Panel 8.14 – The Economy of Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique North Africa: Linking Town and Country


Organiser/Chair:

  • Silvia Polla (Freie Universität Berlin)
  • Mariette De Vos (Università degli Studi di Trento)

External Discussants:

  • Philipp von Rummel (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut)
  • Andrew Dufton

Panel abstract

"No area of study of Roman Africa has witnessed such dramatic advance in recent decades as that of the economy" (Mattingly and Hitchner 1995, 198).

More than 20 years ago, in a bibliographic essay on the archaeology of Roman Africa, Mattingly and Hitchner considered the state of the art and set up a research agenda in Romano-African studies. In the meantime, several fieldwork projects in urban as well as in rural context has been carried out and some synthetic re-appraisals of Romano-African Landscapes has been published. Nevertheless, despite of the very abundant archaeological information and literature on Roman Africa, we still lack a clear understanding of how town and country worked together in the different regions and historical periods. Moreover, the present politically sensitive situation makes fieldwork impossible in many areas, especially in the countryside. However, for no other Mediterranean region we dispose of a similar level of knowledge of the Roman and Late Antique ceramic production and intra-provincial distributional patterns like for Africa Proconsularis. This body of evidence has allowed shifting the attention to the African consumers and inland circuits of commodities distribution and consumption. Nevertheless, the economy of the Hellenistic North Africa, considering urban and rural settlements of the Numidic/ Lybian/ Punic periods and of the one of the early colonization phase, are still a poorly understood aspect, raising also questions on cultural and socio-economic diversity. Recently, the transformation processes characterizing the Late and Post-Antique phases have been reconsidered, analyzing urban and rural trends as they emerge from the archaeological evidence. In this panel we would like to stimulate discussion, on the one hand, on the diverse regional economic trajectories in Hellenistic, Roman and Late Antique North Africa especially concerning the relations between town and country, considering production, distribution and consumption of commodities and services; on the other hand we invite scholars who study the economic nature and function of urban and rural spaces to link together these two interwoven spheres.

D. J. Mattingly - R. B. Hitchner, Roman Africa: An Archaeological Review, JRS Vol. 85 (1995), 165 - 213.

Paper abstracts

1. David Mattingly (University of Leicester)

The Pre-Roman origins and inter-relationships of urbanisation and agriculture in North Africa
It is widely acknowledged that North Africa under Roman rule experienced an extraordinary development of wealthy cities sustained by a boom in agriculture. This presentation will address the less commonly asked question of what lay behind these epi-phenomena. Insofar as the issue has been raised, the consensus has been that urbanisation and agriculture were exogenous gifts bestowed on Africa by outsiders (Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans). Drawing on new archaeological data from both the Maghreb and the Sahara, I shall argue that the endogenous contribution to these key socio-economic developments has been drastically under-emphasised. This has major implications for how we read the story of the achievements of ‘Roman Africa’.

 

2. David Stone (University of Michigan)

Linked Economies: Regional Networks and North African Urbanism
Recent field survey evidence and ceramic analyses make it possible to investigate more precisely the links between North African urbanism and regional economic systems. This paper aims to analyze these links in two dimensions. First, it will define the chronology of urban growth and contraction. Next, it will assess differences between regions over the long period between the initial establishment of urban centers in the first millennium BCE and their decline in late antiquity. The result will show distinct differences between regional economies. The region of Northern Tunisia, consisting of Carthage and the Bagradas river valley, had both the largest and longest-lived urban centers and rural settlement systems. Central Tunisian systems were the next in size and duration of occupation. Examination of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Southern Tunisia, Numidia, and Mauretania Caesariensis will enable the regions of North Africa, and the different degrees with which they participated in wider economic activities throughout antiquity, to be assessed. A conclusion will show how a more precise understanding of the growth and contraction of North African regions contributes to a more nuanced, and less monolithic, evaluation of the southern Mediterranean over the long term.

 

3. Andrew Dufton (New York University)

Everywhere the people: an archaeological approach to population growth in Roman North Africa
A connection between population growth and the economy is often identified in the scholarship on Roman North Africa. Increases in the number of urban dwellers—traced archaeologically through changes to the physical area covered by a city or town—are sometimes used as a proxy for increases in economic production. Similarly, the frequency and distribution of rural settlements identified through landscape survey are regularly invoked in discourses on the agricultural economy. These data are far less frequently studied holistically, however, meaning we have yet to fully understand provincial patterns of expansion or how urban and rural populations interacted during these demographic shifts.
This paper considers relative patterns of population growth across the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis through the first three centuries of Roman rule. I collate archaeological evidence for the expansion of cities—taken both from the results of excavations and geophysical survey at sites such as Utica, Leptiminus or Simitthus, as well as legacy data. This urban growth is then compared to the shifting numbers of rural settlements identified in the landscape surveys of the last three decades. The results identify distinct trends in coastal, inland, and frontier zones which hold implications for questions of the provincial economy. Moreover, I demonstrate how examining the process of growth at the local scale can also speak to the social impacts of a growing populace in the early empire.

 

4. Moheddine Chaouali (Institut National du Patrimoine de Tunis) / Heike Möller (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut)

Simitthus/Chimtou: A manifold approach of economical questions regarding the city and its environment in Roman and Late Antique times
This joint paper consists in two parts, the first one dealing with the economic activities in general in Chimtou and beyond and a second one looking at the ceramic evidence of a town that was famous for its marble quarries throughout the Mediterranean:
„Le but de ma contribution est d’étudier les activités économiques dans la ville de Simitthus (Chimtou) et dans sa campagne environnante en Afrique proconsulaire (Tunisie) et les liens éventuels entre ces deux espaces. Concernant la ville, l’activité économique principale était basée sur les carrières de marbre numidique. D’ailleurs, très peu de témoignages archéologiques sont attestés sur une autre activité (artisanale par exemple) dans cette ville. Le marbre jaune-rouge extrait de ses carrières était très prisé et largement diffusé en Méditerranée, notamment sous le Haut-Empire. Les recherches tuniso-allemandes ont fait avancer les connaissances de ce marbre et les différentes activités qui lui sont liées.
Concernant la campagne, nos connaissances demeurent encore lacunaires. Il est vrai que les établissements agricoles de la campagne de Simitthus sont très mal connus. Il est donc difficile, de prétendre connaître les spécificités des fermes en l’absence de fouilles dans cette région. Les prospections archéologiques ont pu donner une idée schématique des exploitations rurales, faire une typologie des sites, non dessiner en détail telle ou telle ferme. Ce qui nous échappe, c’est la possibilité de restituer avec précision l’organisation d’une ferme particulière. On peut cependant, rendre compte d’un ensemble vaste ou bien étudier beaucoup d’éléments tels que les bâtiments ou les monuments architecturaux qui ont été trouvés in situ. L’activité économique essentielle était basée sur la céréaliculture et l’oléiculture comme déjà attesté dans les autres campagnes des villes africaines.“ (Moheddine Chaouali)
„The paper will focus on the ceramic evidence of the site with „open access“ to the Mediterranean due to its role as marble exporter, to give an insight in the commodities and consumption patterns in Roman and Late Antique times of an inland region. How was Simitthus/Chimtou embedded into an exchange network on intra- and interregional level according to its ceramic evidence? Which similarities and diversities to other inland sites can be traced down? What in general do we know about production and distributional patterns of a region in the inland, in the outer northwest of Tunisia that trade patterns clearly demonstrate a connectivity throughout the Mediterranean by its marble trade?“ (Heike Möller)

 

5. Moncef Ben Moussa and Sonia Jebari (Musée National du Bardo - Tunis)

Archaeological excavations in a pottery workshop of Pheradi Maius, Sidi Khlifa - Tunisia
Situated in a residential area of Pheradi Maius/Sidi Khlifa, a pottery production complex was partially excavated in 2016. The structures identified testify of the complexity of organization and of functioning of a set of kilns producing essentially north African Fine Wares. Besides the importance of the typological and chronological data obtained from reliable stratigraphical contexts, it was possible to place theses productive structures within the framework of of the functioning of the various current economic forms for the considered period. It was if possible to analyze the complementarity of urban and rural productive activities to meet the various levels of demands, local, regional and Mediterranean. Numerous comparisons were made with productive structures discovered in the provinces of Byzacena and Zeugitana show hawever an adaptation to the space and the daily requirements in the case of urban kilns, with reorganization and re-uses while for the kilns situated in rural frame it is rather an adaptation to the natural conditions and to the networks of communication which characterizes the pottery production of the Late Antiquity.