of the engravings in the landscape is also studied, thanks to the georeferencing of the database, and the results are produced in the form of heat maps that highlight the different concentrations according to the styles, dating hypotheses or motifs represented. Unsurprisingly, the analysis reveals a greater density of works near the most frequented areas, with variations due to the greater or lesser accessibility of certain rocks and walls, as a result of variations in the extension of marshes and water areas depending on the climate. For Tertia Barnett, “Some of these panels appear to depict a narrative in which the images and the rock surface form a microcosm of a real or conceptual landscape” (p. 216). She cites, as an example, a panel that, in her view, “features a number of possible swans that swim around deep, natural holes in the rock (fig. 9.18b–c). The holes could conceivably represent real or imagined pools of water, or a supernatural dimension beyond the rock surface”. This interpretation is, to say the least, fragile, especially as it is perfectly possible to identify these birds as ostriches, some lying down, others standing upright, and their relationship with the natural holes in the bedrock being highly debatable.
These remarks do not detract from the quality of this publication. The author's conclusion, that “as water and grazing resources dwindled in surrounding areas, growing numbers of herder groups moved closer to the Wādi al-Ajālin in order to access more predictable resources” (p. 281), is in line with all that is currently known about the region. Tracings are accompanied by photographs, which allows their validity to be assessed, statements are always sourced so that they can be verified, discussions are measured and divergent positions are objectively presented.
These two volumes are therefore a major contribution to our studies, and we can only thank Tertia Barnett and the Society for Libyan Studies for making available the rich results of such a meticulous field study.
