This article revisits archival excavation records of the Roman garrison at Bu Njem. Past research on the archaeology of Bu Njem often considered the site in isolation from its extramural settlement and from the content of its ostraca, focusing on the morphology of the fort, and the composition of the garrison: this offers the opportunity to study the garrison as an extended military community in its interconnected social, cultural and economic settings. Since the completion of fieldwork led by Rebuffat between 1967 and 1980, there have been significant advances to the research on the Garamantes, the understanding of trade in the Sahara and the nature of Rome's North African frontiers. These advances allow for a rethinking of the interpretation of the evidence from Bu Njem. This article focuses on the archaeology of the military base and the extramural settlement. Building on existing research, the results add to interpretations of the activities in the garrison, recognise the urban character of the garrison settlement, and in doing so, improve our understanding of social and economic activities on the frontier.

Greek archaeology, and especially prehistory, has been a field of pioneering zooarchaeological research from as early as the first half of the 20th century. The discipline retains this innovative dynamism and actively participates in the international developments that shape its future. This paper takes a critical look at zooarchaeology in Greece and highlights its current trends as they may be teased out from the considerable and multifaceted body of research published since 2010. In comparison to earlier decades, zooarchaeological research in Greece over the last decade has been characterized by the breadth of its achievements and progress in almost every aspect. Institutional representation and zooarchaeological infrastructure in the country, however, still needs enhancing. Overall, though, the presence of a large number of contributing researchers from Greece and abroad, the diffusion of zooarchaeological data across an increasingly wide range of disciplines, and the augmented inclusion of zooarchaeological results in the wider archaeological and historical narratives certainly point towards a promising future.

This article, based on an oral presentation in virtual format by the author at the British School at Athens (BSA) Annual General Meeting on 9 February 2022, summarizes the activities of the BSA with a focus on the calendar year 2021. It describes – selectively and concisely – research by award holders, BSA-sponsored fieldwork and study in 2021, research and events associated with the Fitch Laboratory and the Knossos Research Centre, plus other activities of the BSA in Greece and the UK, including seminars, conferences, and workshops.

The BSA Museum houses a study collection of artefacts donated to the BSA and collected by its members up to the 1960s. The collection provides a valuable resource for teaching and research, enabling scholars to gain first-hand familiarity with objects from a range of material types (including ceramics, metals, stone, terracotta) dating from the Neolithic through to the Late Byzantine period. The collection comprises some 4,000 individual artefacts and over 46,000 sherds of pottery, objects that have been displayed in different parts of the BSA premises over the past 130 years. Of the whole collection, various small sections have been published in the Annual of the BSA. What has been lacking, however, is a narrative about the museum itself: where its objects came from, who studied them, how the collection as a whole has been catalogued and organized. This paper tells that story: from the collection’s humble beginnings, with the first donation of just a few sherds in 1892, through to recently completed digitization and public engagement projects.

Recent scholarship on North African cities has done much to dispel earlier assumptions about late antique collapse and demonstrate significant continuity into the Byzantine and medieval periods. Yet urban changes did not affect North Africa evenly. Far less is known about the differing regional trajectories that shaped urban transformation and the extent to which pre-Roman and Roman micro-regions continued to share meaningful characteristics in subsequent periods. This article provides a preliminary exploration of regional change from the fourth to the eleventh century focused on a zone in the Central Medjerda Valley (Tunisia) containing the well-known sites of Bulla Regia and Chimtou. We place these towns in their wider historical and geographical setting and interrogate urban change by looking at investment in public buildings and spaces, religious buildings and housing, and ceramic networks. The process of comparison identifies new commonalities (and differences) between the sites of this stretch of the Medjerda River and provides a framework for understanding the many transformations of North African cities over the long late antiquity.