Matt McCarty has been awarded a SSHRC Explore grant to provide RA support for his exciting project, “Reforesting Roman Africa.” The project examines lifeways related to the Aleppo pine forests of the Tunisian/Algerian Tell in the Roman imperial period, focusing on the intersections of sylvan economies and worship as well as their reception in modernity. The work starts from two basic questions, one historical, the other historiographic: what role did the forests of Africa Proconsularis play in the economies and productive imaginaries of the region’s imperial-period inhabitants? And why have the products, labour, and labourers of forestal industries been largely written out of modern histories and archaeologies of Roman Africa, in ways that have forced tortured interpretations of cultural practices?
Figure 1: Votive stele to Saturn, dedicated by Caius Annaenus Felix. Thignica, mid second or early third century CE. Musée de Carthage. Photo: author.
