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Ancient Settlement in the Tripolitanian Gebel, II: The Berber Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

David Oates
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Extract

This paper provides a sequel to the account previously given of Roman settlement in the eastern Gebel of Tripolitania, and is designed to complete the summary report of exploration carried out in this area during the years 1949–51. I must again express my gratitude for the assistance of friends and colleagues, in Tripolitania and elsewhere, to whom detailed acknowledgement was made in my earlier paper.

In dealing with the decline of the prosperous agricultural society of the first three centuries A.D., two sites were described on which the open olive farms were replaced, in the one case by a ditched blockhouse, and in the other by a herdsman's hut. These examples were chosen to illustrate the nature of the transition rather than to give a complete picture of the later economy. We there confined ourselves to the suggestion that the destruction of the olive farms was the work of marauding pre-desert tribes such as the Austuriani, whose incursion into the territory of Lepcis is recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus; and that the invaders' subsequent settlement left its material traces in the huts and fortified farms, and its historical mark in Procopius' description of the Libyan tribes and Ibn Abd al-Hakam's account of their traditional origin. It is our purpose here to give a fuller account of the later society, as it can be pieced together from the evidence of the sites, and to elucidate it where possible by a more detailed citation of the literary references.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 22 , November 1954 , pp. 91 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1954

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References

1 ‘The Tripolitanian Gebel: Settlement of the Roman Period around Gasr ed-Dauun’, Papers of the British School at Rome xxi, 1953, pp. 81–117Google Scholar. Referred to here as ‘Roman Period’. Section 1, dealing with ‘Geography and Modern Settlement’, and its accompanying general map (fig. 1), also provide the background for the present work.

2 ‘Roman Period’, pp. 105 ff., Sites 13 and 14.

3 See Goodchild, R. G. and Perkins, J. B. Ward, ‘The Limes Tripolitanus in the light of recent discoveries’, Journal of Roman Studies xxxix, 1949, p. 84Google Scholar, and Goodchild, , ‘Limes Tripolitanus II’, Journal of Roman Studies xl, 1950, p. 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 A vertical air photograph of Gasr ed-Dauun appears in ‘Roman Period’, pl. XXIV, and a key plan in fig. 4, p. 91 of the same article.

5 ‘Roman Period’, pp. 97–9.

6 Cowper, H. S., The Hill of the Graces, London, 1897, pp. 153, 163, and 259Google Scholar, figs. 42 and 47. The inscription has been republished by J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania ( = IRT), 878.

7 See p. 100 above.

8 The Hill of the Graces, p. 153 and frontispiece.

9 The block bearing the Chi-Rho monogram has been published and illustrated by Perkins, Ward and Goodchild, , ‘The Christian Antiquities of Tripolitania’, Archaeologia xcv, 1953, p. 48Google Scholar and pl. XIIIc. For details of inscriptions from this site see Appendix I, pp. 113–14, nos. 1–3.

10 Appendix I, p. 115.

11 Appendix I, p. 115, No. 5.

12 The chapel has been published by Ward Perkins and Goodchild, ‘Christian Antiquities’ (n. 9), p. 47, pls. XXa and XXId. The description given here differs from theirs only in detail, and I am indebted to them for permission to reproduce it. The survey (fig. 9) is the work of Dr. A. Wells.

13 On the occasion of the writer's last visit, in 1952, a large vertical crack had newly opened in the northern apse.

14 op. cit. (n. 9), p. 59.

15 ibid., pp. 50–4 and pl. XXb.

16 A brief account of this site appeared in Bulletnno del Museo dell' Impero Romano xiii, 1942, pp. 151–1Google Scholar; the church has been republished in ‘Christian Antiquities’, pp. 44–7.

17 IRT 877. Discussed by Goodchild, , ‘Some Inscriptions from Tripolitania’, Reports and Monographs of the Department of Antiquities ii, Tripoli, 1949, p. 32Google Scholar.

18 al-Hakam, Ibn Abd, Conquête de l'Afrique du Nord, ed. and tr. Gateau, A., Algiers, 1948, pp. 35–7Google Scholar; quoted in ‘Roman Period’, p. 113.

19 de bello Vandalico, IV, 10.

20 IV, 28.

21 IV, 21.

22 III, 25.

23 El-Bekri, Description de l'Afrique Septentrionale, tr. de Slane, 1913, p. 26.

24 Description de l' Afrique et de l'Espagne par Edrisi, text and tr. by R. Dozy and M. J. de Goeje, 1866, p. 154.

25 Khaldun, Ibn, History of the Berbers, tr. Slane, de, Vol. 1, p. 280Google Scholar.

26 This would explain the presence, in 397, of barbarians between the episcopal sees of the coast and those of the regio Arzugitana, which was probably the limes area. For a discussion of the evidence for the limes in the late fourth century, and the Syrtic origin of the Austuriani, see Goodchild, , ‘Limes Tripolitanus II’, Journal of Roman Studies xl, 1950, pp. 30–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Cf. ‘Roman Period’, p. 111.

28 Goodchild, R. G., ‘Roman Sites on the Tarhun Plateau of Tripolitania’, Papers of the British School at Rome xix, 1951, pp. 59–62Google Scholar.