The Sahara and Peoples of North Africa: Facing the Sea of Sand

An Exclusive Talk for Members of the Ashmolean

With Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology, School of Archaeology, Oxford.

In-person and online (via Zoom).

Tea, coffee and cake will be served from 3pm.

The Sahara desert, the great sea of sand, stretching across Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, might be thought to be a barrier to travel. But far from it.

For 5,000 years people have faced the challenge of crossing it, driven by the desire to trade or simply by their curiosity to find out what is beyond.

Before that, when the climate was very different, much that is now desert was green and welcoming. Deserts change and people change with them.

Professor Barry Cunliffe, well-known to generations of Oxford students as an inspirational teacher and renowned for his ground-breaking archaeological research, will show how the Sahara has, and continues, to play a crucial part in world history.