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Document Details : Title: Studies in Legal and Agrarian History I Subtitle: The Inscription from Henchir-Mettich and the Lex Manciana Author(s): DE LIGT, L. Journal: Ancient Society Volume: 29 Date: 1998-1999 Pages: 219-239 DOI: 10.2143/AS.29.0.630058 Abstract : The last quarter of the twentieth century has witnessed a dramatic change in the type of evidence most frequently used in the study of rural North Africa during the Roman period. Until around the mid-1970s nearly all attempts to reconstruct the agricultural history of this region relied heavily on literary and epigraphic sources. Since then the field has come to be dominated by field surveys, pottery studies and excavations. Although archaeological research has shed new light both on the way in which individual farmsteads were operated and on the evolution of patterns of settlement, however, it is less useful when it comes to unravelling social and legal relationships. For this reason alone the written sources will always remain important, even if some of them have been discussed ad nauseam. |
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