The wealth of the Vandal kings has long been recognized by modern scholars, but the economic prosperity of their kingdom has rarely been studied in detail. In part, of course, this is simply a methodological issue. Attuned to the long, slow cadences of their subject - subtle shifts in trading patterns, gradual changes in production and exploitation - economic historians have conventionally toned down the sharp pizzicato of political and military change in their accounts. Catastrophic wars and invasions, along with earthquakes, plagues or other natural disasters, may frequently be cited as turning points in economic history, but they are rarely seen as causes for long-term change in themselves: an invading army may destroy a town, factory or farm, but only a settlement that is already in decline will fail to recover from the blow.3 The archaeological record, similarly, brings gradual social change out more clearly than it does political cataclysm. Consequently, most studies of the late - and postRoman economy tend to focus on long timescales, rather than ephemeral kingdoms and dynasties - on the history of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, not on the Vandal state and its kings. The Vandals themselves are all but invisible in the material record of North Africa, and it is this absence which has long defined their role in economic history.4 If the new masters of Carthage did not directly destroy the systems of production and distribution upon which the ancient world relied, and made few changes to the firm foundations on which their kingdom developed (and there has been some dispute about this) it has been concluded that theirs was only ever a fleeting role within the economic life of their world. In many accounts, the Vandals are presented as interested (but uninteresting) spectators of the gradual transformation of the ancient economy.5
These assumptions have been supported by recent methodological advances. A massive growth in archaeological data has revolutionized modern understanding of the ancient economy, but its interpretation can create difficulties. From the early 1970s, systematic assessments of hundreds of tonnes of ceramics found throughout the Mediterranean promised a wholly new perspective on ancient trade routes which crossed the sea and the patterns of supply and demand which stimulated them.6 With increased confidence, archaeologists could date and identify the provenance of amphorae, finewares and coarsewares and outline a complex web of economic interdependence, changing over the centuries but remaining more or less intact down to the Vandal period and beyond.7 Other studies focused upon production centres within North Africa itself. Although detailed research excavations in rural areas were rare (and remain so), the implementation of a number of large scale archaeological surveys in the 1980s and early 1990s helped to uncover the landscapes of Roman and late Roman Africa.8 Supported by the weighty testimony of thousands of sherds, and the visible remains of vast olive oil processing plants in Central Tunisia, Zeugitana and Tripolitana scholars emphasized the liquidity (in both senses of the word) of the Roman economy.9 Crucially, the Vandal period was increasingly seen as a continuation of this prosperity, rather than marking a dramatic decline.
This confident appraisal has been muted somewhat in more recent scholarship. A proliferation of studies of late Roman ceramics has immeasurably improved understanding of many aspects of the African economy, but each new study challenges assumptions about the dating of certain vessel types and demands recalibrations of scholars’ narratives.10 Vessels once thought to have been produced in the late fifth century are now dated with confidence to the early Byzantine period; others traditionally regarded as later Roman now seem to date to the mid-fifth century.11 This does not invalidate the view that economic life remained vibrant in the Vandal period, but does demand a more nuanced appreciation of the ebb and flow of post-Roman production.12
Equally significant has been an increasing interest in the varied agricultural production of Roman and Vandal Africa. Historians have always acknowledged that grain is likely to have been the principal export of the region and was probably the mainstay of the economy, but the fields in which it was grown, the hard-earth threshing floors on which it was processed, and the sacks in which it was transported have left little trace in the archaeological record. As a result, the details of its production and distribution are frequently obscure. Countless amphorae sherds, and well-studied remains of olive presses have created a contrasting problem in the study of olive-oil production. Recent analysis of African amphorae has noted that a substantial proportion of these vessels (perhaps around half) were lined internally with pitch.13 This was probably common practice for the transportation of wine or fish-sauce, but would have spoiled olive oil. Consequently, an economy once thought to have rested heavily upon the olive is now being re-assessed. Oleiculture was still very important in Roman Africa - and continued to flourish under the Vandals - but viticulture and fish processing are increasingly recognized as crucial cash crops for the region.
Another major conceptual shift has been an emphasis upon noncommercial forms of economic exchange, particularly those related to the operation of the empire itself. One result of this has been to move the Vandals back towards the centre of the stage. Studies have highlighted the importance of taxation to the functioning of the complex Roman state and to the operation of a monetized and vibrant inter-provincial economy.14 Once the ties of taxation had been loosened, the world system of the late empire began to unfold and regional economic structures began to predominate. This did not happen immediately, and its true effects are best discussed in terms of decades and centuries rather than years, but the crisis of the imperial fisc may be regarded as a crucial turning point in the economic history of the ancient world. So important were African taxes to the functioning of the later western empire, and so great were the implications of their decline, that the Vandals have plausibly been identified once more as the authors of its eventual collapse.15
World History
