BMCR 2009.01.19, David L. Stone, Mortuary Landscapes of North Africa

David L. Stone, Lea M. Stirling (ed.), Mortuary Landscapes of North
Africa.  Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2007.  Pp. xii, 249.
ISBN 978-0-8020-9083-6.  $75.00.
Contributors:  David L. Stone; Lea M. Stirling; Habib Ben Younes;
Jennifer P. Moore; David J. Mattingly; Anna Leone; Michael McKinnon

Reviewed by Kathryn J. McDonnell, UCLA ([email protected])
Word count:  1815 words
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[The reviewer apologizes for the delay.]

Mortuary Landscapes of North Africa stems from a colloquium the two
editors, David Stone and Lea Stirling, organized at the 2001 meeting of
the Archaeological Institute of America. The book has both the
advantages and disadvantages of a thematic session, including a close
focus on a particular geographic area, North Africa, a region that is
well-defined by modern terminology and research focuses, but less
defined from an ancient perspective. The volume is a valuable and
stimulating examination of multiple aspects of mortuary studies in
North Africa, and contains  eight essays, each of which is either a
contribution by one of the original members of the panel or a solicited
contribution.

The eight essays in the volume vary greatly in subject matter,
methodology, and approach and provide a survey of trends in mortuary
studies. These studies include: (1) in-depth examinations of a single
facet of funerary practices, such as Stirling's own discussion of the
cupula tomb type; (2) wide-ranging syntheses of evidence from multiple
sites, such as Michael McKinnon's masterful analysis of human skeletal
evidence; and (3) theoretical approaches, such as Stone and Stirling's
co-authored introductory essay. The volume encompasses a wide range of
chronological perspectives, from the first millennium BC to the
Byzantine era.

In the introduction, "Funerary Monuments and Mortuary Practices in the
Landscape of North Africa," the two editors set out current directions
in landscape archaeology and contextualize the individual contributions
to the volume within a theoretical framework. The directions they
discuss include the role of ritual, the categorization of monument
types, the interaction of individuals with the landscape, and
acculturation exchange between groups. As careful as their discussion
of approaches and methodology is, at the same time, in this reviewer's
opinion, Stone and Stirling err by assuming an audience already
familiar with the "major civilizations in ancient North Africa:
Garamantian, Berber, Punic, Roman, and Early Christian" (14). They
therefore omit a general overview of these peoples and of ancient North
Africa as a topic within the introductory essay. Given the range of the
volume, this omission makes it difficult for the reader who does not
specialize in North Africa to grasp all the nuances raised by the
individual papers and the volume as a whole. This is unfortunate
because so many of the theoretical and practical issues raised by the
papers in the volume are the same as those confronted by scholars who
work in other geographical and historical contexts.

The introduction performs a singular service to the reader by locating
the approaches of each essay within a broader theoretical context
("landscapes of change," "landscapes of continuity," "landscapes of
identity," "landscapes of community," and "landscapes of the sacred"
[pp. 14-25].) Given the overall focus of the volume on funerary
monuments as markers in the inhabited landscape, it is not surprising
that the majority of papers in the volume focus on questions of
monument typology (Stirling), monument placement (Leone), the
interaction between viewer or community and monument (Stirling,
Mattingly, Leone), cultural interaction and exchange in funerary
practices (Ben Younes, Mattingly, Stone) as well as the monument within
the landscape. A brief summary of the seven individual contributions,
arranged thematically, and their individual strengths and weaknesses
follows.

Anna Leone's contribution, "Changing Urban Landscapes: Burials in North
African Cities from the Late Antique to Byzantine Periods," looks at
the placement of graves within the classical urban core in these
periods at four sites: Thysdrus; Hadrumentum; Carthage; and Bulla
Regia. Her analysis examines re-use of the classical cityscape by
subsequent inhabitants and concludes that the placement of burials was
not random, as often assumed, but deliberate and organized. Her
discussion and the clarity of her approach will be a useful model for
all scholars who consider questions of use and re-use in the post-Roman
landscape.

Stirling's study of the cupula tomb type, "The Koine of the Cupula in
Roman North Africa and the Transition from Cremation to Inhumation,"
presents a well-written investigation of an individual phenomenon. Her
discussion raises interesting questions about the connection between
funerary practice, ritual acts, and the use of a particular tomb type,
arguing for a functional understanding of funerary monuments. Here,
however, the volume's scope limits the depth of her investigation to
the cupula tomb's appearance in North African contexts, with only a
brief mention of its appearance elsewhere in the empire, most notably
at Isola Sacra.[[1]]

Jennifer Moore's contribution, "The 'Mausoleum Culture' of Africa
Proconsularis" also investigates a particular monument type, in this
instance, mausolea in Africa Pronconsularis. Her thorough study
highlights the many challenges in funerary studies, including the
modern construction of monument typologies, continuity and change in
monument types, interaction between pre-Roman-era and Roman-era
populations, and the placement of monuments in the landscape. Her
examination of monument placement is particularly strong. The only
substantive flaw in her approach is her discussion of epitaphs, which
cites only the references to CIL and other corpora and not the texts
themselves, not even when her discussion focuses on specific formulae
in the inscriptions.

David Stone examines the haouanet, first millennium BC rock-cut tombs,
and attempts "to situate (them) in the social and cultural development
of North Africa" (40) in his essay, "Monuments on the Margins:
Interpreting the First Millenium B.C.E. Rock-cut Tombs (Haouanet) of
North Africa." Stone builds on the recent monograph on haouanet by
Mansour Ghaki[[2]] and examines three specific questions: the
historical framework of the monuments; their relationship to the
landscape; and the evidence they provide for cultural exchange. He
divides his essay into two sections: an analysis of the historical
context for haouanet based on archaeological and textual evidence; and
a case study of the two best-published haouanet cemeteries, Jbel el
Mangoub and Latrech, both in modern-day Tunisia. In his case study,
Stone analyzes the form and frequency of decorative elements and motifs
in the tombs, such as columns, niches, human figures and animals, and
draws conclusions about their origins, meaning, and interpretation.
Stone concludes that the haouanet provide evidence for "a dialogue
between old and new ways of thinking" (71) and envisions the builders
of these tombs as active participants in their own culture and in
cross-cultural exchange. His use of multiple approaches is
sophisticated and serves as a model for future studies of haouanet
cemeteries.

Habib Ben Younes' contribution, "Interculturality and the Punic
Funerary World," focuses on the effects of intercultural exchange on
"the pre-Roman funerary world", in terms of both practices and
monuments, found in modern Tunisia (p. 32). He argues for a
conservative model of monument design and selection, in which
innovation and change occurs slowly, if at all. Working from this
assumption, he then defines three 'families' of tombs: megalithic
tombs; rock-cut tombs (haouanets); and shaft tombs and traces
influence, often reciprocal, between these types and between the
Phoenician and Punic populations that created and used them. Ben Younes
reads the plurality of monument types as evidence for interculturality
in the Punic funerary world in particular. Ashe himself points out,
however, our lack of knowledge about pre-Phoenician contact cultures in
North Africa makes it difficult to attribute non-Phoenican practices to
any particular source.

Ben Younes' noteworthy caution about assigning particular meaning or
attributing specific origins to funerary practices in North Africa
contrasts with David J. Mattingly's contribution to the volume, "The
African Way of Death: Burial Rituals Beyond the Roman Empire."
Mattingly attempts "to identify specifically African characteristics in
mortuary tradition" by focusing on the practices of the Garamantes
(138). Mattingly assumes that their mortuary traditions, even if
subject to diverse influences, offer insight into typically African
traits (140, 161). This assertion and his methodology highlight the
current gap in theory and methodology between many classical
archaeologists and non-classical archaeologists. Archaeologists in
other specialties, most notably historical archaeologists who work on
colonial and ante-bellum United States, have recently been examining
the assumption that ethnic identity is reflected in the archaeological
record, problematizing the idea that cultures or peoples, such as
enslaved Africans in the colonial US, can be identified in the record
through artifact typologies.[[3]] It would have been useful for
Mattingly to have alluded to this extensive discussion in either his
study or his bibliography. Given the state of the question, Mattingly's
contribution would have benefited from a more nuanced approach to
questions of identity and ethnicity in the archaeological record. It is
unfortunate that our division into specific sub-fields within
archaeology and departments within academia often precludes
intellectual cross-fertilization, but recent edited volumes have begun
to break down this divide.[[4]]

Perhaps the most valuable contribution to the volume is also the final
paper, Michael McKinnon's overview of human osteological evidence from
North African sites, "Peopling the Mortuary Landscape of North Africa:
An Overview of the Human Osteological Evidence." Not only does McKinnon
summarize the state of the field and interpret the available evidence
for human populations, he also points out future directions, including
the possibilities offered by digital media. This reviewer would urge
that we go one step beyond McKinnon's suggestion of digital publication
of data and consider the creation of web-accessible databases through
which various categories of data could be made broadly available. Such
databases for scientific fields such as bioinformatics (
http://www.maizesequence.org/index.html
(http://www.maizesequence.org/index.html) ) have become a standard
means of data exchange among researchers. Projects in American
historical archaeology, such as the Digital Archaeological Archive of
Comparative Slavery (DAACS (http://www.daacs.org/) ), point the way to
new standards of data publication and exchange for all archaeologists.

Returning to the volume as a whole and its critical apparatus, this
reviewer found that, despite its great range, the volume has some flaws
in overall execution and in individual contributions, as discussed
above. The primary flaw in execution by the authors lies in the lack of
geographic and chronological context in the introduction to the volume
by Stone and Stirling. Neither their introductory text nor the
supporting maps and illustrations address the concept of "North Africa"
in either modern or ancient sense. Instead, North Africa as a
geographic construct goes largely unexamined and undefined. This flaw
is compounded by the publisher's choice to include simple outline maps
(figs. 1.1 and 1.2) with labeled sites and no topographical information
rather than a detailed topographical map. Given the volume's focus on
the placement of funerary monuments in the landscape and connection
between mortuary practices and local topography, this oversight
detracts substantially from the overall impact of the volume. Given the
availability of the maps from resources such as the Barrington Atlas
and the Ancient World Mapping Center at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, the decision to use simple outline maps seems
inexplicable on scholarly grounds. The particular focus on North
Africa, as noted earlier, is both the strength and the weakness of the
collection. Despite these criticisms, Mortuary Landscapes of North
Africa is a remarkable collection of essays and one that should be of
great value to scholars of funerary practices and cultural exchange in
the ancient Mediterranean.


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Notes:


1.   See her note 49.

2.   Mansour Ghaki, Les haouanet de Sidi Mhamed Latrech, (Tunis :
Institut national du patrimoine, 1999).

3.   The bibliography on ethnicity and on colonialism in the
archaeological record is extensive. To begin, see: Randall McGuire,
"The Study of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology," Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology 1(1982), 159-278; Robert Paynter, "W. E. B.
DuBois and the Material World of African Americans in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts," Critique of Anthropology 12 (1992), 277-291; Patricia
Samford, "The Archaeology of African-American Slavery and Material
Culture," William and Mary Quarterly 53 (1996), 87-114; Sian Jones, The
Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and
Present (London, New York: Routledge, 1997); all of the work of Teresa
A. Singleton, most recently Teresa A. Singleton & Mark Bograd,
"Breaking Typological Barriers: Looking for the Colono in Colonoware,"
in James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter (eds.) ,
Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), pages 3-21; Sam Lucy,
"Ethnic and Cultural Identities," in The Archaeology of Identity:
Approaches to Gender, Age, Statues, Ethnicity and Religion (New York,
London: Routledge, 2005); and in classical and comparative contexts,
see Claire L. Lyons and John K. Papadopoulos (eds.), The Archaeology of
Colonialism (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2002). (BMCR
2003.09.43), and Gil Stein (ed.), The Archaeology of Colonial
Encounters: Comparative Perspectives (Santa Fe: School of American
Research Press; Oxford : James Currey, 2005).

4.   For the full references to these collections, notably Stein 2005
and Lyons and Papadopoulos 2002, see above, note 2.