Abstract:

Current archaeological research is largely focused on the study of identities, often forgetting the study of the underlying economic and political structures that explain long-term sociocultural evolution. In North Africa, this orientation of studies has led some authors to question the validity of the paleoethnological map that can be deduced from the study of the written sources, and even to raise the possibility that, from a cultural point of view, there were no clearly differentiated peoples. In this paper we question the theoretical and factual basis of these views. We do indeed claim the real existence of the cultural groups mentioned in the ancient sources, while acknowledging their obvious internal diversity and the various interactions they maintained, which contributed to their evolution. The diversity of opinions on these issues is due in large part to the dramatic limitation of available data on the ancient Libyan populations. In this sense, recent work at Althiburos and its immediate surroundings has shed some light on the factors of continuity of an autochthonous community throughout the first millennium BCE, and has shown that, despite the growing incorporation of cultural elements typical of the Punic world, the inhabitants of this settlement maintained a clearly differentiated personality, which can be described as “Numidian”.