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The Tripolitanian Gebel: Settlement of the Roman Period around Gasr ed-Dauun

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

David Oates
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Extract

This paper summarises the results of work carried out during the years 1949–51 in the eastern Gebel of Tripolitania. The area had been visited, and some of the sites noted, by nineteenth-century travellers and by Italian archaeologists between the wars, and the adjacent plateau of Tarhuna has been the subject of a recent paper by R. G. Goodchild. My work was complementary to his, and I have not reproduced the details of information so lately set out except where they were immediately necessary.

I was able to spend long periods in the territory while holding the Scholarship in Classical Studies at the British School at Rome and a Research Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and I am deeply indebted both to the School and to my college for their generous support in unusual circumstances: in particular the latter, for providing a truck which carried me over fifteen thousand miles in difficult country and for a generous grant towards the cost of illustrating this paper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 21 , November 1953 , pp. 81 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © British School at Rome 1953

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References

1 ‘Roman Sites on the Tarhuna Plateau of Tripolitania’, Papers of the British School at Rome xix, 1951, p. 43Google Scholar. Referred to here as ‘Tarhuna Plateau’.

2 In dealing with the Gebel there is no reason to dispute the general view of Gsell and others that the climate in Roman times was substantially the same as it is now. On the other hand, the distribution of rainfall through the year, and the possible annual fluctuation, may have changed for the worse as the result of deforestation. The pre-desert area presents a different problem, and here it is difficult not to postulate a drop in the annual total.

3 The most impartial survey of the possibilities of agricultural development in Tripolitania is contained in Despois, J., La Colonisation italienne en Libye; problèmes e méthodes, Paris, 1935Google Scholar.

4 Cowper, H. S., The Hill of the Graces, London, 1897Google Scholar. Cowper's suggestion that the ruined presses were religious monuments was conclusively refuted by Myres, J. L. and Evans, Arthur, Proc. Soc. Ant., 2, xvii, 1897–1899, pp. 280–93Google Scholar.

5 A reconstruction of a very similar press to those described here is illustrated by Saladin, H., in ‘Rapport sur la mission faite en Tunisie nov. 1882-avril 1883’, Archives des Missions Scientifiques, 3, xiii, 1887Google Scholar, and a generalised sketch of a Tripolitanian press appears in Myres and Evans, op. cit., p. 286. For the literary evidence see Drachmann, A. G., ‘Ancient Oil Mills and Presses’, in Archaeologisk-Kunsthistoriske Meddelelser, Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Bind, I, Copenhagen, 1935Google Scholar.

6 Calculations based on the weight of the stones and the breaking strain of the wooden components give a maximum pressure of about 15 lb./sq. in. I am indebted to Dr. T. E. Faber for this information.

7 A detailed survey of the Udei el-Me series was made in 1950 by R. M. Bradfield and A. Wells, and will form the subject of a separate article.

8 Geogr. xvii. 3. 18-19. It is impossible to say whether this passage refers to any of the surviving structures in the Wadi Caam.

9 De controversiis agrorum ii.

10 For text see Appendix I, p. 114, J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, 936 and 937.

11 ‘The Eastern Gebel Road’ in Goodchild, , Roman Roads and Milestones in Tripolitania, Tripoli, 1948Google Scholar.

12 Traces of settlement here were noticed by Bartoccini, ‘Le Antichità della Tripolitania’, Aegyptus vii, 1926, p. 66Google Scholar.

13 Itineraria Romana i (ed. Cuntz, ), pp. 10–11Google Scholar. For Mesphe see Goodchild, ‘Tarhuna Plateau’, pp. 46 ff., and for Ain Wif, Goodchild and Perkins, Ward, ‘The Limes Tripolitanus in the light of recent discoveries’, Journal of Roman Studies xxxix, 1949, p. 84Google Scholar.

14 Goodchild, ‘Tarhuna Plateau’, p. 56.

15 Hill ofthe Graces, p. 275.

16 Miller, K., Weltkarte des Castorius, Ravensburg, 1888Google Scholar.

17 Goodchild, Roman Roads and Milestones, p. 25 and n. 24.

18 Cf. the presses at Henscir Sidi Hamdan, p. 97 below and plate XXVIIIa.

18a Col. Baradez mentions another waste tract, with traces of Roman cultivation, near El-Kantara, called “h'mel zitouna” (Vue Aérienne de l'Organisation Romaine dans le Sud-Algerien, Paris, 1949, p. 201Google Scholar).

19 Cowper's ‘Aref capitals’ (Hill of the Graces, fig. 35, p. 143).

20 Hill of the Graces, p. 270.

21 No full survey of this group has yet been undertaken, but it appears to be a smaller settlement dependent on Sabratha. It may be the Thenteos of the Antonine Itinerary (cf. Goodchild, Roman Roads and Milestones, p. 21).

22 Briefly, reported in Africa Italiana ii, 1928–1949, p. 106Google Scholar.

23 ‘Limes Tripolitanus II’, in Journal of Roman Studies xl, 1950.

24 Vue Aérienne de l'Organisation Romaine dans le Sud-Algérien, Paris, 1949, pp. 202 ffGoogle Scholar.

25 Déchelette—Grenier, , Manuel d'Archeologie Gallo-Rornaine i, pp. 452–5Google Scholar.

26 Cf. Henchir ez-Zaatli in Tunisia, H. Saladin, op. cit. (n. 5), p. 129.

27 To be published by Caputo.

28 Bartoccini, , Africa Italiana ii, 1928–1929, p. 105Google Scholar.

29 Catacombs have been found at Medina Doga (Goodchild, ‘Tarhuna Plateau’, p. 50) and also at Tarhuna, but no cemetery of any sort has yet been located at Gasr ed-Dauun.

30 This site is the ‘Kasr Shenr’ of which a plan is given by Myres, , Proc. Soc. Ant. 2, xvii, 1897–1899, p. 285Google Scholar.

30a See plan in ‘Tarhuna Plateau’, p. 62.

31 The fortified farmhouse is typologically a descendant of the unit of frontier settlement in the third century A.D., described in the two articles on the Limes Tripolitanus referred to above, notes 13 and 23. Late examples in the pre-desert area are sometimes surrounded by hut-villages, but the huts themselves have not yet been investigated.

32 Information from Mr. M. de Lisle.

33 Goodchild, , ‘Mapping Roman Libya’, Geographica Journal cxviii, 2, June 1952, p. 145. 34Google Scholar.

34 Cowper, Hill of the Graces, pp. 276–7.

35 See Gsell, , ‘L'huile de Leptis’, Rivista della Tripolitania i, 1924–1925, p. 41Google Scholar.

36 Six of the twenty coins said to have been found in the area are of Punic or Numidian type, but the virtual absence of Roman first-century types in itself suggests that these remained in circulation for a very long period.

37 ‘Tarhuna Plateau’, pp. 56 and 67; IRT, Neo-Punic 6.

38 See the article by Mrs. Brogan and the writer in this volume, pp. 74–80.

39 ‘Tarhuna Plateau’, p. 50.

40 Illustrated by Caputo, in ‘Scavi Sahariani’, Monumenti Antichi della Accademia Naztonale del Lincei, xli, 1951, fig. 177, p. 411Google Scholar.

41 IV, 172.

42 E.g. the mausoleum at el-Khadra (‘Tarhuna Plateau’, pp. 44, n. 6 and 63, n. 36).

43 The fertility of the cornland in ‘the plain of Sofeggin’ was proverbial in antiquity (el-Bekri, , Description de l'Afrique Septentrionale, tr. Slane, de, Paris, 1913, p. 25Google Scholar).

44 The only evidence for imperial estates in Tripolitania connects them with Sabratha and Oea rather than Lepcis, suggesting that they may have been situated in the Gefara. See Reynolds and Ward Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania, pp. 9 and 10.

45 Ammianus Marcellinus XXVIII, 6.

46 See Perkins, Ward and Goodchild, , “The Christian Antiquities of Tripolitania’, forthcoming in Archaeologia xcvGoogle Scholar.

47 Bell. vand. IV, 21.

48 Conquête de l'Afrique du Nord, ed. and tr. Gateau, A., Algiers, 1948, pp. 35–7Google Scholar.

49 The Afri provided large contingents of infantry to Carthage and are clearly distinguished by Livy from the Mauri and Numidae, who lived outside her immediate territory. Cf. XXI 22.2, XXIII 9.4, XXX 33.5, etc.