Between Sahara and Sea: Africa in the Roman Empire (Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures) - Hardcover

Mattingly, David J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472133454 ISBN 13: 9780472133451

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2023

Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Classics

• Winner of the 2025 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize and Lecture

Between Sahara and Sea: Africa in the Roman Empire challenges orthodox views of the story of Africa under Roman domination. It presents a new framework for understanding this and other territories incorporated in the Roman Empire. Based on decades of research in North Africa, David Mattingly’s book is a cleverly constructed and innovative account of the history and archaeology of ancient North Africa (roughly equivalent to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya) from the first century BCE to the third century CE. He charts a new path toward a bottom-up understanding of North African archaeology, exploring in turn the differing material cultures and experiences of the Roman communities of the military and the urban and rural areas. Regional and societal differences emerge as significant and of long duration in the fascinating story of one of the most important sectors of the Roman Empire. 

This important book is the most comprehensive in English on Roman North Africa. It is remarkably rich, with up-to-date references and a host of new ideas and perspectives. Well written and illustrated, with a plethora of maps, it will be required reading for anyone interested in the subject. Rather than emphasizing the role of external actors, as studies of “Roman Africa” have traditionally done, Between Sahara and Sea focuses on local contributions to the making of Africa in the Roman Empire. The author demonstrates that the multiple populations encountered by Rome were not an indistinct bloc, but had different identities and cultures.

About this title

About the Author

David J. Mattingly is Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester. 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472133454
• ISBN 13: 9780472133451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 744