Garamantian Agriculture and its Significance in a Wider North African Context: The Evidence of the Plant Remains from the Fazzan Project

The Garamantes, centred on the Wādī al-Ajāl in the Fazzan region of southern Libya, were an increasingly dominant power in the central Sahara from c.900 BC to AD 500 ¹ . Traditionally the Garamantes have tended to be viewed from the perspective of the Roman Empire using the Classical sources. An alien and nomadic people, they lived beyond the limits of the Roman world and therefore beyond ‘civilisation’. By relying less on historical sources and more on the archaeology, recent work by teams in both the northern and southern Fazzan ² are beginning to form a more Saharan-centred view of the Garamantes. It remains the case that from the early first millennium AD, the most visible material culture recovered from excavations of Garamantian sites is Roman, and that the Fazzan is on the periphery of the Mediterranean world from where such goods originate. However, from a Saharan perspective, the Fazzan is at the centre of a regional system and a network of caravan routes from which it provides a link between the Mediterranean world and the Sudanese belt ³ .As Liverani argues, ⁴ from this perspective the Garamantes were in a position to exploit both the interface between their own and the Mediterranean world and that of the sub-Saharan world, as well as the Nile Valley to the east. The success of the trade system which brought olive oil, bronzes, pottery, glass, jewellery and other goods from the Mediterranean world depended on the reciprocal trade of wild animals, salt and slaves ⁵ much of which must have derived from southern sources. While the success of the Garamantes depended on agriculture, the evolution of Garamantian civilisation from the mid-first millennium BC until the mid first millennium AD can also be seen in the context of the evolution of the trans-Saharan trade routes which are so well known from the Medieval and early modern periods. ⁶ Botanical remains recovered from excavations at sites within the Wādī al-Ajāl, the heartland of the Garamantes, suggest a predominantly northern influence. ⁷ This paper, however, attempts to demonstrate that while the crop repertoire was largely inherited from the Mediterranean or Egyptian world, the position of the Garamantes in the centre of the Saharan trade network is reflected in the adoption of African crops and a specialised agriculture which was adapted to that unique position.