l'Institut Culturel Italien and Moroccan archeology

The Institut culturel italien in Rabat is similar to the Institut français de Rabat in that it organizes cultural events for members and interested folks in the community. Last evening, the center hosted a lecture called « L'archéologie du Maroc antique » and the event was standing room only. Professor Emanuele Papi from the Univeristy in Sienna talked about the Italo-Moroccan team's excavations of recent years and what had been learned.

My class at ESI ran late (we had to talk about plagiarism and it took a while longer than expected) so I arrived 10 minutes late. I can only assume that the presentation began on time, and I learned a lot during the time I was there.

In the period before the Romans, the Mauritanian period, all trading villages had to be built inland because of the high tides associated with the Atlantic. Settlers would take a river inland for 10 km and set up trading villages in naturally protected areas. The Mediterranean coast to the north was entirely inhospitable, and only from the level of Tangiers down could trading settlements begin.

When the Roman toops arrived, they came in small numbers and with soldiers who had been recruited in Spain, Syria, and Bulgaria. Some of the "Romans" were Berbers who collaborated, and took Latin versions of their Berber names. It is likely that none of the "Romans" in Morocco had ever set foot in Italy, much less in Rome. Volubilis is the most well-known Roman installation, but there are others. One site, called Chellah, is near Salé in Rabat.

In one Moroccan city, Essouria, a center for dying purple dating back to Roman times has been identified. It takes 11,000 mollusks to dye one small shirt purple using these ancient techniques. The liquid pigment is unstable and cannot be transported; the fabric must be transported to the dying center. Dr. Papi's team can be certain of the production of the dye because of the mounds of mollusk shells in the area.

The Romans may have been among the first colonizers of Morocco (followed by the Arabs, the Spanish and the French), but this scholarly presentation was in the language of the most recent colonizers, the French. Dr. Papi did a beautiful job of describing his work in French, to an audience of French speakers, nestled away in a room at the Italian Cultural Center. French may no longer be the international language it once was, but it continues to be the language of scholarly communiation in Morocco. Of course, the audience was largely Western, but that should be the topic of another blog post, I suppose.