Living at the Margins

Living at the margins looks at the history of African peasants from the fourth to the ninth century: their economic and social history and – as far as possible – the shaping of their economic mentality. The book offers a concrete view of how peasant households organized their labor and secured their reproduction from one generation to the next. Starting from key extant sources – the most important being the Tablets Albertini – this book explores the microhistory of a marginal, and, as such, exemplary rural community: the people from the fundus Tuletianos in southern Numidia. The result is a deep dive into the internal dynamics the Tuletianos’s community, its households, and its members. The Tuletiani were exemplary, not exceptional. The life there reflects the organization of the standard rural community of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.