Dougga

Dougga, located in Tunisia, is the site of a very well preserved Roman city.  It covers many acres and features several very-well preserved monuments and temples.  It lies in the country-side, which protected it from much of the looting and then re-development that many other ancient Roman sites have experienced (such as the much larger Tunisian site at Carthage.)  It is a popular tourist site, if somewhat remote, and receives around 50,000 visitors per year. 

It is built on a slope as is customary for many ancient Roman sites, in an area that has been used for agricultural purposed for several thousand years.  A particularly interesting feature called the "Fossa Regia" runs to the east and south.  Following the Punic Wars, the Romans used this as the boundary of their dominion.  This has lead many historians to consider Dougga a point of Roman-Berber contact, which is corroborated by some of the textiles and pottery found.

Some issues which the landscape bring up are that of historical ownership and land use.  Many of the mosaics, sculptures and friezes have been moved to various museums since its early excavation.  Tunisia was at the time a part of the French Protectorate and some of these treasures were taken to the national museums in France.  Many of these have been returned to the Tunisian government and now reside mainly in a museum in Tunis.  Some, however, still remain in the private collections of museum patrons or in other European museums to which they were traded.  

In addition to issues of historical ownership, the last inhabitants were evicted in 1991 when it was designated a protected archaeological site. Further evictions may be possible for the olive farmers depending on the extent to which the site grows and is developed in an archeological capacity.