Volubilis - Excavation, Restoration and UNESCO Listing

Excavation, Restoration and UNESCO Listing

Volubilis was principally excavated by the French during their rule over French Morocco between 1912–56, but the excavations at the site had their origins decades earlier. From 1830, when the French conquest of Algeria began the process of extending French rule over much of northern, western and central Africa, archaeology was closely associated with French colonialism. The French army undertook scientific explorations as early as the 1830s and by the 1850s it was fashionable for French army officers to investigate Roman remains during their leave and spare time. By the late 19th century French archaeologists were undertaking an intensive effort to uncover north-west Africa's pre-Islamic past through excavations and restorations of archaeological sites. The French had a very different conception of historic preservation to that of the Muslim Moroccans. As Gwendolyn Wright puts it, "the Islamic sense of history and architecture found the concept of setting off monuments entirely foreign", which "gave the French proof of the conviction that only they could fully appreciate the Moroccan past and its beauty." Emile Pauty of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Marocaines criticised the Muslims for taking the view that "the passage of time is nothing" and charged them with "let their monuments fall into ruin with as much indifference as they once showed ardour in building them."

The French programme of excavation at Volubilis and other sites in French-controlled North Africa (in Algeria and Tunisia) had a strong ideological component. Archaeology at Roman sites was used as an instrument of colonialist policy, to make a connection between the ancient Roman past and the new "Latin" societies that the French were building in North Africa. The programme involved clearing modern structures built on ancient sites, excavating Roman towns and villas and reconstructing major civic structures such as triumphal arches. Ruined cities, such as Timgad in Algeria, were excavated and cleared on a massive scale. The remains were intended to serve, as one writer has put it, as "the witness to an impulse towards Romanization".

This theme resonated with other visitors to the site. The American writer Edith Wharton visited in 1920 and highlighted what she saw as the contrast between "two dominations look at each other across the valley", the ruins of Volubilis and "the conical white town of Moulay Idriss, the Sacred City of Morocco". She saw the dead city as representing "a system, an order, a social conception that still runs through all our modern ways." In contrast, she saw the still very much alive town of Moulay Idriss as "more dead and sucked back into an unintelligible past than any broken architrave of Greece or Rome." As Sarah Bird Wright puts it, Wharton saw Volubilis as a symbol of civilisation and Moulay Idriss as one of barbarism; the subtext is that "in ransacking the Roman outpost, Islam destroyed its only chance to build a civilised society". Fortunately for Morocco, "the political stability which France is helping them to acquire will at last give their higher qualities time for fruition" – very much the theme that the French colonial authorities wanted to get across. Hillaire Belloc, too, spoke of his impression being "rather one of history and of contrast. Here you see how completely the new religion of Islam flooded and drowned the classical and Christian tradition."

The first excavations at Volubilis were carried out by the French archaeologist Henri de la Martinière between 1887–92. In 1915 Hubert Lyautey, the military governor of French Morocco, commissioned the French archaeologists Marcel and Jane Dieulafoy to carry out excavations in Volubilis. Although Jane's ill-health meant that they were unable to carry out the programme of work that they drew up for Lyautey, the work went ahead anyway under Louis Chatelain. They were assisted by thousands of German prisoners of war who had been captured during the First World War and loaned to the excavators by Lyautey. The excavations continued on and off until 1941 when the Second World War forced a halt.

Following the war, excavations resumed under the French and Moroccan authorities (following Morocco's independence in 1956) and a programme of restoration and reconstruction began. The Arch of Caracalla had already been restored in 1930–34. It was followed by the Capitoline Temple in 1962, the basilica in 1965–67 and the Tingis Gate in 1967. A number of mosaics and houses underwent conservation and restoration between 1952–55. In recent years, one of the oil production workshops in the southern end of the city has been restored and furnished with a replica Roman oil press. These restorations have not been without controversy; a review carried out for UNESCO in 1997 reported that "some of the reconstructions, such as those on the triumphal arch, the capitolium, and the oïl-pressing workshop, are radical and at the limit of currently accepted practice."

From 2000 excavations carried out by University College London and the Moroccan Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine under the direction of Elizabeth Fentress, Gaetano Palumbo and Hassan Limane revealed what should probably be interpreted as the headquarters of Idris I just below the walls of the Roman town to the west. Excavations within the walls also revealed a section of the early medieval town. Today, many artefacts found at Volubilis can be seen on display in the Rabat Archaeological Museum.

Volubilis was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. In the 1980s, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) organised three conferences to assess possible nominations to the World Heritage List for sites in North Africa. Volubilis was unanimously agreed to be a good candidate for the list and in 1997 ICOMOS recommended that it be inscribed on the list as "an exceptionally well preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire", which UNESCO accepted.