Atlas of the Landed Estates of the Ancient Maghreb – ALEAM

The ALEAM (Atlas of the Landed Estates in Ancient Maghreb) project aims to comprehensively study the large landholdings of ancient North Africa, a region often considered the granary of Rome. We will ask how a world empire became dependent on this one region (along with Egypt) for wheat and why North Africa managed to distinguish itself from the rest through its large agricultural estates. Indeed, according to literary sources, a large part of Africa was occupied by extraterritorial estates, i.e. not belonging to the territories of the cities. If imperial estates have been studied in recent projects, the extraterritorial landed properties of private individuals, which preceded them and with which the imperial property coexisted throughout its history, have never been the subject of a global study.
We propose two lines of work in order to fill this gap. On the one hand, we will proceed with the creation of the database that will give rise to the atlas of the landed estates of the ancient Maghreb. It will be based mainly on epigraphic, but also archaeological and literary sources. Its digital structure will be the adaptation of an existing open source software where, in a relational database, records of documents, individuals and sites will be linked, allowing the consultation of objective data. A committee of specialists in African antiquity will follow the work of creating and filling the database/atlas by means of two meetings. On the other hand, we will organise workshops with internationally renowned researchers on four main themes, namely the origin of this African peculiarity and its latest expressions at the end of Antiquity, the organisation of production in large private estates, the role played by women in these estates and the comparison with other regions of the Roman world where large landholdings proliferated.