Rome without Romanization: Cultural Change in the Pre‐Desert of Tripolitania (First–Third Centuries AD)

Abstract

The pre-desert of Roman Tripolitania was one of the most remarkable regions of the empire. From the first to the sixth centuries AD it supported a thriving agricultural community, despite the marginality of the environment. The initial transformation took place at a time when Rome was actively campaigning against the tribes of the true desert. That the settlement of the pre-desert had something to do with Roman action seems obvious enough, but paradoxically the material culture of the pre-desert shows little direct Roman influence. This paper resolves this dilemma by arguing that settlement of the pre-desert came about largely because of the social dynamics of its indigenous nomadic inhabitants. It is argued that Roman military success brought political stability to the pre-desert and that this inadvertently created the conditions that enabled certain sections of pre-desert society to abandon a nomadic existence in favour of a more sedentary one, based on agriculture. This paper explores the reasons why this took place and discusses cultural change in the Tripolitanian pre-desert in light of these conclusions.

Rural settlement and economic activity

“…A very similar argument is presented by Mattingly, who observed that the Gebel Tarhuna includes the bestdocumented surviving traces of Roman olive farms in Tripolitania, even though the landscape and land-use had changed in the post-Roman period (Mattingly 1988c, 25). Oates (1954, 91) suggested that this change started from the fourth century AD, due to the marauding raids of pre-desert tribes such as the Austuriani, which caused a decline of the prosperous agricultural society of the first three centuries AD (Moderan 2003, 262 on Austuriani and p71 on defences).Some writers have claimed that the eastern Gebel lands were first opened up to intensive olive growing early in the first century AD (Grahame 1998). However, this claim was based on the fact that previous surveys had not been able to produce any proof that the farms discovered in the region had existed before the first century AD (Mattingly 1995, 140;Oates 1953, 110).…”