干旱区生态环境知识资源中心(Arid): Saharan trade in the Roman period: short-, medium- and long-distance trade networks

Arid

DOI	10.1080/0067270X.2012.727614
	Saharan trade in the Roman period: short-, medium- and long-distance trade networks
	Wilson, Andrew
通讯作者	Wilson, A (corresponding author), Univ Oxford, Inst Archaeol, Oxford OX1 2PG, England.
来源期刊	AZANIA-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA
ISSN	0067-270X
EISSN	1945-5534
出版年	2012
卷号	47 期号:4 页码:409-449
英文摘要	This paper examines the evidence for Saharan trade in the Roman period in the light of recent fieldwork in the Libyan Sahara by the Fazzan Project and the Desert Migrations Project and by the Italian Mission in the Acacus. The results of these projects suggest that trade between the Roman world and the communities of the Sahara was substantially greater than believed a few years ago and highlight the transformative effect that contact with the ancient Mediterranean had on Saharan society, especially on the Garamantes of Fazzan. But this paper also argues that in focusing chiefly on trans-Saharan commerce, much previous research has misunderstood the nature and importance of Saharan trade in antiquity. Relatively few types of goods were traded all the way across the Sahara from south to north or vice-versa in the Roman period. Rather, we should be thinking principally in terms of a network of interdependent sub-systems, of short-, medium-and long-distance exchange; the trans-Saharan traffic was only one part of this network. Moreover, Saharan trade * and especially the short- and medium-distance subsystems * also provoked transformations in the frontier zones of Roman North Africa. The abundant evidence of Roman imports to Fazzan discovered by British fieldwork there also calls into question the universal assumption that trans-Saharan trade in the medieval and modern periods exceeded the scale of trans-Saharan trade in antiquity; this is based on no good evidence at all and may be entirely false. Comparison with better documented periods suggests that the Roman world was capable of absorbing a trans-Saharan slave traffic at least as large as that of the medieval period and the evidence of Roman imports points to a substantial trade, of which slaves were probably a major component, via the central routes across the Sahara. Saharan trade in antiquity was organised around a set of drivers that were very different from those of the medieval trans-Saharan trade, with a key role played by the development of a substantial agriculturally-based trading state within the Sahara itself, the Garamantes. The collapse of Saharan trade in late antiquity is related to the decline of Garamantian authority and is linked in part to the emergence of new tribal conglomerations in the frontier zones between the fourth and sixth centuries AD.
英文关键词	Saharan trade trans-Saharan trade Garamantes Roman trade foggaras Fazzan
类型	Article
语种	英语
收录类别	AHCI
WOS记录号	WOS:000311118500001
WOS关键词	MYTH
WOS类目	Archaeology
WOS研究方向	Archaeology
资源类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.177/qdio/handle/2XILL650/361081
作者单位	Univ Oxford, Inst Archaeol, Oxford OX1 2PG, England
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Wilson, Andrew. Saharan trade in the Roman period: short-, medium- and long-distance trade networks[J],2012,47(4):409-449.
APA	Wilson, Andrew.(2012).Saharan trade in the Roman period: short-, medium- and long-distance trade networks.AZANIA-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA,47(4),409-449.
MLA	Wilson, Andrew."Saharan trade in the Roman period: short-, medium- and long-distance trade networks".AZANIA-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN AFRICA 47.4(2012):409-449.

条目包含的文件
条目无相关文件。

个性服务

谷歌学术

百度学术

必应学术

相关权益政策

收藏/分享