Book Reviews
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BOOK REVIEWS RUS AFRZCUM. TERRA ACQUA OLZO NELL' excavation and survey (78-80,by S. Abram). A list AFRICA SETTENTRZONALE. SCAVO E RZC- of sites (81-84) and bibliography (85-93) are also OGNZZZONE NEI DINTORNI DI DOUGGA provided. The second half of the volume is taken up (ALTO TELL TUNISINO), MOSTRA PALAZZO with the exhibition photographs, in colour and THUN, TORRE MIRANA, TRENT0 23 black-and-white. which are of high quality. The NOVEMBRE 2000-7 GENNAZO 2001. By many colour photographs of structures and the M. de Vos (ed.) Universita degli Studi di landscape are a particular delight. Trento/Znstitut National du Patrimoine de The description of the Dougga aqueduct is the Tunis, Trento 2000. ISBN 88-8443-003-8, pp. first detailed treatment of this structure since its 104 + r~umerouspages of colour and black- description (with very few illustrations) by Louis and-white illustrations; 7 folding maps and Carton in 1896,s and comprehension of the plans. L.It. 35,000. monument is greatly improved by the inclusion of accurate plans. photographs and drawings of Considering the fertility of the North African coun- several of the seven arcaded bridges which carry the tryside and the exceptional state of preservation of aqueduct across valleys. We now have another well remains there, relatively little field survey work has illustrated and documented North African aqueduct been done there by comparison with other parts of to set alongside studies of the Cherchel and the circum-Mediterranean world. The survey proj- Carthage aqueducts.9 The illustrations show rusti- ects in Libya, Tunisia and Algeria which have been cated masonry arcades of a style comparable with published in any detail can be counted on the fingers the Djebel Toudscha arcade of the Saldae aqueduct of one hand-the UNESCO Libyan Valleys (completed AD 152) or the Oued Mellah arcade of Survey,l Segermes2 and Ka~serine,~with Philippe Cherchel (first- or second-century AD): outside Leveau's one-man survey around Cher~hel.~A brief Africa, comparable masonry styles are evident at notice has appeared about a survey near ~artha~e,~Segovia (original construction undated; restored and there are short prehminary reports of recent under Nerva) and the Pont du Gard (now dated in work on ~erba,6and around Leptiminus;7 but this the middle two quarters of the first century AD).As represents almost the sum total for field survey the Dougga aqueduct was completed in AD 18411 87, work in Libya and the Maghreb outside Morocco. it is clear that attempts to date aqueducts by Almost the sum total: Rus Africum, the acconlpany- construction styles are unreliable-still more so any ing volun~eto a photographic exhibition in Trento in suggestion that rusticated masonry work in the 2000, presents a first summary of some of the prin- provinces is any reflection of Claudian fashions in cipal findings of a survey project undertaken in the Italy. Tunisian Tell, under the direction of Mariette de Vos A notable accomplishment of the survey's work between 1994 and 1999. The study zone lies around along the Dougga aqueduct is the identification of the spectacularly preserved ancient city of Thugga an inverted siphon carried on the third aqueduct (modern Dougga) in the fertile uplands of northern bridge at A'in Krogia. Carton had illustrated some Tunisia, in an area where the standing remains of stone pipeline blocks from this area,1° although it is rural sites have been known since the late nineteenth unclear from his account whether these belonged to century, but hardly recorded; it is also the region the Dougga aqueduct or to a separate rural aqueduct which produced a series of important inscriptions at Bled Zehna. Whatever the origin of Carton's relating to the legal rights of agricultural tenants on blocks, the new survey has established that the Mn imperial estates, and the findspot of one of these, Krogia bridge, 29.5 m high on three tiers of arcades, fin Wassel, was among the rural sites excavated by carried a stone pipeline inverted siphon 27 m deep the project. The project therefore represented an to take the water across a valley c. 46.5 m deep. opportunity of great significance for studying the Foldout 4 gives a fine restored elevation and axono- rural landscape of the fertile agricultural uplands of metric drawing. The new data show clearly the scale North Africa, and for setting the well-known of the engineering project involved in the construc- epigraphic material in its wider archaeological con- tion of this aqueduct. underlining the prosperity of text. Dougga at thls date; it is hardly surprising, there- The text gives background on the project's aims fore, that the aqueduct is one of the few monuments and methodology and the nature of the study area to have been built collectively by the town from (pp. 9-20), the survey results (pp. 20-35)-rural municipal funds, rather than by private euergetism. sites and cisterns, agriculture, olive presses and The source of Dougga's wealth was primarily factories, the aqueduct of Thugga, land ownership agricultural, and the survey has identified 186 farm and imperial estates (all by M. de Vos). There fol- and villa sites ('fattorie') and 12 villages lows a report on the excavation at A'in Wassel (pp. ('agglomerati rurali') in the countryside around the 36-8, by M. de Vos and B. Maurina), the pottery town, 123 of which have remains of olive presses. from the excavation (38-57, by A. Ciotola and B. Photographs, plans, elevations and axonometric Maurina), the pottery from the survey (58-77,by A. reconstructions are given for one of these (site 205). Ciotola), and an initial report on the coins from the whose walls still stand in part c. 5.8 m high; BOOK REVIEWS essentially a large stone barn with tiled roof, hous- Handmade pottery is common throughout North ing two lever presses. The sheer number of oil press Africa, and is notoriously difficult to date;ll hand- elements recorded in total (including 119 counter- made bonfire-cooked pottery of the first century BC weight blocks) should facilitate the refinement of may be visually indistinguishable from domestic regional typologies, when the data are presented in production of 50 years ago. Yet the survey seems to detail in the final publication. have considered that all handmade 'impasto' The rural settlement of Ai'n Wassel was partially pottery is pre-Roman (p. 58), and to have used it as excavated in the hope of shedding light on the dating evidence. Accordingly we are told that there nature of settlements occupied by the tenants of are allegedly 64 pre-Roman sites (p. 58; p. 20 gives imperial estates, who were granted tax exemption the figure as 63); black-glossed wares occurred on 7 on the yields from lands previously uncultivated or sites (only 9 fragments in total !), glazed impasto on abandoned for ten years, under the Lex Hadriana de 14 sites, and unglazed impasto on 29 sites. rudibus agris, of which five inscriptions had been Presumably the remaining sites (at least 14) were found in the Medjerda valley region, including one dated by the presence either of structural remains at A'in Wassel itself. In fact. the excavated remains, (dolmens etc.) or of pre-Roman amphorae not which included an olive press, dated principally mentioned here. We are not told to what extent the from the fifth-seventh centuries. However, new evi- two different impasto wares are found with each dence for the Hadrianic law was found in a chance other or with certainly pre-Roman evidence on the discovery by the survey; a sixth and previously same sites, but unless black-glossed wares or other unknown copy of the law found at Lella Drebblia, definitely pre-Roman material were found on the which allows the completion of some lacunae in the impasto sites, there is no justification for viewing other copies. these sites as necessarily pre-Roman. Some indica- The broader results of the survey, in terms of site tion that the picture is not straightforward may be distribution and settlement trends, are presented in found in Table 2, showing occupation of sites by very preliminary fashion. Here there are some prob- period; numerous sites claimed as pre-Roman show lems of methodology and interpretation, relating to a gap between pre-Roman and mid- or late-Roman site definition and the dating of supposedly pre- occupation, but then continue into the Byzantine or Roman sites. Because of the high level of 'back- medieval periods. Why the gap in the early Roman ground noise' the criterion adopted for identifying a period? Or do some of the impasto wares from these site was a minimum density of four sherds per m2, sites really also date from the Roman, Byzantine, or the presence of standing remains. But the pot medieval or later periods*? The excavation at Ain density threshold seems arbitrary and over-mecha- Wassel may even provide some evidence to support nistic; theoretically, a spread of 3,500 potsherds this latter possibility; a sherd of 'impasto over a 30 X 30 m area would not qualify as a site, preromano' is considered residual in a sixth-/ although this seems a pretty dense concentration, seventh-century AD context, although no other higher than that encountered, say, on many sites in residual material is noted, and surface pottery all Italy. Furthermore, 54 of the sites discovered had dated from the second-seventh centuries (p. 36). standing remains but no pottery (and they did not all The authors are clearly aware of the problems of belong to acerarnic prehistoric periods); if so many identifying pre- and post-Roman pottery (59, 66), sites with standing remains cannot even begin to and Ciotola admits that it is impossible to reach the four sherds/m2 threshold, what is the real distinguish 'impasto preromano' from later produc- value of such a cut-off for the artefact scatters? tion (41), which makes it all the more curious that Although this approach makes it almost certain that these caveats are not incorporated into the all sites identified really do represent concentrated analysis of site dating.