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Geographical Factors in Roman Algeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

A. N. Sherwin-White
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the geographical setting of Roman Algeria and the relation between human settlement and geographical factors, and will contain some comments on the writing of Roman provincial history. The present may be a suitable moment for those who are no longer occupied directly with scholarship to review the first principles and method of provincial history writing, which were perhaps not altogether sound in the published works, and particularly in the general histories, of the pre-war decade. There were two main types of study. The first were monuments of learning and minute scholarship, but tended to convey no general impression at all. The second type were so broad in outline as to be mainly false, a fault particularly marked in the various economic histories and general surveys of the Roman Empire. It is extraordinary that for Roman Africa, with its tens of thousands of inscriptions and superficial ruins and its dozens of town sites, there still exists no coherent or detailed study of part or whole except Toutain's old and excellent account of Tunisia published in 1896. Instead, scholars have concentrated either on particular town sites or on the military frontiers and military stations. The military studies are all linked to Cagnat's monumental work about the Roman Army in Africa. The result is that there exists a coherent body of knowledge about this great topic.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 1-2 , November 1944 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © A. N. Sherwin-White 1944. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 The substance of this paper was written for, and delivered as, a lecture before the Society after the Annual General Meeting on 8th June, 1943. The main facts about the geography of Algeria are to be found in the Geographie Universelle, vol. xi, 1 (Paris, 1937)Google Scholar, Bernard, A., Algérie, ed. 7 (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar, or more briefly in Gautier, E. F., L' Afrique blanche (Paris, 1939)Google Scholar. Gautier discusses the relation between climate and human settlement in ancient times in his stimulating L'Islamisation de l' Afrique du Nord. Les Siècles obscures du Maghreb. (Paris, 1927)Google Scholar. The only regional account of human settlement in Algeria is contained, often by implication, in Cagnat, R., L'Armée Romaine d' Afrique, ed. 2 (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar. Numidia is studied with some topographic relevance but less systematically by Broughton, T. R. S., Romanisation of Africa Proconsularis (Baltimore, 1929)Google Scholar. Accounts of the social and economic development are to be found in Chapot, V., Le Monde Romain (Paris, 1927)Google Scholar, Rostovzeff, M., Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1926)Google Scholar, and the Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, vol. 4 (Baltimore, 1938)Google Scholar. The distribution of the remains of antiquity are plotted in the Atlas archéologique de l'Algérie (Paris, 1911)Google Scholar, in a series of sheets on scale 1: 200,000. Gsell, S., Histoire ancienne de l'Afrique du Nord (Paris, 1913–1928)Google Scholar only reaches to the death of Julius Caesar. Particular sites are studied with reference to their topography in Gsell, S. and Joly, C. A., Khamissa, Mdaourouch, Announa (Paris, 1913–1922)Google Scholar, and Allais, Y., Djemila (Paris, 1938)Google Scholar. These works and personal observation are the main basis of this paper, and contain most of the facts and some of the theories discussed. Permission to reproduce the maps and diagrams, some of which are re-drawings of published work, was kindly given by the Admiralty.

2 The military camp at Lambaesis, some twenty miles away, contributed to the development of Thamugadi, no doubt, but had its own local municipality developed from canabae.