ABSTRACT
The Trajanic period, Roman imperial control concentrated on economic and strategic nodes of western Syria and the Levant, leaving the rural regions of North Mesopotamia almost untouched. Roman soldiers and local components managed to cooperate with one another in a relatively workable way, contributing to the definition of a particular sociocultural landscape that adapted to the physical and ideological mobility of the borderlands. The particular position of Northern Mesopotamia gained much more importance, however, after the conquest of Severus and the formal annexation of the territory into the Roman Empire. The absence of architecture of the sort typical of Roman construction, the low occurrence of Roman-period ceramics, and the complex processes at the base of the relation between the local elites/civilian groups and the Roman army are all clues that hint at a failed attempt at organization.
