De Africa Romaque

Niccolo Mugnai, Julia Nikolaus, Nicholas Ray

• Publisher: Society for Libyan Studies
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781900971331
• eBook ISBN: 9781900971348
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: History

Conference proceedings

PART I NORTH AFRICA BEFORE ROME: INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS AND THEIR LEGACY

2 WHO SHAPED AFRICA? THE ORIGINS OF URBANISM AND AGRICULTURE IN MAGHREB AND SAHARA

David J. Mattingly

Abstract

This paper questions some underlying assumptions of the study of Roman Africa, first promoted in the Classical sources, but reinforced in the modern colonial era. These assumptions relate to the processes of urbanization and the development of agriculture in the Maghreb and the identity of the communities behind these innovations. The common tendency has been to link these crucial social changes to a time after the arrival of colonists on African shores – whether Greek, Phoenician or Roman. The role of indigenous African people has generally been limited to that of passive recipients or inexpert imitators. New evidence on the date of the earliest agriculture and the early stages of proto-urban development pose fundamental questions for the traditional models. The contributions of indigenous communities to the shaping of Africa under Rome need thorough re-evaluation.

INTRODUCTION

The story of Roman Africa is often constructed around two extraordinary epi-phenomena of the era. The first defining characteristic is presented as an unusually high density and magnificence of towns in the region during the Roman period. Second, there was an evident boom in agricultural output with concurrent distribution of the surplus production across Mediterranean markets.¹ I am not challenging the fundamental significance of these themes for our study, but rather I shall question the orthodox position on what the drivers of these phenomena were.²

The scholarly consensus view of Africa in the Roman Empire has been skewed by the agenda of modern colonialism in the region (Figure 2.1). The modern imperial regimes in North Africa (Spanish and French in Morocco, French in Algeria and Tunisia, Italian, British and French in Libya) have been fixated on a Romano-centric vision, with a particular emphasis on the notion of Romanization, and on presenting the modern colonial ventures as successors to the ancient, claiming to reprise a previous attempt at European civilization of Africa, based around the gifts of agriculture and urbanization.³ In reaction to this model, in the first decades of post-colonial independence, some Maghrebian historians created a version of the past that was more attuned to the nationalist agenda of irreconcilable opposition to imperialism, including Bénabou’s notable (and still fundamental) account of resistance to Romanization.⁴ Although the debate has moved on to the point where the middle ground between these discrepant views of Roman Africa is now well populated, my main argument here is that we have still not deconstructed the primary tenets of the old colonial models and that the future agenda of study remains compromised.⁵

Figure 2.1. Map of Roman provinces of Africa, with main sites mentioned in text marked (image: N. Mugnai, based on rough by D. Mattingly).

A variant of the emphasis on the Roman inspiration of agrarian and urban development concerns the role of Phoenicians/Carthaginians in kick-starting these processes.⁶ Both these scholarly tendencies present a paternalistic view of external civilizations bringing advanced skills and institutions for the instruction of backward and passive indigenous populations. The Libyphoenician cities along the coast are thus often hailed as key players in the introduction of cultivation and urban living.⁷ In Cyrenaica (eastern Libya), Greek colonists stand in for the Phoenicians in the identical scenario.⁸ The classic characterization of indigenous Africans has been that they were simple pastoralists who lacked substantial sedentary settlements and farming before colonists first visited African shores:

‘[des Gétules] [. . .] pasteurs nomades ou semi-nomades, ils entraient peu en contact avec des cités, à tel point qu’on a tendance à penser aujourd’hui que le terme Gétule désignait les peuples libyens nomades, un genre de vie plus qu’une véritable ethnie’.⁹

In a nutshell, my question concerns whether the Romans and earlier incomers to the Maghreb were ultimately responsible for the dramatic changes we witness in farming and town life and that undoubtedly represented an urban and agrarian boom by the heyday of ‘Roman Africa’. Was it outsiders who shaped Africa? Or did indigenous groups have a larger role in the process than generally credited? The problem in seeking to resolve this question is that the archaeological evidence is drastically unequal – we have far more excavation of Roman and Carthaginian sites than of the proto-historic African societies in Maghreb and Sahara. At Roman cities, the presence of major monuments impedes exploration of the earliest levels of occupation, leaving unchallenged the assumptions about their origins.

What sort of societies were the indigenous African communities of the first millennium BC? The default assumption both in antiquity and today has tended to be that they were small-scale tribes of pastoralists and that most of the vast hinterland was still essentially undeveloped prior to the arrival of Rome. Pliny talks of 516 distinct populi between the Ampsaga and the Greater Syrtes.¹⁰ The more northerly peoples were coalescing into states by the late third century BC, based around two main self-identifying groups, the Numidae in western Tunisia and eastern Algeria and the Maures further to the west. The peoples living to the south of the Carthaginian, Numidian and Mauretanian heartlands were known by myriad names, but had the capacity for periodic confederated action. The Roman sources tended to refer to them in broad terms as Gaetuli. Beyond them lay other Libyan peoples of the deep Sahara, including the Garamantes, who feature later in this paper, and the Aethiopes (black Africans).¹¹ I shall now look individually at each of my themes, urbanization and agriculture, then offer a few points of general conclusion.

URBANIZATION

Towns were certainly a characteristic, even defining, feature of the African provinces of the Roman Empire.¹² The mapping of the towns and roads of the African provinces frames our conception of those spaces¹³ (Figure 2.2 gives an approximation of urban densities in the Roman Empire).¹⁴ What is immediately apparent is that Africa Proconsularis was the main focus for high-density development in the Maghreb. So densely packed were towns in northern Tunisia, for instance, that it has been estimated that the average territory of a city was only in the order of 80 sq. km.¹⁵ Some other parts of the Maghreb and the Libyan coast had much lower levels of urbanization. It is also evident that Africa was one of seven main urban hotspots in the Roman Empire (defined by boxes on Figure 2.2), the others being Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, the Levant, the Nile Delta and south-western Spain. What these other areas share in common is the fact that Roman urbanism built on already well-established urban traditions. If we compare the success of Roman urbanism in regions of low pre-Roman urbanism and proto-urbanism, like northern Gaul and Britain, the difference in numbers, density and status promotions of towns is very striking.¹⁶ This comparative view might thus suggest that the high urban density in Africa is most readily explicable in terms of pre-Roman developments.

Figure 2.2. Distribution of urban sites in the Roman Empire (image: M. Hawkes; after Russell 2013, figure 3.8).

Most modern commentators would accept that the Roman urban achievement did not happen ex nihilo, but represented rather a rapid growth in urban centres and in the size, monumentality and status of many of these. The urban progenitors are mostly identified with Carthage or Libyphoenician centres without consideration of alternatives. Can the pre-Roman development be attributed solely to the Phoenician and Carthaginian inspiration? Even where a potential African urban community is recognized, the impetus for growth is often vested in newcomers (often Roman citizens):

‘C’est là la question cruciale : les cartes montrent [. . .] le pullulement de petites cités, auxquelles les calculs les plus optimistes donnent à peine quelques milliers d’habitants. Elles portent à peu près toutes des toponymes libyques, ou parfois puniques, et sont donc d’une ancienneté antérieure à la conquête romaine. Le début de leur intégration au monde classique est souvent le résultat de l’installation d’un petit groupe de citoyens morantes, résidents [. . .]’.¹⁷

Carthage was clearly an extraordinary urban centre, but it was also unique in Africa for its scale and development.¹⁸ The early phases of urban evolution in Africa have been inadequately explored, whether in terms of matching up the traditional literary foundation dates for sites like Utica and Carthage, or in assessing the scale and sophistication of early sites, their economic bases and connectedness, or the identity of their inhabitants (diet, material culture, behaviours). In general, Punic specialists have found it difficult to match literary dates for foundations with archaeological evidence. At present the first archaeological traces from Carthage date to the eighth century BC (compared with the literary date of ninth century BC), at Utica the earliest published burials are late eighth century in date (compared with the literary date of the late twelfth century BC). Similarly, while the expectation is that many of the Libyphoenician emporia should date to the first half of the first millennium BC, at present the evidence suggests that the main expansion of their numbers came after 500 BC. The earliest secure archaeological evidence from Lepcis Magna is sixth-fifth century BC, at Sabratha it is late fifth century BC, at Leptiminus it is fifth century BC.¹⁹ Part of the problem is that many early towns went on to be successful Roman towns, replete with monumental architecture and in situ mosaic floors, which have discouraged deeper sondages. The best-preserved Punic town at Kerkouane (with its main phase of structural development in the fourth-third centuries BC) is atypical because of its abandonment by c. 200 BC.²⁰ On the other hand, the extensive excavations have revealed this site to have been a small-scale settlement, lacking in public buildings and monumental architecture. It was little more than a large village and evidence for the spatial extent of other emporia also suggests that these were generally quite small in size. It is certainly the case that many...

Table of contents

• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• PRELIMINARIES. CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES
• PART I. NORTH AFRICA BEFORE ROME: INDIGENOUS TRADITIONS AND THEIR LEGACY
• PART II. PLANNING, DEVELOPING, AND TRANSFORMING THE NORTH AFRICAN TOWNSCAPE
• PART III. PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION OF POWER, ETHNIC AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES
• PART IV. ECONOMIES ACROSS NORTH AFRICA: PRODUCTION, TECHNOLOGY, AND TRADE
• PART V. CREATING A LASTING IMPRESSION: ARCHITECTURAL AND DECORATIVE MOTIFS
• CONCLUSION