Piscationes in Mauretania Tingitana: marine resource exploitation in a Roman North African province (2 vols.)

Abstract

This study determines the methods, products a nd areas of marine resource exploitation in the northwest Maghreb during the mid-1stto late 3rd centuries AD, when the region constituted the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana. At the centre of this thesis are two data sets that are contextualised within the specific marine, lagoonal and riverine environments of the province: regional archaeological data (marine an imal remains, fishing equipment, and finds related to fish-salting practices) and relevant descriptive data (written sources, iconography and ethnography). This material included in this study derives not only from the Roman period but also the preceding Punico-Mauretanian and subsequent Late Roman periods. Such a diachronic analysis identifies the ways in which the practice and role of fishing and consumption of its products we re affected by the region’s incorporation into the Roman Empire.

The region’s maritime cultural landscape was conducive to a variety of exploitation methods, practised throughout all periods examined. However, the socio-cultural, economic and technological structures that were the consequences of inclusion into the Roman political system developed to a level that reached commercialisation of the resource. Thus, for the first three centuries AD, anthropogenic factors instituted a change in the way in which people moved through and related to the marine environment of the northwest Maghreb.

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