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

Abstract

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.