In July of this year a three week study of ancient ports in the Libyan Pentapolis was undertaken by Robert Yorke, John Little and David Davidson. The principal achievement was the surveying of the remains of the harbours of Tolmeita and Tocra, with a brief investigation of the remains at Apollonia providing useful comparative material. Visits were also made to Zawiat el Haniya (? Ausigda), Zawiat el Hammama (Phycus) an d Driana (Hadrianopolis) but these proved, as expected, to have limited underwater remains.Previous accounts of the ancient harbour at Tolmeita failed to agree on the exact location of the port but this controversy would now seem to have been resolved as a result of the discovery of submerged quays, roads and buildings and the underwater remains of protective harbour moles attached to the small islands in the bay to the East of the promontory. All these structures are now in an advanced state of decay as a result of wave action over the centuries but the main outlines are still apparent underwater.

This article describes fieldwork undertaken in 1972 at the harbour of the Hellenistic city of Ptolemais at Tolmeita in Cyrenaica, Libya. This survey has shown that the city possessed a sophisticated Hellenistic harbour installation, now submerged by some 2 m. It consisted of a small fishing harbour and a larger commercial harbour protected by extensive stone breakwaters built around two offshore islands. Between the harbours, remains were found under water of an extensive block‐built quay connected to one island, where there was a system of submerged rock‐cut tanks. These are interpreted as the foundations of a fish‐processing factory. Changes in sea‐level are also discussed.

No abstract

On the East coast of Tunisia, between Sousse and Sfax, lie the scant remains of the ancient city of Thapsus, notable mainly for a battle fought in the civil war in 46 BC. Visits by the authors resulted in the discovery of one of the longest‐known harbour moles in the entire Roman Empire. No ancient sources make reference to any work of such magnitude and the paper suggests that the harbour was never completed, but might have been started by the local emperors Gordianus, none of whom survived long enough to have executed such a project.

No abstract