1. To study the water and agricultural resources of medieval Sijilmasa using satellite imagery, aerial photography, surface survey and oral interviews;
2. To refine and extend the topographic data and maps of the 1988 season using electronic distance measuring (EDM) technology;
3. To refine the typology and sequence of ceramics types established during the 1988 season;
4. To confirm the identity, date, and orientation of the mosque;
5. To study the stratigraphy and architectural and artifact deposition in a series of soundings at randomly selected locations over the site;
6. To collect archeobotanic specimens in a stratigraphic context.

The cartography team collected topographical data using an EDM system, redoing the central area that we did in 1988, plus an area both to the north and to the south of the central area. They have entered the data into a computer and have generated a contour map using computer software.

In order to study the agricultural potential and water delivery systems in Sijilmasa's catchment area, remote-sensing specialist Dale Lightfoot analyzed satellite imagery. Lightfoot and Jim Miller "ground truthed" this map and collected data from oral tradition regarding traditional land and water use in the oasis. Important information has been obtained from this satellite map/ground truthing process including a clear picture of the irregular clustering of date palms in the oasis and a better understanding of how near- surface geology has affected available ground water and agriculture in the Tafilalt. They have projected a map of the Tafilalt Oasis depicting Sijilmasa as a unified city some 13 kilometers north to south but only about 1.5 km wide along the River Ziz. Oral tradition also identifies a market area at the western edge of the Sijilmasa g'maman called "Ben Akla Tazrout." Visible at this location today are low wall sections and stone foundations including a few square pillar foundations from what local traditions identifies as a small mosque.

Having learned that the qibla of most early mosques in Morocco face SSE, we conducted a sounding (T7) along the south wall of the mosque. It revealed the foundation of the mihrab.

A sounding (T11) adjacent to (T2) of the 1988 season revealed at least two levels of occupation below the eighteenth century level previously exposed by the Ben Shemsi excavation of 1974, a level defined by stone pavers above a mud/concrete floor with sub-terranian drains. The exact nature of the architecture remains undefined, but the abundance of stone building materials suggests structures of major importance.

A sounding (T12) adjacent to (T1a) of the 1988 season shows that, below a level of eighteenth century walls and floor, there are at least three different floor levels and two series of drains and pits and cesspools.

A sounding (T14) in the citadel area, north of the mosque indicates three levels of walls. The lowest level consists of a packed mud floor with early (eleventh to fourteenth century) pottery below the floor. The architecture remains to be defined.

They re-examined a tower (T6) that was exposed in 1991 by Lahcen Taouchikht. The tower is located along the western edge of the central part of the site, along the River Ziz. The tower clearly had two distinct phases of construction. By digging trenches both inside and outside the tower below the base of the wall, they learned that the lower level of the wall rests on an earlier level of occupation, probably of the eleventh or twelfth century.

Approximately three hundred meters north of the west tower (T6), they exposed another tower along the River Ziz having the same two levels of construction. Several small trenches dug to the north and to the west of the north tower revealed that the outer wall does not continue due north from the north tower but steps in to the northeast toward the citadel. It remains to be determined whether or not evidence of a continuous exterior wall can be found all along the River Ziz.

A sounding (T18) approximately 100 meters to the southeast of the north tower exposed two floor levels near the surface, below which was a deposit of midden for 1 meter and then still another floor level. Although time did not allow them to reach bedrock in this sounding, the lowest levels reached contained eleventh through fourteenth century pottery. The architecture remains to be identified.

At the southern edge of the central area, near T3 of the 1988 season, a sounding (T9) revealed three distinct levels of occupation, the lowest consisting of a solid mud/concrete floor, tentatively dated to the eleventh century by ceramics inbedded in the aggregate base of the floor. The presence of common tableware, cooking ware and storage vessels suggests a residential zone.

A small 2 x 5 meter sounding was excavated at 200 m SSE of the "mosque." After exposing one relatively recent level of occupation, bedrock was reached at 40 cm below the surface.

Using aerial photographs, they mapped areas where they suspect subsurface walls. They tested an area one to two hundred meters southwest of the mosque with a series of small cuts and discovered that walls were located just below the surface forming a rectangular shaped enclosure, the nature of which is yet to be identified.

Dr. Lahcen Taouchikt analyzed and registered 1472 pieces of diagnostic pottery. He divided this pottery into four broad categories:

1) The earliest type, chronologically, he calls "Sijilmasian" pottery, and dates it from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries. It is made from a compact, homogeneous, clayey paste, mostly cream colored. The pottery is very thin and of very fine texture. The forms are typically bowls, plates, jugs, bottles, lamps and cups.

2) The second type is called "Filalian" pottery and dates from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Its characteristics in terms of color, composition and forms are virtually identical to Sijilmasian. The forms are primarily small utilitarian ware.

3) The third type is called "Bhayr" pottery, so named because of its place of production in the Ksar Bhayr al-Ansar, now in ruins, on the west bank of the Oued Ziz. Bhayr pottery dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The paste is similar to Filalian pottery and, too, consists of small domestic forms such as bowls, plates, jugs, bottles, lamps and cups. It was often covered with a monochrome glaze: green, yellow, brown (iron glaze).

4) The fourth group consists of crude pottery which dates from prehistoric through all three historic periods described above. The type derives from pre-historic Berber pottery identified at a site approximately six kilometers east of Sijilmasa in the mountainous massif named "Rich Dar al-Bida". This pottery is characterized by a crude texture with inclusions of small black stone and a thickness ranging from ten to twenty-four millimeters. The forms are large utilitarian ware: jars, basins, cooking vessels, braziers. The cooking ware has a red or white slip.

Dr. Taouchikt's analysis indicates that, although there is a remarkable similarity in pottery production in the Tafilelt from earliest times to the present, there are subtle differences in decoration, paste composition and forms and that these variations have some chronological significance.