the mediterranean and africa 427
Fazzan probably exceeded 100 000. High population and settlement density was due
to the maintenance of a major public works project—an underground water-extraction
system based on extensive tunnel networks known as foggaras. Dating from about 800
bce this technology, which replaced the shaduf water-raising device, is considered an
independent invention of the Garamantes. By the third century ce foggara tunnels
measured 20 000 kilometers in total length and supported a mixed agricultural regime
of Mediterranean, Nile valley, and tropical crops (wheat, barley, figs, grapes, sorghum,
pearl millet, and cotton). Agricultural production generated substantial surpluses,
some of which was exported to Mediterranean emporia. Foggara technology was also
employed in large-scale salt production. The Garamantian Kingdom was pivotal in the
diffusion of this water-management technology which spread across the northern
Sahara in the following centuries. It was a composite of interweaving areas of political
security and state control, of information and trade networks, and local political
alliances and a sovereign and integrated project that was commercial, crafts/mining,
military–political, and agricultural. How does it converge or diverge from contempo-
rary Mediterranean formations? What constituted its Mediterraneanness?
The ruling dynasty, together with confederates or allies like the Nasamones of
Augila, the Atarantes of Ghat, and possibly the Gaetuli federation of the western
Sahara, established in the sixth century bce the basic features of the Saharan oasis–
caravan system that was to endure until the end of the nineteenth century ce. The first
external reference comes from Herodotus (fifth century bce), who describes a trade
route from Lower Egypt through the Fazzan to a city on the middle Niger floodplain.
The system’s principal elements include:
(1) an exchange between Saharan salt and middle Niger gold;
(2) the accumulation and classification of topographical knowledge, specifically,
identifying oases, water sources, accessible tracks, and mountain passes;
(3) a logistical organization incorporating the use of the dromedary and the
establishment of daily travel stages of 45/50 kilometers between oasis
settlements; and
(4) the hydrological management of oasis communities based on the employment of
servile labor.
The system’s emergence has been ascribed to the growing importance of the
Saharan gold trade, evidence of which has been traced to several events along the
Mediterranean seaboard:
(i) gold minting at Cyrene beginning in the fifth century bce;
(ii) the “sudden explosion” in naval expeditions along the western African coast by
Greeks, Persians, and Carthaginians between 520 and 470 bce, spurred by
interest in discovering direct access to west African gold-producing areas,
bypassing Garamantian intermediation; and
(iii) the functional reorganization of Egypt and the Libyan coast from the sixth
century bce onward to serve as northern termini of trans-Saharan commerce.
Can these developments be traced, in part at least, to the social and structural
effects of the Pastoral Technocomplex’s long duration?