The landscape of the Roman Eastern Empire included extreme conditions and barren regions that can be characterized as marginal zones within the landscape. The region of the Negev, located in modern-day southern Israel, necessitated adaptation to such a zone by the Roman army. One of the strengths of the Roman mechanisms of imperialism was the extent to which the army, while in many ways considered a very standardized and homogenous institution, excelled at optimizing indigenous strategies of occupation and making them their own. Roman internal security in the Negev developed out of modification of the established Nabataean system of trade routes. Here, Roman army units monitored road systems, secured supply lines, and performed local policing duties, functioning as agents of imperial administration in a region without large urban centers and far-removed officials. This paper will explore the military dispositions throughout the Negev from the 1st c. BCE – 6th c. CE  where distribution patterns do not support a traditional military interpretation, either of a defensive strategy or an internal frontier. Rather, the region remained structured around long-established Nabataean-era road networks that were used  to transport commodities and maintain communication routes. In the Negev, the Roman army facilitated imperial interests for economic, rather than military, security, where they built on a system conveniently provided by their Nabataean predecessors.

Alexandra Ratzlaff is a Classical and Near Eastern archaeologist specializing in the eastern Mediterranean. As a field archaeologist, her projects have been primarily in Israel, focused on the Late Roman Fort at Yotvata; the Middle Bronze Age Palace at Tel Kabri where she is currently Associate Director; and the Hellenistic – Byzantine coastal and maritime presence at Tel Achziv, Tel Dor, and Caesarea. Her current research examines the impact of maritime trade at small harbors on the Late Antique Economy of the central Levantine coast. This includes a previous coastal survey from Achziv to Ashkelon (modern Israeli coast). As an extension of this research she is currently publishing the ceramic remains from the Hellenistic harbor at Akko and Hellenistic/early Roman excavations at Achziv, and Roman Dor. She is also the Project Lead for the Brandeis Techne Group at Autodesk, a long-term research project aimed at developing new equipment and methodologies for digital imaging in archaeology and the humanities. Ratzlaff’s research has been funded by the US Department of State – Bureau Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, and the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies.