Anna Leone

The Fezzan Project 2001 : preliminary report on the fifth season of work.

The Fezzan Project completed its five-year fieldwork cycle in 2001. The geographical research team located numerous additional palaeolake sites within the Edeyen Ubari, using a combination of Remote Sensing technology and field visits. Additional samples were taken for analysis and dating from many lake edge locations, relating to both the large Pleistocene lake and to the numerous smaller Holocene lakes that have been identified by the team. The excavations at Old Germa were taken down through Garamantian occupation levels to the natural subsoil below the earliest cultural horizon. The earliest activity, represented by a few mudbrick walls and hearths built directly on the natural soil, is believed to date to c . 400-300 BC. Traces of several phases of Garamantian buildings were uncovered, along with numerous rubbish pits, which yielded a rich assemblage of finds, including, for the first time, examples of Garamantian figurines, small 3-D sculptures of humans and animals. Work on the various classes of finds (pottery, small finds, lithics and other stone artefacts, metallurgical evidence, etc.) complemented the excavation work. In addition, a small amount of further survey work was carried out on sites in the Wadi al-Ajal, along with a contour survey of Old Germa and standing building survey at a number of other sites.

Late Antique North Africa: Production and Changing Use of Buildings in Urban Areas

(2003). Late Antique North Africa: Production and Changing Use of Buildings in Urban Areas. Al-Masāq: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 21-33.

Water management in late antique North Africa: agricultural irrigation

In 1984 Brent Shaw looked at a number of issues connected with water management for irrigation in North Africa in his paper ‘Water and society in the ancient Maghrib: Technology, property and development.’ This study greatly improved our understanding of water management and exploitation in rural areas of Roman North Africa, but some of Shaw’s conclusions need to be reconsidered, particularly with reference to archaeological evidence. Important questions that need to be addressed are how water was exploited for agricultural production, and who was responsible for this; and whether or not there was a conscious policy to develop Africa’s agricultural potential either through the extension of an existing hydraulic technology or through the introduction of new water technologies. The paper investigates these problems by analysing archaeological evidence from the Kasserine survey and in particular the data from irrigation systems in the uplands and lowlands. The main focus is on late antiquity and the transition from the Roman to Vandal periods, tracing continuity in the exploitation of land and irrigation technologies. By combining the archaeology with ancient texts, and in particular a Vandal-period archive of private documents, the so-called ‘Albertini Tablets’, this investigation examines irrigation systems and the private use of water in the light of Roman legislation.

Clero, proprietà, cristianizzazione delle campagne nel Nord Africa tardoantico: status quaestionis

This paper analyses the growing involvement of the North African churches in economic activities and the acquisition of estates and properties, in the 4th and early 5th centuries. In particular it explores the process through which the clergy developed secular role in Byzantine society. The analysis considers principally written sources alongside the limited archaeological evidence. The combined data available do not permit a detailed understanding of the evolution of the role of the clergy in society, but the paper provides some general directions for the focus of future research. Overall it offers a detailed synthesis of the current state of knowledge and points problems and potential within the complex history of North Africa immediately prior to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Michael Greenhalgh. Constantinople to Córdoba: dismantling ancient architecture in the East, North Africa and Islamic Spain . xxviii+510 pages, 91 illustrations. 2012. Leiden & Boston (MA): Brill; 978-90-04-21246-6 hardback € 177 &

To conclude, this volume offers a useful summation of approaches to Celtic art in Britain. It is a shame that one of the signal triumphs of this project—the radiocarbon dating of Celtic art—received little discussion in the volume; it would have been good to reconsider the significance of this body of material in the light of what are remarkably tight chronological boundaries and in relation to the European Iron Age sequence. Strangely, while seeking to investigate the parameters of Celtic art, the authors have retained the traditional idea of ‘Celtic art’ as being solely associated with metalwork. It would have been interesting to examine how decoration works in comparison to decorated ‘craft’ objects of pottery, bone and antler. While this is, in many ways, a landmark analysis, I believe it to be ultimately flawed as it relies too heavily on Gell’s theoretical underpinnings. If the authors truly wished to investigate the ontological character of materials, they needed to have paid more attention to the sensory and material qualities of the artefacts, thereby placing materials at the centre of their analysis. By doing so the authors might have loosened the boundaries between metalwork and other decorated materials, and more fully realised their stated aim (p. 5) of understanding the impact of the decorative arts in Late Iron Age and Romano-British social relations. Ultimately, we are left with the impression that ‘Celtic art’ objects worked to reproduce prestige identities, a conclusion that does little to unseat traditional assumptions.

242.

The diffusion of Christianity in North Africa involved complex interaction on several fronts, first among the pagans and the Christians, and then within the church itself as schisms occurred. The Christianisation of North Africa was followed by a progressive acquisition of power (both religious and secular/ economic) by the clergy. This chapter synthesises the main phases of this process, focusing on the role of the clergy, its transformation over the centuries, and the impact of Christianisation on society and economy. The combative posture of the Catholic Church against pagans is striking. Even as pagans become decreasingly visible in the history of Roman North Africa, Christians who are self-consciously not in communion with Rome come to fill their place as the other. In 439, the Vandals, who were Germanic Arians, entered Carthage. The Vandal kings showed varying attitudes towards the Catholic Church in North Africa; persecution and tolerance followed one another, sometimes within the same reign.

Christianity and paganism, IV: North Africa

Studies on intra-mural burials have been developed in the last ten years, focussing especially on Italy. The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon in North Africa, particularly in Carthage, the capital of Africa Proconsularis during the Vandal and the Byzantine period. Study in this province has two main limitations: the first is that urban burials are already common at the end of the 4th century (earlier than in other parts of the Roman Empire) and the “urban” sectors are often difficult to define clearly; the second is due to the reliability of data, as much archaeological evidence was destroyed by excavations in the 19th-beginning of the 20th century. In spite of this Carthage is peculiar, because a large amount of information is available (even if not always securely dated). In considering the difficulty in defining the concept of “urban” especially in Late Antiquity, the analysis focuses more on what can be said to be “urban space”. Data are presented following a topographical order from nor...