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374 13. specialized production and exchange
Mediterranean, and when, from the evidence of field-survey, rural settlement
was at its most extensive and prosperous. It is also true of southern
Gaul and Mediterranean Spain at a slightly later date, at the end of the first
century and through the second century. Moving closer to our period, the
third and fourth century seem to have been the high point of wealthy rural
and urban settlement in Africa, and they were also centuries when exports
of African red-slip ware and African amphorae were very high. The fifth
and sixth century then saw the gradual but distinct shrinkage of these
exports, and also probably a gradual decline in rural and urban settlement
in Africa itself. 48
For the fifth and sixth century, it is very striking that Gaza wine amphorae
appeared in quantity on eastern and even western sites at the very
period that the small towns and villages of Gaza’s desert hinterland, the
Negev, reached their greatest size and displayed their most evident signs of
prosperity. It is equally striking that the period of extensive and large-scale
export of the amphorae known prosaically as Late Roman 1, which were
produced in the region around Antioch (as well as in Cilicia and on Cyprus),
coincides with the period of the best evidence for settlement and prosperity
in the nearby Syrian limestone massif. Neither the Negev nor the limestone
massif ever again sustained a large population, and yet in the late
Roman period both were extensively settled by people who seem to have
been well-off. Furthermore, in fifth- and sixth-century western texts
Syrians are often referred to as traders, to the point that the very word
‘Syrus’ appears to have acquired the partial meaning of ‘merchant’: so that
Sidonius Apollinaris, describing a topsy-turvy world in Ravenna in 468,
could write ‘the clergy lend money, while the Syrians sing psalms’,
confident that his audience would understand the paradox. 49
If combined, the evidence from rural survey, amphora finds and texts
strongly suggests that the prosperity of the fifth- and sixth-century near
east was, at least in part, based on an ability to sell its products overseas,
sometimes over very long distances. Overseas demand seems to have put
cash and spending power into a region. It also probably encouraged, in the
exporting regions, the development of specialization of production for
those goods that could be sold. This is best seen in the opening up of marginal
land. For instance, the Syrian limestone massif, though reasonably
well watered, is very rocky, with soil restricted to basins of arable in the
valley bottoms and to pockets of earth in the hill slopes (see Fig. 5, p.322
48 Overall summaries of the rural evidence: Lewit (1991); Mattingly and Hitchner (1995) 189–96 and
211 (for Africa). Summary of pottery and amphora evidence: Panella, in Giardina, Società romana
iii.431–59.
49 Settlement in the Negev and limestone massif: see ch. 12,p.321 above, n. 12. Amphorae: Reynolds
(1995) 71–83 and figs. 155–60; Riley (1979) 219–22 (Gaza/LRA4); Empereur and Picon (1989) 236–43
(LRA1). Texts: Sid. Ap. Ep. 1.8; Lambrechts (1937); Pirenne (1939) ch. ii pt 2; Ruggini (1959) (who
rightly points out that by no means all easterners in the west were involved in trade).
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