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Cemetery or sacrifice? Infant burials at the Carthage Tophet

Phoenician bones of contention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2013

Paolo Xella ,
Josephine Quinn ,
Valentina Melchiorri  and
Peter van Dommelen
Paolo Xella
Affiliation:
1ISCIMA, CNR, Via Salaria km 29 300, I-00015 Monterotondo Stazione (Rome), Italy
Josephine Quinn
Affiliation:
2Worcester College, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 2HB, United Kingdom
Valentina Melchiorri
Affiliation:
3Marie Curie Fellow of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Biblisch-Archäologisches Institut, University of Tübingen, Liebermeisterstr. 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Peter van Dommelen
Affiliation:
4Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University, Box 1837 / 60 George Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA
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Abstract

Even if the foundation, rise and eventual demise of Carthage and its overseas territories in the West Mediterranean occurred in much the same space and time as the glory days of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greece and Rome, there is no doubt that the Phoenicians and their Punic successors (to use the conventional terms) have rarely been regarded as fully signed-up members of the ancient world. Reduced to walk-on cameos as skilled silversmiths, agricultural experts, shrewd traders or military strategists, Phoenician and Punic representations tend to be rather stereotypical (Prag 2010, with earlier bibliography), which perhaps should not come as a surprise, as nearly all these portraits have been sketched by outsiders; they certainly do not add up to a coherent ethnographic or political description.

Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 87 , Issue 338 , December 2013 , pp. 1199 - 1207
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2013

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