Adhuc Tacfarinas: Causes of the Tiberian war in North Africa (AD ca. 1524) and the impact of the conflict on Roman imperial policy.

During the reign of Tiberius successive governors of Africa Proconsularis struggled to suppress a serious revolt by a number of semi-nomadic tribes led by Tacfarinas. The conflict can only be explained convincingly as an indigenous act of negative negotiation of the Roman administrative encroachment on tribal territory. An in-depth analysis of the literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence, as well as modern migration patterns, indicates that the rebellion should be perceived as the outcome of cadastral activities, which entailed taxation and confiscations. The actual causes of this rebellion do not support the traditional view of antagonism between agriculturalist and pastoralist communities in North Africa.