a comparative study of a Roman frontier province. - Historia Antigua

-447-
8: 1/8: 2
presses worked to full capacity for one month might produce c. 1500
hectolitres of oil. For comparison, the total oil production of Libya
in 1946 was only c. 7500 hectolitres.
8: 2 The Army and the economy
1. Fentress 1979,124-87.
2. Fentress 1979,175-79.
3. The Aures plain is also prime agricultural land rather than a marginal
environment like that of Tripolitania or southern Numidia. See also note
27 below.
4. The evidence for irrigation systems is too extensive for all of it to
have been military in origin and one may suspect a native origin for a
good deal of it, contrary to the views expressed by Baradez 1949a; Birebent
1962,487-507; Gsell et al 1902,1-143.
5. See now Shaw's fundamental study of the nundinae or rural markets in
Africa, 1981a, 37-83.
6. On the Roman economy, see Finley 1973 and Hopkins 1978. On the economy
of Roman Africa, Gsell HAAN I, 1-176 and Haywood 1938,3-119, are still
fundamental for their discussion of the primary sources.
7. O'Leary 1982, was a slightly misguided attempt to identify either a
"primate" or "dendritic" market system in Tripolitania using an inadeq-
uate data base. The methodologies, however, should prove of great
value in future work.
8. Manning 1975,112-16; Bowman and Thomas 1983,83-96; Rebuffat 1982a,
505-06.
9. Manning 1975,112-14; to some extent the speed of economic development
may have conditioned the advance and development of frontiers.
10. See above 7: 3.
11. There are good parallels for this sort of economic development in modern
colonial situations, for instance, Oliver 1979,13-23 (on West Africa).
12. See Hodder 1979,189-96, Reece 1979,211-217 (particularly 216-217).
Also Jones and Walker 1983,189-93, who raise fundamental questions
about the interrelationship between an "embedded" native economy and
a Roman market
system.
13. Very few coins have been found in surface sherding and excavation by
the ULVP. Only two identifiable examples were found at Ghirza by
Brogan (1976,123)
and one in the wadi el-Amud (1964,52, a bronze of
Galb a: ) .
14. Barker 1982,2-8; 1983,1-49.
15. See further 8: 3, below. For discussion of the functioning of embedded
economies (based on social ties and obligations) see Polanyi et al 1957,
passim; Hodder 1979; Haselgrove 1979.
16. Rebuffat 1977,407-13, lists the economic needs of fort and vicus.
17. The investment of capital in developing the land and in planting new
olives is less tangible archaeologically but was not insignificant either.
18. Reynolds 1955,142 (Agerem); IRT 898,900 (Ghirza); the Antar inscrip-
tion is to be published by Brogan.
19. Burns and Mattingly 1981,26-27, on the pair of obelisk tombs at el-
Amud in the wadi N'f'd.
20. This was the practice in modern times also, Louis 1975,175; Brehony
1960,64.
21. The presence of some Roman finewares on a wide range of sites may
indicate
exchange rather than cash purchase, even though it would
appear to confirm a rise in production levels above subsistence
farming.