LBI-PROJECT
OBJECTIVES
DIGITALIZING THE CULTURAL HERITAGE
The
phenomenon of rock art is becoming more and more a subject of global
interest and concern. Rock art is one of the most visible components
of the archaeological record. Above all rock inscriptions serve as a
valuable source of information about the important era of the introduction
of writing in early societies.
One of the most important and less known types of ancient scripts of
North African history is the group of Libyco-Berber scripts, spread
all over the northern part of Africa - from Libya to the Canary Islands.
However, this important source is in danger to be destroyed in manifold
ways. In the face of ever-increasing tourism, road construction and
even visitor traffic to archaeological sites, rock art sites are being
subjected to unprecedented levels of destruction. Therefore, there is
a real and urgent need to systematically record the rock art before
it is degraded and to store this information in a medium that will not
fade or otherwise disintegrate with time. Thus it will be available
for future generations of researchers all over the world for purposes
of analysis and comparison.
THE PRIMARY
OBJECTS OF THE PROJECT ARE:
1.
Elaboration of a standardized database system for the storing of rock
inscriptions
2.
Documentation of all relevant data of each rock inscriptions site, panel
and line of script using standardized field recording forms
3.
Documentation of each Libyco-Berber inscription by digitalized photo
and drawing
4.
Establishment of a comprehensive and updated bibliography subdivided
into geographical and thematic groups
5.
Analysis of each inscription by epigraphic and linguistic commentaries
6.
All these steps will be done in cooperation with international and local
authorities and institutions
7.
Presentation of the database within the framework of the homepage of
INSTITUTUM CANARIUM, so that the whole documentation and interpretation
can be used by the interested lay public as well as by academic scholars
and researchers worldwide
LBI-PROJECT
AND DATABASE
The
LBI-project is based on the activities of INSTITUTUM CANARIUM in cooperation
with Canary and North-African authorities, universities and researchers.
The aim of the LBI-online-database is to present all known Libyco-Berber
inscriptions of the Canary Islands and of several regions of Northern
Africa, starting with Morocco.
For the moment approximately 190 panels and 350 lines of inscription
are known and documented on the Canary Islands, most of them on El Hierro,
followed by Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote, only single ones
on Tenerife, La Palma and La Gomera.
Morocco provides for the moment about 110 rock panels and additionally
about 30 steles with Libyco-Berber inscriptions.
Information
has been broken down into two main types: SITE and INSCRIPTION.
SITE includes
information about the physical and political location of the site, its
type, the number of inscriptions and - if available - photographs of
the landscape.
INSCRIPTION
includes all information about one panel. Each inscription is documented
by photograph and drawing and interpreted by epigraphic and linguistic
commentaries.
A comprehensive
listing of the references can be found at REFERENCES.
General
information about the Libyco-Berber script is presented at SCRIPT, about
the different alphabets at ALPHABET.
CONCORDANCE
should help to avoid misunderstandings in different languages by providing
a multilingual list of special terms and definitions.
EPIGRAPHIC
CONVENTIONS gives a short explanation of some conventions used for the
transliteration of the inscriptions.
MAPS provide
geographical overviews over the sites of a country/region.
Because
of increasing methods of digitalized photography and computer aided
analysis we nowadays are able to create drawings of the inscriptions
which are more accurate than those made ten or twenty years ago. Therefore
some of the drawings shown now in this database differ in details from
those published in earlier papers.
All information within this database is presented to the best of our
knowledge and belief. If one has better or more detailed information
he is kindly asked to contact the webmaster.
COMMENT:
All visitors of the page are invited to write guest-comments: private
opinions, suggestions, additions or corrections to the whole database
as well as to special inscriptions.
The database
is, of course, open for including additional inscriptions. Everyone
is invited to contribute photographs, drawings and data of own discoveries:
they will be included with guarantee of personal copyright.