Roman Africa: An Archaeological Review

Abstract

The significance of the African provinces is well-appreciated in historical studies of the Roman Empire, but there is a distinct lack of good summaries in English on recent developments in the field of study. Some introductory books sacrifice readability in favour of detail, others offer a more synthetic view, but lack depth. The bibliography is now vast and ever more intimidating for the uninitiated; we hope that what follows will serve both as a useful introduction for those new to the field and as a refresher for others. In this review we have concentrated on developments which seem to us to be of particular importance, whilst directing the reader's attention to basic references in other areas. The emphasis throughout is on archaeological work and this will explain short measure having to be given to some important historic and epigraphic studies. Another choice had to be the geographical limits of the study and, mostly, we have restricted our coverage to Africa Proconsularis and Numidia, though certain themes demand expanding the horizons to sites in the Mauretanian provinces and Cyrenaica also. We have considered 1970 as an appropriate start-date for our survey, allowing us to review developments across the last twenty five years, though necessarily with greater emphasis being placed on publications of the last decade.