John Riley Cyrenaica Papers.

Collection relates to John A. Riley's work on the coarse ware of Cyrenaica. The collection includes a variety of media including correspondence, catalogues, notebooks, articles and papers, thin sections, clippings and photographs.

The records primarily relate to expeditions to Cyrenaica during the 1970s and excavations carried out at a number of Cyrenaican sites including Ajdabiyah, Apollonia, Benghazi, Berenice, Cyrene, Jalo, Medina es Sultan, Ptolemais, Selmani, Sidi Khrebish, Tauchira [Tocra] and Tolmeita. However, material relating to sites outside of Cyrenaica and Libya is also present within the collection, mostly for comparison purposes.

The findings of these expeditions eventually resulted in "Excavations at Sidi Khrebish Benghazi (Berenice): Volume II" (Tripoli, 1985) and there is a significant amount of correspondence and photographs relating to this publication.

The image below shows a lamp from D14/8/10/7.

John Anthony Riley postgraduate in University of Manchester researching "The Hellenistic and Roman Pottery of Cyrenaica", moved to Cambridge to continue his research in 1976. Last visit to Libya in 1979. In 1982, Riley was at the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton (appointed 1978 - he was offered the post of Research Fellow to study the petrology of Minoan and Mycenean pottery.

Editor of Libyan Studies, resigned in November 1983 after two years

The records have been arranged into nine series, based on their format;

1. Correspondence.

2. Catalogues and Notebooks.

3. Research Notes.

4. Articles, Papers and Reports.

5. Pottery Indices.

6. Samples and Thin Sections.

7. Miscellaneous Documents.

8. Photographs.

9. Maps, Plans and Drawings.

Available for general access

Please contact the BILNAS General Secretary on gensec@bilnas.org If you wish to consult the archive.

Donated by John Riley to the Society for Libyan Studies Archive in 2011; a second donation of material was made by Riley on 19 April 2016.