Abstract: North Africa is rarely mentioned in scholarship on the medieval Mediterranean. This paper demonstrates the potential of archaeology for understanding the impact of the Arab conquests on settlement and society in seventh- and eighth-century North Africa. Despite difficulties in dating early medieval occupation, synthesis of the available evidence reveals that the Arab conquest was not catastrophic for settled life. Mapping the distribution of urban sites across North Africa shows that the majority of Byzantine towns were not abandoned but remain...
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Topics: 
Archaeology
Ancient history