Money, Trade and Trade Routes in pre-Islamic North Africa

This book expands upon a conference held at the British Museum in 2008 that brought together scholars from differing fields specialising in ancient North Africa. This multidisciplinary approach allowed a number of subjects to be enriched through comparative evidence. The conference concentrated on the area the Romans knew as "Africa" (the area of the modern Maghreb) to draw out evidence for trade and interaction amongst groups in central and western North Africa, allowing themes of trade and cultural influence to emerge from the interactions of the various ethnic groups in the pre-Islamic period. This book follows two main strands: firstly, the cultural identity of the people of this region and their interaction with neighbouring peoples; secondly, the development and extent of trans-Saharan trade routes in the pre-Islamic period. The Ancient North Africa conference was part of the Money in Africa project and this volume follows the publication of the Money in Africa conference proceedings, which covered more modern material. Amelia Dowler is the curator of Greek and Roman Provincial Coins in the British Museum. Elizabeth R. Galvin is an economic anthropologist specialising in Africa.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Greek, Punic and Roman Africa at the British Museum (Amelia Dowler and Elizabeth R Galvin)
Coins, Cities and Territories: The Imaginary Far West and south Iberian and North African Punic Coins (Bartolome Mora)
Coinages with Punic and neo-Punic legends in Western Mauretania: attribution, chronology and currency circulation (Laurent Callegarin)
Carthaginian Garrisons in Turdetania: the Monetary Evidence (Eduardo Ferrer and Ruth Pliego)
Economic Connectivity in Pre-Roman Africa (Josephine Quinn)
North Africa and the Mediterranean Long-distance Trade (Michael Sommer)
The Garamantes Revised and Revisited (David Mattingly)
Slavers on Chariots: The Garamantes between Siwa and the Niger Bend (Elizabeth Fentress)
Sub-Saharan Evidence for Contacts between North Africa, Mauritania and the Middle Niger: 800 bc–ad 400 (Kevin MacDonald)