A British team of researchers with EU funding from the European Research Council (ERC) has discovered more than 100 fortified farms and villages with castle-like structures and several towns, most dating from AD 1-500 in Libya’s south-western desert using satellites and air-photographs.

A team from the University of Leicester (UK) has identified the mud brick remains of the castle-like complexes, with walls still standing up to four metres high, along with traces of dwellings, cairn cemeteries, associated field systems, wells and sophisticated irrigation systems in Libya. The discovery has been possible thanks to the fall of Gaddafi, which has opened the way for archaeologists to explore the country’s pre-Islamic heritage, so long ignored under his regime. The British team, which is being funded under the European Research Council (ERC) has discovered more than 100 fortified farms and villages with castle-like structures and several towns, most dating from AD 1-500.

According to Dr Martin Sterry, from the University of Leicester and responsible for much of the image analysis and site interpretation, the evidence suggests that the climate has not changed over the years and we can see that this inhospitable landscape with zero rainfall was once very densely built up and cultivated. These are quite exceptional ancient landscapes, both in terms of the range of features and the quality of preservation. Dr Sterry also added that the discovery it is like someone coming to England and suddenly discovering all the medieval castles. These settlements had been unremarked and unrecorded under the Gaddafi regime.

The findings challenge a view dating back to Roman accounts that the Garamantes consisted of barbaric nomads and troublemakers on the edge of the Roman Empire. The Libyan antiquities department, badly under-resourced under Gaddafi, is closely involved in the project. Funding for the research has come from the European Research Council who awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of nearly €2.5 million, the Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Libyan Studies and the GeoEye Foundation.