ROME (ITALPRESS/MNA) – New excavations at Oued Beht, in northwestern Morocco, have unearthed the oldest defensive system documented to date in North Africa outside the Nile Valley: a large ditch and an earthen rampart dating back to between the early and mid-2nd millennium BC—approximately 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. This discovery, the result of the third field season of the Oued Beht Archaeological Project (OBAP), resolves an archaeological mystery that had persisted since the 1930s.
According to a statement from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the findings—published via open access in the journal Libyan Studies—are the result of a collaboration between Morocco’s National Institute of Archaeology and Heritage Sciences (INSAP), the National Research Council (CNR), ISMEO (International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies), and the University of Cambridge. The project is co-directed by Giulio Lucarini, Cyprian Broodbank, and Youssef Bokbot. It is carried out in partnership with Morocco’s Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication and the local community of Aït Siberne (Khémisset), and is funded by MAECI, the CNR, the MUR (via ISMEO), the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, and the University of Cambridge.
“For nearly a century, this ridge kept its secret,” said Giulio Lucarini, an archaeologist with CNR ISPC and ISMEO and co-director of the project. “Today, this discovery compels us to view this landscape in a new light. Our research shows that the communities of northwestern Morocco were capable of conceiving and executing major works through collective projects on a scale we had not previously been able to document.”
Taken together, these discoveries present an image of Oued Beht as a landscape that was inhabited, transformed, and reoccupied over the course of five millennia—from the first Neolithic farmers to the builders of great Bronze Age structures, and finally to the communities that returned to live there in the medieval period.
– Photo Ipa Agency Archive –
(ITALPRESS).
