User:Simsar69/Fabrizio Mori (Africanist Etnographer)

Fabrizio Mori (Cascina 4th December 1925 –Trequanda 2010) was an italian ethnographer and archaeologist who worked in Africa, well-known internationally for his work on cave art in the Sahara.

Biography
Fabrizio Mori was born on 4th December 1925 in Cascina (Pisa) in Italy.

He obtained his classical high school diploma at the Naval College in Venice. From here, he went to the Naval Academy, which after 8 September was transferred to Brindisi. At the end of October 1943, not yet eighteen years old, he left the Academy to enroll as a volunteer in the "I Raggruppamento Motorizzato Italiano" (Italian Motorised Regiment), the first nucleus of the regular Army reorganized for the liberation of Italy.

On 8th December, he took part in the battle of Montelungo where, among the many tragic losses, five of his high school and Academy friends died. He was decorated for Military Honour "in the field"; he was promoted officer for war merits and was awarded honorary citizenship of Rocchetta a Volturno (Isernia).

In 1954, he graduated in Political Science from the Cesare Alfieri Institute of Florence University, with a thesis on the peoples of the Sahara.

In 1955, his interest in the Saharan area led him to organize his first archaeological mission in the Libyan Fezzan, where he began a series of research projects in the hitherto unexplored Tadrart Acacus mountain range. His research, which yielded astonishing results, enabled him to begin his career at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1969. In 1972-1975, he was appointed to teach Prehistoric Ethnology of Africa (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy), a post he had been given in recognition of his important research in the Libyan Sahara. In 1982, he was appointed associate professor for the same discipline and then in 1989, following a competitive examination, he was appointed extraordinary professor of Prehistoric Ethnography of Africa. In 1992, he was confirmed as full professor of Prehistoric Ethnography of Africa, a position he held until 1997.

In 1980, after a suspension of his activities in the field due to serious family reasons, he resumed joint Italian-Libyan missions for prehistoric research in the Sahara. In 1992, he founded the C.I.R.S.A. (Inter-University Centre for Research into the Civilisations and Environment of the Ancient Sahara) at "La Sapienza", together with the Universities of Milan, Modena, Cassino, Pisa, and Naples l'Orientale. His prestigious appointments include chairing the "Commission du Néolithique du Nord de l'Afrique et du Sahara" of the UISPP (Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques). In 2002, he was awarded a high honor by the authorities of the Shaabia region of Ghat and Tadrart Acacus, motivated by the scientific results obtained in that region in almost half a century of researches and studies and also by the intense communicative relationship with the Tuareg who lived in the T.Acacus area, in Ghat, and in Aweynat.

In parallel with his academic and scientific work, he has dedicated himself to civil commitment. In 1977, he founded the Lorenzo Mori Centre in Trequanda (SI), which takes in minors with various difficulties. Subsequently, in 2003, he founded the association called "Noutopia" in Trequanda, which aims to totally eliminate weapons and violence in all its forms.

Scientific Activity
From 1955 to 1964, he organized a series of field missions in the Tadrart Acacus (Libyan Fezzan), involving various specialists in the excavations and reconnaissance, including geologist Angelo Pasa. He thus inaugurated a type of multidisciplinary research, the results of which enabled him to gather fundamental data on the chronology of the peopling of the central Sahara, on various aspects of prehistoric and protohistoric cultures, and, in particular, on rock art. In addition, artists such as Ugo Furlan, Piero Guccione, and Lorenzo Tornabuoni collaborated to produce reproductions of the paintings and rock engravings. This first phase of research was made public in 1956 through a series of articles and a book summarising the main results of the research and setting out the interpretative hypotheses on the rock art of Tadrart Acacus (1965). Since then, he has been interested in the conservation of rock art and paintings, in particular, an interest that led him to request the collaboration of restorers from the Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome. From the 1960s onwards, he inaugurated a series of exhibitions of reproductions of rock art in the most important cities in Italy (Florence and Rome) and abroad (New York, Washington, Tripoli) and held conferences at major universities in Europe and the USA. Subsequently, as highlighted in the second book dedicated to research in the Libyan Fezzan (1998), his research extended to the Messak Settafet plateau, which is rich in thousands of engraved sites.

In 1985, he obtained the inclusion of the Tadrart Acacus in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

According to Fabrizio Mori, the study and interpretation of the rock art "phenomenon" requires a dual approach. The multidisciplinary investigations aimed at identifying the ethnic and cultural identity of the creators of the rock art of the Central Sahara, which, according to Mori, has a very long history stretching from the end of the Pleistocene to the Holocene, go hand in hand with anthropological and philosophical reflections on "...the 'historical' function of rock art: on the role, it played in the development of the various cultures, as a manifestation or "phenomenon" of an "aesthetic" attitude that was becoming established as one of the most important faculties of the species, linked to those non-material needs which occupied ever greater spaces in the lives of the various groups" (1988-1989: 479).

Publications

 * Mori F. 1956 Ricerche paletnologiche nel Fezzan, Rivista di Scienze Preistoriche, XI:211-29.
 * Mori F., Ascenzi A.1959 La mummia infantile di Uan Muhuggiag. Osservazioni antropologiche, Rivista dell'Istituto di Antropologia, XLI:125- 48.
 * Mori F. 1960 Arte rupestre del Sahara libico, De Luca.
 * Mori F. 1961 Aspetti di cronologia sahariana alla luce dei ritrovamenti della V missione paletnologica nell'Acacus, La Ricerca scientifica,31: 204-15.
 * Mori F. 1964 Short conclusions on the discussion of the chronological problem of Saharan rock art, in Pericot Garcia L., Ripoll Perellò E. (eds.) Prehistoric art of the Western Mediterranean and the Sahara, Viking Fund Publication in Anthropology, Barcelona, 39:235-240.
 * Mori F. 1965 Tadrart Acacus. Arte rupestre e culture del Sahara preistorico. Einaudi, Torino. ISBN
 * Mori F. 1968 The absolute chronology of Saharan prehistoric rock art, in E. Ripoll Perelló (ed), Simposio Internacional del Arte Rupestre Barcelona 1966, Barcelona: 291–4.
 * Mori F. 1971 Proposta per una attribuzione alla fine del Pleistocene delle incisioni della fase più antica dell'arte rupestre sahariana, Origini V: 7-20.
 * Mori, F. 1974. The earliest Saharan rock engravings, Antiquity, XLVIII, 87-92
 * Mori F. 1976 Considerazioni sull'arte preistorica sahariana. Il Tadrart Acacus. In Civiltà preistoriche del Sahara e dell'Alto Nilo, CNR, Roma.
 * Mori F.1984 Prehistoric rock art in the Libyan Sahara: the result of a long biocultural process. Symposium UNESCO, Paris.
 * AA.VV.1986 Arte preistorica del Sahara, De Luca, Roma.
 * Mori F.1988 -1989 Funzione e senso dell'arte rupestre preistorica, Origini XIV: 479-483.
 * Mori F. 1992a La fonction sacrale des abris à peintures dans le massifs centraux du Sahara. L'Acacus, Origini XV: 79-101.
 * Mori F. 1992 b Le civiltà del Sahara: neolitizzazione ed antropomorfismo. In Lupacciolu M. (a cura di) Arte e culture del Sahara preistorico, Quasar, Roma: 9-20.
 * Mori F.1998 The Great Civilizations of the Ancient Sahara. Neolithization and the earliest evidence of anthropomorphic religions, L'Erma di Bretschneider, Roma. ISBN 88-7062-971-6


 * Sito web della missione nel Fezzan libico, fondata da F. Mori
 * Video dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze: Fabrizio Mori: “Sguardi sull’arte preistorica del Sahara”.
 * Video del regista Lucio Rosa: “Fabrizio Mori un ricordo”.