[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Since its discovery by a pair of French colonial functionaries in 1921, the “tophet” at Carthage—a sanctuary where the burned remains of perinatal children and animals were offered to the deities Baᶜl Hammon (and later Tinnit) from the mid eighth century BCE until the city’s destruction in 146 BCE—has been one of the most discussed and controversial sites in the Iron-Age Mediterranean. Yet despite its centrality in a range of fields (including archaeology, history, Phoenician studies, and biblical studies), and despite at least seven distinctive excavation campaigns, not one of these campaigns has been published fully. With only partial information, modern questions and conflicting interpretations abound, often wrapped up in Orientalist and colonial (or postcolonial) ideologies: about how the archaeological finds relate to textual accounts of Canaanite and Phoenician child sacrifice; about whether the Carthage site was the locus of live child sacrifice or simply a special necropolis for naturally deceased biological infants; and about its role in the social, political, and cultural histories of the central Mediterranean in antiquity.
Although it does not offer firm answers to these questions, the current volume does present, for the first time, a host of preliminary archaeological data, mostly stemming from the 1976–1979 ASOR Punic Project (APP). Under the direction of the late Larry Stager (1943–2017), this project worked to excavate a strip of the northern tophet zone in Carthage. Although the final publication of this excavation has been teased as “forthcoming” for over a decade, the trickle of new material and observational analysis here will be of great interest to those working on central Mediterranean archaeology, religion, and Phoenicio-Punic studies more generally. The APP data—studies looking at faunal remains, “amulets,” and ceramic fabrics—are complemented by an introduction that frames the subfield of tophet studies, a tribute to Stager that includes an unpublished manuscript outlining his views of archaeology as a discipline, three more thematic chapters, and a preliminary report from more recent Tunisian-led excavations in the southeastern part of the sanctuary. Although a grab-bag of mostly observational studies rather than a coherent whole, each contribution offers new insights on worship and child-offering in the Iron-Age Mediterranean. Yet the way this data is studied and presented—disembedded from its relational, archaeological assemblages—both limits its usefulness and points to the need for more intensive collaboration among specialists working on different forms of material.
The introductory chapter provides an overview of tophets—sites with a distinctive archaeological signature consisting of buried urns with the burned remains of biological infants and animals, often topped by stone monuments—their users, and the offerings found in them. It lays out the big problems in tophet studies, and its own responses to these. In many ways, the chapter treads old polemic grounds in making a case for tophet sites as loci of live child sacrifice, rehashing earlier arguments made by the authors to rebut the “necropolis hypothesis”[1] succinctly but without adding either new data or new theory. Despite its avowed positivism and proclaimed desire for precision, a few minor errors creep in: for example, Hr. Ghayadha and Mactar are conflated as a single site; the sanctuary at el-Kénissia is confused with the ancient site of Civitas Popthensis (actually at Hr. Ksiba, over 200km away in modern Algeria); Nebi Yunes is identified as a “likely sanctuary to Baᶜl and Tinnit” despite only having evidence for the worship of Eshmoun. These may be small quibbles, but they may also highlight the ways in which the spatial dimensions of material assemblages often fall to the wayside in this volume as a whole.
After Joe Greene’s tribute to Stager, and Stager’s previously unpublished manuscript, we arrive at the heart of the volume: the preliminary publication of data from the APP. Deirdre Fulton et al. offer an overview of the faunal remains from 445 urns excavated and studied as part of the project: the first published account of this material, and a welcome modern complement to French-colonial-era studies of urn-contents from Carthage and to preliminary (and contradictory) publications of the biological human remains from the APP urns.[2] Fulton et al. argue that the process of intentionally burning animals alongside or in place of biological human offerings supports the child-sacrifice hypothesis, rather than the funerary hypothesis. Their results dovetail with those from earlier excavations and other tophet sites with published faunal assemblages. Ovicaprines are the most frequent animal found in the urns (and, when identifiable, sheep outnumber goats). They are often represented by a full range of skeletal elements that lack signs of butchery or hide-removal, implying that the ovicaprines were burned whole as holocaust offerings. When found alongside biological human remains, fewer skeletal elements from the ovicaprines are present than when animals alone appear in urns. This is an important observation: perhaps evidence of differential bone-collection practices, privileging human remains when present, but giving similar care to animals if they were offered on their own. That is, there appears to be a clear ritual distinction between a primary offering and a secondary offering. On the seasonality of offerings, the authors note the prevalence of ovicaprines between 0 and 6 months, and suggest a trio of possible interpretations: either there were two seasonal periods of offering (spring, shortly after a single lambing, and then again in autumn); or that there were two lambing seasons, and thus sacrifices usually took place in spring (involving older lambs from an autumn lambing); or that, even if there were peaks of offering in spring/autumn, sacrifice may have been a year-round affair.
Patrick Degryse et al. examine the “amulets,” a category of material that encompasses all artefacts (from offcuts of gold to manufactured beads and worked shell) recovered from inside the urns. Special attention is given to sourcing the glass and silver used. Strikingly, artefacts only appear alongside biological humans; urns with animals only do not contain additional artefacts. Although the authors suggest that such artefacts are uncommon, present in only 31% of the 445 urns studied, this may not be the best measure of the choices made by ancient worshippers. When animal-only and no-identifiable-bone urns are removed from the data-set, and we take the number of urns that certainly contained biological humans as the basis (323 urns, based on Schwartz et al. 2010), 43% of the human-containing urns had artefacts with them. When we look at urns containing biological humans only (rather than human and animal), the percentage containing small artefacts may jump to 51%. That is to say, when biological children were offered on their own, the choice to include artefacts (or not) may have been a coin-toss. Perhaps more important than suggesting revised historical and archaeological conclusions, though, this exercise points to the problems with the methods of quantification used throughout the volume, to which we shall return.
Using petrographic analysis of fabrics, Dennis Braekmans et al. attempt to identify where the urns used to hold burned offerings in the tophet were produced. Within a sample of 27 thin sections (perhaps too small of a sample from which to generalize), they identify six major fabric groups (impossibly illegible in the published images) and try to source these. Unsurprisingly, the majority of their sample was probably produced in the vicinity of Carthage (59%), and another 26% probably in northern Tunisia/Cap Bon; the urns were not sourced from a single producer, but were assembled from a range of regional production sites. Although the authors do not comment on this, one dynamic that emerges from their catalogue is that different fabrics were used for the urns and lids within a single offering deposit (true for both 5578/5590): evidence that offrands collected and combined available ceramics, rather than calling for custom urn production.
The three wider, thematic studies all make arguments that will be of interest to specialists. Valentina Melchiorri asks how image, text, and ritualized practice might intersect and communicate in different ways by examining the rare images of children on stelae from central Mediterranean, Iron-Age tophets (she adduces 5 clear examples of anthropomorphic children alone, and 5 more of a child with an adult), before examining one motif (the “bottle idol”) and its possible association with child-offerings in more detail. Philip Schmitz offers a detailed etymological interpretation of a Punic phrase that appears on a small group of inscribed tophet stelae (myᶜms); the historical, social, and cultic implications of his linguistic analysis are unfortunately not fully elucidated. Paolo Xella argues that the absence of evidence for tophet-like sanctuaries in the eastern Mediterranean does not provide evidence of absence. Instead, the fact that fully-formed tophets appear contemporaneously with colonial Phoenician foundations in the central Mediterranean suggests the rites had a Levantine origin; likewise, the Hellenistic stele from Nebi Younes dedicating a mlk (holocaust) rite to Eshmoun is taken to provide ancient evidence for child-sacrifice in the Phoenician homeland, especially when complemented by biblical and Graeco-Roman accounts.
The greatest potentials of the APP excavation stem from the ways each urn was recorded in its spatial context, and from the detailed collection and analysis of each urn’s contents. Whereas earlier excavations presented material in synopsis or aggregated, with little interest in the precise relationships among monuments, urns, and other finds, the APP focused on identifying and recording such detailed relationships. That is, the APP data promises to offer new insights on the individual ritualized activities and choices that resulted in discrete offerings, their variability, and changes through time. This potential is unrealized in the current volume. The choice to focus on individual categories of material—faunal remains, amulets, ceramic fabrics—in isolation serves to segregate each from its relational assemblage and ritualized practices. We do not get to see how individual choices and acts played out and created each distinctive offering context. We cannot see how the choice of an imported urn might relate to what (or who) was burned and buried; how particular amulets might relate to a particular biological individual; how burn patterns might suggest the ways sheep and biological infant were placed together on a single pyre. We cannot see how these acts connect to particular stone monuments, or how whole assemblages of material and practices change through time.
A reader might do some work to draw the various threads of material together, at least in speculative ways. An increase in birds (identified as largely partridges, in contrast to the preference for song-birds in tophet-like sanctuaries of the 1st century BCE onwards) in the Tanit III phase (c. 300/250–146 BCE) correlates with an increase in lead objects in the urns in this period: phenomena that the authors of both chapters see as increases in less luxurious offerings. Could this point to a wider swathe of society worshipping in the sanctuary, a dynamic of “democratization” that Gilbert Charles-Picard suggested long ago based on his own work in the tophet?[3] The decision to separate analysis by material—faunal remains versus small artefacts—occludes possible connections between these phenomena.
The way that data is presented and quantified also makes it difficult to evaluate or build from, in the absence of full catalogues or a more detailed discussion of methodological choices, a problem already raised for the amulets. All of the current studies use a base of 445 excavated, sealed urns: a slight difference from the 444 enumerated by Stager (2014), but a markedly larger number than the 348 urns whose bone remains were catalogued and published by Schwartz (2010). The other 96 or 97 urns may have had no identifiable bone material, but this is not made clear. There are also other discrepancies that need explanation: Schwartz catalogued 25 “animal only” urns, but here, Fulton et al. record 59 “animal only” urns. Is the heightened number of animal-only urns the result of re-analysis of Schwartz’s sample or analysis of additional urns? Only the full publication of the site material will offer answers, and firmer grounds for interpretation to take place. For now, such discrepancies in numbers draw into question all of the quantitative data presented, and the conclusions drawn from that data. Interpretation of the Carthage tophet’s archaeology remains as uncertain as ever.
There is hope, though, in the final chapter of this volume, a report on recent Tunisian-led excavations in the tophet (2014–2018). With stratigraphic units running from the sixth century BCE through Byzantine intervention in the area, Imed Ben Jerbania et al. offer the clearest evidence for changing rites in the tophet and for dating different forms of monuments: a chronological typology that will supplant the one proposed by Hélène Bénichou-Safar (2004). Ben Jerbania et al. also offer detailed analysis of the microstratigraphy and contents of urns, noting an intrusive layer covering sandy and cremated remains, and the presence of unburned artefacts placed directly above the cremated remains, added between the steps of bone-collection and urn-burial. They note that a particularly rich assemblage of jewellery came from an urn with an older-than-normal (~2 years old) biological human, hinting that these more elaborate assemblages might be linked with marking more complex social identities: more contextual information than was offered in the chapter on APP amulets. Ben Jerbania et al.’s analysis rules out many claims and interpretations of the ritual chaîne opératoire that have been floated from less well-studied excavations: they demonstrate that some (but not all) stone monuments were contemporary with and directly tied to urns, rather than added later; they show that, in many cases, the presence of more than one biological human in an urn is not the product of accidently collecting remains left from a previous burning event, but reflects the cremation of multiple, non-fraternal perinates simultaneously on the same pyre; they suggest that the diversity of burning patterns means that biological infants were not regularly laid on their backs on pyres. The model multidisciplinary, scientific analyses executed and planned for this new tophet project offer the most robust archaeological data on the tophet and its rites to date.
Overall, this volume is a welcome—if ultimately preliminary—contribution of excavation data and related thematic studies on the Carthage tophet. Until the final publication of the ASOR excavations, it will serve to offer a rough approximation of finds from the site: the most current data that we have. If nothing else, the volume points to the difficulty in drawing together and interpreting disparate forms of material and data from an excavation run over 40 years ago, studied by different teams of specialists in relative isolation and sometimes with contradictory results—a problem exacerbated by the untimely death of the project director. Drawing these teams and their analyses back together, relating the material to individual ritualized acts in space and time—in short, rebuilding those archaeological assemblages that modes of study have pulled apart—will be a Herculean task. It is no wonder that, despite Brien Garnand’s and Joe Greene’s laudable efforts, a final report from the APP has not yet appeared. One can only hope that when the final ASOR Punic Project report does go to press, it will not have been rendered wholly obsolete by Imed Ben Jerbania’s more recent work and seemingly closer interdisciplinary collaborations.
Works cited
Bénichou-Safar, H. 2004. Le tophet de Salammbô à Carthage. Essai de reconstitution. Rome: EFR.
Picard, G.C. 1964. Carthage. London: Elek.
Schwartz, J.H., F. Houghton, R. Macchiarelli, and L. Bondioli. 2010. “Skeletal remains from Punic Carthage do not support systematic sacrifice of infants.” PLOSOne. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009177
Schwartz, J.H., F. Houghton, L. Bondioli, and R. Macchiarelli. 2017. “Two tales of one city: data, inference and Carthaginian infant sacrifice.” Antiquity 91(356): 442–454. doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.270
Smith, P., G. Avishai, J. Greene, and L.E. Stager. 2011. “Aging cremated infants: the problem of sacrifice at the tophet of Carthage.” Antiquity 85(329): 859–874. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00068368
Smith, P., L.E. Stager, J. Greene, and G. Avishai. 2013. “Cemetery or sacrifice? Infant burials at the Carthage tophet: age estimations attest to infant sacrifice at the Carthage tophet.” Antiquity 87(338): 1191–1199. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00049954
Stager, L.E. 2014. Rites of Spring in the Carthaginian Tophet. 8th Byvanck Lecture. Leiden: BABESCH. https://www.babesch.org/new_site/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/BABESCH_Byvanck_Lecture_2014_Stager.pdf (accessed 23 May, 2024).
Xella, P. (ed.). 2012–2013. “The tophet in the Phoenician Mediterranean.” Studi Epigrafici et Linguistici sul Vicino Oriente Antico 29–30.
Xella, P., J. Quinn, V. Melchiorri, and P. Van Dommelen. 2013. “Cemetery or sacrifice? Infant burials at the Carthage Tophet: Phoenician bones of contention.” Antiquity 87(338): 1199–1207. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00049966
Authors and Titles
Introduction to the Special Issue (Brien K. Garnand, Joseph A. Greene, Paolo Xella)
In Memory of Lawrence E. Stager and “Archaeology and History” (Joseph A. Greene)
Animals as Offerings: Faunal Remains from the Carthage Tophet (Deirdre N. Fulton, Paula Hesse, Peter Burns)
The Amulets from the Carthaginian Tophet (Patrick Degryse, Grace Dove, Annelore Blomme, Bas Beaujean, Katherine Eremin, Joseph A. Greene)
Uniformity in Tophet Ceramics? A Petrographic Overview of Urn and Lid Production (Dennis Braekmans, Brien Garnand, Joseph Greene, Patrick Degryse)
The Iconography of Children as Cultic Characters in Mediterranean tophet Precincts (Valentina Melchiorri)
Punic mycms and Greek Μαιουμα(ς): a re-examination (Philip Schmitz)
The Levantine Roots of the tophet Sanctuary (Paolo Xella)
New Excavations in the Sanctuary of Ba‘l Ḥammon in Carthage (Imed Ben Jerbania, Ahmed Ferjaoui, Victoria Peña, Taoufik Redissi, Kaouther Jendoubi, Nesrine Maddahi, Walid Khalfalli)
Notes
[1] Including Xella et al. (2013); the contributions in Xella (2014).
[2] Schwartz et al. (2010; 2017), arguing against the sacrificial hypothesis; Smith et al. (2011; 2013) arguing in favour of the sacrificial hypothesis, based on different aging criteria for the skeletal remains.
[3] Picard (1964), 83-5.