Reforesting Roman Africa: Woodland Resources, Worship, and Colonial Erasures. (November 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McCarty, Matthew M.
• Is Part Of: Journal of Roman studies. Volume 112(2022)
• Page Start: 105
• Page End: 141
• Publication Date: 2022-11
• Subjects: Roman Africa -- forests -- ancient economy -- religion -- French colonialism -- historiography -- archaeology; Rome -- Antiquities -- Periodicals; Inscriptions, Latin -- Periodicals; Rome -- History -- Periodicals; 870
• DOI: 10.1017/S0075435822000338
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0075-4358

Abstract

Abstract: Despite a range of literary and archaeological evidence for the importance of forests in Roman Africa, these marginal lands and their marginalised populations have been almost entirely ignored or downplayed by modern scholarship, leading to tortured interpretations of a range of material. This article asks two questions, one historical, the other historiographic: what role did the forests of Africa Proconsularis play in the economies and productive imaginaries of the region's inhabitants? And why have the products, labour and labourers of sylvan industries been largely written out of modern accounts? After drawing together evidence and proxies for the centrality of Africa's pine forests to a range of lifeways, cultural practices and economies — including their fundamental (and overlooked) role in providing the pitch that lined the exported amphorae that drove North Africa's economic boom — I argue that French colonial practices around forests led to their erasure from histories of Roman Africa.