Part III: Production and Consumption

5 Exploiting the Available

Antagonism and Symbiosis
That production in antiquity was predominantly based on agriculture is hardly controversial. The majority of people worked on the land, and the primary ‘industry’ of the Roman empire was farming. Some modern analysts have emphasized the countryside as the place of production, to be contrasted with the towns and cities, which were centres of consumption. Both sides had an interest in the other - the consumers in the city needed agricultural produce and the farmers needed markets in which to sell surpluses, but behind it lay a power struggle between urban centres and the countryside. The countryside might be exploited by absentee landlords resident in the cities, or country-based landlords might exploit the dependency of the urban populations. This antagonism between city interests and country interests helped shape the ancient city and its hinterland.
Such analyses present a strict dichotomy, between city and country, or between city and village, which is likely greatly to oversimplify the complex processes of production and consumption in Roman Syria and the Near East. For a start, there is the question of whether the distinction between cities and villages is a useful one in this particular instance. The term ‘village’ is itself inadequate for the task of describing the wide variety of settlements encountered, from small agglomerations of rural buildings to ‘towns’ of several thousand inhabitants. A city might be distinguished from a village in legal terms, but as we have already seen (chapter 3), not all cities were equal, and nor were all villages. The main distinction between a city and a village was legal and institutional, and hierarchical in that a city had villages for dependencies and villagers in city territories were expected to contribute to the expenses of the city. But large villages acted as economic and religious centres for the surrounding countryside, just as cities did. They had communal funds and common land, and magistrates and officials, some of whom were responsible for distributing the tax burden of the community. In some regions there is little evidence to suggest that the villages were legally subordinate to any city. In such places there may have been hierarchies of settlements, with leading villages acting as markets or centres of redistribution for other villages, although the evidence for this is debated. A subordinate settlement might gain political independence from a city by being elevated to civic status, but in economic terms small cities probably differed little from larger villages. In the late second century the village of Dionysias (Suweyda) acquired city status, and archaeological investigations there have demonstrated that it acquired monumental buildings, with a carefully planned civic centre, but Dionysias had a small territory and can hardly have been an important economic competitor with its neighbour Canatha. Indeed, Dionysias had formerly been a village in the territory of Canatha, and Canatha may have continued to dominate the new city economically. Villages were potential cities, if the right conditions prevailed, but in many cases they did not challenge the existing economic order. Conversely there were settlements that ought to have been cities even if they did not possess that status legally. We have seen how Heliopolis appears to have been dependent on Berytus until the late second century (chapter 3). However, it had acquired monumental structures that could compete with anything in Berytus, and some are likely to have exceeded anything found in Berytus, before its ‘independence’. It probably attracted wealthy benefactors, and had typical civic monuments like walls and a theatre (admittedly the date of these features is unclear and they may post-date Heliopolis’ dependent status). It therefore resembled a city, even if constitutionally it was not one, and treating Heliopolis as if it were a village would probably not reflect its economic importance in the Bekaa valley. The dichotomy, if such there is, contrasts the smaller settlements with the larger ones, the latter lying at the point where agricultural subsistence ceases and where large-scale consumption and redistribution of surpluses begins. For the purposes of this chapter, then, settlements which had civic status and the larger villages which might be characterized as ‘towns’ will be considered together in contrast to the ‘countryside’.
Cities are the products of social processes, the result of debates by country-dwellers and city-dwellers about whose needs these settlements are meant to serve. They can serve the needs of a predominantly agricultural population, or they can shape the country to their own needs. For the French historian Fernand Braudel the town ‘has to dominate an empire, however tiny, in order to exist’, but the relationship might sometimes be described as more symbiotic than one of dominance and submission. However, this symbiosis between city and country was unlikely to have been a happy and democratic marriage of urban and rural populations. In antiquity control of production and distribution of food was the surest way to power, and that control could be achieved by urban or rural elites through social institutions like the city state.
A popular urban model for antiquity is the ‘consumer city’ promoted (with some reservations) by scholars such as Moses Finley and A. H. M. Jones, who were building on the ideas of sociologists like Max Weber. The argument in favour of this model runs roughly as follows: in the Roman world the value-systems were governed by those who lived in towns and cities. For the elite inhabitants of these centres, agriculture was the proper source of wealth, not manufacture and commerce. The countryside was therefore where production was located, and it was dominated by city-based landlords, who absorbed the agricultural produce. Society was urban and elitist, and the city unproductive. The ancient ‘consumer city’ was intended as a contrast to a medieval mode of productive towns, but like the dichotomy of city/village, that of consumer/producer for the ancient city and its hinterland oversimplifies the complexity of relationships suggested by the evidence derived from archaeology.
	Archaeology reveals clear evidence for production in the heart of the major cities. Iron slag and hammer scale (detritus from the forging of iron objects) reveal evidence of smelting and smithing, loom weights hint at textile production, and there is widespread evidence for glass manufacture. The coastal cities of Syria and the Near East sometimes yield quantities of murex shells used in dyeing (see below), and important dye-works have been found at the coastal cities of Dora and Gaza. Kilns can indicate not only the production of pottery; the types of container being made suggest the manufacture of other products as well. The second-century-AD macellum or food market off the monumental cardo at Gerasa was enlarged in the late Roman period, becoming in the sixth century what its excavators describe as a ‘closed industrial area’ rather than a market, containing a dye-works and a lime kiln, as well as storage and stables. Production in the cities was most likely organized according to guilds, for which there is evidence from inscriptions. The obsession with recording occupations on tombstones (see chapter 8) means that funerary epigraphy is an unusual but valuable source of information about various forms of manufacture in the cities, particularly of occupations which leave little trace in the archaeological record. 
While most urban excavations invalidate the strict consumer city model, it is less easy to quantify the scale of production in cities relative to agricultural production. However, it seems likely that cities provided an organizational framework for all forms of production within their territories, whether or not these were exploitative of the country dwellers, and if so, cities were an integral part of rural productive schemes. Raw materials for production in the cities are often likely to have originated in the countryside (see below), so production in the two locations was intimately linked. Cities might organize the packaging of products in distinct containers for export, or simply for redistribution within the city territory. There is some evidence in Jewish sources of the second and third centuries for the cities setting the market prices of goods in their territories, so that these goods could not be bought or sold in violation of these prices. The fact that cities seem to have been the principal institutions responsible for organizing the export of goods from their territories (whether or not the individual exporters were private entrepreneurs rather than public contractors), and that these exports were sometimes on a large scale, means that those cities were exploiting their hinterlands for purposes other than direct consumption. Taxation in kind may account for a growth in production and export of various commodities at some centres rather than independent economic growth (see chapter 6), but in general a command economy does not explain the complexity of the archaeological evidence for exports. Generalizations are difficult from the varied textual and material data available, but year by year the archaeological support for an elaborate economic interrelationship between city and country is growing.
	Practical and social considerations placed limitations on the productivity of cities. Although pottery kilns are not unknown on or close to urban sites, large centres of production required a fair amount of space. A number of prominent industries were considered obnoxious and dangerous if confined within urban centres. Strabo’s description of the smell emitted by the vats of the profitable purple industry at Tyre, which ‘makes the city unpleasant to live in’, is well known. In the late first or early second century Rabbi Akiba prevented a tannery being set up west of Jerusalem because the prevailing wind came from that direction. A late Byzantine document, the Legal Manual of Constantinus Harmenopolus, preserves the decrees of a prefect recorded by a certain Julianus ‘the Architect’ of Ascalon, in which explicit restrictions on the siting of industries are laid down. It is not certain how universal these regulations were, but they concur with other sources of information about the offensive nature of certain industries. Cheese-makers and manufacturers of garum [fish sauce] ‘do no small damage to those nearby. For the smell from them is extremely unpleasant, and obnoxious at a large distance. Hence such tradesmen must not live at all in either city or village. But if there is need for them for the necessities of towns and villages, they must be three stades [c. 600 metres (656 yards)] distant.’ Similarly glass-makers, iron-workers and bronze-casters ‘must not carry out those operations in the cities proper. Or if there is a necessary reason that they should inhabit cities and carry on these occupations in them, they must work in remote and sparsely populated parts of cities. For the danger to buildings from the fire is considerable; and so likewise is the constant bodily harm to persons.’ Any processes involving furnaces and fumes were considered a potential danger, and whilst makers of plaster of Paris, quicklime, dyes, olive oil, and any processes involving fumigation, such as rush-weaving and wool-cleaning, were allowed to set up in cities, Julianus states the distances and positions that were legally permissible. If these kinds of restrictions existed everywhere and were enforced, it would seem that many industries were better off located outside the cities, although archaeological evidence suggests that the regulations might sometimes have been ignored. 
In the countryside the dominant social and economic unit appears to have been the village, rather than the villa estates characteristic of many parts of the Roman west, and the importance of the village in Roman Syria and the Near East cannot be over-emphasized. Indeed, the region has with good reason been characterised by scholars as a land of villages; and by stressing the rural, we seem to be according prominence to this form of settlement over that of the city. Sometimes Syrians themselves appear to have done so as well: rather than identifying themselves with a city of origin as was normal, some Syrians abroad might prefer to be identified with their home village instead. This is an interesting phenomenon, and is indicative of the social importance of the Syrian village in relation to the city.
Were villagers for the most part landowners, or were they tenants on private estates owned by wealthy city-dwellers? The answer to this question is crucial to our understanding of the relationship between the city and the countryside, but it is not yet resolved. Conditions are likely to have varied from city to city and village to village. Opulent rural villas are known, such as those at Cekmece or Yakto near Antioch, those at Jenah and Ouzai south of Berytus, or the fortified ‘manor’ at Khirbet el-Muraq in Judaea. Some of these may well have been country retreats for the civic aristocracy; others may have served rural grandees. If the wealth of the Roman empire was predominantly agricultural, the wealthy must have owned large rural estates, making these villas a material manifestation of a particular form of social organization and exploitation. The third-century villa at Yakto provides us with a glimpse of such places, albeit incomplete. The excavated area included a court containing an ornamental pool surrounded by a colonnade, probably used as a fish-pond. There were exhedras on two of the three sides exposed in excavation, and a small private bath. The Cekmece villa also had a pool surrounded by a colonnaded portico and an adjoining private bath. Both villas were provided with sumptuous mosaics. Another mosaic pavement, this time from Antioch itself, shows a large fortified building which may be intended to represent an aristocratic rural residence (fig. 45.2); note, however, that village houses in the region sometimes had towers and high walls surrounding their courtyards (fig. 45.1; see also p. 000). Whether large estates were common, or whether the elites tended to hold dispersed properties in different villages, is not clear. In those places where we have much information about villages (mainly the limestone massif of the north and the Hauran) large estates do not appear to have been the norm, and instead free peasants seem to have worked their own lands. But large private estates are possible in other areas. 
Fig. 45.1. Late Roman house at Dalloza in the Jebel Zawiye with two towers. After G. Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du nord, vol. II, plate xxii. 45.2. Topographical border of a fifth-century-AD mosaic pavement from a building at Antioch, showing what may be either a rural villa or a house similar to that in fig. 45.1. The owner’s name, Alexandrenos, is given.
Private individuals were not the only owners of estates. Apart from those owned by the emperors, there were those owned by the church, which was also a major landowner in the late Roman period. Monasteries were centres of production as well as consumption, with the larger ecclesiastical estates often selling or exporting their considerable surpluses. The monks themselves were active forces for development in marginal areas, farming in the wilderness and interacting with the nomads there. The economic dependence of groups of nomads on a monastery might even motivate these people to settle in the vicinity. In some cases private landowners might encourage the establishment of a monastery on an unproductive and uncultivated part of their holdings, doing their duty to the Lord and at the same time increasing the productivity of their estates.
A. H. M. Jones saw the process of urbanization as antagonistic to the interests of country-dwellers, because the wealthy landowners who lived in the cities were slowly able to eliminate ‘peasant proprietorship’ through the creation of large private estates, leaving the country-dwellers as poor tenants or working marginal lands. As time went by, things became worse. In Jones’ view, and that of Finley, life in the countryside in late antiquity was harsh, with the peasantry crushed by the burdens of taxes and other obligations in cash and kind. The blame was largely placed on state demands to supply the army, the annona. The consequences were serious indeed. Over-taxation led to a decline of productivity in the countryside, which led to the empire’s decline. 
While the sources make it clear that there were large estates in the hands of urban elites, and villagers who were tenant farmers, ancient writers do not always concur with the gloomy views of Finley and Jones. The fourth-century Antiochene author Libanius claimed that the villages of the Antiochene hinterland ‘had little need for the town, thanks to exchange among themselves’. Archaeological studies of that hinterland - of which more below - have stressed the growing prosperity of the countryside at a time when it was supposed to have been declining. It was once thought that this Antiochene hinterland could be explained as exceptional, but studies of other rural landscapes of Syria demonstrate that it was not unusual, and that this growth can be observed in the ruins of settlements in the basaltic zone to the south-east, or in the Hauran. In fact, the evidence from almost every part of Syria in late antiquity suggests a growing population, and an increase in the amount of land put under the plough. Whether this overall spread of agricultural production represents per capita growth, so that the lot of ordinary farmers improved, is more difficult to answer, but there is some evidence to suggest that it does (see below).
	If such growth can be discerned, does this mean that urbanization improved the lot of villagers rather than making life harsher? To what extent were the cities involved in the process whereby sedentary lifestyles spread into areas formerly inhabited by nomads? As suggested in chapter 3, there may be a relation between agricultural growth in the steppe and the spread of urbanism there. Cities, of course, depended on their agricultural hinterlands, so we should not necessarily expect altruistic motives from city-based elites with respect to country-dwellers, but it was in the interests of the civic centres to develop their resources. Wealthier cities were probably able to indulge in more costly and elaborate projects aimed at encouraging agricultural growth. An important area where they could help rural development was in matters of water supply. Villages did not have the resources and manpower for large hydraulic projects; by constructing aqueducts, qanats and dams, cities could provide water for lands that needed irrigating. The building of a dam on the lake of Homs (Emesa) and the irrigation projects associated with it are thought by some to have coincided with Emesa’s consolidation as a city, perhaps as late as the first century AD. Canatha in the Hauran seems to have been responsible for providing water to villages in its large territory, and other civic schemes elsewhere could have supplied the hinterlands (see below). Cities also provided markets, a religious focus and an administrative centre for dependent villages. With good reason some scholars consider that the ‘urbanization of Roman Syria may be described overall as due fundamentally to the economic requirements of the villages and to the religious needs of their inhabitants.’
	The fact that in many areas a rise and fall in the level of rural occupation can be seen to coincide with the growth and subsequent decline of the cities implies a high degree of dependency of villages on urban centres. Villages relied not only on urban markets but also on the elaborate social, organizational and religious infrastructure that cities could provide. As cities shrank, so did markets and the organization of the infrastructure, and village life receded from the marginal zones.

The Spread of Sedentarization
In the midst of all this uncertainty one rural trend is absolutely clear. During the period of Roman rule the settled rural population increased enormously in Syria and the Near East. Good land was densely settled, and marginal lands such as the dry steppe or stony highlands were occupied more intensively than at any time before. This growth is most striking in late antiquity, and the trend in Syria seems to be part of an empire-wide phenomenon. Far from exhausting its resources, the Roman empire appears to have encouraged more efficient exploitation.
Literary sources suggest that there was little or no settlement in the steppe during the first century BC. The inhabitants are characterized as ‘Arabs’, meaning that they were tent-dwellers or bandits, whose lifestyle was the antithesis of that of the civilized, city-based peoples. At the time of Pompey these nomadic peoples had encroached on many of the city territories, and in some cases had taken them over. Under Roman rule, however, the nomad presence retreated from the cities. Even so, the process seems to have been a slow one, because the Orontes valley and neighbouring regions still contained non-civic communities under Augustus. Rome may have encouraged the spread of settled agricultural populations through legislation. Roman laws passed in the first and second centuries allowed peasants to own uncultivated land if they developed it, and this probably led to the spread of farming in marginal areas or regions where nomadism had previously been rife. It may explain the regular field systems noted in many areas, particularly in the limestone massif of northern Syria, in the Orontes valley and in the steppe to the east of these two regions. Rather than being centuriated plots for army veterans, these fields may well have belonged to peasant farmers. Roman state surveyors were perhaps employed to lay out the fields in regular-sized plots in order to make it easier for the authorities to assess tax on the land. From the fourth century the number of settlements rose dramatically, and this fact, coupled with the accelerated pace of development in marginal areas, is seen by some as a consequence of the reorganization of the imperial tax system under Diocletian, and the payment of taxes in kind. This system, aimed mainly at supplying the military, stimulated agriculture in late antiquity rather than depressing it with excessive demands. In addition, the Roman state might have purchased for cash any additional surpluses that the farmers produced which might not otherwise have found a ready market locally. It is thought that in late Roman times the border troops, the limitanei, cultivated their own lands and provided at least some of their own food from their fields. A rescript issued by Constantine offered tax incentives, grants of cash, draft animals and seed grain to military veterans who were prepared to farm deserted lands. In the steppe the growth of a system of forts (see chapter 10) was accompanied by irrigation systems which were probably developed by the garrisons. According to this model, it is a symbiotic relationship between the military and the countryside, rather than purely between city and country, which accounts for some of the development.
	However, it is likely that cities were an important part of the process. If there was any long-term strategy on the part of the Roman state regarding agricultural production, it may have been as follows: the principal aim was to increase the state’s tax base, and to supply the army. Cities provided a suitable focal point for the collection of agricultural produce and taxes within their hinterlands, so direct rule was established over cities and the sedentarized countryside, while areas characterized by nomadism were left to client rulers. These client rulers were expected to encourage sedentary lifestyles, and the mark of a kingdom’s success was its incorporation into the empire (see chapter 2). Seen in this way, the spread of urbanization was dependent on the spread of sedentarization, and urbanism was a mark of agricultural success.
Dating the spread of sedentarization is difficult. Much depends on dated inscriptions from sites and surface finds of ceramic fine wares, and the dates they provide may not coincide with the earliest phase of settlement in a given region. But the broad trends just cited are traceable. Increasing settlement in the steppe would have extended the area over which direct Roman rule (or self-regulating government on behalf of Rome) was imposed, since it was much easier to regulate sedentary farmers than nomad communities. It is not always clear whether the spread of sedentarization forced nomads further into marginal areas, or whether it was the nomads themselves who were settling down. The interplay between sedentary peoples and nomads is another complex topic which cannot be reduced to the dichotomies of antagonism and symbiosis (see below).
There are, however, alternative ways of viewing some of the evidence for growth. Farmers will have used a variety of subsistence strategies, diversifying when life became difficult, and focussing on one or two strategies when surpluses allowed. So by itself, the observation that more land was being used is not evidence of great agricultural success. It could signify the opposite. Fortunately other sorts of evidence are available which allow us to suggest which model is more appropriate.

Village Life
We should not conclude that this world of villages was a thoroughly parochial one. There is plenty of evidence for interaction between villagers and Roman officials, and the involvement of villagers in a wider world. For some people at least, life was not confined within the limits of the village. Imported fine ware pottery on rural sites speaks of economic interaction, but not necessarily of an extended network of social interaction. However, the number of papyrus and parchment document finds from the region is slowly increasing and these texts, which often come from rural contexts and concern villagers, provide us with good evidence for social activities and movement of people. Some of the best-known ones are from fairly marginal economic zones on the peripheries of our area, but there is no reason to suppose that social relations in these regions were atypical. We see villagers petitioning the Roman authorities, or travelling to appear in court before the governor in one of the cities. The archives also provide evidence of different languages in use: the same archive may contain documents in two or three languages, and in some cases a single document may contain more than one language.
Fig. 46. Dead cities: the ruins of the late Roman village of Burj Baqirha in the limestone massif of northern Syria.
The Babatha archive, found in 1961 in a cave in the Judaean desert, contains a series of documents dated to between AD 94 and 132 written in Aramaic, Nabataean and Greek, which formed the private archive of a Jewish woman called Babatha, from the village of Maoza in Arabia. They are extremely important for yielding a great deal of information about village life, legal procedures and Nabataean and Roman provincial administration, and for providing us with a glimpse of the transition from the Nabataean kingdom to the province of Arabia and of the way in which Roman legal institutions permeated daily life after the Roman annexation in AD 106. As the documents reveal, Babatha’s personal life was complicated: she was married first to a Maozene Jew by whom she had a son, and then to a Jew from Ein Gedi, who took her as his second wife. Both husbands died, leaving her with difficult legal matters to pursue. After the first husband’s death male guardians were appointed for her son; they held the son’s inheritance and from them Babatha received payments for the boy’s maintenance. She contested the guardianship, and the amount paid, but lost. After her second husband’s death Babatha found herself in competition over property with his other wife, and she also found herself in litigation with a woman called Julia Crispina, a Roman citizen and possibly the daughter of a Roman consul, who acted on behalf of other members of her husband’s family. Babatha was caught in the Roman offensive during the Bar-Kokhba war, at Ein Gedi; her skeleton may be among those found in a cave where a group of people had taken refuge. It was in this cave complex that her archive was discovered, stowed away along with other documents and belongings of the refugees.
The Babatha archive shows that the village of Maoza, which was located somewhere at the south-eastern end of the Dead Sea, had a registry, which if normal would imply an elaborate administrative network in the Nabataean kingdom. The registry continued to operate when Maoza, which lay in the territory of Petra, was incorporated into the Roman province of Arabia. We have Babatha’s declaration of property during a census taken in AD 127, in which her land is listed, giving its area (calculated by the quantity of barley that could be sown in it), and its tax liability in dates and, ‘for crown tax’, in money. On private properties irrigation rights were outlined in detail: two documents make it clear that each landowner had a regular time assigned for tapping the nearby wadi channel. We see the villagers freely buying and selling land, giving it as gifts, or declaring it as security against a loan. Women could own land, and Babatha herself had substantial properties in Maoza. Crops were clearly sold for cash. Babatha’s second husband borrowed money at 1 percent interest per month from a Roman centurion, and it was possible for him to speculate on future crops on a leased date grove by purchasing them a year in advance. None of this suggests a heavily oppressed peasantry, or a particularly primitive economy.	
Another important set of documents is the mid-third-century Euphrates archive, also known as the Mesopotamia papyri. It is not known exactly where these documents come from (they were purchased on the antiquities market by a collector), but they appear to be connected with a village called Beth Phouraia which was an imperial estate on the Euphrates up river from Dura Europus, and they mention several other places which lay along the middle stretch of the Euphrates river. The archive contains five petitions in Greek, written by professional scribes. Two of these are signed in Syriac by the petitioner, Aurelius Abidsautas, who was a councillor of a place called Neapolis (thought to be a newly created city at Appadana near Beth Phouraia). There are two legal documents entirely in Syriac, again written by professional scribes; two private letters in Greek; and several private documents, all in Greek but several with subscriptions in Syriac. One petition, dated 28 August 245, concerns a property dispute between two groups of villagers, and is addressed to Julius Priscus, the brother of the emperor Philip (AD 244-9). Four villagers from Beth Phouraia travelled to Antioch to put their case to Priscus, but had to wait eight months to see him. Other petitions, all brought before Roman officials, concern a dispute over a vineyard and lost revenues from it, acts of physical violence, and a murder. The private documents include sales contracts (slaves, a boat), loans of money, and the lease of land together with houses and a courtyard. 
Although they come from a city, the parchments and papyri found at Dura Europus furnish us with additional information about village life in the same region as the Euphrates archive. The city was sacked by the Sasanians in the middle of the third century (see chapter 2) and excavations at the site produced a wealth of documentary material from both military and civilian contexts. Most came from a military archive housed in the Temple of Azzanathkona, and concern the activities of soldiers. The Dura documents are perhaps better known for the information they provide about life and languages in the city (there are texts in Syriac, Palmyrene, Parthian and Middle Persian as well as Greek and Latin) and the workings of the Roman army (see chapter 10), but a few of them also highlight the importance of soldiers and army veterans in the countryside. One papyrus deed of sale in Greek, found near the city’s synagogue, records the purchase by a veteran soldier of a vineyard in a village on the Khabur river. The individual may have been adding to lands assigned to him by the state on his retirement from military service (the text mentions that he owned adjoining properties). It is worth noting that this document stipulates that as owner of the land the buyer must meet his obligations (imperial taxes) and village services (liturgies). Such a sale was technically a civilian affair but the deed was drawn up in the winter quarters of the veteran’s old unit. The witnesses were soldiers, all but one of them signing in Latin, and it is likely that the unit was stationed in the Khabur region. Another document, this time on parchment, records that a second veteran witnessed the divorce of a probable civilian couple in the village of Ossa (location uncertain, but perhaps near the confluence of the Khabur and Euphrates). A third document is a marriage contract of a veteran and a soldier’s widow at a place called Qatna (probably on the Khabur), written in Greek. It seems clear that ex-soldiers became prominent figures in the rural communities where they settled, and that villagers along the middle Euphrates had regular dealings with the Dura’s registry. 
From the late Roman period we have the recently discovered archive found in a church in Petra which had been destroyed by fire. This collection, which contains documents from the first half of the sixth century until the reign of Maurice (AD 582-602), appears to be have belonged to a certain Theodore, son of Obodianus, who was archdeacon. The documents seem to deal more with comparatively wealthy landowners than peasant farmers, and the land itself may often have been leased or farmed by less wealthy individuals. We see what appears to be an attempt by three brothers to diversify farming strategies by cultivating different sorts of land in several different geographical areas, in the manner described above (p. 000). Even so, given the total amount of land recorded for them, they can scarcely be classed as smallholders eking out a living at the margins. Land was measured not only in the official late Roman units called iugera but also by the traditional method, in terms of grain needed to sow it, just as in the Babatha archive. The Petra archive also shows how the landowners had properties in the territories of other cities, and private land straddling the boundaries of two cities, Petra and Augustopolis (Udhruh?).
A further late Roman collection of papyrus documents was found in the village of Nessana in the Negev. The site lies in a marginal environment which receives about 10 centimetres (4 inches) of rainfall annually. It was established by the Nabataeans, but flourished in late Roman times, when it was subordinate to the city of Elusa. Most of the documents come from a room attached to a small church in a Roman fort, where they had been discarded or carelessly stored away during the declining years of the settlement, more than half a century after the Muslim conquest. Most of the texts are badly damaged, and appear to be from a variety of sources. Many are personal or financial in nature: a marriage contract, divorces, loans, documents concerned with inheritances and divisions of property, and other legal contracts. There are texts connected with a sixth-century military unit, which appears to have been a camel corps, personal documents associated with church officials, fragments of Virgil’s Aeneid and Biblical texts together with commentaries which probably formed part of a small teaching library from a monastic school, and a set of writings in Arabic and Greek dating after the Muslim conquest. As in other cases these papyri illustrate the fact that the villagers were well connected with a wider world. The village seems to have had a caravanserai for merchants. Itinerant tradesmen, who appear to have travelled in a caravan, visited the village, buying goods (particularly animals) to sell elsewhere, and the villagers enjoyed fish brought from the Mediterranean. Growers of dates stockpiled produce and sold it to Egyptian dealers, who traded in the Negev as well as Egypt.

Syrian Landscapes
While much work remains to be done on the Syrian countryside, a number of important regional studies help to define the ways in which different zones developed.

The ‘Dead Cities’
The north western corner of Syria is characterized by fertile plains framed by broad stretches of limestone hills which are less favourable to agriculture. Yet it is the rather unpromising upland environment of this limestone massif that contains some of the most remarkably well-preserved examples of ancient rural landscapes found anywhere in the Roman world. Not only do entire villages survive, but often so do their field systems, burial grounds and rural outbuildings. In spite of the popular sobriquet these ruins, although dead, are not those of cities, but of villages in the territories of cities like Antioch, Apamea, Chalcis, Cyrrhus and Beroea. There are more than 700 settlements, ranging from modest hamlets containing a few buildings to large agglomerations with numerous communal oil presses, churches and monasteries. Some, such as Serjilla in the Jebel Zawiye or Babisqa in the Jebel Barisha, possessed bath buildings. The majority of larger settlements are to be found on the edges of the limestone hills, close to or on the more fertile lowlands, with convenient access to roads or rivers, but small villages are scattered across the region. Most of the surviving buildings belong to the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, when occupation and cultivation of the limestone massif was at its most intense. The reason why these villages have survived so well is that much of the land on which they stand is marginal - it was densely occupied in the late Roman and very early Islamic periods, but more sparsely inhabited thereafter and virtually abandoned from the ninth or tenth century. Consequently the ruined buildings were not used as quarries for building material, simply because there were no later inhabitants in the region to plunder them. Many structures still stand to full height, lacking only their upper floors, roofs, doors and shutters.
Fig. 47. North Syrian landscape: contrast of the fertile plain with the limestone massif. In the middle distance is the late Roman monastery at Breij.
	Although not particularly fertile compared to the lowlands around it, the highland region enjoys a mild climate. It averages between 500 and 600 metres (1640 and 1970 feet) above sea level, and nowhere rises much beyond 800 metres (2625 feet). Rainfall provides most of the necessary water for agriculture, and the few types of water installation used there in antiquity consist predominantly of cisterns. There are two principal stretches of limestone hills: the Jebel Zawiye in the south; and in the north a series of ranges, the most important of which are the Jebel A‘la, Jebel Barisha, and the northernmost mass, the Jebel Halaqa and Jebel Semaan (named after St Simeon Stylites, whose martyrium is located here).
The region may have been fairly sparsely populated before the Roman annexation, with development beginning only in the late first or early second century AD. Archaeological excavation in the limestone massif has been very limited, so our understanding is drawn mostly from surface surveys, and in general these have been restricted to studies of structural remains. In many cases it seems that the houses of this early phase of development were demolished and the materials used in later periods of construction, effectively obliterating evidence of earlier settlement. Fortunately a local habit of inscribing buildings with their year of dedication or construction according to one of the local city eras (see chapter 4; fig. 90.1) allows us to date this early phase even when the materials have been reused, and quantitative analysis provides us with broad trends. Using data from inscriptions (particularly those from tombs), a significant period of development between c. AD 110 and 250 can be identified. The settlement of Me‘ez in the Jebel Barisha seems to have been one of the first centres of any significance, though other buildings of the second and third centuries are known from other regions of the limestone massif. Some of the pagan temples of the region, such as that at Burj Baqirha (see frontispiece), may have had dependent villages (though this is not certain), and thus the religious centres may have been important for the agricultural development of their immediate surroundings during this first phase. In the period after 250 there is little evidence for development, but from c. 330 to 550 the limestone massif witnessed a significant increase in population and occupation. Building activity reached a peak c. 450-80. Pressure on agricultural land increased, and between 330 and 550 the amount of land available per head of population (based on a count of the number of rooms in houses in selected villages relative to the extent of the village territory, where this could be determined) dropped dramatically. One estimate puts the fifth-to-sixth-century population of the Jebel Barisha at 21,000 (100 people per square kilometre) and that of the Jebel A‘la at 8500 (53 per square kilometre). These estimates are based on the number of surviving houses. The figures may not be all that reliable, but they give us some impression of relative densities of population when occupation of the region was at its height. However, this growth does not seem to have brought about impoverishment, or at least, not before 550. The largest number of high-quality buildings belong to the period closer to 550, suggesting that until the mid-sixth century the land was able to support its inhabitants, and that intensive farming of the region brought prosperity to them.
Fig. 48. The limestone massif of northern Syria.
But who were the inhabitants? Independent communities of rural peasants? Tenant farmers or estate workers, subordinate to absentee urban landlords? Or were the larger buildings the country residences of wealthy estate owners? The Dead Cities have long attracted the interests of travellers and archaeologists, and the landscape of the limestone massif has been read in very different ways over the years. When first described in detail by the Marquis de Vogüé in the nineteenth century, many of the buildings were seen as genteel farmsteads and villas inhabited by a rural bourgeoisie. A more thorough survey was published in 1953 by Georges Tchalenko. He saw the villages as servicing the great cities and, in the late Roman period, participating in large-scale overseas export of olive oil. Impetus for rural development therefore came from the cities, or the demands of state-controlled redistributive systems of taxation in kind. He proposed that the development of the more marginal hill country was due to investment in olive oil production, and that the oil produced in the limestone massif was often destined for foreign markets. As olive trees take a long time to mature, olive culture was an expensive long-term investment that would have been best undertaken by wealthy estate owners, or encouraged by the Roman state through tax incentives offered to less wealthy individuals, rather than on the initiative of an independent rural peasantry. At the same time there was plenty of evidence for the villagers raising livestock and growing other sorts of crops - grain, wine, fruit, much of which was probably destined for local consumption. His thesis was an attractive one. At the time that Tchalenko’s ideas were formulated the gloomy model of a depressed late antique countryside proposed by Finley and Jones was gaining ground, making the Dead Cities appear anomalous in their apparent prosperity. Placing them at the heart of an important oil industry was one way of explaining why they were different. The intensification of settlement, particularly in the fifth and sixth centuries, could be seen as a response to events taking place elsewhere in the Roman empire. In the fifth century the Vandals had conquered the major oil-exporting provinces of north Africa. Northern Syria was able to take advantage by developing its own oil-exporting industry to replace what the empire had lost, and consequently the limestone massif prospered when in other areas the countryside was in decline. 
Support for the thesis appeared to come from the analysis of pottery in the western Mediterranean. A major amphora type, Late Roman 1 (see chapter 6), is common in southern France, Italy and north Africa, and is often thought to be connected with this oil industry. It is also found widely in the eastern Mediterranean. The date range of the exports, from the fourth to sixth century, seemed to fit conveniently with the date range of standing buildings in the limestone massif. The region of Antioch is considered to have been a major centre for production of Late Roman Amphora 1 (LRA 1) - although this connection remains to be proved and it was also produced in Rhodes, Cilicia, and Cyprus. No LRA 1 kiln sites have been identified in the Dead Cities, and thus a direct connection between agricultural development in the limestone massif and LRA 1 exports cannot be proved. But the amphoras could have been produced at kilns on the coast or near the cities, and the oil transported from the limestone massif in temporary forms of packaging such as animal skins. Furthermore, some features of the LRA 1 suggest that oil could have been only one of the products being exported - pitch linings in some of the amphoras indicate that another was wine. Wine exports would help to solve the puzzle of the massive quantities of LRA 1 imported to Carthage between AD 450 and 550. Carthage was a major centre of oil production, so why would it need to import foreign oil? If in this case the LRA 1 was carrying wine, the ‘carrying coals to Newcastle’ conundrum is negated. Even so, a connection between the Dead Cities and exports of wine and oil in LRA 1 has yet to be demonstrated, but this is one archaeological problem which might suddenly be solved, one way or the other, by fresh evidence.
Several recent studies of the Dead Cities have stressed local consumption over exports. While the overall number of presses in the villages is considerable (over 500 have been identified), in some cases old surveys confused the rectangular cuttings in the bedrock, which were used for crushing olives, grapes or fruits using stone rollers, with presses, and this has produced an artificially high estimate of the number of presses per household. Another question concerns the quantity and quality of the oil produced in the presses. One view holds that the majority of presses can hardly have been used for oil production on a scale sufficient to support the theory of export. Most have no installation for a second refinement (although this could have been done by using a hand-held strainer) and in many cases the pulp was produced by a crude technique using stone rollers (unless these rollers were normally used for grapes or other crops). While each press itself is likely to have been protected by a roof, these installations were commonly open on one or more sides, which exposed them to bad weather and wind-blown detritus. Communal use of the presses by the villagers is unlikely to have made the quality any better. According to this argument, it would seem that the products of these presses were destined for local use, or, at most, markets in neighbouring towns or cities. Enclosed presses are much rarer, and tend to be larger, well-built installations. These would have produced much better quality oil, and may well be the equipment of wealthy landowners or communities whose products were destined for export. Even these tend to lack any fixed means for providing a second refinement, but there are reasons to think that their products were destined for uses other than local consumption. Once again, the discovery of a connection between exported LRA 1 and oil production in the Dead Cities would completely alter our picture of production and consumption in the region.
Some buildings have been tentatively identified as public structures associated with the storage and perhaps marketing of oil: a rare type of building, which Tchalenko called an andron, may be a public utility. These buildings are usually situated at the centre or entrance of the village, and are without the substantial walls and courtyards characteristic of houses (fig. 49). In those at Baaude in the Jebel Barisha and Berrish in the Jebel A‘la the lower storey consists of an undercroft for storage or a press; above is a single large room. The upper floor could have been a meeting-place for traders or producers of goods – rather like a medieval European market-hall. But this hypothesis is far from certain. The only andron to be identified as such by an inscription is at Me‘ez, and the precise layout of this building, which is unpublished, is unclear. It is also early; the inscription is dated to AD 129, and it may have been a banqueting-hall for a pagan cult. The best known andron is the so-called ‘café’ at Serjilla, which stands at the centre of the village, next to the bath house (the two public buildings may have formed a single complex, but again this is not certain).
Fig. 49. The ‘café’ at Serjilla, which some have interpreted as a commercial depot at the centre of the village. 
Apart from olive oil, Tchalenko recognized the importance of other types of agricultural product in the limestone massif (wine, grain, fruit and livestock). A few inscriptions mention a variety of crops other than olives, but these are too few to support any general argument for agricultural diversity in the limestone massif. There is, however, plenty of material evidence. New studies have concentrated on this evidence, proposing that the surrounding cities were sufficiently numerous and large enough to consume all of the surpluses of the limestone massif, and that it is unnecessary to invoke export as an explanation. Oil production, while important, was clearly more significant in some regions of the limestone massif than in others: some villages had few or no oil presses (or at least, none is identifiable today), whereas in other villages the number of presses is enormous (for instance, at Behyo, where thirty-seven presses have been identified). Viewed by region (see fig. 50), the number of presses indicates that olive cultivation was most intense in the Jebel Barisha and Jebel A‘la, among those Dead Cities closest to Antioch. The more easterly ranges of the Jebel Semaan and Halaqa have fewer presses, but there the villages have a large number of stone feeding troughs or mangers, which can be seen as evidence of a greater concentration on the raising of livestock. The southernmost region, the Jebel Zawiye, has fewer presses and mangers and is something of a puzzle: it has some of the best agricultural land, and some of the biggest settlements, including the large village of el-Bara. Perhaps agriculture was mainly given over to products that leave little or no trace in the archaeological record, such as grain or fruit trees. Rectangular and elongated strip fields found in the Jebel Zawiye are suitable for such crops and lend some weight to the hypothesis that these were the major products. 

	Jebels Semaan and Halaqa	Jebels Barisha and A‘la	Jebel Zawiye	
Number of presses	61	157	36	
Number of rooms with mangers	281	183	40	

Fig. 50. Presses and mangers or feeding troughs in the Dead Cities. After G. Tate, Les campagnes de la Syrie du nord, du IIe au VIIe siècle, vol. I, Paris, 1992, p. 254.

The limestone massif was an environment which was not devoted to a single crop, but to many forms of agricultural exploitation, with regional preferences or specializations. The Dead Cities may have been mainly communities of free farmers rather than estates inhabited by tenants. One estate is known from epigraphy, Zaero (modern Baziher) in the Jebel Semaan, but its ruins are in a very poor state of preservation and it is difficult to discern whether it was different from other villages presumed to be independent. The landscape contains very few buildings that could be classified as villa-estates or grand houses, such as we might expect had there been great patrons or estate owners living on the land, though the question of absentee landlords remains. It is likely, however, that estates were to be located in the more fertile lowlands rather than the marginal limestone hills, and the Dead Cities represent the efforts of individuals who moved into these hills after the plains had come under full cultivation.
The villages lack any formal planning. There are no regular streets or grids. The majority of surviving buildings are houses, although the purpose of some house-like structures remains ambiguous (fig. 51). These substantial, stone-built dwellings are a measure of success: prosperous local smallholders profited from selling surpluses, and were able to invest their profits in expensive housing. Houses can also be differentiated: the quality of wall construction varies and some buildings have exceptional decoration on them. These differences are likely to reflect differences in wealth and status, and a possible hierarchy among the villagers. 
Fig. 51. The ambiguity of architectural remains: these buildings in the northern part of the village of Baaude in the Jebel Barisha are arranged in a row and have porticoed façades  reminiscent of classical stoas. Some believe them to be ‘market halls’ or shops in a commercial centre; others consider them houses, but there is no clear evidence for courtyard walls between individual properties.
After houses, the commonest buildings are churches. They are not found in every settlement, but they are extremely common (the limestone massif as a whole contains something like 1200). Villages frequently contain two, and sometimes three. Monasteries are also found in the limestone hills, and their lands were probably worked by monks. Even so, there is little to suggest that they were involved in large-scale olive oil production. Monasteries with large territories, such as Qasr el Brad in the Jebel Semaan or Qasr el Banat in the Jebel Halaqa have a single, small installation for pressing olives. But they may have been producing and marketing other kinds of goods.
One distinct building type found in villages, attached to houses, or free-standing in the countryside, is the tower. Some of the towers had flat roofs, others may have had pointed ones - it is not always clear from what survives (colour plate 26). Rather than being mainly defensive, the towers were perhaps used for surveillance of villages and their fields. Additionally they may have served as habitations or as stores. The presence of latrines in some and machicolations (a tower in the village of Jerade tower has both) suggests habitation and defence (fig. 52).
Fig. 52. Tower at Jerade in the Jebel Zawiye, which still stands about 20 metres (65 feet) high.
Many other buildings labelled in earlier surveys as ‘inns’, ‘androns’, and ‘stoas’, may prove on closer inspection to be houses. It is hard to make a distinction between a building given over wholly to economic or public functions (such as is implied by the term ‘market-hall’) and one mixing economic activities with residential functions (as most of the houses do) given the present state of the evidence, but public utilities would seem to be rare. Where some scholars have looked at the ruins of certain villages and seen in these evidence of regional centres for collection and redistribution, others have seen only individual peasant dwellings. It is difficult to distinguish inns from farms, but one large early sixth-century building at Kafr Nebo in the Jebel Semaan looks very much like an inn. It contains a large number of stables (identifiable by their mangers) on the ground floor, but even so it may be nothing more than a group of houses. The functions of unique buildings, such as the three-storey ‘Residence’ at Deir Semaan, are enigmatic. Deir Semaan probably catered to pilgrims visiting the martyrium of St Simeon, and such structures may have been ‘hotels’. One mid-sixth-century building at Babisqa in the Jebel Barisha bears an inscription which describes it in Greek as a stoa, and its general appearance resembles that of a classical stoa. The ground floor consists of a portico fronting five rooms of similar proportions; the second floor has a veranda and rooms which may have been for habitation. The whole looks like an elongated version of the typical house structure and the notion that it was given over to commercial use is by no means secure, although it too might have tended to the needs of pilgrims travelling to the sanctuary of St Simeon.
The archaeological evidence points to a wealth of agricultural activities, based around mixed farming, with significant surpluses sold for profit. The claim by Libanius that the villages of the city’s hinterland thrived by selling and buying among themselves, and that they had little need of the city, may apply in part to the Dead Cities, but there is reason to think that these settlements relied on city markets as well. Markets in the Roman world were certainly not confined to cities, but permits to hold them in the countryside were regulated by the authorities, to prevent those in villages or on private estates competing with urban ones. If the villages themselves had markets, these were most likely held in the open air. Spaces in villages which were formerly described as ‘agoras’ now seem doubtful. Excavations in one, at Dehes, have revealed that what was thought to be an open space was in fact divided up by walls to form courtyards for three separate houses.
	The Dead Cities suggest a symbiotic relationship between city and country in which the rural inhabitants fared well. The villagers were able to benefit from large markets provided by the major cities like Antioch, Apamea, Chalcis and Beroea, selling their surpluses in these regional markets, or perhaps exporting them overseas. The rise and fall in prosperity of these marginal areas seems to be linked to the growth and decline of the great cities. We have less information about settlement on the richer plains surrounding the limestone massif, but it was perhaps here, rather than in the marginal environment of the Dead Cities, that large estates, given to monoculture and exports, were located. A recent survey in the Amik plain, the broad and once marshy zone north-east of Antioch, makes it clear that these lowlands were intensively settled in the Roman period, as might be expected. The remains here are much less spectacular than those of the highlands because of continuous habitation in the region and pilfering of sites for building materials, but they provide a good deal of information about settlement in the lowlands, even if they do not as yet supply evidence for the types of agricultural activities practised. Besides demonstrating that there was an increase in the number of Roman sites all over the plain when compared with earlier periods, the results of the survey suggest a significant relationship, or even dependency, between lowland rural settlements and the neighbouring ‘towns’ and cities. There are particularly strong concentrations in the valley of the Kara Su to the north, along the eastern half of the plain, and in the south-west, close to Antioch. Some of the sites in the south-west are identified as wealthy villas on the outskirts of the city, but most other sites appear to be agricultural. With the establishment of Antioch and large villages like Immae (Yenishehir) and the road networks between them, smaller rural settlements seem to have gravitated out of the central part of the plain and towards these centres. The colonisation of the limestone highlands may be an indirect consequence of more intense exploitation of the lowlands by the cities, as smallholders were squeezed out by large estates and had to look elsewhere. Until more information about lowland settlement in the region is available, such comparisons only invite speculation.

Chalcidice and the Eastern Steppe: Desert and Sown
The land east of the Orontes and the Jebel Zawiye gradually shades away from fertile fields to arid steppe as one moves towards the Euphrates. Chalcidice, named for the ancient city of Chalcis ad Belum (Nabi Iss), is a broad region extending east of Chalcis in the north-west and Salaminias (Salemiya) in the south-west, between the Lake of Jabbul in the north and the Jebel Balas in the south. The western regions are suitable for growing vines, olive trees and cereal crops, but agriculture becomes progressively more difficult as one moves east.
	An American expedition at the turn of the twentieth century was the first to describe the ruins here in any detail. Later, the Jesuit fathers Antoine Poidebard and Rene Mouterde explored the region between 1934 and 1942 and interpreted the ruins there as a product of Roman imperial organization. Like Tchalenko, they saw this rural environment being altered by outside concerns, but whereas Tchalenko posited an elaborate economic system for the limestone massif, Mouterde and Poidebard stressed the military organization of Chalcidice. In their study, Le limes de Chalcis, Chalcidice was presented as a frontier zone, which, although arid, possessed a complex military and economic network, and formed an important part of the Syrian limes. The limes, they suggested, was not a linear boundary or no-man’s-land, but a frontier zone of habitations, roads and forts. Mouterde and Poidebard believed that many of the ruins were those of Roman military installations. Much of the reconnaissance was done by air and through the interpretation of aerial photographs, but they also concentrated on field work (particularly the recording of inscriptions) and attempted to date sites through the study of surface scatters of pottery. However, pottery chronologies were not well refined at the time, and uncertainty about the date of many sites remained. The inscriptions were almost all late Roman in date (fourth - sixth century). Nevertheless, Mouterde and Poidebard considered that the limes system was developed in the early empire.
Fig. 53. Map of Chalcidice and the eastern steppe zone, with qanats and other water installations marked. After B. Geyer, ‘Des fermes byzantines aux palais omayyades, ou l’ingénieuse mise en valeur des plaines steppiques de Chalcidique’, in L. Nordiguian, J.-F. Salles (eds.), Aux origines de l’archéologie aérienne. A. Poidebard (1878-1955), Beirut, 2000, pp. 109-122.
	New research has enabled the settlements to be more closely dated, and raised questions about the history and nature of agricultural exploitation of the steppe. There is little evidence of any grand military organization. As with the limestone massif, the more arid regions of Chalcidice do not appear to have been developed in the early empire. Some of the regular field systems noted in the western parts and in the north in the Jebel Hass may be due to Roman planning in the second or third centuries, but otherwise the region was during the early empire an area of semi-nomadic communities which were probably engaged in raising livestock. There is the well-known third-century temple in the eastern part of the region, at Isriye, indicative of a community with the funds, organizational capacity and manpower to build a monumental structure of this sort, but otherwise this site seems to have become of real military importance only under Diocletian. Some Roman military presence can be detected along routes of communication, and in larger settlements of late Roman times (see below), but many of Poidebard’s ‘forts’ appear to be late Roman farms (or, in some cases, Umayyad and Abbasid). Thus Chalcidice owes little to Roman military organization and much to a growing population in late Roman times, just like the Dead Cities.
	The late Roman settlements appear to have developed independently of any centralized strategy. Exploitation depended on careful water management, either drawing water from distant sources or relying on rainfall and run-off from the mountains. The region around al-Anderin (ancient Androna) is particularly notable for its heavy use of hydraulic qanat technology (see p. 000). The qanat tunnels can run for long distances, sometimes more than 10 kilometres (6¼ miles), and often supply large communal basins or reservoirs. The primary purpose of most of this water was to irrigate fields, but qanats were also used to supply the large settlement that developed at Androna. This seems to be a particularly good example of a countryside developing in symbiosis with an emerging urban centre. In more remote and drier regions further east such water sources were not available or too difficult to exploit, but cereal crops could be cultivated by locating farms in those places most likely to receive moisture, such as alongside the beds of wadis. Such farms are recognizable by their large, walled enclosures which defined the boundaries of cultivatable land. There are also farms and enclosures away from the wadis, but these tend to enclose smaller areas and were probably used for livestock. In any case, it is likely that even those farms situated in the wadis practised mixed farming of animals and cereals.
	Late Roman occupation of the region includes an additional feature: a few large administrative and military complexes which appear to have served the surrounding regions. Like large villages, such elaborate structures were possible only with the support of a developed agricultural infrastructure. The most famous of these is Qasr Ibn Wardan: a complex of three free-standing structures, identified as a ‘palace’, church and barrack building (fig. 54). The palace is dated by epigraphy to AD 564, and the whole complex would appear to have been constructed in the mid-sixth century. In technique it resembles the architecture of Constantinople, with complex vaults and domes of baked brick which are unparalleled in the area. The foundations are of basalt, superimposed with walls alternating bands of brick and basalt. The arches and domes are of brick only. The dimensions of the bricks at Qasr Ibn Wardan are of a standard size, resembling those used at Constantinople for the so-called Palace of Justinian and for Hagia Sophia, and it is possible that some materials were imported. However, regional parallels have been recognized: the barracks of nearby Androna, dated AD 558, use the same basic construction technique of basalt and brick, and the ruins of the episcopal palace at Bostra are similar in design to the palace at Qasr Ibn Wardan. The design is also paralleled further afield, by the Umayyad palace at Mshatta in Jordan. These links with other Syrian buildings suggest that, in spite of its Constantinopolitan appearance, Qasr Ibn Wardan was designed by Syrian architects.
Fig. 54.1. Qasr Ibn Wardan, with the church (on the left) and the ‘palace’ (on the right). It was presumably the residence of an important official or landowner, but nothing is known of its owners. 54.2. Reconstruction of the north elevation of the church at Qasr Ibn Wardan. After H. C. Butler, Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expedition to Syria, II. B. Part 1, plate 1.
The evidence from Chalcidice and the eastern steppe, for a significant increase in exploitation, and thus of population, in the late Roman period, and for reliance on mixed farming, including raising livestock, helps to put the ruins of the limestone massif in perspective. The development of small cities in the eastern steppe went hand-in-hand with the increase in rural settlement. It is likely that the systems of qanats required social organization on a scale greater than that of individual villages, or even groups of villages. The developments were of benefit to both city and country. However, there is also evidence for the existence of large estates, and such estates are also an important feature of the Umayyad period. These estates could have possessed organizational capacities similar to those of the small cities of the region, and point to a third element in the relationship between city and country. By the Umayyad period the existence of several large estates and palaces in the region may be an indication that the initiative had passed away from the cities to the rural elites.

Palmyrene
	Drier still was the territory of Palmyra. However, Palmyra itself should not be characterized as a ‘desert city’, for its territory contained numerous small watering places and villages. It is likely that livestock raising was the chief concern, given the problems of irrigating some of the land in this region. These villages seem to have been dependent on, and were probably encouraged by, the city - they appear with the growth of Palmyra and disappear with its fall. Pack animals used for transport and the caravan trade were probably raised there, as, perhaps, were war horses used by Palmyra’s powerful militias. Palmyra itself is likely to have been founded by a confederation of nomads who came together and settled at the oasis, and the maintenance of good relations with the tribes of the countryside was absolutely necessary for the city’s success in long-distance trade. One explanation for the sudden end of a distinctive Palmyrene culture in the city after its capture by Aurelian in the third century is that a large proportion of its population simply abandoned urban life and returned to a more nomadic existence in the countryside. Unlike Chalcidice and the limestone massif, Palmyrene’s development was arrested early on.

The Hauran
The strongest evidence for the notion of village independence comes from the basalt region which lies in the south of the modern Syrian Arab Republic and northern Jordan. The landscape here varies greatly from one district to another and in antiquity the districts bore distinct names, just as they do today (fig. 55). Auranitis was the name given to the uplands (the modern Jebel Druze or, as it is now officially called, Jebel al-‘Arab). In the mountainous central part of Auranitis the altitude and cold climate may have discouraged settlement, but this desolate zone was ringed with villages. Winter temperatures in Auranitis were not suited to olives, and both textual and archaeological evidence suggests that viticulture was an important activity, perhaps accompanied by the growing of fruit trees. The northern part of Auranitis around Shaqqa (Maximianopolis), Hayat and Hit has some of the best conditions for agriculture, and this may explain why two cities (Philippopolis and Maximianopolis) developed here. The rough lava-flows extending north-west of Auranitis were known as in antiquity as Trachonitis (modern Leja). The landscape here is rugged and desert-like, except for the pockets of fertile land in the depressions. The more important settlements tended to be located on the edge of the larger depressions, or at the very edges of the Leja flows, close to land better suited for farming. To the west of Auranitis lies the broad plain of Batanaea (the Nuqra), which shades off into Gaulanitis (the Golan) further to the west. Although not well watered, Batanaea was developed in the Roman period and probably concentrated on the production of grain. Villages were often situated on rocky outcrops so as not to take up agricultural land.
Fig. 55. The Hauran.
The inhospitable terrain of Trachonitis made it a difficult place to administer, and in the first century BC the region is presented in our sources as a refuge for bandits. King Herod was granted control of it, and he and his successors placed colonies around the region and encouraged agriculture. It is worth noting, however, epigraphic evidence which suggests that there were villages in Trachonitis in pre-Roman times, so the wholesale characterization of the inhabitants as robbers hiding in caves may be inaccurate. By the end of the first century BC we hear no more about the bandits of Trachonitis, and from then on the region was characterized by village settlements. Nevertheless the Romans saw fit to build a road across the region, and inscriptions attest the presence of military personnel, which may indicate that the presence of the forces of coercion were still required.
At the time of Pompey the only city in the region was Canatha (Qanawat), which appears to have controlled a large section of the southern part of Auranitis and the northern part of Batanaea. In the early empire other parts of Batanaea are likely to have been included in the territories of the cities to the south, in particular Adraa (Deraa) and Bostra (Bosra). To the north of Canatha lay a large number of villages which do not appear to have been subject to any city in either early or late Roman times, and it is from here, in the northern part of Auranitis, and in Trachonitis, that some of our best evidence for village life comes, although recent studies have also looked in detail at other areas of the Hauran. Parts of Trachonitis and Batanaea may have been given over to large imperial and private estates, and there is some evidence for small ecclesiastical domains in the late Roman period, but it would seem that the village was the dominant social unit in all areas throughout the Roman era. There are strong similarities with the Dead Cities of the north. The villages have no formal plans, no roads or streets, and contain irregular open spaces between buildings. House plans resemble those of the limestone massif - the ground floor being reserved for economic activities, and upper for living - but there are notable differences (see chapter 8). Like their modern counterparts in the Hauran, the outskirts of the ancient villages were ringed with small enclosed gardens and plantations, the larger open fields lying beyond these. There is evidence from the inscriptions, particularly from northern Auranitis and Trachonitis, that the village inhabitants formed a commune with common funds for public works, and that land could also be owned communally. There may also have been village assemblies in special buildings set aside for this purpose, though none have been securely identified and some would question the existence of such structures. 
Overall, the agricultural development of the Hauran between the first century BC and the seventh century AD was a success, and ancient field systems cover practically the whole region. Dated inscriptions suggest two main phases of building, one lasting from the late third or early fourth century until the early fifth, and a second from the first half of the sixth to the early seventh. Inscriptions also mention hydraulic projects but it seems that these were intended to supply village reservoirs rather than to irrigate fields. As in the Dead Cities, the agriculture of the entire region looks as if it relied mainly on precipitation. In late Roman times the villages may have come under pressure from nomadic tribes from the desert regions to the east of the Hauran, but the epigraphic evidence of the first to third century AD hints at a possible symbiotic relationship between villagers and nomads, and in some cases the inhabitants may have been members of a nomadic tribe that had adopted a sedentary life (some scholars have questioned these interpretations, however, positing a more antagonistic relationship between the villagers and the nomads to the east).
Much information about the Hauran derives from inscriptions, and again those of northern Auranitis and Trachonitis are particularly important. Many are undated, and thus rather difficult to fit into a detailed chronological framework. Many are also no longer in situ, having been reused in other structures. A large number, however, name officials, buildings and settlements, and in doing so provide a wealth of evidence for the character of local administration and village institutions. There is a bewildering variety of officers whose titles suggest very specific functions. Some have seen this as evidence of a complex, almost city-like system of autonomous village government, with elected officials and colleges of magistrates performing specific tasks. This might appear to suggest a top-down approach, with Rome encouraging the agricultural and civic development of a backward region of Syria (often using centurions as administrators in the early empire), as part of a general strategy of urbanization. Others have raised doubts. A few of the titles may be inexact or inconsistent Greek translations of traditional titles for more general offices such as a village chief or head man. Most of the officials are named on building inscriptions, and hence their function may have been to supervise construction, or provide for a religious or public building in some other way. Some may have been temporary posts, specifically for the purpose of erecting a building, and so these people cannot really be seen as village administrators. Some of the titles occur almost exclusively in the Hauran and Arabia, and are perhaps peculiar to the region. There is some evidence for a shift in the titles being used in the building inscriptions between the early and late empire, with old ones dropping out of use and new ones being introduced. Some old ones, such as episkopos (‘overseer’), continued, but the meaning was changed (in the case of episkopos, it also signified ‘bishop’ from the fourth century). This alternative view plays down the notion of any complex village bureaucracy, and with it any planned imperial strategy for the region. Whatever the case, the epigraphic evidence from the Hauran provides us with extremely important, if only partial, evidence about social organization, religious duties, land management and ownership of common land, both sacred and secular, among the villages.
As in the steppe east of Chalcis, some of the villages of the Hauran achieved city status. This has been seen as possible evidence for an imperial policy of urbanization, with the region passing from lawless banditry to a land of settled villages and thence to a landscape organized into city states. Opponents of this view object that the geographical distribution of the cities is peculiar and very uneven, if there were a policy of urbanizing the region: four (Canatha, Dionysias, Philippopolis and Maximianopolis) are concentrated in the north-western part of Auranitis, and one (Constantia) is located at the northern edge of Trachonitis. One explanation for this configuration is that imperial estates occupied large parts of Batanaea, and perhaps Trachonitis. Cities would not be developed on imperial property. Another explanation is economic: the first four of these were situated on or close to some of the best agricultural lands and water supplies of the region.
Apart from settlements with the status of village or city, we also encounter those with the title metrokomia, ‘mother-village’. The title is found in Batanaea and Trachonitis. To give a village a purely honorary title (as was perhaps sometimes the case for cities with the title metropolis) would be unusual; that it designates some administrative function would seem more likely. The term might indicate that metrokomiai were the top rank in a hierarchy of villages, but there is no clear evidence that other villages were subordinate to the known metrokomiai. One ingenious solution is that the term was granted as an intermediate stage in the process of urbanization, so that a village became a metrokomia before acquiring city status. However, there is as yet no evidence that any metrokomiai became cities (unless one counts the evidence from late Roman civic and ecclesiastical lists that Phaena in Trachonitis eventually did - see p. 00). Therefore it is possible that the term designated a settlement that could not become a city. A recent suggestion is that metrokomiai were, in the context of the Hauran at least, settlements located on imperial estates. An inscription from Sanamein mentions such an estate, and the known metrokomiai are located in the vicinity. There was no question of settlements on imperial estates attaining city status, so the term metrokomia could be viewed as a kind of substitute title for large villages that might have attained city status had they lain outside the estates. A number of the metrokomiai had bishops in the fourth century, suggesting that they were places of some importance, and this fact may explain why late Roman ecclesiastical lists placed Phaena among the cities. Such reasoning adheres to the view that there was a general trend towards urbanization which specific circumstances denied to these settlements, and that as elsewhere urbanization and rural development were linked.

Rural Resources and their Exploitation

Water
The distribution of natural water supplies throughout the region is very uneven, and water, more than any other resource, has shaped the pattern of settlement. Below an annual average of 250 millimetres (10 inches) of rainfall, farming becomes very difficult without irrigation, but livestock raising is possible in the steppe zone, which is characterized by about 150-250 millimetres of annual rainfall (fig. 56). A limited amount of arable farming in this steppe zone is possible through judicious use of what little water there is, and occasional rains can be used to sow one-off crops. Beyond this zone, in the true desert, wells are necessary to support life, and only seasonal presence of flocks is possible. This is the zone of camel herders and nomads. 
Fig. 56. Desert, steppe and sown: approximate limits of desert, steppe and regions where dry farming is possible. The land to the north of the broken line receives 200 millimetres or more of rainfall annually; the regions to the south receive less.
Water could be transported from a source to a place where it was needed, but this often required considerable effort and investment. Many of the more elaborate installations were likely to have been organized by cities or by the Roman state, because they would seem to be beyond the capabilities of villages. With large projects, such as aqueducts, dams or canals, the involvement of the military is often apparent (fig. 190). The Roman army possessed both the technological skills and the manpower to carry out such jobs efficiently; if necessary, it could also coerce locals into assisting. But military involvement need not mean that the project was intended solely for military purposes, and may it have been undertaken for the public good at the behest of governors or other Roman officials, or commissioned and paid for by local authorities. 
Aqueducts are the best-known and most conspicuous form of hydraulic installation of the Roman period, and are closely associated with ‘consumer’ cities. Where at all possible, the aqueduct ran below ground, following the contours of the terrain, since this was generally cheaper than raising the channel on masonry supports such as arches. Only when the terrain left no other option were arches and bridges contemplated. Because gravity was the sole source of power conducting the water, the source normally had to be higher than the city itself. In the case of the aqueduct which supplied the coastal port of Tyre the source was at more or less the same level as the city, about 5 kilometres (3 miles) to the south, on the coast at Ras al-Ain. The solution was to build large, high-walled tanks around the points where water emerged from the ground. These artificially raised the level of the source and created a sufficient head of water to supply the aqueduct, which then ran on arches for its entire length, extending alongside the main road into Tyre on its final approach. The tanks and a section of the aqueduct at Ras al-Ain still function, although the water is now drawn from the aqueduct for irrigation of surrounding fields (fig. 57). 
Fig. 57. Aqueduct at Ras al-Ain, south of Tyre. The concrete channel is modern, but sits on top of Roman arches.
The main purpose of aqueducts is thought to have been to supply baths, hence their association with particularly ‘Roman’ and city-oriented ways. But they also supplied small reservoirs, fountains, nymphaea (see p. 000) and public latrines. Private houses and workshops might also tap the supply (presumably for a fee, which went towards maintenance). The main aqueduct channel needed regular cleaning to remove lime deposits and blockages, and so it had to be large enough for someone to crawl in, and often was large enough to stand in. Inside the city terracotta pipes were commonly used to distribute supplies, but lead pipes have also been found in urban contexts (for example, at Berytus). Because they appropriated water sources, often in locations distant from the destination, and were very wasteful (all unused water poured directly into the city drains), the social symbolism of aqueducts seems particularly appropriate to the subject of relations between the city and country. Aqueducts appear to present us with a good example of the consumer city parasitizing the countryside and consuming its vital resources, giving nothing in return. However, it seems that rights to tap water along the course of an aqueduct could be negotiated. Research at Caesarea shows that the aqueducts which supplied the city were tapped to supply lesser settlements and rural needs. Thus, even if the city benefited most from the construction of aqueducts, rural communities along their routes also stood to gain.
Other projects sought to conserve and regulate water supplies. Although dams are an important way of managing water in many parts of the world today, they were not a major feature of water management in the Roman empire. Large dams seem to be a feature only of the drier provinces, and several good examples are known from Syria and Jordan. One of the finest is the dam at Harbaqa, near Palmyra (fig. 58). It is probably a Palmyrene work of the late first or second century, but the dam and its irrigation system were utilized again in the eighth century by the Umayyads. It blocks the Wadi el-Barda and is 345 metres (377 yards) long and about 20 metres (65 feet) tall, constructed of rubble and mortar, and faced with limestone cladding. During the winter season rainfall collected behind the dam, forming a lake (which today has largely silted up) that could be used throughout the year. Outlets at the base of the barrage controlled the flow of water from the lake, which fed into a reservoir downstream. From the reservoir water was drawn off in conduits to feed the valley into which the wadi originally flowed. Dams such as these created oases in the dry zones, greatly increasing the agricultural productivity of the steppe and providing water for travellers, traders and their animals. Elsewhere, on rivers and streams, the dams were often linked to canals and aqueducts. At Caesarea the Crocodilon river was dammed to feed the low-level aqueduct and a system of water mills. Still functioning is the masonry dam of rubble and mortar on the Orontes at Homs (Emesa). The date of the original phase of construction, and of successive works, is unclear, but it is assumed to be Roman in origin. In this case the purpose was to increase the capacity of a natural lake into which the Orontes flowed and to regulate the river. Canals drew water off from the lake to supply the fields of the valley downstream, and to supply the gardens of Emesa. The older works suggest a structure between 5 and 7 metres (16 and 23 feet) high and up to 2 kilometres (1¼ miles) in length, and before alterations in the 1930s this dam retained some 90 million cubic metres (000 million gallons) of water. By regulating the flow of the Orontes, the dam may well have helped to increase the area of cultivatable land downstream by allowing marshlands to be drained. 
Fig. 58. The Harbaqa dam near Palmyra. It was presumably an important road station on the routes between Palmyra, Damascus and Emesa.
Like aqueducts and dams, canals required the mobilization of considerable manpower and expertise. The canalization projects around Antioch under Vespasian, which involved soldiers and inhabitants of the city, have already been mentioned (p. 00). One seems to have been to supply city fulling-mills, but other work may have been for water transport, making the Orontes and its tributaries in the Antioch region more navigable and at the same time helping to improve drainage off the marshy Amik plain north of the city. Some projects were perhaps prompted purely by military requirements, but civic needs may have inspired others. The best-preserved evidence for such work is at Seleucia Pieria. The city’s artificial port was in danger of silting up, and as a preventative measure under Vespasian soldiers dug a tunnel 1300 metres (1420 metres) long through a mountain spur to divert a seasonal stream away from the harbour (fig. 59). The work is impressive, and in some places the tunnel runs 50 metres (55 yards) below the surface, but in principle it was little different from the qanats and aqueduct channels found elsewhere, which ran for many kilometres underground. Such projects illustrate how Roman technology could transform the forces of nature.
Fig. 59. Seleucia Pieria, the so-called ‘Titus Tunnel’, which diverted a seasonal stream through a hillside. Shafts were dug at intervals to provide access from above.
A qanat or chain well consists of a gently sloping tunnel, dug into a hill or mountain to tap an underground water source. The tunnel then drew water downhill from this source and delivered it to an outlet, often in the form of a large basin or a canal. Above ground its course was marked by the presence of vertical shafts, spaced at regular intervals. These acted as ventilation and access points but also for extracting spoil when the tunnel was being dug. Qanats are particularly common in the steppe, and there is an impressive example at Palmyra, built to supply the Efqa spring which was an important source of water on the south-western side of the city. As we have seen (fig. 53), some qanats run for more than 10 kilometres (6¼ miles), and are impressive feats of engineering which were probably achieved through a high degree of social co-ordination.
Less grand, but perhaps more conspicuous at the source, were irrigation schemes which drew water off directly from the rivers. Large water wheels called noriahs still survive on the Orontes river today; these are powered by the flow of the river. Containers are attached to the wheel and used to lift the water up into the channel of a small aqueduct, which irrigates fields and gardens in the vicinity. Noriahs were common in medieval times, but the only certain evidence for their existence in the Roman period is from Apamea, where a fifth-century mosaic depicts one in operation (fig. 60).
Fig. 60. The wheel of a noriah on its stepped stone plinth, depicted on a mosaic from the portico of the cardo maximus at Apamea, dated AD 469.
Unless supported by a nearby town or city, smaller communities could not afford elaborate installations for water. Even in cities simple time-honoured means of supply were used, particularly wells and rock-cut cisterns, and it was not uncommon for urban dwellings to be supplied by one or two such installations. Cisterns are typically bell- or bottle-shaped, with a narrow neck to slow evaporation, the mouth often being covered with stone slabs. Communities in the highlands had to find simple solutions for their everyday needs. In the limestone massif of northern Syria there are very few springs even in the lowland areas, and none at all on the hills. The agriculture practised depended on rainfall, but water storage was essential for human and animal requirements, and there are hundreds of small cisterns, about 1 metre (3¼ feet) deep. In such an environment it is perhaps surprising to find bath buildings like those at Brad, Babisqa and Serjilla, but these too were supplied by cisterns and, unlike their city counterparts, were probably frugal in their use of water. Large communal reservoirs, with roofs supported by pillars or vaults, are found in both cities and villages all over Syria and the Near East. Good examples are to be seen at Canatha (Qanawat) and Umm el-Jimal in the Hauran, but the most impressive are those at Sergiopolis in the north-eastern steppe (Resafa: fig. 61). These immense underground vaulted chambers were sufficiently impressive to receive a mention by the historian Procopius. The largest of the three is estimated to have contained more than 15,000 cubic metres (00,000 gallons) of water, enough to see a substantial population through the dry season and perhaps an indication that the city was sometimes expected to receive refugees from the surrounding countryside during Sasanian attacks.
Fig. 61. One of the great cisterns at Resafa. Procopius ascribes their construction to the emperor Justinian, but they are probably earlier, perhaps belonging to the reign of Anastasius (AD 491-517).
Communal wells or birkets (cisterns open to the sky) also served villages and cities alike. Birkets in the highlands and remote places were fed by rainwater channelled into them (fig. 62). Evaporation usually emptied them by the end of the summer. In the lowlands and cities they were sometimes fed by aqueducts, and remained full all year round. The grandest examples are those at Bostra (fig. 36), the largest of which is about 150 by 120 metres (164 by 130 yards) and 8 metres (26 feet) deep, but there are also good examples at Gerasa, where a double birket to the north of the city measures about 88 by 43 metres (96 by 47 yards) and is 3 metres (10 feet) deep. 
Fig. 62. The birket at the village of Nela or Nelkomia (modern Mushennef) in Auranitis, which lies behind a religious sanctuary with a small basalt temple dated to AD 171 (centre).
In remote and drier parts of the steppe and semi-desert where there was a complete lack of springs and perennial water channels, rainwater required very careful management. The development of villages in places like the Negev suggests that such inhospitable environments were capable of producing significant agricultural surpluses if the right strategies for water collection and storage were pursued. Barrages were built blocking wadi beds, and channels directed water to cisterns or to fields where they could provide moisture for the soil. When rains come, even the desert can prove productive. 

Agriculture and Livestock
Grain was the staple of the ancient diet, and much agricultural land in Syria will have been turned over to its cultivation. The surpluses produced by smallholders and great estates found ready markets in the cities, and additional surpluses could find markets abroad. Some arrangements for export may have been reciprocal, where grain-rich cities sold their surpluses to other cities in exchange for different sorts of produce. A city might be rewarded with a gift of grain by an emperor or a wealthy citizen (fig. 74). Such gifts might have helped alleviate a real need, bring the cost of grain down, or allow the city to sell its own surplus elsewhere. There is some textual evidence to suggest that wheat from the Syrian region was regarded as superior to Egyptian wheat, and was more expensive, but this did not prevent coastal cities from importing Egyptian produce. 
The degree to which Mediterranean coastal cities depended economically on one another is a topic of debate, but it should have been possible for famines in one area to be alleviated by imports from another. Widespread crop failures in the early empire, such as happened in Syria and Egypt between AD 44 and 47, probably encouraged the larger cities to attempt to secure supplies. Arrangements, however, may have been ad hoc and not very reliable, and sometimes it was not possible to find alternative sources. Famines and shortages were frequent occurrences, and cities might attempt to stockpile grain, although such practices were not always undertaken for humanitarian reasons. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, control of the food supply was a route to social power, but crises placed a strain on distribution systems. Elites could profit by importing or stockpiling and selling the grain at inflated prices during a regional or local famine; conversely the authorities could intervene to fix low prices even when supplies were running out. Precisely this sort of crisis occurred under Constantius II, when the Caesar Gallus came into conflict with the great landowners and councillors of Antioch, who refused to lower prices when a shortage occurred. A violent riot ensued, in which Gallus fled the city and the Syrian governor was lynched by an angry mob. Between 381 and 384 there was another shortage of grain in Syria. The comes Orientis tried to regulate prices to prevent starvation, but bakers and suppliers refused to produce any bread at the recommended tariff. 
	As well as providing surpluses for cities, supplying the army of Syria would have been a major task for Syrian farmers. Sixty thousand soldiers would consume 22, 000 tonnes of wheat a year, assuming a kilo (2¼ lb) per person per day. These quantities had either to be acquired directly through tax in kind or purchased by the state in exchange for cash. While supplies could be transported long distances from their places of production, much of the food supply for the army would have been provided locally. This probably explains the location of legionary bases in fertile areas of farmland such as Commagene, the Orontes valley, or Bostra. It is also highly likely that imperial estates were heavily involved in supplying the army. During campaigns, when large numbers of additional soldiers were concentrated in Syria, grain was sometimes imported from neighbouring provinces as well. Without extra supplies, too many troops in one place are likely to have caused food shortages. This may have been the cause of the famine under Gallus, who was preparing for a campaign; a similar event occurred in AD 362, when Julian came into conflict with the Antiochene landowners over grain prices after they had been driven up by the presence of troops preparing for his Persian war. In these cases the balance of production and consumption was disrupted.
Modern surveys have revealed traces of ancient field systems in many areas of Syria, particularly in the more arid regions east of the Orontes and in the north around the Jebel Semaan, and in the Hauran. These have often survived because little or no farming has occurred in the region since Roman or Umayyad times, whereas the ancient field boundaries of the richer and more fertile lands are easily confused with more recent ones. However, property boundaries are notoriously conservative, which sometimes allows us to use modern alignments as evidence for ancient arrangements. Even so, dating any ancient field system is no easy task. The field systems around Antioch appear to be an extension of the city’s cadastral plan, suggesting that these were developed under the Seleucids. In other fertile lowland areas much older traditional field boundaries may have survived into the Roman period. This much is implied by the very ancient tradition of measuring land by grain needed to sow it, a practice recorded in the Babatha and Petra archives. 
To date, some of the most detailed studies of field systems have been undertaken in the Hauran. The fields there range from regular, formally aligned systems in long strips, to irregular patterns which perhaps predate the Roman annexation. A Roman road running from Sia to Dionysias (Suweyda) cuts across such irregular fields (fig. 63), as does another from Sia to Canatha (Qanawat). The latter road diverges from its course slightly to avoid some tombs of the first century AD, providing a terminus post quem for its construction. This suggests that in the vicinity of Canatha, Dionysias and Sia these irregular fields are first century AD or earlier. Field systems west of Bostra (Bosra), in the vicinity of the modern village of Burd, align with the mid-second-century Roman road running from Bostra to Mothana (Imtan) and presumably belong to the same period. These fields are laid out in a highly regular rectilinear pattern and are perhaps the product of Roman land surveys following the Roman absorption of Nabataea in AD 106. Similar regular patterns are known around Mothana itself. Here the evidence points to development under Roman rule, probably on land that had not previously been cultivated, and possibly in connection with Roman military settlement. It is quite likely, given what we know about settlement patterns in Syria as a whole, that many of the regular field systems found in the marginal and drier inland areas were created in the Roman period. Not all need have been connected with the requirements of the military (although some may be the result of state relocations of peasants dispossessed by settlement of army veterans). As stated earlier in this chapter, in the second century the Roman state introduced laws designed to encourage the utilization of uncultivated lands, and it is possible that the planning and layout of field systems in these marginal zones belongs to that time, as landless peasants moved in and began cultivating regions which had previously been sparsely settled. Many systems may have been established prior to the reign of Diocletian (AD 284-305), because the well-known land surveys of his reign, and other, later surveys of the fourth century, appear in the main to have confirmed existing boundaries rather than creating new ones.
Fig. 63. Roman road from Sia to Dionysias, cutting across older field systems. After P. Gentelle, ‘Éléments pour une histoire des paysages et du peuplement du Djebel Hawran septentrional, en Syrie du sud’ in J.-M. Dentzer (ed.), Hauran 1, Paris, 1985, p. 39. 
Inland, in the plains of the Hauran and around Chalcis, fields for grain were probably predominant. Olives and grapes were valuable crops, and land planted with olive trees or vines was reckoned at a much higher rate of tax than land for grain. However, olives and grapes can grow in more marginal conditions, in stony highland areas where arable farming is more difficult. The presence or absence of wine or oil presses (see below), and their density in different regions of Syria, helps to confirm the importance of these crops in the local economy. Some field systems also seem better suited to them. Ancient sources describe the inland hills of Auranitis as being covered in grape vines, and, as mentioned earlier, the climate is unsuitable for olives. An abundance of presses attests to the importance of wine in the local economy. The remains of ancient terraces there show that land there was parcelled into elongated plots by long walls running perpendicular to the terraces, from the top of the slopes to the bottom; in other words, the individual properties were divided into fairly narrow steps running down the hillsides, rather than each cultivator having a terrace. Such fields were best suited to plants like vines rather than being put to the plough.
The slender, strip-like field systems common in some areas, such as the limestone massif of north-western Syria, may have been particularly well suited to fruit trees, but this observation is based on modern analogies; in the plains of Batanaea such fields were probably intended for grain, and the vine terraces of Auranitis described above are divided into elongated plots (of course, it is possible to raise trees or vines together with grain in the same field). Nevertheless, fruit was of sufficient significance to be mentioned in the literary sources: Syria is noted as a producer of pistachios, pears, apples and figs by Roman writers, which suggests that these were exported. Once dried, figs and dates could be easily shipped to other parts of the Roman world, as could raisins, gathered from wild vines around Laodicea and Antioch. A small, carrot-shaped amphora produced at Berytus and perhaps in Palestine may have been a container for exporting dates (fig. 73.2). Walnuts are among the products known to have been carried in amphorae like the late Roman Palestinian bag-shaped type (see chapter 6), and while such crops could have been destined for local or regional consumption, export too is possible. Walnut trees could produce a crop on higher slopes than olives or figs, and they were perhaps harvested in the coastal mountains. The Peutinger Table (see p. 000) places between Raphanea and Emesa a location called Carion, perhaps derived from the Greek Karyon, ‘chestnut’ or, more probably in this context, ‘walnut’. But foreign fruits may also have been imported to the region; at any rate, the documents from Masada show Herod importing apples from Cumae in Italy.
Through irrigation projects of the sort described earlier the amount of agricultural land could be extended, but in drier regions livestock raising became increasingly significant. It is likely to have been the dominant economy of the marginal steppe zone. Drought or minor fluctuations in climate could have devastating effects on these communities, and it was better for them to pursue a flexible farming strategy, concentrating on livestock and adopting a variety of other approaches as conditions permitted. This subject seems to take us far away from a world of cities, buildings and elites, into the worlds of pastoralists, nomads and people living on the peripheries of ‘Graeco-Roman’ society, who invested their cash surpluses in animals rather than in durable buildings. And yet pastoralists did not exist in isolation from town and city; nomad economies relied on sedentary populations for materials and foodstuffs, and they were dependent on markets for milk, wool and meat. 
Raising flocks of animals need not have been an entirely separate occupation from that of arable farming. The finds of mangers in the houses of the Dead Cities and the Hauran suggest that animals were part of the sedentary economy too. Draught animals were needed for cultivating fields, and there is evidence from the limestone massif and the Hauran of cattle raising. But it is difficult to assess the economic importance of raising of livestock on farms compared to the practices of pastoralism and transhumance, because the evidence for the various modes cannot be quantified either in absolute or relative terms. 
Different methods of livestock raising - sedentary farming, pastoralism, or long-distance transhumance - could potentially compete for land. Transhumant livestock herders will have moved into the drier areas during the winter months when grazing was better, and brought their flocks closer to the settled regions during the summer months. Legal arrangements were sometimes necessary between farmers and pastoralists, particularly over grazing rights. These agreements are occasionally mentioned in the papyrus and parchment archives, and might even be of concern to the cities. The tariff from Palmyra (chapter 6) makes a distinction between Palmyrenes grazing flocks in Palmyrene territory, who do not have to pay for the privilege, and those from outside Palmyrene territory, who do. Routes of transhumance, pastures and peoples are likely to have been carefully regulated by the civic authorities of the region, and major movements of flocks and people were probably of interest to the imperial authorities as well.
It is difficult to generalize about the status of nomads, or even to draw a strict distinction between them and settled farmers. The peoples of the steppe, who built no permanent settlements, qualify as true nomads, but sometimes the line between transhumant pastoralists and sedentary peoples is blurred. Some nomads and sedentary farmers may form part of a single community in the eyes of the inhabitants, one group remaining in the village to cultivate crops and the other taking the animals to seasonal pastures.
Fig. 64. The underlying continuities of rural life: modern nomad family and flock, near Urfa (ancient Edessa) in Mesopotamia.
Animal bones from excavations suggest that sheep and goats supplied the meat of preference in the region, and these animals are well suited to pastoral and transhumant herders. Pork consumption was generally low, as was beef. Religious taboos may account in part for the relative dearth of pig bones. Apart from Jewish prohibitions, other communities also abstained from pork. The historian Herodian wrote that Elagabalus would not touch pigs ‘by Phoenician law’ (whatever that meant). However, most of the animal bone evidence is drawn from Israeli sites only, and further study may reveal differences between different regions, and perhaps between city and country. Pork consumption is noted in some of the more Hellenized towns and cities (one is reminded of the Gadarene swine of Mark 5 and Luke 8, for example), and consumption of this meat may have been a sign of high status and ‘Hellenization’. However, it may also have been a sign of ‘Romanization’. Italy is unique among the regions of the Roman Mediterranean for its very high consumption of pork, and the Italian preference for this meat is mirrored in some Roman colonies in the western and eastern Mediterranean. The evidence from Berytus indicates that pork was an important element of the diet there, right down to the Muslim conquest in the seventh century AD. Does this indicate Italian-style dietary preferences among the colonists, and its maintenance in succeeding centuries? Further analysis will no doubt provide evidence for regional or local preferences, and it will be interesting to see if the analysis of faunal remains reveals further evidence for diets conforming to religious taboos. After all, food and dietary preferences are an important aspect of social identities.
There is plenty of material evidence for agricultural activity even in those places where field systems do not survive and where excavations have not yet been undertaken. The presence of livestock is signified by stone water troughs or mangers. The main Mediterranean crops - grain, olives and grapes - all needed processing, and the stone installations often survive when all other traces of agricultural activities have disappeared. Corn grinders and querns are commonly made of rough volcanic basalt, and vary in size and complexity from small, hand-operated devices suitable for domestic use to large rotary mills turned by animals or a couple of people (fig. 65). More elaborate equipment included water mills, employed where running water was available. Olives and grapes tended to require special installations and processing them was always a communal activity; it is estimated that eight or nine people would normally be needed to operate the mills and presses necessary for making olive oil, and most of the presses associated with wine production are clearly designed for teamwork. 
Fig. 65. Basalt mill for processing grain on a large scale.
So many remains of olive mills and presses survive that it is worth describing some of the more prominent types (fig. 66). In the first stage of processing the harvested fruits were crushed to a pulp in stone mills. These might consist of large basins in which simple stone rollers were levered over the fruits using crowbars, or more elaborate rotary mills. The circular stone basins in which the rotary mill wheels were turned are a common sight throughout the Mediterranean, and the same technology was used in the recent past in northern Europe for other types of fruit, such as apples. The mill wheels are stone, fixed to a wooden central axis and turned using a wooden beam, operated by humans or animals (fig. 66.1). Some basins, however, lack any sort of installation for a central axis, and these may have housed cylindrical rollers that could be spun around. Next the pulp, consisting of the crushed olives, their stones, oil and water, was pressed to produce the crude oil. Layers of pulp were placed in flat baskets or panniers, and these were then stacked one atop the other to form a pile that would be squeezed under pressure. The first pressing produced the finest-quality oil; after the pulp had been mixed with water, a second pressing produced a lower quality. Further pressings might obtain more oil, but each time the quality decreased. The residue could be used as fertilizer or animal fodder, or, because it burns easily, for lighting fires or fuelling kilns. 
Fig. 66. Devices for processing olives. 66.1. Mill for crushing fruits. 66.2. Screw press, similar to that shown in fig. 67. The beam was drawn down by a screw held in place by a large cylindrical stone weight, bringing pressure to bear on the stack of containers. After O. Callot, Huileries antiques de Syrie du nord, Paris, 1984.
A wide variety of methods for pressing was available in antiquity. Many were variants on the lever press, where the pressure was applied using a wooden beam. This would be slotted into a support at one end and pressure brought to bear at the other. The main variants of the lever press are defined by the mechanism whereby pressure was applied. In some cases winches or ratchets were used to draw the beam down; these could be held in place by counterweights or by being fixed to upright posts or heavy stone blocks on the floor. Others used a screw, held in a heavy stone weight, to draw down the beam (fig. 66.2). 
The oil produced by this process was unfit for consumption, regardless of whether it was the first or a subsequent pressing, and contained a mixture of oil, pieces of olive and water. This mixture was allowed to drain into a receptacle set in the floor of the press. Here it settled: the water and detritus sank to the bottom and the lighter oil separated to the top. This could then be ladled off by hand, or more water could be poured in to raise the level of the oil, which might then pour over a sluice into another tank. This first refinement was followed by a second. The oil had to be filtered to remove any remaining impurities, which could be achieved either by straining it into a portable container or basin or by using a variation on the first process of refining. Permanent installations for this second refining process consist of a basin or a series of basins, through which the oil flowed, the idea being that as the oil passed through each basin more of the impurities would sink to the bottom. Water often had to be added to assist the flow and separation. 
Fig. 67. Late Roman building for processing olives at Chhim, a village in the hills above Sidon. The basin of the mill for crushing the fruits can be seen against the wall on the right; in the lower part of the picture is a press. The top of the cylindrical weight can be seen (bottom left), and the base of the press with its circular conduit (bottom right).
Grapes did not necessarily need pressing, since they could be crushed by treading, although additional juice could be extracted from the grape pulp using a press. Installations identified as presses for grapes have a waterproofed treading floor, which slopes down towards a reservoir. Some also contain the remains of screw or lever presses. The grape juice flowed into the reservoir where it was left to ferment, or else was transferred to pitch-lined jars or casks for fermentation. After this it was transferred to amphoras to mature. However, it was common for fermentation to continue in the amphoras, and these often have small holes in their necks to prevent a build-up of gases that might otherwise have caused the pots to explode. The same press could perhaps be used to produce both olive oil and wine (as asserted by no less an authority than Cato the Elder, author of On Agriculture), but one wonders what the quality of such products would be like. Specialized installations seem more likely.
Because oil and wine tended to be packaged in ceramic containers, we are able to trace the movement of these agricultural products far more precisely than we can grain, and more can be deduced about the trade in these goods. Syrian olive oil receives little notice in the sources, but certain areas of Syria and the Near East are celebrated for the popularity or excellence of their wines: the Orontes valley around Apamea; Berytus; the coast of Palestine around Ascalon and Gaza; and Sharon, Carmel and Diospolis-Lydda. There are, however, some difficulties in marrying the information derived from the texts with that derived from archaeology. The texts suggest that Laodicean wine was particularly favoured abroad. According to Strabo, who was writing in the time of Augustus, it was exported in large quantities to Alexandria in Egypt, but the container in which it was shipped has yet to be identified. The amphora of Berytus has been identified, but it does not appear to have been widely exported. Sometimes, though, the texts and the archaeological finds agree. Gregory of Tours in his History of the Franks mentions wine from Gaza, indicating that this product was making its way as far as western Europe into the sixth century. Archaeological evidence confirms a widening market for Gazan wine in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the presence of Gazan amphoras in Gaul confirms Gregory’s statement. The movement of goods in amphoras is examined in more detail in chapter 6.

Regional or Local Products
Specialized products, which tended to be non-essentials, are mentioned in textual sources but are often difficult to identify in the archaeological record. These include various perfumes and unguents. Styrax, a gum from a tree resembling a quince, was used in the preparation of medicines and perfumes. Pliny identified the northern coast, on Mount Casius, and Gabala and Marathus, as sources for styrax resin. Balsam was produced in various parts of Palestine, along with papyrus, which grew in the Jordan valley. The most famous specialized product of the Syrian region was purple, a highly expensive dye for which the Phoenician cities were particularly renowned (although this commodity was also produced in other parts of the Mediterranean). Various sea creatures were used, producing colours ranging from purple to brownish-red, but the best quality was extracted from a sea snail, the murex. The product was extremely expensive: while the price edict of Diocletian quotes a maximum price of 175 denarii for a pound of best-quality Tarentine wool, it quotes 50,000 denarii for the same quantity of purple-dyed wool - at a time when a skilled labourer was to receive a maximum daily wage of about 50 denarii. The tremendous value of murex purple permitted a labour-intensive industry, employing fishermen and dyers and the processing of thousands of tonnes of shellfish. Murex fishermen seem to have been organized into guilds according to the ports in or from which they worked, and murex fishing is recorded as the sole occupation on a number of epitaphs. To obtain purple from the murex required mortally wounding it. When stressed or dying the animal produces a secretion which turns purple when exposed to the sun and oxygen. It was a smelly and unpleasant process. The murex snails, fished from the sea, had their shells broken and were left to die in shallow vats, or their dye-producing gland was removed and put in the vat, and salt was added. Over a period of about three days the liquid would become coloured through photochemical action with the sun and air. The resulting mix of fluid and rotting murex was then transferred to heated vats where it was processed for a period of about nine days before straining. Thousands of snails were needed to make a few grams of dye (one estimate suggests 12,000 snails were needed to make enough dye for the border of a single garment), and the industry produced huge quantities of waste in the form of broken shells. A hill on the southern edge of Sidon, into which the city’s ancient theatre was built, is formed of crushed murex shells; a testimony to only one of many major purple dye-works along the coast.

Building Materials and Techniques
Most of the surviving buildings of Roman Syria are constructed of local materials, predominantly the abundantly available limestone and basalt. In the Euphrates region a local gypsum was employed, and on the Lebanese coast soft local tufas were occasionally used for foundations and sandstone served as a low-quality substitute for limestone. While stone quarried in one region of Syria might be exported to another, the convenient use of local materials contributed to the persistence of local building techniques over the centuries. Marbles and granites, which had to be imported, were employed most commonly by cities on the coast (see chapter 6). 
Classic Roman building techniques, such as opus reticulatum (a decorative facing for rubble and mortar walls using small squared stones laid in diagonal rows), often encountered in Italy, are rarely found in the region, and where used they may have been chosen deliberately as a statement about the Roman affiliations of their builders. The few examples of opus reticulatum belong to the early Roman period, and most are associated with client kingdoms: for example, a wall at Samosata, a tomb at Emesa, Herod’s third palace at Jericho, and a wall of Herodian date at Caesarea Panias. Another classic Roman building technique, using rubble and mortar faced with brick, is also rare. It is occasionally seen in layers alternating with bands of ashlar masonry. By itself mortar and rubble construction was used for domes and vaults, usually on top of ashlar walls and piers. It is found, for example, in the baths at Dura Europus, Bostra and Philippopolis, and in the domes of late Roman churches. Baked brick was often employed in baths in hypocaust construction, although stone could be used, even for the pillars which supported the hypocaust floors. In the late Roman period baked brick was employed extensively at sites in the steppe, such as Androna (al-Andarin) and Qasr Ibn Wardan, and especially along the Euphrates, at places like Sergiopolis (Resafa), Sura and Barbalissus (Meskene). Some of the brick was probably made locally, but there is good evidence for imports as well (see chapter 6).
An abundance of suitable limestone enabled architects to maintain the tradition of ashlar architecture when in many other parts of the Roman world mortar and brick had become more common. Sometimes we find limestone ashlars used even in those places where mortar would normally be expected, as in the well-preserved dome and vaults in the west baths of Gerasa. This tradition continued throughout the period of Roman rule in Syria: the fifth- and sixth- century houses of the limestone massif of northern Syria, or those of the Hauran, are generally devoid of mortar, bricks or vaults. Dry masonry was the norm, using large blocks, and spanning gaps with a post-and-lintel technique. Grander buildings employed the arch (frequently used for the interior arcades of basilical churches) and the semi-dome (for apses). Limestone was a versatile building material, although it varies greatly in quality from one region to another. It is easy to cut or saw, and limestone surfaces will take elaborate carving and drilling. In some places the deposits are badly fractured, which greatly limits the size of stones that can be quarried; this is not so in other places which have particularly excellent stone (fig. 68).
Fig. 68. The so-called Hajjar al-Hiblah, the ‘Stone of the Pregnant Woman’, lies in the quarry south of the temple of Jupiter at Heliopolis, at the foot of the nearby Sheikh Abdullah hill. It is 20 metres long (00 feet), and over 4 metres (00 feet) square, and would have weighed over 1000 tonnes if completed. Although destined for the podium of the Temple of Jupiter, it was never detached from the bedrock.
The basalt regions of the Hauran and Golan, Emesa and north-east of Chalcis are characterized by the use of this dark volcanic stone. It was difficult to cut evenly; buildings constructed of it tend to be made of small, uneven blocks. Nevertheless some monumental buildings, fortifications and houses were formed of finely squared basalt ashlars. Colonnades employed basalt columns and capitals, and the sculptors of the Hauran were able to produce some remarkable basalt reliefs and statues. More commonly buildings were constructed of roughly squared, dry stones, or walls built of wedge-shaped blocks were laid to form an outer and inner face, the void between being filled with rubble. Corners, doorways, windows and occasionally foundations consisted of dry dressed ashlars, and the rubble cores were sometimes bonded with clay or mortar (fig. 69). In the Hauran flat roofs and floors of upper storeys were frequently formed of basalt slabs, laid not on wooden beams but on corbels or stone arches springing from the interior walls of the buildings (this would seem to suggest that there was little or no supply of adequate timber for building in the region). The strength of basalt meant that it was better suited than limestone to corbelling. Even so, only fairly narrow spaces could be roofed in this way. For wider spans, supporting arches were necessary. The problem of roofing the two second-century temples at the village of ‘Atil in Auranitis was solved using such transverse arches and roofing slabs, although here the roofs were pitched, as was normal for classical-style temples (fig. 70). One might have expected a city like Philippopolis to have used imported timber, but the surviving buildings suggest that this was not the case, and they too frequently used either roofing slabs or, less commonly, vaults of mortar and rubble. One of the finest examples of basalt roofing is to be found in the elaborate public complex known as the ‘Kaisariyeh’ at Maximianopolis (Shaqqa). This building employs transverse arches extensively to support the roofing slabs (most of which are only a couple of metres long). The arches span the roofs of two long halls which meet in a large apartment, thought to have been roofed with a dome. The piers for the high arches in one of the halls were strengthened by the use of exterior buttresses, thus minimizing the penetration of the piers into the interior of the building. However, not all of the basalt regions were utterly devoid of wood, even if it had to be imported. At the late Roman village of Umm al-Jimal, 30 kilometres (18½ miles) south of Bostra, there is evidence for the northern nave of the Double Church being roofed with timber, even if the aisles were corbelled in stone.
Fig. 69. Umm al-Jimal: basalt wall in a private house, consisting of two stone facings, the void between being filled with rubble and clay.
Fig. 70. The northern temple at ‘Atil, the ancient village of Atheila, near Dionysias (Suweyda). Note the interior arch, which supported the pitched roof. The elaborately decorated doorway with its flanking niches is ancient, but the blocking of the entrance using pieces of the temple is modern.
On the coast the soft, coarse sandstone of petrified dunes was used for a variety of purposes - walls, arches, vaults and columns. It is a poor building material, having very rough surfaces, and is often found rendered with a plaster surface in imitation of limestone or marble. It was probably a material of expediency rather than choice, although some monumental structures were erected using it. The colonnade next to the hippodrome at Tyre utilized this porous sandstone, as did the nearby aqueduct and the monumental arch spanning the main road into the city. In the latter case limestone was also employed for decorative elements.
Where there are stone buildings, quarries are usually never far away. However, not all of the stone was destined for local consumption, and there is growing evidence for regional trade in certain stones in the Syrian region. Sometimes it was the physical properties of the stones that were the attraction; in other cases stones were desired for their colours and appearance. Hard basalt was a preferred stone for doors of tombs, and these were often carved in imitation of wooden doors. Presumably there were centres of production located in the basalt areas, and those living in other regions could order them from the quarries. Some large basalt grain mills found on Cyprus have been traced to a source in Galilee, near Tiberias. Lava grist from Trachonitis was probably used in road-building; this material served as the penultimate layer on Roman roads in Arabia. Limestone columns were brought into Bostra, where they were set up in the basalt theatre (colour plate 17), or alternating with basalt columns along the main street - a contrast of white and black which presumably reflects an aesthetic choice. The Bekaa valley and the region south-west of Damascus contain extensive deposits of Miocene conglomerate. Some of this is stained with iron oxide, producing an attractive pattern of white inclusions set in a pinkish matrix. There must have been quarries for such conglomerates somewhere in the region, as the stone is encountered in the form of columns and pilasters in the Bekaa and the coastal cities of Lebanon.
Mud brick was the predominant building material in the dry steppe. It was also used in the regions further west, and is sometimes found in the coastal cities where stone buildings were the norm. Mud brick walls were usually, but not always, built on foundations of rubble masonry. This is the common pattern among private houses at Dura Europus, where walls built entirely of stone are rare. There the door jambs were of stone, and the entrances often had moulded lintels or arches. Roofs of buildings at Dura were flat and probably supported by wooden beams overlain with wattle and daub. Mud brick was not confined to small or domestic structures, and at least parts of some defensive circuits were made of this material (for instance, at Sura on the Euphrates). 

Timber
The mountains, particularly the Amanus, the Bargylus and Lebanon provided ample supplies of wood: pine, oak, larch, fir, spruce, juniper, cypress and cedar. Little survives today, although these forests once extended far inland. The now barren Jebel Muntar near Palmyra was referred to as the ‘Mount of Terebinths’. It is unclear whether exploitation in the Roman period led to serious deforestation, but the need for fuel for baths in towns and cities is likely to have had environmental consequences as much as the need for building materials. A lack of good wood is implied by the frequency with which stone was employed for lintels over doors and windows of private houses. Stone lintels crack easily, and the builders had to resort to constructing relieving arches to distribute the weight either side of the door or window. These might be proper arches with keystones or simple corbelling, leaving a gap of only a couple of centimetres above the lintel.
A remarkable series of some 200 Latin inscriptions cut into the faces of exposed rock outcrops across the Lebanon range provides us with evidence of an attempt by the Roman state to manage forest resources, perhaps in some sustainable way. These inscriptions, which all belong to the reign of Hadrian, carry a variety of formulas. Some seem to indicate a rotational system of harvesting and planting, or management of particular species: ‘Under the Emperor Hadrian Augustus, the limit of the forests. Four species [of tree reserved]. The others for private individuals.’ In this case the four types of forbidden tree were probably those destined for naval shipyards, such as cedar and juniper, and perhaps oak and spruce. It is by no means clear whether the vast areas demarcated by the inscriptions indicate an imperial estate or whether some arrangement was made by the Roman state with the pre-existing villages (and perhaps cities like Berytus) over the cutting of timber. The degree of imperial control may have varied from one location to another. While this looks very much like imperial recognition of a conservation problem, it cannot be seen as any sort of serious environmental programme, and merely reserved certain species of tree for exploitation when necessary by imperial agents. But it does suggest that where the use of timber resources was concerned there were potential points of conflict between the needs of the Roman state and those of villagers and even city-dwellers.

Natural Mineral Resources
Although many varieties of mineral deposits are known in Syria, it is far from certain that all were exploited in antiquity. Some clues are provided by place-names, such as settlements called Chalcis (chalcos means ‘copper’ in Greek), which could be taken to suggest (but not to prove) the presence of copper deposits nearby. Ancient copper mines are certainly known from the Syrian region, but currently little can be said about their character or extent of production. Commagene is described in inscriptions from around the Roman empire as the country ‘where iron grows’, and the Taurus range is particularly rich in iron, but the importance of Commagenian iron remains to be proved. Otherwise, there are few good iron ore deposits in Syria, though there are many poor ones. Argentiferous galena is to be found on Mount Casius, but there were better silver-producing lead ores in other parts of the Roman east. There were gold deposits in Arabia, and Strabo mentions that the Nabataeans produced some silver and gold themselves, but imported copper and iron. It was once thought that the hills above Byblus yielded deposits of tin, but this myth appears to have developed from a misinterpretation of prospectors’ reports of the early twentieth century. Stibnite (antimony ore) occurs in the Amanus. Pliny mentions that orpiment, a yellow sulphur compound of arsenic ore used by painters, was found in Syria. 
	The small, strongly saline lakes of the Syrian interior, like the Madkh and Jabbul, were a useful source of salt, which was also collected near Palmyra. Salt features prominently in the Palmyra tariff (p. 000). Further south, the Dead Sea, in addition to producing salt, provided bitumen and sulphur. There were bituminous springs at Hit, an important crossing place on the Euphrates in Parthian and later Persian territory, and bitumen deposits in the southern Bekaa may have been exploited. Quicklime, used mainly for mortar, was produced by burning limestone; Theophrastus (fourth - third century BC) singles out Syria and Phoenicia as important sources for this, and there are indications that this industry continued throughout the Roman period. It is difficult to draw any general conclusions from the information available to us. The list of mineral products mentioned in the sources is extensive; and the list of mineral deposits in Syria and the Near East that might have been exploited is long; but we are some way from understanding the intensity of that exploitation, or how it was organised.

City and Country
Overall, when the cities prospered and developed, the countryside did the same. The city is likely to have been an important institution for organizing production and distribution of agricultural produce and other materials from its territories. The increase in the settled rural population in all areas of Syria and the Near East during the Roman period, and its expansion into marginal agricultural zones, is striking. Some of this expansion could be achieved only through large-scale projects aimed at altering the environment: draining marshes, building dams, aqueducts and qanats, and the planning and laying out of new field systems. The manpower needed for these projects required considerable organization and expense. Some regions, such as the limestone massif, the Hauran and Palestine, witnessed tremendous growth in the Roman period, from being economic backwaters to major centres of agricultural production. In the late Roman period some of the larger settlements in these marginal areas became cities, and agricultural development was clearly a prerequisite for urbanization. The cities which had existed prior to the Roman annexation were best served by stable rural populations, and this was best achieved by making provision for the villages. Both the cities and the Roman state were acting in their own interests by stimulating the primary mode of production. When civic life declined, growth in the countryside came to an end. 

6 Portable Antiquities

Mediterranean Trade
Archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of trade in the Roman Mediterranean. Long-distance trade by sea was nothing new, but the scale of the exchanges was notably different from what had gone before. The scope of economic contacts was increased by imperial demands for goods, which were then redistributed to the populace at Rome, or to state servants (and in particular the army), and also by individuals or groups operating independently of state concerns. Foodstuffs, textiles and raw materials such as marble or metals probably formed the bulk of the cargoes transported, but other kinds of goods were also moved along with these. The state exacted surpluses as tax in kind as well as money, and cities also appear to have been able to market their specialized products overseas, exchanging them for goods produced in other coastal cities. A growing trend towards regional specialization in certain parts of the empire led to increased levels of production of particular types of goods over time. Ports clearly had an advantage over communities inland, being better positioned to market their surpluses abroad, but regional distributions of goods can be detected in land-locked areas as well. Mediterranean products also made it to inland areas, but these appear in the main to have been ‘luxury’ goods rather than bulk foodstuffs. However, it is apparent that even bulk products could be transported inland along major trade routes where there was a demand for them.
Fig. 71. The agora at Palmyra. In such spaces cities regulated exchange and prices of goods.
	The Roman economy has not always been viewed as dynamic. In the 1950s the historian A. H. M. Jones felt able to observe, in connection with the economic life of Roman towns: ‘It was only products of a rather superior kind which commanded a wider market and were manufactured on a large scale. The terra sigillata of the Principate, an ornamental ware used in better-class households, was, for instance exported to all the western provinces from its original place of manufacture in northern Italy; but even in this case provincial factories were soon established which could undercut the Italian product by saving transport costs.’ His view was shared by another influential historian, Moses Finley. Long-distance trade, they argued, was limited because of the high cost of transport. In the Roman world only those who owned land could be considered wealthy, and land was certainly the only form of respectable wealth. Rich and powerful people did not sully their hands with trade. Agriculture was the dominant mode of production in the Roman world, and its produce was consumed locally. Cities parasitized their hinterlands, being centres of consumption rather than production, and supported by rents and taxes (see chapter 5). They were also the centres of social power, for this was where the landowners lived. Regional trade did exist, but on a small scale because of the poor transport infrastructure; there was little need to move basics around the Mediterranean because these basics were produced almost everywhere. The only long-distance trade was in luxury goods.
Finley and Jones were reacting to works such as Michael Rostovtzeff’s The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, which viewed the Roman economy with a distinctly modern eye, and emphasized the importance of trade in staples such as grain, wine and oil. They were dealing with the same material as Rostovtzeff (mainly texts and inscriptions, supported by some archaeological evidence), but they read that material in a quite different way. Far from being integrated, the economy of the Roman world was a rather primitive structure, with little overall organization, so that the empire could scarcely be considered an economic unit. That such diverse readings of the evidence could be possible is a reflection of its very fragmentary nature.
While this ‘primitivist’ view (which has also suffered from caricature from the pens of its opponents) no longer holds, its influence is still felt. Yet archaeological evidence accumulated over the last three decades or so, particularly from the study of pottery, has rendered such a limited view of the Roman economy untenable. It is quite clear that there was widespread movement of goods all over the Mediterranean and beyond, and on a considerable scale. This was not limited to luxuries; indeed, most of it seems to have been the movement of staples. ‘Luxuries’ such as the terra sigillata pots mentioned by Jones were transported only because there were established routes for more mundane goods. The amount of trade, its complexity and its nature mark the Roman imperial economy as something quite different from preceding and succeeding periods. What remains debatable is the degree to which much of this movement of goods was prompted by the demands of the state (taxes in kind to supply Rome and state servants, like the army) and how much was in the hands of private traders and entrepreneurs who were exploiting the existence of a market economy and freedom of movement afforded by the pax romana. Those influenced by Finley and Jones prefer not to emphasize the role of private traders, while others see them as an important factor in the movement of goods. 
The existence of a class of traders conducting private transactions on a significant scale, unconnected with state demands, is implied by Roman legal texts dealing with exchanges between individuals. There is also evidence that aristocrats did not consider it beneath their dignity to profit from involvment in long-distance trade, and were prepared to take risks by investing in this business rather than in agriculture. In fact, state demands and private enterprise may have been interlinked. The transport of bulky, perishable goods destined for state use required an infrastructure to move it around. Instead of a merchant navy to deal with its fiscal cargoes, the state relied on private contractors, and it is clear that these ships commonly carried private cargoes along with the state ones, even if the state frowned on such practices. Fiscal cargoes were exempt from port taxes, and so, it seems, were any private loads carried in the same vessels, making these ships particularly attractive for entrepreneurs who could not be certain that their goods would be sold at the first port of call. The ‘hijacking’ of state-contracted ships for private interests could even lead to deviations from the regular route to offload private cargoes, or, worse still, selling the fiscal load en route. But the establishment of important shipping routes across the Mediterranean, whether or not they were mainly for state cargoes or also plied by private companies, allowed markets for secondary and tertiary cargoes like terra sigillata to develop along these routes. In addition, Mediterranean ports appear to have developed a complex network of economic interdependence, exchanging their respective specialized produce with one another and creating subsidiary shipping lanes which could also be exploited by entrepreneurs.
The state too was involved in producing and selling things on the open market. The trade in marble seems to have developed as a commercial concern under imperial supervision (see below). In this case it would appear that state-owned quarries marketed their products over wide areas of the Roman world. The objects they made were often prefabricated in the quarry before shipping, and some quarries mass-produced particular classes of object. Prefabricated designs could have contributed to ‘Romanizing’ or ‘Hellenizing’ styles. The movement and distribution of foodstuffs like fish sauce and Greek-style wines (implied by particular shapes of amphora) also played a part in creating more homogeneous cultural practices, by affecting and altering local preferences in eating and drinking habits, or catering to changes in those habits. So part of the standardization of culture observable in the Roman period rested on elaborate commercial links and institutions, both public and private, establishing overseas branches to market their products. This standardizing tendency did not come from the centre (Rome), but through interchanges between the provinces under the auspices of Rome. Was there anything special about the Roman world that could have increased this interchange? Roman suppression of piracy may have been a factor, as was perhaps political peace across the Mediterranean, although it is evident that political hostilities did not always inhibit regional and long-distance economic exchanges. 
With such active trade links between different parts of the Mediterranean, one would have expected a universal currency to facilitate trade. Perversely, as we shall see, for the first three centuries of Roman rule in Syria, the region maintained local and regional currencies, precisely at the time a fully international currency might have been most useful (see p. 000). Local coinage looks insular and parochial, but the goods traded speak of a broader network, linking Syria and the Near East to a wider Mediterranean world. Even when the currency became more homogeneous in late Roman times, there are distinct regional differences (see p. 000).

Transport
That huge quantities of foodstuffs and other goods could be transported long-distance implies that transport costs were relatively low. Emphasis is often placed on the contrast between water transport (cheap) and land transport (expensive). The distribution of imported goods, which are common at coastal sites and less so inland, and the construction of canals such as those in the plain of Antioch (p. 00), would seem to confirm the distinction, but doubts remain about the significance of this contrast between land and water transport. We have no specific information about the cost of either, and in general we are forced to resort to analogies with more recent times. Various ratios of the cost of sea to land transport have been proposed, varying from land transport being more than twenty-five times more expensive than sea to more than sixty times. There is unequivocal evidence that large, heavy loads were transported overland, which could be seen as an indication that carriage by road was not prohibitively costly, and that the Roman land transport infrastructure was better developed than was the case with many of the proposed analogues. If so, the transport of some 188 Egyptian granite columns into the Bekaa valley to the courtyards and propylaea of the Temple of Jupiter at Heliopolis, while still an extraordinary physical feat, may have been less of a financial feat than might be supposed. We simply do not know. The same might also be noted for the granite columns at Palmyra which, although much fewer in number, nonetheless represent enormous physical outlay. Columns count as ‘luxury’ or prestige goods which people would have been prepared to spend money on, but the same can hardly be said for brick and tile imported to inland sites. Wear and tear on vehicles, and the entropic forces of friction and physics, no doubt made land transport more costly and less desirable than water transport, but their costs relative to each other in Syria and the Near East are unknown. Land transport must have been responsible for the widespread distribution of certain forms of amphora produced and marketed in the Syrian interior. As in the case of brick and tile the value-to-weight ratio of these ‘cargoes’ of wine and oil cannot have been very great, and implies that costs were not prohibitive.
	In this context it might be worth re-evaluating the role of roads within the Roman economy. As noted in chapter 4, these are considered to have been constructed for strategic purposes, allowing armies and officials of the imperial postal service to move around swiftly, and for transporting military supplies. Their economic importance outside of state and army concerns is considered less significant because of the assumed high cost of land transport. Even so, roads were presumably designed to make land transport as efficient as possible, and thus reduce effort and expense. Some road construction and repair seems to have been undertaken by civilians rather than soldiers, which might imply that this activity was in their own interests, but it may have been at the behest of the Roman state rather than for the civilians themselves. It would certainly seem that by late Roman times the state obliged civilians to maintain roads and bridges. The economic effects of a good road network may well have been incidental to state concerns, but the ways in which the road system could have been in the economic interests of the Syrian cities rather than simply being a burden on their resources has scarcely been explored.

Caravans: a Mild Diversion
No discussion of economic activities in Roman Syria can omit reference to the so-called ‘caravan trade’ in luxury goods from outside the empire. Although it is well known from numerous texts and inscriptions, archaeological evidence for this trade remains meagre compared to the evidence for Mediterranean trade. This is no doubt because of the nature of the goods imported: copper, various exotic woods, pepper, cotton cloth, indigo, exotic herbs and spices, cochineal, and Chinese silk and furs, among other things. The best evidence relating to Syria is for trade with India and Sri Lanka, either from the Persian Gulf, through Parthian Babylonia and up the Euphrates, or from Arabia and the Red Sea via Petra and Bostra. The quantities of goods shipped were no doubt much smaller than those in the Mediterranean, but they were evidently profitable, so much so that it appears that an import tax of 25 per cent could be levied on goods entering the Roman empire from the east (see below). The importance of other caravan routes is difficult to assess, as currently there is very little material evidence. One appears to have come from central Arabia, up the Wadi Sirhan to Bostra, and others, the so-called ‘silk routes’ from central Asia, may have served the cities of the north, like Beroea and Antioch, via Iran, Babylonia and Mesopotamia. These overland routes to central Asia are thought to have been especially profitable to the Parthians, who as the middlemen in this trade took pains to see that direct contact between Rome and China was kept to a minimum.
	While very profitable for those involved in it, the ‘caravan trade’ was probably a relatively minor element of the economy of Syria. It attracted the attention of Rostovtzeff, who exaggerated the importance of this commerce for the urban economies of the region. The rise and demise of routes for long-distance trade in luxury goods is still sometimes invoked as an explanation for the growth and decline of cities, but the extent to which the cities of Syria and the Near East as a whole profited is unclear. Palmyra and Petra derived much wealth from this enterprise, but the model of these ‘caravan cities’ should not be extrapolated to the other cities of the region, as if Syria were some sort of free-trade zone for the transit of commodities. Even Palmyra and Petra drew on the agricultural produce of hinterlands which were more promising in antiquity than they appear today; the caravan trade simply produced additional wealth. 
Palmyra was the ‘caravan city’ par excellence, and provides us with some of the clearest evidence for the way in which this long-distance trade in luxuries was organized. Here we see, contrary to the views of Finley and Jones, wealthy people indulging in trade activities, and Palmyra may not have been exceptional in this respect. Public inscriptions set up in the city by merchants thank powerful and influential individuals who paid for or acted as protectors of the caravans. These caravan-chiefs need not have travelled with the caravan itself, but they arranged safe passage through the steppe. Caravanserais and camel-riding militias provided support for merchants in the vast area controlled by the city, and good relations with the nomadic tribes of the region will have been essential. The Palmyrenes financed trade with India, and most of their activities were directed towards the Persian Gulf. Palmyrene merchants are known to have been active in several cities in Parthian Babylonia, or at Spasinu Charax, the capital of the kingdom of Characene, which operated with a fair degree of independence from the Parthians, particularly between AD 117 and 150. Whether the Palmyrene merchants commonly travelled to India or left that section of the route to others remains unclear. They perhaps had ships on the Euphrates, and some certainly owned or hired ships to sail to the trading port of Barbaricum on one of the mouths of the Indus. A sarcophagus fragment from Palmyra shows a man standing next to a ship; this is thought to represent a merchant and his vessel employed in this trade. A Palmyrene-style tomb on Kharg island in the Persian gulf provides some additional support for the presence of Palmyrenes on this leg of the journey. The periodic military conflicts between Rome and the Parthians conceal a generally tolerant attitude towards international trade, even though Characene’s friendly disposition towards Rome had been established as a result of Trajan’s aggressions against the Arsacid realm. Indeed, although Characene’s role in trade with India and Palmyra remains enigmatic, the relationship between Palmyra and Characene appears to have been strong. A caravan inscription from Palmyra honours a Palmyrene merchant called Yarhai who was satrap of the Thilouanoi (Bahrain) governing on behalf of the king of Characene, who seems to have exercised control of the western side of the Gulf during this period. It is presumably as a result of these contacts that Roman glass and fine wares were introduced into (and, in the case of fine wares, imitated in) the Gulf region. Among the non-commercial activities of these Palmyrene merchants we find one dedicating a temple to the Roman imperial cult at Vologaesias, a city in Parthian territory near Babylon, founded by Vologaeses I (c. AD 52-80). Such activities would be unthinkable in the highly antagonistic political atmosphere a century or so later, under Sasanian rule. 
The Palmyrenes also worked on the sea route from the Red Sea to India. Palmyrene inscriptions refer to a guild of ship-owners and merchants who had a base at Coptos on the Nile, together with their caravans, and archaeological evidence has recently been found attesting the presence of Palmyrenes at the Egyptian port of Berenice on the Red Sea coast.  
	Although the inscriptions from Palmyra give little hint of the kinds of luxury goods imported through the caravan trade, fragments of Indian cotton and Chinese silk have been recovered from tombs. Official Roman supervision and organization of all of this Palmyrene activity is nowhere explicitly evident, although the Roman upper classes would have been the main beneficiaries and the empire received revenues from taxes on these foreign imports. 
Fig. 72. Drawing of a fragment of Chinese silk from the tomb of Elahbel at Palmyra, decorated with dragons in a roundel.
In the late Roman period trade across the borders with Sasanian Persia was very strictly regulated, with merchants having to keep to a specified route and market city to do business. This was partly for security, to prevent spies entering the empire, and to stop secrets and supplies reaching the enemy, but the restrictions could also be used as a political and economic weapon, depriving potentially hostile peoples beyond the frontier of goods by temporarily cutting off all trade. The anonymous but probably Syrian author of the fourth-century Descriptio Totius Orbis (Description of the Whole World) remarks that Mesopotamian merchants were forbidden to sell bronze or iron to the Persians. (The Sasanians were able to exercise a similar policy against the Romans, monopolizing all overland and seaborne trade to the east, much to the chagrin of the emperors.)

The Circulation of Commodities
Our main concern here, however, is not trade outside the empire, but Syria and the Near East’s participation in Mediterranean trade. The role of Syrians within the Roman empire, as merchants at Delos, Rhodes, and Brundisium (Brindisi), or in Spain and Gaul, is well known from epigraphic and literary evidence. Traders and bankers from Berytus were established at Puteoli and Rome, and that Puteoli even had a temple to Jupiter Damascenus suggests a significant Syrian community there. Sporadic epigraphic evidence points to the presence of Syrian merchants all over the Roman world. These texts provide important evidence for the presence and activities of individuals, and for the sorts of goods in which they traded, but in order to gain some idea of the impact of exports from, and imports to, Syria, we have to turn to other sources. The archaeological evidence is significant in that it can be quantified (even if this quantification is relative rather than absolute), and helps to offset conclusions drawn from what are often incidental asides in literature, or chance finds of inscriptions. It cannot provide the whole picture, because much of what was moved around has perished without trace. Grain was shipped either in sacks or loose in compartments of boats. Had shipments of liquids been made predominantly in barrels rather than in amphoras, we would have very little evidence for the movement of goods such as oil, wine and fish sauce. However, even if certain goods have themselves perished without trace, their movement is sometimes possible to detect. As has been pointed out above, major cargoes of perishables were often accompanied by minor loads of other goods. Established trade routes opened up overseas markets for entrepreneurs and producers, and some of what they exported, such as ceramic cooking pots, or table ware, survives in the archaeological record. The frequency with which such pottery occurs, even on fairly remote rural sites, suggests that the markets for secondary cargoes were huge and profitable, even if individual items were cheap. A distribution of such secondary or tertiary cargoes far from the place of production is likely to indicate movement of more important cargoes of which no trace survives, such as grain. As the evidence accumulates, it becomes increasingly possible to suggest trade routes based on the various forms of ceramic evidence.
	What is also remarkable is the movement of materials which might be expected to have been more conveniently produced locally, such as roof tiles or bricks. Regional or local specialization led to the development of major centres for the production and export of such products. Syrian consumers in coastal cities might choose to be interred in a sarcophagus of local limestone, but during the second and third centuries imported alternatives also existed, ranging from relatively humble clay coffins to elaborate and extremely heavy marble sarcophagi.
	Even if the cities themselves consumed more than they produced, they nonetheless acted as a channel for the movement of goods between their territories and the outside world. Trade allowed coastal cities to grow larger than they could if they had to rely solely on their agricultural hinterlands, but it also permitted the countryside to benefit from that trade. As noted in chapter 5, there is growing evidence that cities managed the distribution of goods within their territories as well as production. If this is so, the city state becomes a key element in the organization of production and distribution of commodities in Syria and the Near East.
The coastal cities had been importing goods from other parts of the Mediterranean long before the Roman annexation. Hellenistic pottery finds from the port of Berytus show links with western Asia Minor, particularly Pergamum, extending through the third and second centuries BC, and from the Ptolemaic to Seleucid period of control of the city. Attica was a source of pottery imports in the third century BC, and ceramics from what is today Tunisia, and from Campania in Italy, occur in second-century deposits. Traders and cities may have been able to operate with a degree of independence from regional politics and the clashes between the Hellenistic kingdoms. Nevertheless political changes could make a major difference. Berytus became a Roman colony in the reign of Augustus, and this event appears to coincide with an influx of western foodstuffs transported in amphoras, such as fish sauce (produced mainly in southern Spain). The first half of the first century AD saw many imports from Italy and the western Mediterranean: Italian terra sigillata, amphoras and glass, but these declined rapidly after about AD 50. Whether this was the consequence of a special relationship between the first generation of new colonists and Italy, or was part of a more general movement of Italian goods to Syria, has yet to be determined.
	Integration into the Roman empire does seem to have greatly increased the scale and scope of imports to Syria. The Syrians were presumably paying for these goods, though at present it is difficult to see what they produced in exchange during the early empire. Laodicean wine was clearly one product, exported during the first century BC and AD, although, as pointed out in the preceding chapter, the container for this wine remains uncertain. One broadly distributed product from the region was packaged in small, carrot-shaped amphoras with a wide mouth (fig. 73.2). These are very common on military sites in Britain, Gaul and Germany, and were made in Berytus and probably in Palestine as well. The contents are uncertain; fish or fish sauce is a possibility, or perhaps dates. Another amphora, contents unknown, which was produced either in the very north-western part of Syria or in Cilicia is a small type known as the Pompeii 5 amphora (fig. 73.1). As its name suggests, it was exported to the west, but only in small quantities. Aside from these there is at present not much material evidence for Syrian exports before the fourth century (except for the fine ware called Eastern Sigillata A; see p. 000).
Fig. 73. Two amphora forms of the early empire in which goods were exported from the region (not to the same scale). 73.1. The Pompeii 5 amphora (first to mid-second century), a small vessel produced in eastern Cilicia and perhaps Syria. 73.2. The ‘carrot amphora’, a small container from Berytus and the south, perhaps for packaging fish or dates.
	The later empire appears to have been a boom time for exports from the east, particularly as the western empire began to disintegrate in the fifth century. Eastern exports from Syria and Palestine found important markets in the west after supplies there were disrupted during the Barbarian invasions and settlements, such as the Vandal conquest of north Africa. This eastern take-over is quite dramatic. In Italy, north Africa, Gaul and Spain imports of eastern amphoras increased greatly between the mid-fifth and mid-sixth century, and these often constitute more than half of the amphora fragments recovered from sites in this period. Opportunities for export from Syria and Palestine to the west may have arisen with the growth of Constantinople. Even if the eastern capital did not import large quantities of Syrian foodstuffs, it may have commanded the products of the Aegean, which could no longer be directed westwards, leaving a gap in the market to be exploited by other producers. Attempts by the Roman authorities to control exports in the western Mediterranean could also have worked to the east’s advantage. Wine produced in areas of the west still under Roman control, such as southern Italy, was not sold to the Vandals, and during the fifth and sixth centuries the latter seem to have done a particularly brisk trade with the Syrian region. At Carthage three quarters of the amphoras dating to this period are eastern, mostly Late Roman 1 (see below), a type of container for wine or oil which comes from eastern Cilicia and Cyprus and perhaps northern Syria. The fact that this trade was conducted with Rome’s enemies, the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Visigoths, gives the impression that private interests were at work in this case; at least, it is harder to imagine this export being organized by the Roman state. This trade continued after Vandal power was broken with Justinian’s reconquest of Carthage, although the decline after the middle of the sixth century may be explained as a consequence of Justinian’s attempts to re-establish state control of production in the west. However, places in the west that were lost to the Romans, such as southern Gaul, maintained connections with eastern producers.
Taxation may also have been an important stimulus for export, as cities traded in order to accumulate cash to pay their taxes. Taxation in kind will also have stimulated production (see below). The Diocletianic changes to the tax system may have provided such a stimulus, and institutions other than the Roman state and the cities are likely to have played a role in the production and consumption of goods. The Christian church was a major economic player in the late empire. It inherited large tracts of land from donors, and there is ceramic evidence for its being involved in the production of staples like wine and olive oil. Foodstuffs from ecclesiastical estates were distributed to the poor, or sold to raise money for the church. In addition to institutions such as the state or church, private individuals with large estates might trade or even donate produce on a large scale, give gifts to other wealthy persons, and receive gifts of produce in return. Economic integration allowed for many modes of production and distribution.

Taxes and State Burdens
The Early Empire
The Roman state’s survival depended on its ability to extract tribute from the people it ruled. That said, it is by no means clear how communities paid taxes in the early empire, or in what form. There seems to have been no attempt to create a standardized system. The great organizing and rationalizing force that was the Roman state appears to have dealt with the crucial matter of its incomes in a somewhat haphazard fashion. As with political systems, so too with taxation: the Romans annexed the traditional financial systems of the states they conquered and did little to change them. There is a belief that in the late republic, and especially under Augustus, money taxes became almost universal, and that the main tax-coin was the silver denarius. Large quantities of denarii were therefore being moved around the empire with great efficiency as the public paid taxes to Rome and Rome paid her employees. This model of taxation, which is still debated, has overshadowed evidence suggesting that communities in the early empire also paid taxes in kind. As early as the time of Caesar we find Sidon paying an annual sum of grain; this foodstuff probably went to the army and for distribution elsewhere. The Babatha archive shows Babatha registering her date-palm grove in a Roman census of AD 127; the tax to be paid was calculated in both money and dates. To some extent state demands may have been tempered by feasibility: what a community could reasonably produce was given as tribute. So in some places the state probably exacted payment in cash and in others in kind (there is also evidence for mixed payments).
The impression is that the system in the early empire was disorganized, inefficient and contingent (but this also made it flexible), despite some attempts by emperors to systematize procedures. Censuses do not appear to have been regular and much of the coinage in use in Syria and neighbouring provinces was unsuitable for making direct monetary payments to Rome (see below). Communities may have opted to pay in whatever they could produce as a surplus (for example, textiles or dates), and if so, tax in kind was somewhat of an expedient measure, but no doubt useful if the materials could be redistributed efficiently. Taxation may have provided an incentive for some cities and regions to specialize in particular products, either as tax or as exports to raise capital to pay tax. Whether tax was paid in cash or kind, the Roman tax system might therefore have encouraged increased production and trade.
Methods of assessment differed from one region to another, with no apparent logic behind the system. As Roman power expanded in the eastern Mediterranean, the different, traditional tax systems of various communities and regions were incorporated into the fiscal system without much alteration, and Rome then accepted whatever cities and provinces could offer. The state did its best with what ensued; if it needed cash but accepted tax in kind, it sold the foodstuffs and other materials on the open market to raise the sums required. Even when the state had stipulated that a community’s tax should be paid in money, it might have had to accept some payment in foodstuffs. At other times it was easier for communities to pay in cash than in kind, and they might seek to commute their tribute to coin. The notion of taxation in kind and its accompanying mechanisms for redistribution originated in the attempts by emperors to supply the city of Rome and to safeguard against famine there, as well as to provide supplies to state servants and the army. This system, known as the annona, developed in the first and second centuries. Little effort, however, was made to secure supplies of staples to other cities, although some communities were rewarded for their loyalty during times of rebellion or instability by being granted regular supplies of grain. Laodicea seems to have received such a grant under Septimius Severus, and Sidon under Elagabalus (fig. 74). Such supplies presumably allowed these cities to profit in times of plenty by selling grain on to other communities. In times of shortage cities might petition a governor or Roman official in charge of a province or region which produced a surplus to provide aid; but there seems to have been a hierarchy or pecking-order to respect, and important cities were likely to be placed at the front of the queue. However, a lack of state interest in supply to the cities does not mean that the cities themselves did not make regular arrangements with each other for supplies.
Fig. 74. Civic bronze coin of Sidon of the reign of Elagabalus (AD 218-22) showing a corn measure and bearing the inscription ‘aeternu[m] benefi[cium]’, suggesting a regular grant of grain in perpetuity. BMC 274.
Under the republic tax collection was farmed out to private contractors, the publicani. In early imperial times there is a shift to state employees, who were responsible for overseeing collection through the convenient bureaucratic machinery of the cities, but there is also evidence for continued use of private contractors. Once again, there is no impression of a completely rationalized system at work. There are hints of a possible attempt to systematize by standardizing units of tax according to Roman coin denominations, but the evidence for this is patchy and it may have had little impact on the sorts of coins being produced in places like Syria. The civic tariff of Palmyra quotes a letter from a Roman governor of c. AD 69 stating that taxes should be reckoned in denarii, and this governor quotes in turn a letter from Tiberius’ nephew Germanicus, who had earlier stipulated reckoning in ‘Italian asses’. As Italian asses did not circulate in Syria, these must have been notional units of account rather than physical coins. 
The burden of collecting tax fell heavily on the cities, probably because the state recognized them as centres responsible for organizing local production and redistribution. City councils had to elect officials from among their members to collect the tax. Responsibility for all assessments, and for payment of any tax assessed but not collected, fell upon these officials. The main forms of direct taxation in the early empire were the tributum soli (land tax) and tributum capitis (poll tax), which were assessed through a census, collected by the local authorities and then handed over to imperial officials. Land tax was based on what the land produced, and was assessed according to what the land was used for and its location, whether meadow, pasture, arable, vineyard, woodland, mountain or plain and so on, together with the number of slaves working it and any other assets. However, the exact manner in which this tax was assessed may have differed from region to region. According to Appian (second century AD), in Syria the land tax was 1 per cent of the capital valuation, which might represent 5-10 per cent of the land's annual production (it is unclear how Appian arrived at this figure, or whether it had any general application at all). This figure is not particularly high, but other calculations of tribute in kind result in figures as high as 20 per cent of the crop from the land assessed, which is considerable. In any case it was of paramount importance for tax-payers to ensure that their property boundaries, and hence what they were liable for, were well defined. Only Italy was exempt from land tax, although the extension of ius italicum to some Roman colonies abroad, such as Berytus, meant that their lands were considered ‘Italian’. The Digest of Roman Law, published under Justinian, cites the late second/early third-century lawyer Ulpian, who states that in Syria males aged between fourteen and sixty-five, and females from twelve to sixty-five, were liable for tributum capitis. How this tax was related to land tax assessments remains obscure. Tributum capitis was presumably paid in money, and may not have been particularly burdensome. 
	Because the tax assessment was a proportion of the total assessment for land and persons, estimates of these had to be obtained through censuses. The first proper census of Syria was performed under the governor Publius Sulpicius Quirinius in AD 6, when all the inhabitants were to declare their property in terms of money. This was the census somewhat inaccurately recorded in the Gospel of St Luke: ‘there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius [Quirinius] was governor of Syria.’ The historian Tacitus wrote that the inhabitants thought that the taxes imposed as a result were too high and appealed for a reduction in AD 17. It is not known how frequently censuses were conducted thereafter. 
	The two regular forms of direct taxation sometimes had to be supplemented by additional demands, suggesting that the rather simple system was inadequate for coping with fluctuations in state spending. Among these irregular taxes was a demand by the emperors for gold, either as bullion or in the form of crowns. Originally these seem to have been offered by various communities of the empire on extraordinary occasions, such as an imperial victory, but by the late second century, if not before, the aurum coronarium (crown gold) was institutionalized as a form of tax on the cities.
	The most important indirect tax was the portorium, a tax on the value of goods in transit. This was levied at harbours and at points within and on the boundaries of provinces, on goods both entering and leaving. The eastern frontier of the Roman empire seems to have had an extraordinarily high tax on goods crossing the border from the Parthian kingdom, which in turn suggests that the profit on imports from that direction was high. A mid-second-century inscription from the console of a column at Palmyra describes a certain Marcus Aemilius Marcianus Asclepiades, senator of Antioch, as a tetartones, presumably an official who extracted a ‘fourth’, a 25 per cent duty, on the value of goods entering the Roman empire. This is the highest level of duty known; in other places it was considerably lower (2 or 2½ per cent). Customs stations were located in ports or at fixed sites on roads, where travellers had to declare what they were carrying with them. They were taxed on whatever was deemed inessential for travel (this may have been at the official’s discretion, and these individuals appear not to have been noted for their honesty). The employees seem to have been imperial rather than city officials. In Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana (early third century) the holy man and his companion have a misunderstanding with a customs official stationed at Zeugma (an important crossing-point into Parthian Mesopotamia), partly due to Apollonius’ spiritual pomposity and partly to the official’s greed and stupidity:

When they were about to cross into Mesopotamia, the tax-collector stationed at Zeugma took them to the registry and asked them if they had anything to declare. ‘Prudence,’ replied Apollonius, ‘Justice, Virtue, Temperance, Courage, Perseverance,’ stringing together a lot of nouns in the feminine gender. Immediately the official, with an eye to his own profit, said, ‘Well then, make me a list of your slaves.’ ‘I cannot,’ retorted Apollonius: ‘it is not my slaves I am declaring, but my mistresses.’

	Other indirect taxes included sales taxes (usually quite low), taxes on craftsmen, on the purchase of slaves, on pastures, markets, the inheritance of Roman citizens, and on slaves buying their freedom. There were also other obligations placed upon the city and the citizens: providing recruits for the army; or lodgings for officials, soldiers and employees of the postal service, and fodder and stabling for their animals. While not exactly a form of taxation, their demands did cost the inhabitants time and money, and often the loss of beasts of burden or wagons, requisitioned for state requirements (see chapter 10). Locals could hardly resist such demands; the best they could hope for was that a high state official, or the emperor, would write a letter outlining what was an acceptable demand and what was not, so that this could be posted in a public place for all to take note.

The Late Empire
The chaotic tax system of the early empire came under considerable strain in the third century. The unstable political climate, accompanied, perhaps, by some disruption of long-distance trade, the decline of Italy and the city of Rome as a focal point for political and military power, and a period of high inflation coupled with the end of local coinages, required new strategies. It was the emperor Diocletian (AD 284-305) who formally reorganized the increasingly unworkable and irregular tax base of the empire. The belief that his system represents a change from heavy reliance on money tax to a system of taxation in kind is debatable, but the changes which he introduced were far-reaching, and remained the basis of the imperial tax system of the late Roman empire. One of his most important innovations was the creation of a flexible tax rate, so that the state did not have to rely on a fixed annual income supplemented by arbitrary demands to meet costs. The Praetorian Prefects were charged with estimating annual budgets for their respective parts of the empire, which were published in September every year. As a result, the rate of taxation now varied every year according to expected state expenditure (exceptional needs were still met by exceptional tax demands, superindictiones). Land was assessed according to an abstract unit of value, the iugum or zugon, rather than in units of currency. So instead of valuing land tax at a fixed rate, how much would be extracted from every iugum depended on the rate of tax for that year. The way in which the iugum was defined appears to have varied from one region to another, but it does appear to have been an attempt at standardization. A late Roman text, the Syro-Roman Lawbook, shows the area of the iugum varying according to crop, quality of crop and quality of land. Thus it distinguishes between two sorts of olive trees and three classes of arable land (the third class thought to include pasturage and wasteland). Whether such rules applied throughout Syria is unknown, and other definitions seem to have been applied in different regions of the empire. The tax reform required a reorganization and reassessment of land, and in Syria and the Near East boundary stones of this period, set up by cadastral surveyors, have been found at many locations. A number of them are dated. All dates correspond to AD 297, the year of the tax reform, and many name the censors involved. In rural areas people and animals were also assessed according to an abstract unit, the caput (although use of this unit may not have been universal). How many people and animals made up a caput is unclear, as is the precise relationship of the two modes of taxation to one another, although the iugum and caput appear to have been considered equal in value. In this way this poll tax, where it was used, could be assessed either in money or in kind. The age limits on liable persons in Syria presumably remained the same as under the early empire, because they are cited in Justinian’s Digest. The new system also standardized cycles of annual requisitions (indictiones). These cycles originally lasted five years, but from the time of Constantine became fifteen-year periods (see chapter 4).
	As before, responsibility for collection of tax fell on city officials, who also had to arrange for its delivery to an agreed point, such as a fort, a military station along a main road (where it could be used by soldiers and officials in transit), or a port abroad. Responsibility extended not only to gathering the tax and keeping accounts, but also to overseeing and paying for the transport and storage of these goods until they reached the right depot or the state servants for whom they were intended. Later adjustments and changes to the system cannot be described here, but there are signs that by the sixth century tax collection was being organized by the rich and powerful grandees of the cities, rather than by councillors. The system of delivery of any taxes in kind probably remained inefficient, but some have linked the overall improvements to the tax system in late Roman times with the increasingly intensive settlement and cultivation of the countryside, as the state became more adept at extracting taxes in kind. Nevertheless it would seem that by the sixth century taxes had predominantly reverted to cash, so increased agricultural production may have been aimed at the market, to raise tax money, rather than serving the needs of the state directly.

Civic Taxes
Cities also exacted municipal taxes for their own use, and gained money or foodstuffs by renting municipal properties. While this money did not go to the imperial treasuries (at least not until the late empire: see p. 000), emperors might take an interest in civic finances, and cities could not introduce new taxes without imperial permission. We are fortunate to possess an extraordinary document from Palmyra, listing in both Greek and Palmyrene script the taxes due on goods within the city’s territory. The Palmyra tariff, dated to AD 137, fixed in stone the exactions to be levied on a range of goods, because previously disputes had arisen between the tax collectors and merchants. The law is not concerned with the luxury items of the caravan trade, but with everyday goods being imported or exported, and services provided in the city itself. It lists dues on slaves, dried produce, wheat, wine, purple-dyed fleece, unguents, olive oil, animal fat, animal skins, salt and salt fish, horses, livestock and animals for slaughter, fodder and unloaded pack camels. There were sales taxes on prostitutes and tradesmen, and a hefty charge for the use of Palmyra’s main water sources, presumably levied on caravan merchants watering their animals. Animals brought from outside to graze on Palmyrene lands were taxed, and the tax collector could insist that they be branded for identification. The most luxurious things mentioned are bronze statues (presumably imported from centres of production elsewhere), to be taxed at half their value by weight. The tariff shows that imperial officials took a significant interest in civic taxes: several governors and high-ranking Roman officials are mentioned, or their rulings quoted, including Germanicus, who stipulated that taxes were to be reckoned in Italian currency, probably in an attempt to create some standard form of accounting amidst a multitude of local currencies (on these, see below). It also clarifies how bulk loads were transported: by wagon, camel or donkey. The tariff provides us with a fascinating glimpse of the sorts of essentials being traded in the interior of Syria during the second century AD.
	As time went by, imperial controls on civic finances tightened. In the late Roman period civic incomes were allotted to specific areas of expenditure and could not be transferred to other areas, leaving the cities with a predictable but inflexible system (see p. 000).
	Taxation, imperial and civic, is likely to have been important in determining patterns of production, imports, exports, distribution, consumption and monetization. No overall study of these patterns has yet been attempted for the Syrian region, and it is unlikely that one will be attempted in the near future. What follows is a brief examination of various categories of manufactured materials that were imported to and exported from Syria and the Near East, and the monetary networks of the region.

Pottery
For a long time the study of Roman pottery in the eastern Mediterranean meant the study of fine wares, a category of pottery made from finely refined clays and used for presenting food and drink. Some types were traded long-distance, or had a wide regional distribution; others were made for local consumption. But these wares, which comprise just a fraction of the pottery found on Syrian sites, present us with only part of the story of pottery production and consumption. Less well developed is the study of more utilitarian ceramics (‘coarse wares’). These have great potential, because they too were traded, often in substantial quantities, and their distribution provides a key to understanding the trading networks of the Roman world in considerable detail. It is not surprising to find transport amphoras being moved about; it was their contents that were desired, rather than the amphoras themselves, and of all the types of coarse ware pots amphoras are among the most studied forms. Common sense would suggest that cheap coarse ware items like cooking pots or bowls ought to have been made locally, with only containers like amphoras and the higher-status, displayable table wares being imported. It is all the more startling, then, to find abundant evidence at coastal sites for imported ceramics of all sorts: cooking pots, bricks and tiles, storage jars and clay coffins. Sometimes most of the pottery found at a site was imported, with very little being produced locally. In Berytus even the cheap and common loom weights used in the city’s textile workshops were imported from a specialized production centre, probably in neighbouring Sidon. This does not mean that local industries did not exist in the cities but it should not be assumed that the majority of coarse wares found at a site will always be local. Inland sites tend to exhibit less variety in their ceramic finds than coastal ones, but even in the interior of Syria the coarse ware pots were often produced centrally and marketed over wide areas. North central Syria and the Euphrates looks as if it had its own market, with sites like Resafa and the tells around Aleppo producing plenty of finds of imported ‘Late Roman C’ fine wares from western Asia Minor, coarse ‘brittle ware’ (see p. 00), and amphoras made in a whitish-green coloured fabric from an uncertain source in the north Syrian region. The evidence from sites far from the Mediterranean, such as Dura Europus on the Euphrates, suggests a strong orientation towards Mesopotamia and the Parthian realm, but there are some imported Roman wares at Dura, including fine wares which came to the site before the Romans had taken the city from the Parthians. The late Roman site of Dibsi Faraj (Neocaesarea?), also on the Euphrates, produced significant quantities of fine wares imported from the Mediterranean, including Late Roman C and African Red Slip from Tunisia. Amphoras imported from the Mediterranean are known from these sites, and from Kifrin further down river, but these do not seem to have been brought to the sites in any great quantity.
Some production centres for Syrian pottery have been identified, but we still do not know exactly where some of the more common amphoras and other ceramics were made (although the general regions are often known), a problem which renders any detailed discussion of how and why the trade developed as it did a somewhat speculative exercise. Local wares may imitate imports, compounding the problems of identification. Nevertheless, some broad sketches are possible. It would seem that in the early empire most cities had a ceramic industry (although certain potteries may have served more than one city), and that these cities often produced their own distinctive type of amphora (although some of the trends were regional rather than city-specific). Some cities exported widely, but other amphora types appear to have been confined to the territory of their respective cities. The distributions of certain amphoras which were not widely exported sometimes appear to coincide with their respective city territories. These cases may well reflect the importance of the city as an institution for organizing production, redistribution and consumption within its territory, rather than hinting at patriotic locals preferring home-made products. 
	Different forms of cooking wares and table wares are likely to reflect different culinary habits and dietary preferences. There is some evidence from the early empire to suggest that Roman soldiers, who were often alien to the parts of the empire in which they were stationed, preferred to use ceramics which resembled those of their homelands. Local imitation of Italian-style casseroles in Berytus may reflect more western culinary habits in the colony. Other ceramic distributions may be linked to native dietary and culinary preferences, or to expressions of identity. The distinctive and well-known Nabataean red fine ware made at Petra is more or less confined to the kingdom and does not seem to have been exported in any quantity (although it is found on Palestinian sites). The tradition developed some time after 100 BC, but it ended with the Roman annexation of Nabataea. This hard-fired, thin-walled ‘eggshell ware’ is found in some quantity at Bostra, but it was not made there, and instead was imported from the main centres of production in Petra. However, it does not occur commonly north of Bostra, even in those places where there was a Nabataean presence (such as the cult centre of Sia near Canatha), so its distribution is not coterminous with Nabataean rule, although its association with Nabataean culture is clear.
The Roman annexation of the Nabataean kingdom had a clear effect on pottery production, and in other cases where production centres are known and pottery typologies can be dated we can sometimes see the impact of Rome. The Beirut amphora type appears with or shortly after the Roman annexation (see below) and disappears with the Muslim conquest. It would seem therefore to be one of the consequences of Roman control of the city, and perhaps the result of a particular pattern of exploitation in the city’s territory, although the Beirut amphoras were only rarely exported. Not all coastal cities show such marked changes coinciding with the Roman period. The Tyrian pottery industry, which aside from making amphoras also produced closed vessels like jugs and mould-made items such as lamps and masks, represented an unbroken tradition stretching back to the Iron Age. In the early third century this industry appears to have ceased, although Tyre continued to produce lamps, unguentaria and figurines. It revived again in the seventh century, following the Roman loss of the Syrian provinces. 
	The following brief survey of ceramics begins with the coarse wares, and in particular the vessels used for transport, because these provide a wealth of evidence for regional and empire-wide trade. It should of course be borne in mind that there were other types of containers than those in ceramic, particularly sacks and barrels, but neither these nor their contents survive in sufficient quantities to tell us much about the movement of goods.

Amphoras 
These were two-handled jars, often with wide bodies, used for transport and storage. There were small ones, usually with flat bases, which were suitable for use at the table, but the greatest interest lies in the large containers, often with a body tapering to a pointed or rounded base, which were used for transport. The earliest-known examples are the so-called Canaanite jars of the Bronze Age from coastal Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine, but during the eighth and seventh centuries BC the form spread and was adapted throughout the Mediterranean. By the Roman period it was a major means of packaging, mainly for liquids such as wine, oil and fish sauce, but sometimes other sorts of produce: fruit, nuts, whole olives, small fish such as sardines, oysters, and even mineral products. As noted above, cities had their own very distinct amphora shapes, but in the Roman period the shape and size could also be used to advertise the type of product the amphora contained. Regional preferences are, however, apparent, and in many cases the traditions seem to have been maintained for centuries. Eastern Cilicia (and perhaps Antioch) preferred small containers such as the Late Roman Amphora 1 (see below), which was probably the descendant of an earlier small container, the Pompeii 5 amphora (first to second century: fig. 73.1). Further south, Ras al-Bassit (and perhaps Laodicea) produced round-bodied, ‘globular’ amphoras, and the coastal kilns between Marathus and Berytus made amphoras with a tapering, carrot-shaped body. These are all amphoras with handles attached to the neck in the Greek tradition, but below Beirut some much older conventions were maintained. Sidon seems to have ceased producing amphoras under the Seleucids, but Tyre made its containers in cylindrical or cigar-shaped forms, with little or no neck and ring handles attached to the body. A similar practice may be noted at Ascalon and Gaza, where there was also a preference for cigar-shaped vessels with ring handles. These seem to be consciously archaic forms in a pre-Greek amphora tradition.
The fact that amphoras can be associated with particular cities or regions means that they are useful indicators of the scale and nature of local, regional and long-distance trade in the Roman world. The patterns of imports and exports changed as tastes and social relations changed. The ceramic material from King Herod’s palace at Masada shows that he was importing Italian wines in the second half of the first century BC, and Italian products of the period are also known at other sites, so Herod may have been taking advantage of existing or newly developing commercial links rather than being a trend-setter. Even so, the consumption of Italian wine could be taken as a political and cultural statement. From the second century AD the cities of the Syrian coast began receiving quantities of foodstuffs (oil, fish sauce) in amphoras from southern Spain and Lusitania. These products were exported widely to the Roman world and are also a reflection of particular tastes. Amphoras from Sinope on the Black Sea are common in the late second to mid-third century, and are found again in the fifth and sixth centuries. Whatever these amphoras contained (fish sauce?), it was commonly consumed in the Syrian region, and imports of foodstuffs from the Black Sea are known from inland sites in Jordan as well as in the coastal cities. Italian wine was popular again in the Severan period. Common fourth-century imports from far afield are Tunisian, south Spanish and Lusitanian fish sauce amphoras, but western Mediterranean imports are generally absent from the mid-fifth century. By this time the Syrian region had become a major exporter of goods (see below).
Not every amphora type stood at the centre of a wide overseas distribution network. Some seem to have been used for goods consumed almost entirely within the territory of the city which produced them. The Beirut amphora has already been mentioned in this respect. A creation of the Roman period, it did not survive the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. It does not appear to have been produced for export on any scale, and presumably served the needs of Berytus and its territory. Prior to its introduction the city imported or used amphoras predominantly from Tyre and another source, perhaps Sidon. The date of the Beirut amphora’s introduction is not certain: it may be Augustan (in which case it could be linked to the foundation of the colony), or earlier (perhaps following the Roman annexation by Pompey). The main product carried in it seems to have been wine. A few of the first-century-AD amphoras are stamped ‘COL. BER.’, which could mean that these contained wine produced on communal land belonging to the colony rather than on private estates. In the second century a larger version of the amphora was produced. This was sometimes exported, to Cyprus and Egypt in particular, and occasionally even further afield (one complete example was found in Britain, at Ringmer in Sussex), but this development did not survive the century. Beirut amphoras predominated in the city during the first and second centuries, being much commoner than imported ones, but by the fourth century imported amphoras began to take over. If the wine of Berytus was famous, as some sources suggest, there is precious little evidence for its export in any quantity - at least not in the Beirut amphora.
As noted earlier, there is little evidence for exports in amphoras from Syria and the Near East before the fourth century. However, from the time of Constantine onwards there is a notable change, beginning with exports from one part of the Syrian region to another, and to Egypt, and spreading westwards in the fifth century. Cilicia (and perhaps Antioch) and Palestine in particular were major exporting regions, and the markets came to be dominated by a narrow variety of amphora forms. Some of these late Roman amphoras have crosses and Christian names painted on them, perhaps indicating their origin on ecclesiastical estates. There is also evidence for standard capacities being used, with amphoras being produced in a range of sizes. As mentioned earlier, one problem hindering amphora studies is that often we do not know exactly where they come from or what they contained. A case in point is a common eastern amphora type, Late Roman Amphora 1 (fig. 75.1), produced from the late fourth or early fifth to mid-seventh century. It was exported in large quantities, first to Phoenicia, Palestine and Egypt, and from the fifth century to the west. LRA 1 is heavily represented at Carthage, but also at Rome and Marseilles. It occurs too in western Asia Minor, in Greece, on the lower Danube, in Italy, southern Gaul, north-eastern Spain, and south-west Britain. It is perhaps better thought of as a regional type rather than being specific to a certain city. Kiln sites have been discovered in eastern Cilicia and Cyprus, but it is not yet clear whether the form was associated with Antioch as some have proposed. What LRA 1 contained is uncertain; most probably oil or wine, or perhaps both products were exported in these containers. Whatever the case, LRA 1 was clearly at the centre of a major distribution network, but until the places of production can be identified more confidently the connection between this amphora type and the economy of Roman Syria is a matter for speculation (see chapter 5). Its demise seems to coincide with the Muslim conquest, so a connection with Roman state taxation in kind is not impossible, although the fact that LRA 1 was commonly traded with Vandalic Carthage (see above, p. 000) might speak of private enterprise rather than state interests.
Fig. 75. Common late Roman amphora types from the Syrian region (not to the same scale). 75.1. Late Roman 1, from Cilicia, Cyprus and perhaps northern Syria. 75.2. Late Roman 5, Palestinian bag-shaped amphora. 75.3. Late Roman 4, associated with Gaza and Ascalon.
Another important late Roman amphora is a cigar-shaped vessel from southern Palestine, associated with Gaza and Ascalon (Late Roman Amphora 4: fig. 75.3). This was a continuation of the traditional pre-Greek-style amphoras mentioned above. In Palestine these containers, which were called ‘Gazans’ by contemporaries, were used for a variety of purposes, although the ones exported mainly contained wine, and perhaps fish or oil. The Gaza and Ascalon region was a major producer of wine in late antiquity, as evidenced by the numerous presses found there. Gazan wine was heavily exported to the western Mediterranean from the late fourth or early fifth century onwards, but the evidence from excavations in Beirut suggests that Gaza and Ascalon initially exploited markets much closer to home, with a major rise in regional exports to the Syrian coast in the fourth century. This would match the comment in the Descriptio Totius Orbis, a text believed to date to the reign of Constantius II (AD 337-61), that Ascalon and Gaza ‘export excellent wine to the whole region of Egypt and Syria’. On the strength of the Beirut evidence this regional market was in decline in the sixth century, perhaps indicating that the Gaza/Ascalon industry lost interest in trade with Syria as it directed its trade further afield. 
Distinct from the Gazan containers are bag-shaped Palestinian amphoras (fig. 75.2), which, like LRA 1, have a ‘corrugated’ surface to their bodies. They too were a continuation and development of an earlier regional amphora tradition, most likely connected with the many local wine industries of Palestine. They were probably made at a number of centres in Palestine and Arabia, and most are thought to have held wine, although in the Golan there are large numbers of olive presses in the countryside, so the main product there would seem to have been oil. Their distribution is mainly within Palestine and coastal Syria, but they were also transported to other parts of the Mediterranean, particularly in the sixth and seventh centuries, although not in the same quantities as LRA 1 or the Gazan LRA 4.
	Amphoras have been compared to modern jerry cans or oil drums, part of a use-once process from production to consumption. As containers they could of course be recycled, but there are hints that after emptying many were discarded in specialized dumps. The practice of re-using, and even patching up empty amphoras seems to have been more common in late than in early Roman times, but in the late period discard was still common. At Caesarea in the late Roman period a new residential area was laid out on a thick levelling dump, consisting only of broken amphoras. Broken pottery and refuse was commonly used in levelling layers for the construction of buildings. Whether or not discarded amphoras were deliberately collected and sold as building aggregate is uncertain, but some evidence points that way.

Other Coarse Wares
Coarse ware pots, such as vessels for cooking or preparing food or for storage, were also traded. Unlike the amphoras, they were goods in themselves rather than containers for staple foodstuffs, and probably travelled on the back of trade in other cargoes, though it is not always clear what these other cargoes were. Italian cooking wares, made from a strongly fire-resistant volcanic clay, were imported to the Syrian region from Campania in the first half of the second century AD, but Campanian amphoras were not. Jugs, small jars, cooking pots, casseroles, basins and storage jars might be produced locally, but there is often a heavy reliance on imports. Sometimes imported coarse ware pots predominate over locally produced ones, which is rather astonishing if trade in the Roman economy were as limited as some have suggested.
	Bowls used for grinding and mixing food (mortaria) are a typical coarse ware form of the Roman period, although similar vessels had been used for the same purposes in earlier times. A source at Ras al-Bassit near Laodicea specialized in producing them, along with basins and large storage jars. The mortaria, in a dark brown ware roughened with volcanic grits, with a channel on the rim for pouring, are often stamped with the makers’ names. They are widely distributed in Syria during the late Roman period, and were exported to other parts of the Roman empire, some examples even reaching north-western Europe.
	Bulky ceramic products, such as large basins, storage jars (dolia), roof tiles, bricks and clay sarcophagi were traded regionally. As noted above, the degree to which a site relied on imported wares was likely to have been influenced by its position in the trading network, and how easy it was to transport the goods there. Berytus, like most coastal cities, depended almost entirely on imported tile rather than making its own. Remote inland sites may have had to rely more on local ceramic building materials, but this is by no means the rule. There is some uncertainty as to whether batches of tiles or bricks formed the principal cargoes or whether they moved with other goods. Centres which produced ceramic building materials may have functioned like quarries (see below), producing and shipping on commission. Eastern Cilicia was an important source of clay sarcophagi, roof tiles and large basins for Syria between the first and third centuries AD, and the products of this centre dominate the ceramic building materials of the Syrian coast: at Seleucia, Ras al-Bassit, Ras Ibn Hani, Marathus, Berytus and Tyre. The sarcophagi are found widely in the coastal regions of Syria and Palestine, and Cyprus. 
	Dolia, large storage jars with thick walls, were possibly used for transporting wine as an alternative to amphoras. A first-century-BC shipwreck from near Caesarea had dolia in the hold. As the ship had come from Italy, it is thought that the dolia may have contained Italian wine. The use of these containers for transporting liquids seems to have been an Augustan innovation, but did not survive the early imperial period. Otherwise these large jars found useful employment on farms and in domestic contexts.

Fine Wares
Fine wares, like cooking pots, must have travelled with more valuable cargoes - staples like grain, wine and olive oil. Thus the pots, while not highly significant goods in themselves, are an indication of the movement of other goods. The fine wares are also fairly well documented and datable, and some of them enjoyed a very wide distribution.
	Most Syrian cities did not produce their own fine wares, and instead relied on imports. The shapes often imitate those of more expensive metal vessels. The potteries may have been at rural locations rather than in the cities themselves, but currently many of the production sites for east Mediterranean fine wares are unknown. A major fine ware industry for the glossed ware known as Eastern Sigillata A (ESA) was located somewhere in northern Syria or eastern Cilicia. Production of this ware began in the second century BC and the pots rapidly became common in Syria and the Near East. Output remained high for more than two centuries, but by the second century AD the industry was in decline. Although the ESA tradition commenced before the important sigillata fine wares of Italy started production, the Italian industry of the first century BC became very influential, and from the late first century BC onwards ESA imitates the forms of Italian red-gloss sigillata wares, sometimes adding Italian-style makers’ stamps, but in Greek rather than Latin. ESA was widely exported to other parts of the eastern Mediterranean basin and to the west, suggesting Cilician or Syrian exports of more important cargoes to the same destinations (for instance, Leptis Magna, Carthage, Rome). No other significant Syrian (if indeed ESA is Syrian) export industry for fine wares has been identified. In the late Roman period all of the major fine wares were imported: the classes called Late Roman C and Late Roman D, Cypriot Sigillata and a little Egyptian Red Slip. African Red Slip wares from Tunisia are common on Syrian and Near Eastern sites, implying the import of other goods from Africa to our region. That at least a part of this trade was civilian rather than connected with military supply is implied by the fact that this trade continues after the eastern and western Mediterranean began to go separate political ways. But the commonest late Roman fine ware in the region, Late Roman C, which is associated with Phocaea in western Asia Minor, has a strong connection with military sites.
	Other ceramic products made from refined clays include lamps, which were produced in stone or plaster moulds. It was easy to create new moulds from existing lamps, and in this way identical designs could have been replicated at more than one centre. The common form in the early Roman period is the round-bodied discus type with volutes on either side of the spout, which often carries a motif in relief in the central discus (fig. 76.1). This form gave way to the slipper lamps of late Roman and early Islamic times (fig. 76.2). Small flasks with long, narrow necks (unguentaria) were made to contain aromatic oils, unguents and perfumes. Tyre was an important centre of production and regional export for these vessels during the early empire. Glass forms overtook clay unguentaria by the second century, but clay forms continued to be produced at some centres. A major centre for imports of clay unguentaria to Syria in the fifth and sixth centuries was Ephesus. A much rarer type of small container encountered in late Roman times is the so-called ‘pilgrim flask’, a mould-made vessel with a flat-sided body and a pair of handles and usually bearing religious motifs in relief. It held oil or water which had been blessed and was probably produced for sale to visitors to holy sites.
Fig. 76. Common lamp types from the excavations in Beirut. 76.1. Early Roman mould made volute lamp with decorated discus. 76.2. Late Roman moulded slipper-shaped lamp, fourth - fifth century AD. After R. Mikati, The AUB Beirut Souk Excavations 1994-95: The Terracotta Lamps, unpublished MA thesis, American University of Beirut, 1998.

Glass
The technique of blowing translucent glass vessels was reputedly developed in the Syrian region in the later first century BC, but it spread so rapidly in the Mediterranean that glass vessels appear at many different sites at roughly the same time, between the end of the first century BC and the beginning of the first century AD. Glass objects had been manufactured in the region since the middle of the second millennium BC, but all previous methods of manufacture had involved melting and fusing glass in moulds or forming them around a core. Common vessels were small, core-formed bottles and mould-made bowls. Blown glass, on the other hand, extended the number of possible forms and decorative techniques, allowing glass to become a substitute for a variety of vessels of other materials. Not only that, but over time glass also became a relatively cheap substitute for vessels of other materials. 
Manufacture involved two processes. In the first, the raw materials were melted in large furnaces, producing blocks of glass (cullet). The potential scale of this operation is apparent from the huge block of melted glass found at Beth Shearim in Palestine. This was a slab 3.4 metres (11 feet) long, 1.95 metres (6½ feet) wide and 45 centimetres (1½ feet) thick, corresponding to the size of the furnace; it weighed almost 9 tonnes, but was presumably abandoned because the composition of the glass produced was wrong, making it unusable. When successfully melted and cooled, such huge slabs could then be broken up into blocks for remelting and blowing, which was the second part of the glass-making process. Production of cullet and production of vessels did not usually take place in the same location. There is ample evidence for the transportation of cullet to secondary production centres where the vessels were blown. The site of Jalame, about 10 kilometres (6¼ miles) south-east of modern Haifa and not far from Beth Shearim, was evidently such a place, and the large furnace at the site was for remelting cullet before working it, or simply for gathering heat-softened chunks of glass on the end of a blowpipe and heating them in the furnace until they were sufficiently viscous to blow into vessels. Glass-blowing workshops were to be found in both cities and at locations in the countryside, and can be identified by quantities of broken or melted glass and - most telling of all - moils (the glass left over on the ends of the workers’ blow pipes) and pieces of collapsed glass vessels. Although a specialized craft, glass-blowing was by no means a rare one. Because of sheer size of the operations and the danger of fires the furnaces for the large-scale production of cullet were more likely to be located in the countryside, or away from built-up areas, but glass-blowing was sufficiently inoffensive for workers to set up shop in urban environments. The production of glass linked city and country.
	Early glass vessels often imitated more expensive ones in stone or metal. Once glass-blowing had developed, there was little further change to the basic range and function of forms, and nothing characteristically ‘Syrian’ about most of those produced in the region. Currently no detailed chronological typology like that of pottery is available, although some forms and types are characteristic of particular periods and are easily dated. By the beginning of the first century AD glass-workers were blowing glass into moulds to make more elaborate shapes and to produce relief designs on the surfaces, but most workshops did not go to such lengths when producing the cheap, transparent or green glass vessels for everyday use, and the basic forms of these did not change much over the centuries. Like pottery, glass was traded, although in most cases the places of manufacture are extremely difficult to determine. Unlike pottery, broken glass vessels could be recycled, so that raw materials from multiple places of origin ended up being mixed together. Some cast bowls of the second and first centuries BC were produced in Syria or Palestine and exported to other parts of the Mediterranean. A group of strongly coloured mould-blown vessels bear makers’ names, often describing these people as Sidonian. ‘Sidonian’ vessels are known from various parts of the Roman world, but none is known from secure contexts in the Syrian region. Strongly coloured glass is typical of Italy in the early empire, so these objects may be the work of Sidonian glass workers established in Italy and not representative products of Sidon itself. In the late Roman period small mould-blown bottles and pitchers were produced in the Syrian region, decorated with religious motifs. Like the ceramic ‘pilgrim flasks’ they may have held holy oils and waters.

Marble
The trade in decorative stones is one of the most improbable consequences of the Roman empire. That hundreds of tonnes should be quarried, roughed into prefabricated and standardized shapes, and then shipped hundreds or even thousands of kilometres across the Roman world seems an unlikely undertaking, but such was the prestige of exotic stones in the empire that the unlikely became commonplace. Columns, capitals and bases, architectural mouldings, sarcophagi and even statues were mass-produced and shipped to clients all over the eastern and western Mediterranean. It is doubtful, however, whether this unusual trade would have developed without imperial impetus. Decorative stones of the type which the Romans called marmor were quarried and shipped to Rome under the Julio-Claudian and Flavian emperors for use in imperial building projects, the object being to enhance both the prestige of the capital city and its imperial benefactors. In order to secure the supply, and to exploit these stones on a large scale, the emperors took control of many of the quarries producing them. In this way imported stones, with their distinctive and attractive colours and patterns, or their fine surfaces and polishes, became symbolic of the centre of power. They could be obtained only at great effort and expense, and they were clearly associated with imperial supremacy. Cities and individuals in the provinces sought to obtain these symbols to enhance their own prestige, and by the late first or early second century the demand for such stones was strong enough to engender a viable distribution network to supply clients and communities outside Rome. The imperial supply system began providing stone commercially for other cities of the empire. What is most remarkable is not that it was possible to extract and move such quantities of stone, but that a social need for such quantities made it acceptable to do so on a regular basis.

The System
Our understanding of the marble trade owes much to the pioneering work of John Ward-Perkins, who was able to demonstrate the scale and importance of Roman exploitation. Only the general outlines of this trade’s development and mode of operation are known, and some elements of the basic model are disputed. Nevertheless there is general agreement about the existence of an organized system and the importance of this for the spread of ‘Graeco-Roman’ architectural styles and building types in the eastern Mediterranean. Major quarries appear to have come under imperial ownership during the first century, although some were opened up for large-scale exploitation only in the second, when the demand was increasing. The manner in which the imperial quarries were exploited is not entirely clear. They seem to have been run by imperial officials, who leased out parts of the quarries to private contractors. It remains possible, however, that certain centres of production remained independent of imperial control. Most of the quarries were close to the sea, enabling their products to be shipped easily, and the shapes and designs of the individual items were often roughed out prior to shipping to lighten the load (quarries located far from the sea appear to have gone to greater lengths to finish off their products before moving them, presumably to cut down on transport costs). The physical characteristics of the stones often dictated what sort of objects could be produced, and the dimensions of the flawless blocks that could be quarried limited the sizes and shapes of those objects. In this way a high degree of uniformity in the end product was established right at the outset. 
The distribution of products from individual quarries shows that each quarry had preferred areas to which exports were directed. Apart from the city of Rome, the overall bias in the use of decorative stones is clearly towards cities of the eastern Mediterranean (where the majority of quarries were located), but finds are known as far west as Britain, albeit in small quantities. Marble sarcophagi are one of the commonest forms of monumental stone object to be mass-produced and exported by quarries (see below), and trade in these is better understood than for some other classes of object. Their distribution resembles that of ceramic fine wares in that there are clusters of the same types of sarcophagi in certain regions, suggesting that these regions were targeted intensively by particular quarries. It is not clear whether sarcophagi, like fine pottery, travelled with other cargoes, but their bulk and weight presumably formed the major element of a ship’s freight. The quarries probably employed agents at targeted centres overseas, who took orders, perhaps stockpiled popular products, and who employed sculptors familiar with the qualities of the stones to finish the products for clients. These sculptors may sometimes have travelled from the quarry to the overseas agency, but it is more likely that they were permanently established overseas. As noted above, the fully fledged system of trade in decorative stones did not develop until the late first or early second century, perhaps in connection with the massive building projects at Rome under Domitian (AD 81-96), Trajan (98-117) and Hadrian (117-38). Whilst there is some limited evidence that individuals other than emperors may have been able to acquire some stone during the early phase of imperial exploitation under the Julio-Claudian emperors, it was only afterwards that a sophisticated commercial system developed. Now the quarries produced ready-made items for sale. From the early second century the trade was characterized by massive exploitation of particular sorts of stone hailing from a limited number of centres, and widespread use of these stones by communities all over the eastern Mediterranean. 

Syria and the Common Vocabulary of Stone
The ancient concept of ‘marble’ embraced a rather broader category of rocks than the modern geological notion of marble, and covers all sorts of decorative stones that could be given a polished finish. While a wide variety of these stones has been found on Syrian and Near Eastern sites, the products of certain quarries are particularly prominent there (fig. 77). In its combination of imported stones, particularly granites, Syria resembles the southern coast of Asia Minor, and Egypt, more than it does Greece or Italy.
Syria was a major importer of decorative stones, having no significant supplies of its own. Some quarries produced local limestones and gypsum which could be polished so that they resembled marble, but otherwise all decorative marbles were imported or, if unavailable or too expensive, imitated in some less costly medium. Prior to the widespread availability of decorative coloured stones, a common option was to paint wall plaster in imitation of marble veneers. This is what King Herod did when building his elaborate ‘hanging’ palace on the precipitous northern spur of the rock of Masada in Judaea. Although Herod took advantage of the possibilities of long-distance trade to import other prestige goods, he reigned too early to benefit from the main phase of trade in marbles. Otherwise, no doubt, the walls of his palace would have been faced with imported veneers, and the limestone columns and Corinthian and Ionic capitals, cut by Jewish masons, would have been prefabricated marble ones (this is not to imply that he was unable to acquire any high status materials, as he did have opus sectile floors mixing local and imported stones in his palaces). Even after they became widely available, decorative stones might prove too expensive for some projects. At Majdel Aanjar in the Bekaa valley a locally-occurring conglomerate (see p. 000) was used for the columns and pilasters of a large temple of the second century AD. The stone is of a rather rough quality, but from a distance its mottled pink colour vaguely resembles that of Egyptian granite. The building may have been trying to compete in a modest way with the great religious complex at nearby Heliopolis. The design and decoration of this temple was similar to the so-called ‘Temple of Bacchus’ at Heliopolis; the use of this pinkish conglomerate may be a conscious imitation, in cheaper local materials, of the genuine Egyptian red granite used in the courtyard of the Temple of Jupiter Heliopolitanus.
Movement of huge, heavy stone objects was greatly facilitated by water transport, and therefore import of decorative stones was commoner at sites on the Syrian coast than at sites inland (colour plate 18). This is no doubt a contributing factor to the general observation by modern scholars that the coastal cities were more thoroughly Hellenized than those of the interior. Opus sectile floors laid with coloured marbles, cemeteries populated with imported sarcophagi, or colonnades of cipollino, grey or red granites, are a notable feature of Syrian and Palestinian coastal cities, while local limestones proliferated in high-status buildings at inland centres. Nevertheless, it was clearly felt to be important for cities inland to have at least some decorative stones, and the inhabitants must have expended considerable effort in obtaining them: large columns of Egyptian red granite are found at Heliopolis, Gerasa, Philadelphia (Amman), and even as far inland as Palmyra. A common architectural vocabulary, based around imports of the same stones and forms, linked the cities of the Syrian hinterland to those of the coast.
One of the most important centres of marble production and export was the island of Proconnesus in the Sea of Marmara, which yielded a fine white marble with faint bands of grey. The entire island is made of this marble, and thus it was easy to extract and ship. Proconnesian marble was used for a variety of purposes, mainly for architectural elements such as column capitals and bases, entablatures and pilasters, but the quarry also specialized in sarcophagi. The island’s exploitation probably increased in the fourth century with the foundation of Constantinople, but the quarry was being worked intensively and its products widely distributed overseas long before this. Proconnesian marble is very common in the Syrian region. 
Geology determined what types of stones were preferred for columns. In Syria and the Near East the favoured imported types were granites and a green-banded marble from Carystus in Euboea which resembles the layers of an onion and since the Renaissance has been called cipollino. The main sources of granite in the eastern Mediterranean were quarries in the Troad of north-western Asia Minor (producing grey granites) and Egypt (producing both red and grey). Most of the grey granite found in the Syrian region is thought to be Troadic rather than Egyptian; it now looks as if the Egyptian grey granite was used almost exclusively for imperial projects. Other quarries in western Asia Minor provided grey granite columns, but in smaller quantities. Columns appear to have been produced in a range of standard sizes, although it seems that quarries could make special sizes (such as very large columns over 12 metres (40 feet) high) to order. Unlike most other objects which were merely roughed out before leaving the quarries, columns were shipped in an almost-finished state, with projecting collars to protect their ends. These collars could then be dressed into torus mouldings on arrival. 
Many quarries produced blocks of stone for use in wall veneers and opus sectile floors, which were sawn into suitable panels at the destination. There is some evidence to support the view that these blocks were cut to standard sizes, to minimize waste. Veneers were widely employed in both public and private buildings, giving them the appearance of being made of solid marble, and are commonly found in the cities of the coast. Small quantities were relatively easy to transport overland, which may explain the modest use of opus sectile flooring in places like Palmyra. Coloured limestone sometimes sufficed as a substitute when the real thing was too expensive or too difficult to find, or it might be used in combination with limited quantities of marble. The sixth-century opus sectile floor found in the so-called House of the Consoles at Apamea used mainly limestone, slate and ceramic (materials commonly employed in mosaic) in imitation of more expensive decorative stones.
Fig. 77. Sources of the principal decorative stones exported to the Syrian region.

1. Proconnesus (white marble)
2. Thasos (white marble)
3. Bithynia (breccia corallina)
4. Assos (lapis sarcophagus)
5. Troad (grey granite)
6. Docimium (pavonazzetto)
7. Thessaly (green breccia, verde antico)
8. Carystus (green-veined marble, cipollino)
9. Mount Pentelikon (white marble)
10. Paros (white marble)
11. Mons Porhyrites (purple porphyry)
12. Syene (Aswan, pink granite)

Mass-production of architectural elements by the main quarries leads us to wonder whether the design and decoration of buildings was limited by what the customers or builders could obtain from the quarries, or whether the quarries were tailoring their products in response to popular demand. It is noteworthy that the inspiration for the styles tended to derive from the place where the quarry was located rather than from overseas. Thus the Attic quarries exported capitals of a type characteristic of Roman Athens. The Proconnesian quarries are thought to have been influenced by the tastes and styles of late second- and early third-century Asia Minor, and their influence helped to make these designs part of an interprovincial architectural vocabulary which we now associate with early imperial ‘Graeco-Roman’ architecture. An element typical of Asia Minor is the pilaster decorated with floral scrolls, inhabited by small human figures; very similar ‘peopled scrolls’ are found at Caesarea and Scythopolis, at Leptis Magna in Africa, and sites in Asia Minor. Such a degree of similarity might not be expected from local sculptors working in the different cities, but is easily explained if the quarries directed the decoration according to standardized patterns. The fact that in the Syrian region grey granite columns tend to occur in conjunction with Proconnesian capitals, entablatures and column bases (for example, at Tyre, Caesarea, Gadara), whereas Egyptian granite columns more commonly employ local limestone elements, hints at a possible co-ordination between the Troadic and Proconnesian quarries, the former supplying columns and the latter the other elements. 
It seems likely that the quarries disseminated the styles, which were adopted by communities overseas. In the case of sarcophagus designs, when it came to deciding which types to market in Syria the quarry at Proconnesus may have been influenced by local preferences, yet the types preferred were actually inspired by sarcophagus designs popular in Asia Minor (see below). Even if the styles were the result of a two-way process of dialogue between quarries and customers, the resulting range of ‘off-the-shelf’ designs was limited, rather like the products available in modern do-it-yourself stores, and this would have forced architects and builders to work with standard sizes, colours and types. Proconnesian architectural elements found in Berytus were carved with instructions for assembly, probably at the quarry. In the late empire quarries on the islands of Thasos and Proconnesus were producing ready-made ‘kits’ for churches, including columns, chancel screens, altars and other fittings. The marble trade contributed to architectural uniformity, and there are growing indications that it may have contributed to artistic uniformity as well. There is good evidence for statues being mass-produced, either being finished in the quarry or shipped in a roughed-out state for completion at the destination. (This does not rule out the production of unique pieces to order, but the sculptors employed are likely to have been those familiar with the working properties of the marble. Therefore the style of unique pieces is likely to have conformed to the typical products of a quarry.) Generic busts could be shipped with the features of the faces roughed out; an appropriately skilled craftsman could subsequently turn them into individual portraits. Certain quarries specialized in particular sorts of statue, so that poses or the types of figure were to some extent predetermined and limited. As with architectural elements the kind of stone might determine the size, type or pose of the statue. Purple porphyry from Egypt was deemed particularly appropriate for imperial figures (an excellent if headless example, probably of Hadrian, is to be found re-employed in the so-called ‘Byzantine esplanade’ at Caesarea). Although desirable and expensive, a considerable quantity of the sculptural ‘high art’ of the Roman world was mass-produced; it was the provincial art that was often more truly original. It is perhaps not surprising that the purely classical-style sculptures are commoner on coastal sites and local styles in local materials more characteristic of the interior. As with architecture, the difficulties and cost of land transport provided greater incentive to ‘do it yourself’ inland, rather than import the elements ready-made. Sometimes those sculptures that were imported to the cities of the hinterland might provide a curious juxtaposition with local work. The sanctuary of the goddess Allat at Palmyra contained an imported marble statue of Athena (a goddess assimilated to Allat), a copy of a fifth-century-BC Greek masterpiece by the sculptor Pheidias. It must have provided a strong stylistic contrast with the Palmyrene limestone sculptures of the sanctuary (fig. 140). It was no doubt a prestige object, but its purely classical form does not necessarily prove that Palmyrenes preferred classical art over native art - prestige objects of this sort were simply not available in local styles and forms. 
However, the prestige of objects in marble did encourage their imitation in cheaper local stones, and the craftsmen employed by the overseas agents of the major quarries may have been prepared to work for clients using local materials. Limestone imitations of Proconnesian sarcophagi sometimes resemble the originals to an astonishing degree. Such imitations in local stones strongly suggest that these craftsmen employed by the quarries were permanently established at importing centres, rather than travelling with shipments to finish them wherever they were sent. Through imitation, successful quarries disseminated their styles over a much wider area, influenced products made in local materials and potentially increased demand for the real thing. 
Fig. 78. The Tyre necropolis. Imported marble and local limestone sarcophagi are placed side by side among and on tombs.
Sarcophagi provide the clearest evidence for the theory of mass-production and stockpiling. The Syrians had always tended to bury rather than cremate their dead, and an increasing trend towards burial rather than cremation in the Roman world in the second century led to a growth in the demand for sarcophagi. The Phoenician cities of the coast had imported marble sarcophagi in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, as finds from Sidon show, and the Roman trade in these objects may represent a continuation of the tradition. Most quarries shipped their sarcophagi in what is called a ‘quarry state’, that is, with the surfaces roughly dressed with a claw chisel and the areas for relief designs blocked out. As a result, standardization at the quarry often dictated how the decoration on the surfaces of the finished sarcophagus would look. The standard form for marble sarcophagi was a rectangular box closed with a lid, the latter normally having a pitched roof and acroteria at the corners. The sarcophagus thus resembled a house or a temple; a similitude not lost on some people, who had the sloping sides of the lids sculpted in imitation of roof tiles. The acroteria also helped to strengthen and protect the corners of the lid. Only after it had been placed in the tomb or cemetery would the surfaces of the sarcophagus be finished, and normally only those sides exposed to view would be completed. Sometimes they were lined with a second sarcophagus made of lead sheets, although lead sarcophagi were also used for independent burials. Lids were secured with metal clamps, but finds show that they were frequently tampered with, not necessarily to rob the contents, but to reuse the sarcophagi at a later date. Sometimes they were used for multiple burials over a period of time, perhaps by the same family; at other times old sarcophagi were appropriated illegally by strangers. A number of inscriptions on the sarcophagi naming the deceased are crudely carved compared to the care lavished on the decoration, and suggest that the occupants named were not their original owners.
Fig. 79. Typical imported sarcophagus forms. 79.1. Proconnesian garland sarcophagus in quarry state, side and end views. 79.2. Garland sarcophagus after reliefs have been added in situ. 79.3. Proconnesian pedimental gable sarcophagus, side and end views. The boss in the pediment was often worked into a decorative motif. 79.4. Sarcophagus of lapis sarcophagus, side and end views.
The Tyre necropolis gives us a good idea of the trade in these objects. The excavated part of the cemetery lies on the peninsula of Tyre, surrounding the main road and aqueduct approaching the city. The majority of imported sarcophagi there come from Proconnesus, but Tyrians evidently had a number of choices when selecting sources and designs. Quarries might specialize in more than one design, but each was peculiar to the quarry producing it. The Proconnesian quarries manufactured three main types, but of these only two forms were marketed in the Syrian region: the so-called ‘garland sarcophagus’ and the ‘pedimental gable’ type (fig. 79). Garland sarcophagi seem to have been common in the necropoleis of coastal cities in Syria and Palestine, and they were shipped in their quarry state from Proconnesus to destinations all over the eastern Mediterranean and to Italy. When decorated they were usually sculpted with putti or ox-heads supporting garlands, with gorgoneions in the fields (fig. 79.2). At Tyre most people were content to leave them in their quarry state, or at the most covered the sarcophagus with a smooth layer of plaster; only occasionally was a sculptor employed to decorate them. The rarity of decorated ones at Tyre led Ward-Perkins to suggest that no suitable workshop for finishing them was regularly available in the city, and that perhaps the main centre for importing and decorating them was located in another coastal city. Finished garland sarcophagi are known from Laodicea, Tripolis, Byblus and Berytus, and also from Antioch, Apamea and Arethusa, but it is impossible to quantify the ratio of finished to quarry state pieces at these places without systematic exploration of their cemeteries, and it is not clear which of the cities could have served as the main regional centre for such imports. The chronology of the sarcophagi is also difficult to establish. Because they were reused, inscriptions and contents are not necessarily an accurate guide. The garland design is thought to have developed in the marble quarries of Asia Minor in the first half of the second century; the precise date of its adoption by the Proconnesian quarry is uncertain. It was certainly being produced in the second half of the second century and through the third, though perhaps no later than this. The pedimental gable type appears to have been produced for the Syrian market, and may be an example of a quarry catering to local tastes. However, there is no clear evidence for prototypes of the pedimental gable type in local stones, so the inspiration may have been foreign to Tyre. The decoration on the pedimental gable sarcophagi is fairly minimal, and mainly restricted to gorgoneions or rosettes and mouldings in the pediments. The type began in the second century but continued into the late Roman period, though once again the dating is insecure.
Another common class of sarcophagus was produced in a rough, dark volcanic stone, the source of which was identified by Ward-Perkins at Assos, in north-western Asia Minor. This was known in antiquity as lapis sarcophagus, ‘flesh-eating stone’, which Pliny the Elder in the first century referred to as capable of consuming corpses in forty days, ‘except for teeth’. From the second to third century these sarcophagi were exported to Syria, Greece, Egypt and Italy. Their quarry state seems to have been their finished state; the stone was so rough that it was hardly worth trying to dress them any further. Their surfaces are decorated with stylized garlands and a panel which could receive an inscription (fig. 79.4). To the modern eye they do not look aesthetically pleasing, but they were perhaps appreciated for their other well-known property.
Much less common is a class of Attic sarcophagi in Pentelic marble from Athens. Again, these are dated to the second and third centuries. The very fine white marble of which they were made was highly prized, and the products of the Attic quarries are thought to have been considerably more expensive than those of Proconnesus. The faces of the sarcophagi are usually decorated with elaborate figured panels, which were prepared in shallow relief at the quarry before being transported. The lids were either gabled like those of the Proconnesian sarcophagi or sculpted in imitation of funerary couches, bearing reclining figures of the deceased. The faces of these figures were left unfinished; accurate likenesses of the clients would be added when the sarcophagus was in position, though in the case of the Tyre examples this was not always done and the heads remain in their quarry state. The location of the sarcophagus in the tomb or cemetery, and the angles from which it could be viewed, tended to dictate how many sides would be carved in deeper relief and polished. 
It is important to emphasize that not all sarcophagi in the Tyre necropolis were imported. A large number was made of local limestone. These were sometimes of a simple ‘shoe-box’ design with a flat lid, but more commonly they had pitched lids with acroteria at the corners, and therefore resemble the general form of the two main Proconnesian types. The commonest have no decoration, although they often bear traces of a plaster or stucco coating. Some have an altar carved in high relief at one end to receive offerings. However, the local limestone sarcophagi also imitate specific imported types. What is perhaps most remarkable is that garland sarcophagi were imitated in their quarry state as well as their finished form, suggesting that even in their unfinished condition the originals were highly prestigious. At any rate, the popularity of the garland type among the imitations attests to the influence of Proconnesian designs.
The marble trade had a profound effect upon the material culture of Syria and the Near East. Cities could acquire prefabricated elements for buildings, or, if they could not afford these, they might be able to have competent copies made in local materials. Temples and other public buildings could be decorated with sculpture, either mass-produced or specially commissioned. Individuals could have statues and portraits produced by craftsmen skilled in classical styles, and they could be buried in imported sarcophagi. The uniformity of this cultural material speaks of a desire for regularity, but it should be noted that this desire was mainly that of the elites who could afford to pay for such expensive objects, and who had the most to gain by aligning themselves with the ‘international’ overlay culture of the Roman Mediterranean. This is a topic which will be readdressed in the chapters that follow.

Textiles
Textile production appears to have been very important in many Syrian and Near Eastern cities. The product, unfortunately, is less durable than the other classes of object discussed, and apart from a few fragments of fabric from the drier regions and sites like Dura Europus, Palmyra and the Euphrates fortress of Zenobia, most information has to be gathered from written sources. These hint at a large-scale trade in textiles, and at the fact that there were major centres of textile production which manufactured goods for a wide market. Linen, which could be woven into fine, cool and light garments, was exported from Syria to the west. The Descriptio Totius Orbis mentions cities which ‘export linen to all the world’: Scythopolis, Laodicea, Byblus, Tyre and Berytus. The author neglects to mention Antioch as a centre of linen production, and yet Antiochene linen is recorded in other sources as a material for cheap and probably low-quality clothing. It was also exported in quantity, so much so that even a ‘primitivist’ like A. H. M. Jones, noting that cheap clothes called ‘unbleached Antiochenes’ were available at Rome in the fourth century, conceded the possibility ‘that in large towns at any rate the cheapest clothing was imported from the large centres of production’. Cheap products, shipped in bulk, suggest that transport costs for such items were low - unless these linens were exported solely as tax in kind. Egyptian papyri record weavers producing garments to be exported for military use. These weavers functioned independently of the state factories established, probably by Diocletian, to supply the army, and the fact that they did so suggests that the state did not rely entirely on its own workers for supplies of textiles.
	The Edict on Maximum Prices published in AD 301 by the emperor Diocletian lists prices for types of garment according to place of manufacture. From it we learn that Damascus, for example, produced woollens, linen mattresses and pillows, and it concurs with the Descriptio Totius Orbis that Laodicea, Byblus and Scythopolis were important for linens. That the cities were listed in an edict published empire-wide suggests their products were familiar to more than strictly local consumers. These were ‘international’ products. They seem to have been distinguished according to quality, but perhaps also by design or cut, because the list distinguishes ‘imitation’ products (for example, Alexandrian linens imitating those of Tarsus). As with marble sculptures and architectural elements, widespread trade in particular designs of clothing will have led to standardized styles.
From Syria there is also some documentary evidence for textiles and traders who dealt in clothes. Nebuchelus, the owner of a house at Dura Europus, and perhaps a textile manufacturer, left a number of graffiti scratched into the plaster of the walls recording commercial transactions. One recorded a large mixed load of goods which travelled up the Euphrates north to Appadana. It included short cloaks, ‘dalmatic’ cloaks, damaged boys’ clothes, girls’ clothes and other textile items.
	The textile industry exported and supplied ready-to-wear garments at a variety of prices, suitable for all classes. Expensive clothes seem to have been produced only in a few centres, particularly Scythopolis, Byblus and Laodicea, and in the latter part of the sixth century a silk industry was established at Antioch, Berytus and Tyre to serve the requirements of the ruling elites. This is not to say that all textile goods were imported from regional or distant centres of production. Cheaper textiles, such as the fragments of woollen tapestry, and goat's hair carpet or saddle cloth found at Dura Europus, could have been produced locally.

Coinage
Historians generally assume that the Roman empire was a single monetary system, with a commonly accepted currency. This standardization is thought to have been due to the tax demands of the Roman state, which coincidentally facilitated regional and long-distance trade. As the Roman empire expanded, it imposed its coinage on conquered regions, and was thus able to bring those regions into a monetary economy centred on Italy. Taxes in coin flowed out of tax-producing provinces to the centre (Rome), and were then redistributed to tax-consuming provinces, particularly those where large armies were stationed. A single monetary system greatly facilitated trade, enabling tax-producing provinces to engage in overseas exports to win money with which to pay taxes. In this way, taxation stimulated trade, and the monetary system provided an ideal environment for these activities. 
However, in reality things may not have been quite so simple. The main tax coin of the early empire is presumed to have been the silver denarius, but a variety of silver and bronze coinages were issued in the Roman provinces, and these did not circulate widely. How these coinages worked in relation to the denarius is not always clear. For the first three centuries of Roman rule small change in the east was provided mainly in the form of local, Greek-style city coinages. These were a continuation of a long-standing tradition whereby Greek cities had issued their own coinages, a custom which the Romans respected. Not every city issued its own money, and those that did not, or those which issued coins only rarely, seem to have made do with the coinages of neighbouring cities. Exactly how they acquired the coinages of their neighbours is not certain. All of this raises questions about the ways in which communities paid money taxes. 
We have no definite knowledge of how coins were put into circulation. Clearly the Roman state did not simply give newly minted money away for free. An obvious route by which coins could enter circulation, and the one most frequently invoked, is as payment for services. The Roman state needed to pay its employees, particularly its armies. While it is highly likely that the bulk of imperial coinage was produced with such considerations in mind, a single explanation of this sort is likely to oversimplify the motives for striking coins, particularly when it comes to the question of civic issues. Local city coinages are likely to have been produced to meet local needs. At any rate, by producing coinage themselves the cities did not have to rely entirely on coinage sent from Rome. (But, at the same time, it is hard to see how Rome could have controlled the amount of money in circulation.) Some eastern cities might also have commissioned other mints to produce the coin for them, including major mints like Rome. It is now known that certain issues of provincial bronze and silver were made at Rome and sent to Syria and other eastern provinces. The possibility that local communities could buy coin direct from a mint provides an alternative route for coinage entering circulation.
It is difficult to assess the extent to which the Syrian economy was fully monetized, but what evidence there is suggests that the use of coinage was widespread, in the countryside as well as in the cities. Inscriptions and papyri provide clear evidence of cash transactions for all sorts of exchanges and in different sections of society. Many of these are for relatively large amounts or costly items, but some provide us with a glimpse of prices for everyday expenses. A third-century account from the mithraeum at Dura Europus lists the prices of materials required for a ritual banquet: ‘Meat, 1(9) denarii [...]; sauce, 1 denarius; paper, 1 obol [?]; water, 1 denarius; wood, 1 denarius; jar of wine, 28 denarii 11 obols [?]; total: 51 denarii, 11 obols [?].’ Other documents, such as those from the Babatha archive and the archive from the Euphrates (see p. 000) suggest that coinage was in common use in the villages of first- and second-century Nabataea and Arabia, and the Euphrates region during the third century. 
Finds of coins from sites also suggest a high degree of monetization. There are two basic categories of find: hoards, which were deliberately concealed and tend to contain valuable coins; and site finds, the product of casual loss or discard, which are largely composed of low-value bronzes. Thus site finds can tell us very little about the circulation of silver or gold coins, and securely provenanced hoards of bronzes are comparatively rare, at least in the early empire. Apart from the site of Dura Europus, destroyed by the Persians in the mid-third century, few Syrian sites have yielded significant numbers of silver coins. This does not mean, however, that a reconstruction of the monetary economy of Roman Syria is beyond us; on the contrary, although much remains to be done, the general outline is becoming clearer as more finds are analysed.

Roman Imperial Coinage
In general, the bronze coinage issued at Rome did not circulate, although it is clear that some special coinages were struck at Rome for issue in Syria. But the regular issues of sestertii, dupondii and asses of the sort commonly found in the western empire are mostly rare or absent, and the region relied heavily on locally produced currencies in bronze. In this respect the pattern of base metal coin use in Syria resembles, in broad terms, that observed in neighbouring Asia Minor. It is clear from hoards and site finds that silver denarii and gold aurei did circulate in Syria and the Near East, but the date of their introduction is problematic. A few mixed hoards combining local Tyrian tetradrachms (shekels) and republican denarii or Augustan denarii are known, hinting that these Roman imperial coins circulated in Phoenicia and Judaea during the late first century BC and under the Julio-Claudian emperors, but there is no clear evidence of their circulation in the north until the second century. The statement by Tacitus, that during the initial stages of Vespasian’s rebellion against Vitellius (AD 69) gold and silver coinages were struck at Antioch (Histories 2.82), is supported by surviving issues of aurei and denarii which can be attributed to that mint. This suggests that aurei and denarii were circulating in the north from the Flavian period onwards, but what happened there under the Julio-Claudians is unknown. If AD 69 does indeed mark the introduction of Roman imperial coinages in precious metal to northern Syria, this change may be related to developments in provincial silver issues (see below).
	By the second century denarii and aurei were regularly being hoarded with local silver currencies, and inscriptions and papyri indicate their presence (at least as units of account) from the Flavian period. Most of these denarii were produced at Rome, and the only significant production of aurei and denarii in Syria occurred under the usurper Pescennius Niger (AD 193-4) and during the early years of Septimius Severus’ reign. In the third century, under Gordian III (AD 238-44), Antioch became a mint for imperial silver ‘radiates’ or antoniniani, and under Trebonianus Gallus (AD 251-3) antoniniani became the only sort of silver coin to be produced in Syria. Some have seen this as a response to the Sasanian invasions of the mid-third century and the need to supply armies with imperial coins, though why the change should have been prompted at this juncture and not during earlier crises is unclear. A number of factors may have contributed to the change (see below).

Provincial Issues
It remains to discuss the other kinds of coins that circulated in Syria and the Near East during the early empire. These were a continuation of late Hellenistic coinages. The Seleucids had struck royal coinages in silver and bronze, principally at Antioch but also at other mints such as Damascus, Tyre and Ptolemais. Independence from the Seleucid empire had resulted in many cities striking their own bronze civic issues, sometimes dated from the year of their autonomy. A few of these cities also struck civic silver coinages, most notably Laodicea, Aradus and Tyre. That their issues were regular is confirmed by the dates which the coins bear, and the number of dies used and the number of hoards known confirm that many issues were fairly substantial. A possible context for these remarkable silver coinages is the frequent warfare of the late Hellenistic and late republican periods, with cities being obliged through alliances with one Roman supremo or another to make cash contributions to their military efforts. A recent study has shown that production at Laodicea and Aradus was higher in 65-63 BC than before or after, and relates this to Pompey’s presence in Syria. 
	Initially the Roman annexation had little effect on the types of currencies being issued. The principal unit of silver coinage issued in Syria was the tetradrachm, a large coin of about 15 grams (½ oz). However, in addition to tetradrachms, a half-unit (the didrachm) was commonly issued by mints in Phoenicia, particularly Tyre. That the didrachm was hardly struck at all in the north may well be significant, suggesting different regional needs. One obvious use for the didrachm in the south is the Jewish Temple-tax, which was set at one half-shekel (equivalent to one didrachm) per person. For the first few years of the new province the north relied on old Seleucid silver coins, but under the governor Aulus Gabinius (57-55 BC) Antioch began striking tetradrachms once again (fig. 80.1). These could be considered the first ‘official’ coins of the province of Syria. Gabinius is viewed as having a certain degree of financial acumen, but whether he was personally responsible for reviving the Antiochene tetradrachm is another matter. The choice of designs is interesting: the coins retained the portrait, name and titles of the Seleucid king Philip Philadelphus (93-83 BC). Gabinius’ authority is confined to his name in the form of a small and cryptic monogram on the reverse, making it unclear whether the coins were the product of Gabinius’ initiative. Hoards show that genuine coins of Philip were in widespread use in the north, and the choice of types may have been prompted by the desire to make the new coins acceptable to the population. A political statement could also be construed: Philip, who ruled before the invasion of Tigranes, was the last Seleucid king whom the Romans viewed as legitimate, and the new coinage was making a statement about legitimacy. The first Roman coinages of Asia and Egypt likewise imitate pre-Roman issues and denominations.
	These ‘posthumous Philip’ tetradrachms continued to be struck at Antioch down to the end of the first century BC, many of them dated according to the Caesarean era of Antioch and using a monogram of the city’s name in place of that of Gabinius. Elsewhere regular minting of silver ceased at all cities with the exception of Tyre, which continued to strike its distinctive tetradrachms and didrachms with traditional designs (fig. 80.2). Unlike the posthumous Philips, the Tyrian coins bear the inscription ‘of Tyre, sacred and inviolate’, clearly identifying them with their city of issue rather than a ruler, living or dead. Hoards show that the two types of coinage did not circulate together: the posthumous Philips circulated in the north, and the Tyrian coins in Phoenicia and the south. The alloys used were different too: Tyrian silver was considerably finer than its northern counterpart. Thus there is reason to view the region being divided into two quite separate systems as far as the circulation of provincial silver was concerned. 
Fig. 80. Provincial silver coinages of Roman Syria. 80.1. ‘Posthumous Philip’ tetradrachm of Aulus Gabinius, 57-55 BC. Head of Philip Philadelphus / Seated figure of Zeus of Daphne, monogram of Gabinius before. 80.2. Tyrian didrachm or half-shekel. Head of Melkart / Eagle on thunderbolt. 80.3. Antiochene tetradrachm of Vespasian (AD 69-79), with a ‘Tyrian’ eagle reverse type. BMC Phoenicia, Provincial, 3. 80.4. Tetradrachm of Caracalla (AD 198-217) from Tyre; the murex shell between the eagle’s legs on the reverse identifies the mint. BMC Phoenicia, provincial, 36.
	These provincial silver coinages must have been expensive to produce. We do not know for certain whether they were financed by the Roman state, but if they were used to pay taxes it is likely that the state would have had an interest in them. The choice of types for the posthumous Philips can be read as evidence that this was a kind of imperial coinage for the province of Syria, but the Tyrian coinage does not fit this mould so easily. To characterize all of the provincial silver of Syria and the Near East as ‘imperial’ is to wield an assumption rather than to describe its nature.
	From about 5 BC the Antiochene tetradrachm bore the imperial portrait. Tyrian silver, however, continued to carry traditional designs, with no hint that Tyre was part of the Roman empire. The two patterns of circulation, and the degree of ‘Romanization’ of their designs, parallels rather neatly the political and military situation of the Julio-Claudian period: the north, characterized by a strong military presence, with its possible ‘imperial’ coinage; and the south, characterised by a much lesser military presence, with a silver coinage making no reference to Roman power at all.
	A major change to the silver came under Nero. Antioch began striking tetradrachms which combined the imperial portrait with reverse designs typical of Tyre. A few hoards show these new Antiochene coins circulating in the south alongside Tyrian silver, and by AD 69 or 70 Tyre had ceased production altogether. The change is quite dramatic: Antiochene silver, which was less pure, replaced the Tyrian, but adopted Tyrian designs, which remained standard for Syrian tetradrachms thereafter (fig. 80.3). Whatever special needs had been served by having two separate systems for provincial silver would henceforth have to make do with one, consisting only of Antiochene tetradrachms. The coincidence of the fall of Jerusalem to Titus and the end of Tyrian coinage has led some to suggest that Tyrian silver was produced specifically for Jewish needs (or that it was not produced in Tyre at all, but at Jerusalem), but hoard evidence from a variety of sites in Phoenicia supports a broader interpretation of their purpose. 
	Later hoards are important for showing not only the adoption of a single system for silver, but also the complete elimination of Tyrian silver and any northern issues prior to the new coinage of Nero. Once again, this fits quite neatly with the observations made by scholars about the changes made to the eastern provinces under Vespasian and the greater integration of Syria and the Near East into the military system of the empire during this period (on these, see pp. 00-00 and 000-000). The coincidence of the two processes might suggest that they are related, as might the striking of aurei and denarii at Antioch. Some change to the system of coin use had clearly taken place, although without more evidence from finds it will be hard to elucidate the precise nature of this change.
	Apart from a reduction in silver content under Trajan, hoard evidence shows that during the period from Nero to Septimius Severus there were no major changes to the pattern of provincial silver in circulation. The main mint remained at Antioch, although there is evidence to suggest that during this period some mints outside Syria were used to strike Syrian tetradrachms - particularly Rome and Alexandria in Egypt. This phenomenon, of a mint in one region being used to produce provincial silver coinage for another, has been noted for other eastern provinces. It could mean that provincials were able to apply to mints outside Syria to produce their coinage; alternatively it may have been one method of dealing with the movement of tax surpluses from one province to another, although if so such movement was intermittent and it is hard to discern any overall plan in the pattern of minting.
	The sole reign of Caracalla (211-17) witnessed another debasement of the tetradrachm, and also saw this denomination being produced at many mints in the Syrian region (fig. 80.4). Output of these debased issues was high until Elagabalus (218-22), under whom production ceased. As had happened in the years following Nero’s debasement, the earlier, purer issues began to disappear from circulation. Production at Antioch was revived in the reign of Gordian III (238-44), and continued on a grand scale under Philip (244-49) and Trajan Decius (249-51). Why the Antiochene tetradrachm was discontinued under Trebonianus Gallus (251-3) is not known. The very last issues of this Greek-style silver coinage were produced at Emesa under the usurper Uranius Antoninus (c. AD 253-4).
	The changes to the coinage may relate in some way to changes in the system of taxation. If denarii were introduced to northern Syria c. AD 69, it may be no coincidence that during this period the tax law of Palmyra shows the Syrian governor Mucianus (AD 68-9) confirming that taxes should be reckoned in denarii. The withdrawals of pre-Neronian and pre-Severan provincial tetradrachms find a parallel in the empire-wide withdrawals of pre-Neronian and (to a lesser extent) pre-Severan denarii at precisely the same periods. The coincidences are surely significant, but more evidence is needed before we can discuss confidently the reasons why the silver coinage was manipulated in this way - and by whom it was manipulated.
	Antioch was also the centre of production for a major series of bronze coins with an imperial portrait on the obverse and the letters ‘SC’ in a wreath on the reverse (fig. 81.1). This SC coinage began under Augustus and was struck for most emperors down to Philip I (244-49). During the first century the inscriptions were in Latin, but under Trajan (98-117) the language switched to Greek. The first-century issues seem to have circulated widely in Syria, and were perhaps intended to be some sort of ‘imperial’ bronze coinage. However, the second century saw a diminution in the area supplied with SC coins. By the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (161-9) they were mainly confined to northern Syria. From the sole reign of Commodus (commencing in 180) to the sole reign of Caracalla (commencing in 211) no SC bronzes were issued at all. They were then revived and struck in large numbers, particularly under Macrinus (217-18) and Elagabalus (218-22), but thereafter they were eclipsed by a new Antiochene city coinage in bronze (fig. 81.2). The SC coinage may have been the casualty of an increasing trend towards local production at city mints, but until its distribution is better known the interaction between the SC bronzes and civic coins will remain poorly understood.
Fig. 81. Some Syrian and Near Eastern provincial bronze currencies. 81.1. SC bronze of Claudius (AD 41-54) from Antioch. BMC 181. 81.2. Civic bronze coin of Trebonianus Gallus and Volusian (AD 251-3) from Antioch, showing the Tyche of Antioch in a portable shrine. BMC 656. 81.3. Civic bronze coin of Philip I (AD 244-9) from Damascus. Bust of Tyche in portable shrine; either side, female figures supporting shrines, each of which contains a bird. BMC 26. 81.4. Civic bronze of Tyre, dated year 289 of the city (AD 153/4), showing the head of the city-goddess on the obverse and a galley on the reverse. The inscription reads ‘of Tyre, sacred, metropolis, 289’. BMC 326. 81.5. Bronze coin issued in Judaea in regnal year 5 of Nero (AD 58-9), with a palm branch and wreath, and the inscription ‘year 5 of Caesar Nero’. Such coins lack imperial portraits in deference to Jewish sensitivity about images.
	It is impossible to generalize about the civic bronze coinages produced by the cities of Syria and the Near East, except to emphasize that most of the issues were intermittent and that what distinguishes them from the SC coins is that they are inscribed in the name of the civic community. The inscriptions are normally in Greek and in the genitive plural - that is, ‘of the Antiochenes’, ‘of the Damascenes’ and so on - which suggests that they were viewed as belonging in some way to the citizens named. They can thus be seen as a sort of register of Syrian civic communities, although not every Syrian city issued its own coins. Nor is the number of coins produced an indication of the importance of the community: the great city of Apamea ceased issuing civic coinage in the reign of Claudius (AD 41-54), while the small coastal community of Balanea continued to issue its own coins down to Gordian III (AD 238-44). Civic bronzes were struck in a wide range of sizes and weights, and it seems that there was no attempt by the Roman government to impose any order on the denominations being issued. It is not at all clear whether the coins were intended to be the equivalents of Roman bronze denominations or Greek ones - some certainly bear Greek value marks, whereas clear Roman value marks are absent.
Syrian civic coinages were slow to adopt the imperial portrait, which did not become common until the later first century. Tyre did not begin placing emperor’s heads on its bronze coins until the city became a colony under Septimius Severus (AD 193-211). Aside from imperial portraits, the designs tend to stress specific local identities: deities of the city, and scenes related to the foundation or origin of the community. Consequently there is an enormous variety of images, each one a recognizable sign of communal identity to its issuers, though sometimes less intelligible to us today. Nevertheless, a wealth of information resides in the iconography of civic coinages (figs. 81; 153; 155; 175). An increasing interest in visibly non-Greek deities can be noted from the early second century, which has some relevance for the survival of non-Greek identities under Roman rule (see chapter 8).
	Even if some of the types appear to be non-classical, the history of civic coinage coincides with the heyday of the classical city in the Hellenistic and Roman east - from its increasing autonomy under the Seleucids and Ptolemies to the decline of monumental building by local elites in the third century. Issues of civic coins can be viewed as monuments themselves: they projected self-images of the community, and it is likely that they were paid for by the civic elites, in the same way that local notables often paid for buildings and other expenses of their city. Increasing reluctance among the elites to make financial contributions (see p. 000) may have led to the decline of civic coinages. The inflation of the mid- and later third century may also have played its part, rendering bronze coinage uneconomical to produce, although if so it is curious that third-century communities tended to persist in issuing large bronzes when they could have issued small ones more economically. The end of provincial coinages may well be linked to changes in the nature of the classical city. Once again, it is a topic that deserves further investigation.
	Civic bronze coins do not appear to have been struck to supply armies, although cities may well have capitalized on the presence of large numbers of Roman troops passing through their territories on campaigns by making the soldiers exchange their silver and gold coins for local small change. Money-changers licenced by each city exchanged foreign coin and silver or gold for the city’s own currency. They charged a fee for doing so, and some of this fee went to the city treasury, although the sums acquired cannot have been very great. In any case cities need not always have issued coins for purely economic motives. Often several decades would pass between successive issues; sometimes so long that a city’s coinage degenerated into almost completely worn bronze discs through protracted use. Some cities may have struck coins simply as a means of asserting their sovereignty, and providing their citizens with small change embossed with symbols of local pride. Site finds suggest that city coinages had a limited circulation (see below), which may mean that the designs were addressed primarily to insiders rather than those from outside the civic community. Thus they were a reminder rather than an advertisement intended to promote the city’s symbols abroad. 
While civic bronze coins were issued in the names of citizen bodies, they were not always produced in the cities where they were issued. Sometimes civic coins were made centrally in a workshop, and the same obverse die (the stamp used to produce the ‘heads’ side of the coin with the imperial portrait) could be used for the issues of more than one city. Perhaps, like the quarries discussed above, these workshops operated as commercial entities, producing coins for clients more cheaply and efficiently than the latter could make coins themselves. There is no clear evidence for the existence of workshops in the Roman east prior to the late second century, and in Syria the only certain one was centred on Antioch, which during the third century struck coins on behalf of Seleucia, Cyrrhus, Hierapolis, Zeugma, Samosata, Laodicea and Philippopolis in Arabia. While this could be viewed as evidence for greater standardization imposed by the state, it is clear that many cities - including some of those listed above - continued to produce their own more eccentric coinages locally, so any standardization was limited in scope.
	Overall the circulation of civic bronze coins appears to have been much more restricted than that of the SC or precious-metal coinages. Exactly how restricted has yet to be determined, but it is possible that certain civic bronzes were legal tender only in the city which issued them. Someone embarking on a ship at Caesarea with a purse full of Caesarean coins may not have been able to use those coins at Sidon or Berytus, for example. This may seem extremely inconvenient to us, but in an environment where hundreds of cities issued coins with thousands of different designs some sort of regulation would have been necessary to determine which coins were legitimate and which were not.
	Trade does not seem to have suffered from having such complex arrangements for currency. Inter-regional trade involved the movement of cargoes, and not necessarily money. The Digest of Roman Law cites a contract of the second century, where a trader borrowed money in Berytus to buy a cargo to sell in Italy. The loan was approved on condition that the trader sell his cargo in Brundisium (Brindisi), use the Italian currency acquired from selling the cargo there to buy another cargo, sail back to Berytus and sell the second cargo and finally repay the loan. Merchants involved in regular regional and long-distance trade may have maintained credit in local currencies with bankers in the cities where they normally did business. This does not mean that coins such as denarii and aurei did not sometimes move about in trade; it merely illustrates how such trade could function without the movement of coinage.
	Production of Syrian provincial coinage came to an abrupt end in the third century. No city in the region issued coins later than the joint reigns of Valerian and Gallienus (AD 253-60). Civic bronzes may have continued to circulate later, but we have very little evidence at our disposal. Thus, within about a decade the nature of coinage produced in the region had changed dramatically: provincial tetradrachms had ceased by c. 253-254, and civic bronzes a few years later. Only one sort of coinage was now being produced and used on any scale: the radiate or antoninianus, which was nominally a silver coin but by now contained only about 2 per cent silver. Production of this coinage at Antioch had begun under Gordian III, and greatly increased under Trebonianus Gallus, at about the time that tetradrachm production at Antioch came to an end. State intervention is possible, although as noted above, other problems characteristic of the third century, such as a change in the nature of the classical city and high inflation, may have had an important part to play in the demise of Roman provincial coinage.

Late Roman and Byzantine Issues
The end of this complex Roman provincial coinage led to greater uniformity of currency. Or at least, the coinage appears uniform, but the distribution still shows strong regional patterns, as if the coinage did not move around very much after its initial injection into a locality. Mints producing coins only of the sort produced at Rome (aurei and antoniniani) opened up in the east, lending a vague degree of homogeneity to the coinage of the empire. Reforms were attempted, particularly under Aurelian (AD 270-5) and Diocletian (AD 284-305), but the distribution of these new coins was patchy, and it is often unclear to us exactly how new issues were supposed to relate to the old. In Syria and the Near East regional supply was provided mainly by an imperial mint at Antioch, with some subsidiary mints active in the late third century. There were far fewer mints for coinage in the Roman east than there had been before, but output was on a far greater scale than the local civic mints had been able to achieve. Antioch’s products did not enjoy exclusive dominance in the Syrian provinces, and coins also came in quantity from Cyzicus in Asia Minor and Alexandria in Egypt and, after its foundation in the 320s, Constantinople. The designs of fourth- and fifth- century coins in gold, silver and bronze were standardized, with major types being struck simultaneously at most mints, whose products were distinguished by abbreviated mint names in small letters on the reverse of the coins. The designs were changed at regular intervals, and in the case of base-metal issues the changes sometimes seem to have been accompanied by demonetization of the preceding issue. However, the degree to which the central government was able to control coin use in the various communities of the empire seems to have varied. In some places old coins continued to circulate, or poor supply of currency was supported by imitations or ‘forgeries’ on a grand scale. These irregular patterns in what was supposed to be a universal currency look like local responses to specific conditions. By the mid-fifth century the system appears to have been in disarray. Silver, which had once been the backbone of the precious-metal coinage, was issued in quantity only in the second half of the fourth and first quarter of the fifth centuries, and its distribution within the empire may have been very irregular. A standard value was maintained in the gold coinage, which remained remarkably stable from the fourth century onwards, but the fifth-century bronze coinage was composed almost entirely of small pieces (nummi) of about 12 millimetres in diameter. The exchange rate between the gold and bronze seems to have varied with no attempt to fix their relative values, the number of bronzes to every gold solidus being measured in thousands. The bronzes probably circulated by the bagful, by weight, rather than as individual coins. There seems to have been little attempt to control the quality of this material: hoards often contain imitations, blank discs, old Hellenistic and Roman provincial issues, or late fourth century coins - anything that was the right size. It seems that nobody looked very carefully at the bronze coins they were using. The later fifth-century bronze coins are much rarer than those of the late fourth to mid-fifth century, but this does not signify a shrinking of the monetary economy between c. 450 and 498, because large numbers of late fourth- and early fifth-century coins remained in circulation.
In AD 498 the emperor Anastasius undertook a reform of the bronze coinage, introducing new, larger coins, clearly marked with units of value. The largest of these was the follis, valued at forty of the small nummi. The introduction of this new bronze coinage marks the beginning of what numismatists have dubbed ‘Byzantine’ coinage, as opposed to ‘late Roman’. In 512 Anastasius made further adjustments, increasing the sizes and weights of the denominations. This coinage continued without significant change under Anastasius’ successors until AD 538, when Justinian increased sizes and weights yet again. Thereafter, however, weights and sizes declined. By the mid-seventh century Byzantine bronze coinage looked rather shabby, and the coins were often made from irregular fragments of metal, including pieces cut from bronze plate, or sometimes even struck on top of old Byzantine or Roman coins. Like its late Roman predecessor, this ‘Byzantine’ coinage was uniform in appearance, but not in distribution. In the first half of the sixth century some of the coastal cities of Phoenicia seem to have opted out of the post-512 system of Anastasius, using only his coins of 498-512, whereas other regions adopted both. In Egypt an entirely separate system of denominations was used, and these issues seem also to have gained some currency in Palestine alongside the regular denominations. And in most places the small late fourth- and fifth-century coins continued to circulate. Nor did the end of Roman rule in the seventh century see the end of ‘Byzantine’ coinage. Old issues remained in use, and for reasons that are quite obscure, Syria under Muslim control imported large quantities of bronze coins of Constans II (AD 641-68). It may be the case that local communities, used to handling Byzantine coinage, continued to acquire coins from Constantinople, and that the Muslims tolerated this. The Umayyads themselves imitated seventh-century Byzantine coinage, even to the extent of copying Christian crosses and symbols of Roman sovereignty. This ‘Arab-Byzantine’ coinage was produced at a number of mints in Syria and Palestine at the end of the seventh century (fig. 82), and in this respect it resembles the old Roman provincial coinage, perhaps revealing once again the underlying regional variations which had always existed, even when the coinage appeared to be uniform.
Fig. 82. Late seventh century ‘Arab-Byzantine’ fals (follis) struck at Heliopolis (Baalbek). The obverse shows two emperors carrying crosses. The figure on the right holds a globe topped by a cross, and another cross is placed between the crowns (topped by crosses) of the two figures. The reverse bears a large value mark, M (= 40 nummi), standard to the Byzantine follis, and the mint name either side in Greek, Helioupole, and beneath in Arabic, Baalbak. 

The Economy of Roman Syria and the Near East
In chapter 1 it was noted that Syria was somewhat loosely integrated into the political and military structures of the Roman empire in the Julio-Claudian period, and that a process of greater integration began only under the Flavians. The evidence for Mediterranean trade provides an interesting contrast to these observations. Economic links between Syria and Italy were established well before, so connections with the centre of power were forged in various different ways. However, archaeological evidence for Syrian and Near Eastern exports during the early empire remains limited, so it is not entirely clear how the region fits into a model whereby the provinces raised tax money through export in this period. With its large armies, the region was probably a tax-consumer, but its agricultural wealth should also have made it a tax-producer. Was the region comparatively self-sufficient in the early empire? How were imports paid for? Export of goods that leave little trace in the archaeological record, such as grain, remains a possibility, and the westward movement of Eastern Sigillata A fine ware pottery may be connected with such trade. But it is only after the various administrative and fiscal reforms under Diocletian and Constantine that we can detect an upsurge in Syrian and Palestinian exports. This may be connected with the foundation of Constantinople and the need for foodstuffs in the new capital, but a link has yet to be demonstrated. Diocletian’s interest in reforming the tax system, and with taxation in kind, probably provided an important stimulus for agriculture and exports in general. The cities were in all probability fundamental to the new economic system, as they had been in the old. The development of regional trade between the Syrian cities and also with Egypt during the fourth century seems to coincide with a major phase of building in many of these cities, concentrating not on public structures but on large private residences, a likely sign that the civic elites were prospering. The fifth century witnessed a general boom in Mediterranean trade, with all corners of the sea exporting and importing goods. Continued agricultural expansion in Syria and the Near East corresponds with the expansion in trade westwards and throughout the empire of Syrian and Palestinian wine, oil and perhaps fish sauce during the course of the century.
Much of the long-distance trade taking place was between Syria other provinces rather than Rome or Constantinople, and some of the commodities traded between communities helped establish a more uniform culture in the eastern Mediterranean. The pattern of trade was as much about interaction between the different regions of the periphery of the empire as it was about exchange between centre and periphery. Whether the exchanges were the result of a ‘free market’ or ‘free trade’ in the Roman empire is still debated, but the complexity of the exchanges makes it highly likely that private interests were an important factor in the movement of goods.
The existence of a major provincial coinage in silver raises questions about the nature of money taxes in Syria. If taxes were collected only in denarii and aurei, it is hard to see how money taxes could have been collected in northern Syria under the Julio-Claudians, and it is unclear why large numbers of tetradrachms continued to be minted long afterwards. (The problem is not unique to Syria; major provincial silver coinages were also produced in neighbouring Cappadocia and Egypt.) If taxes were collected in tetradrachms, are we to assume that these sums were spent in the province or regions where they circulated? The possibility that they were transferred to Rome, melted down and recoined as denarii for distribution elsewhere cannot be overlooked, but where we have evidence, through trace element analysis of denarii, this suggests that recycling of provincial silver was not a universal practice. Denarii of Vespasian, for example, were produced from discrete sources of metal, whose trace element profiles do not match those of contemporary silver coins struck in the eastern provinces. The provincial coinages also raise questions about the nature and extent of monetary exchanges accompanying trade. While long-distance trade could be undertaken with denarii or aurei, it is not clear why provincials persisted in making and using coins which were unsuitable for these purposes. Perhaps the market, although far from being underdeveloped and primitive, was not quite as unbounded and ‘free’ as is sometimes claimed.