Abstract/Summary

The city of Taucheira (modern Tocra) in Cyrenaica, Libya, has played a prominent role in established narratives of the 7th-century Arab conquest of Byzantine North Africa ever since excavations by Richard Goodchild in the 1960s uncovered a substantial walled compound there. Goodchild interpreted the compound as a fortress — “the last monument of Byzantine rule in Cyrenaica” — built in haste in the face of the approaching Arabs inside a much larger set of walls traditionally ascribed to the reign of Justinian I (r. 527–565). In the more than half a century since Goodchild’s publication of the walled compound, late antique and Byzantine studies have undergone radical transformations, but narratives around the walled compound at Taucheira, and about the city itself, have not been considered critically. This article presents a combined historical and archaeological reassessment of the city in light of contemporary developments in scholarship and argues that Taucheira was a vibrant urban centre throughout late antiquity, provided with walls at some point between the late 5th century and the Justinianic period. Detailed re-examination of the walled compound indicates it could not have served an effective defensive function and is better interpreted as an administrative area. Moreover, an Anastasian construction date is more probable than the conventionally accepted date in the 640s CE.