Crumbling History - The Fading Material Culture of the Tataouine Region (Tunisia) and the Jebel Nafusa (Libya) by Anna Leone
2025-10-23 17:00 - 19:00 UTC
The arched cliff marking the edge of the pre-desert plateau between southern Tunisia and Tripolitania—known respectively as Dahar and Jebel Nafusa—has, for centuries, formed a unified cultural landscape where the material traditions of diverse ethnic groups took shape. In the past fifty years, a combination of political and environmental upheavals—many of them seemingly irreversible—has led to the depopulation of these regions. As a result, dozens of once-inhabited sites now stand abandoned and a remarkable built heritage, often dating back to the earliest caliphates, faces relentless deterioration.
The Partnership for Heritage Project, funded by the Cultural Protection Fund, brought together the expertise and resources of three European universities (Durham, Bristol, and Dublin), one Libyan institution (Azzaytuna University in Tarhuna), and the Tunisian National Institute of Heritage. Their shared goal is to develop multi-scale documentation strategies for historic architecture and long-term sustainable conservation interventions, alongside ethnographic research focused on traditional weaving techniques and the intangible cultural heritage embedded in local social life.
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About the Speaker

Anna Leone is professor at the Department of Archaeology, Durham University. She specialises in the study of the late Antique, Early Byzantine and early Islamic periods (4th to 9th/10th c) in the Mediterranean with a focus on the transformation of urban areas, and the impact of religious transitions from Paganism to Christianity, to Islam. She has published two monographs (Changing Townscapes in north Africa from Late Antiquity to the Arab Conquest, Bari 2007 and The End of the Pagan City, Oxford 2013), three edited volumes and over 80 articles in peer review journals. Professor Leone is an experienced field-archaeologist. She is involved in the protection of heritage in the MENA region, capacity buildings and the fight against illicit traffic. She is also the current Director of BILNAS.

Women Explorers in North Africa by Dr Anne Marie Williamson
2025-11-04 13:00 - 14:30
Women Explorers in North Africa
BILNAS is excited to announce our first joint lecture with the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) – a fellow British Academy International Research Institute, which will explore the great contributions made to our understanding of the archaeology and other aspects of North Africa by European women explorers.
This online lecture will be presented by BILNAS’s archivist Dr Anne Marie Williamson, and combines Andrew Goudie’s extensive research on the subject with Anne Marie’s own findings from the BILNAS Archive.
Online via Zoom, free to attend, all welcome.
Please note the start times: 13:00 (UK) / 15:00 (Egypt) / 14:00 (Libya)
TO REGISTER please follow this link to the EES website: https://www.ees.ac.uk/whats-on/events/women-explorers-in-north-africa.html
About the Speaker

This event remains authored by Andrew Goudie but will now feature additional material from the new presenter BILNAS Archivist Dr Anne Marie Williamson.
Anne Marie holds an MA in Irish Literature from Queen’s University Belfast, and a PhD from Ulster University. Her doctoral research, completed in 2016 with the support of a D.E.L Research Studentship, focused on the mobilisation of the female body in Northern Irish women’s writing from 1900-2010.
For five years, Anne Marie was a Teaching Associate at the University of Nottingham. In this role, she taught modules on the history, theory, and practice of dramatic writing and theatre production, and developed learning content for the school’s online master’s programme in Applied English.
In June 2023, Anne Marie completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Archives and Records Management (with Distinction) via distance learning at the University of Dundee. She is a member of the Archives and Records Association UK and Ireland, and an Associate Fellow of Advance HE. Since August 2024, she has served as the archivist for the British Institute for Libyan & Northern African Studies (BILNAS).

The Making of Medieval Morocco: State-Building and Everyday Life on the Edge of Empire by Corisande Fenwick
2025-11-27 18:30 - 21:30 | The British Academy, 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH, London, United Kingdom
This year’s BILNAS ANNUAL LECTURE will be delivered by former BILNAS Director, Corisande Fenwick, Professor of Late Antique and Islamic Archaeology at UCL Institute of Archaeology.
About this Event
The Muslim conquests in the 7th century transformed the everyday lives of communities in North Africa in profound ways. Some of these changes are well known, others less so: the appearance of mosques and palaces; the introduction of new crops, agricultural practices and technological innovations in ceramic, glass, metalwork; and the integration of North Africa into a complex trading network that connected the immense Caliphate with an even vaster region from China to the Atlantic. At the same time, though cultural change was slow and regionally varied, a distinctly ‘Islamic cultural package’ emerged. However, much of what we know about this transformative period continues to reflect the experience of rulers and elites, rather than the bulk of the population.
Recent archaeological discoveries in Morocco – the first region to break away from the caliphate –offer a new perspective on this transformative period. This lecture brings together a wealth of new archaeological and scientific evidence from cities and the countryside — from coins, pottery, glass to the movement of raw materials, and exotic goods— to explore how and why rival Islamic states emerged in this region, and how people lived, worked, and traded on the far western frontier of the Caliphate.
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About the Speaker

Corisande Fenwick is Professor of Late Antique and Islamic Archaeology at UCL. Her books include Early Islamic North Africa and the co-edited Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology. She currently co-directs several field projects in Morocco (Volubilis, Wadi Draa) and Tunisia (Bulla Regia) and is PI of the ERC-funded project EVERYDAYISLAM: Cultural Change, Everyday Life and State Formation in early Islamic North Africa (600-1000) and Co-I of the AHRC-funded project OasCiv: Making Oasis Civilisation in the Moroccan Sahara. Corisande served on BILNAS Council for 10 years as Council Member, Honorary Secretary (2016-20) and Director (2020-24).

Pottery Production and Circulation in Northern Africa from Late Antiquity to the Post-Medieval Period – 6th-18th Century CE
2025-12-02 - 2025-12-04
The Third Thematic Conference of the AIECM3
(Association Internationale pour l’Étude des Céramiques Médiévales et Modernes en Méditerranée).

Tunis-Oudhna
Tues 2nd – Thurs 4th December 2025
Northern Africa’s southern Mediterranean coast, from Morocco to Egypt, has been a cultural and economic hub, with pottery serving as a key indicator of historical changes, especially during Late Antiquity. Central North Africa was a major producer of African Red Slip ware and amphorae, but local and regional pottery, trans-desert trade, and production in areas like Algeria, Libya, and Morocco are less studied.
Post-Late Antiquity, ceramic production and trade networks shifted, yet the 8th and 9th centuries remain under-researched due to limited archaeological data. Emerging evidence suggests continued regional production and external connections, challenging notions of economic decline. From the 10th century, glazed wares reflected technological and domestic changes, while cooking wares and amphorae were overlooked.
The Fatimid commercial revolution boosted trade, with North Africa supplying new ceramic forms and facilitating goods circulation, including Chinese imports via Egypt. However, from the 12th century onward, ceramic studies focus heavily on glazed tableware, neglecting other categories. The historiographical emphasis on maritime powers like Venice and Genoa often overshadows North Africa’s role in Mediterranean commerce and ceramic innovation.
This conference aims to bring together researchers to reassess and enrich our understanding of North African pottery production, which has been underrepresented in recent AIECM3 congresses. The goal is to identify gaps in current knowledge of this long and transformative period, foster collaboration, and define priorities for future research. Many studies and projects currently focus on this part of the Mediterranean, and we believe the time is right to bring these efforts together and stimulate a forward-looking academic dialogue.
Organisers:
Viva Sacco – UCL
Chokri Touihri – INP
Corisande Fenwick – UCL
Contributions: Contributions will consist of oral presentations and posters, and will feature both invited speakers and submissions via an open call.
For further information about this event, including the Call for Papers, please click here

Please send any questions via email to Viva Sacco: v.sacco@ucl.ac.uk

Bizarre Dinosaurs from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco: Implications for Armoured Dinosaur Evolution by Susannah Maidment
2026-01-13 17:00 - 19:00
The Middle Jurassic is a critical time in the evolution of the dinosaurs because it witnessed the radiation of many groups, giving rise to a diversity of familiar forms such as the plated stegosaurs and the long-necked sauropods.
However, this diversification is shrouded in mystery because the Middle Jurassic is poorly sampled, mainly due to a paucity of terrestrial Middle Jurassic rocks across North America and Europe. In 2017 and 2018, the NHM acquired a couple of enigmatic specimens, purportedly from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco. Working with colleagues at the University in Fes, we were able to trace the specimens to the El Mers III Formation, a suite of terrestrial rocks of Middle Jurassic age that were entirely unexplored by vertebrate palaeontologists. We described the NHM specimens as the first stegosaur from north Africa, and the world’s oldest ankylosaur and first ever discovered in Africa.
Our subsequent work in the area, much of it funded by BILNAS, has revealed that the El Mers III Formation is incredibly fossiliferous and it may represent the best preserved Middle Jurassic terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. In 2023, we excavated new partial skeleton of the ankylosaur, which demonstrates it had a morphology unlike any animal living or extinct, and challenging our understanding of the evolution of armour in these dinosaurs.
Working in Morocco, however, is not without challenges. There are no natural history museums in which to reposit our finds, no prep labs, and no vertebrate palaeontologists working in the country, while a thriving commercial trade results in illegal excavations at our sites. Working with our colleagues, we have established a university collection, have trained students in fossil preparation, and are now working with them to establish protections for the fossils in the region.
This event will take place online via the Zoom platform: please REGISTER HERE to attend.
About the Speaker

Prof Susannah Maidment is a vertebrate palaeontologist and Principal Researcher in Fossil Reptiles at the Natural History Museum, UK. Her work focuses on the palaeobiology of the bird-hipped ‘ornithischian’ dinosaurs, including iconic species like Stegosaurus and Iguanodon. She also studies the palaeoenvironments in which dinosaurs and other Mesozoic vertebrates are found, with field areas in Morocco, Kyrgyzstan and the western USA. She has a degree in geological sciences from Imperial College, a PhD in vertebrate palaeontology from the University of Cambridge, and she holds an honorary Professorship in palaeobiology at the University of Birmingham. She regularly appears in the media talking about dinosaurs, and in 2019 was one of National Geographic UK’s Women of Impact. In 2016 she was awarded the Palaeontological Association’s Hodson Award, and in 2017 the Geological Society’s Lyell Fund, both for notable contributions by an early career researcher.
