Abstract: From Sea to Sahara: The Romans in North Africa

Lecturer: Naomi Norman

This lecture will include a general survey of the cities, villages and farms established in North Africa (in particular in the area of modern Tunisia) in the Roman period. Of particular importance and interest are the monuments of Carthage (the capital of the Roman province Africa Proconsularis) and Dougga (the “Pompeii” of North Africa); the lecture will look at these two sites in some detail. The lecture will also include an examination of the rituals of death and burial in the Yasmina cemetery, an important cemetery in Carthage that was excavated by the lecturer and a team from the University of Georgia. Excavation in this cemetery uncovered two magnificent funerary portrait statues, several tomb monuments with figured reliefs and funerary inscriptions and a number of  interesting children’s burials. The focus of the lecture will be the process of Romanization of the province and will include an examination of some of the evidence for continued and strong indigenous influence on the Romans living in the area.

Short bibliography and/or website on lecture topic (for lay reader):

 Susan Raven, Rome in Africa

Naomi J. Norman and Anne E. Haeckl, “The University of Georgia Excavations in the Yasmina Necropolis of Carthage, 1992,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 6 (1993) 238-50