Carthage: A History.

Carthage: A History. Carthage is one of the most evocative Mediterranean sites. Its eventsand characters, wrapped up in Roman literature, are central to ourclassical repertoire - from Dido's fateful encounter with Aeneas tothe elder Cato's resonating cry, delenda est Carthago,'Carthage must be destroyed'. Although the archaeology ofCarthage has until recently been elusive, the broad outline of itshistory is well-established and spans the main cultural episodes of thewest, with alluring links to the east. These include its traditionalfounding by the Phoenicians in 814 BC, and its development into theepicentre epicentrePoint on the surface of the Earth that is directly above the source (or focus) of an earthquake. There the effects of the earthquake usually are most severe. See also seismology. of Punic (western Phoenician) commercial and political powerfrom the 6th century BC; its colossal struggle with Rome, the PunicWars, beginning in 264 BC and ending with the razing of the city byScipio Aemilianus in 146 BC and the foundation of the Roman province ofAfrica; its formal reincarnation as colonia Iulia Concordia Karthagounder Augustus in the late 1st century BC, and its spectacularresurgence as one of the largest Roman cities and economic hubs in thewest; and finally its successive conquests by the Vandals in 439, theByzantines in 533 and the Arabs in 698.The Arabs relocated to the nearby site of Tunis, and it was only withthe encroachment of its suburbs during the present century that Carthagewas again densely settled. This was the main stimulus for the inceptionin 1972 of the UNESCO UNESCO:see United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. UNESCOin full United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 'Save Carthage' campaign, under theaegis of the Tunisian Institut National d'Archeologie et d'Artand the Conservateur du site de Carthage, Abdelmajid Ennabli. Since thenthere has been an unprecedented international programme of fieldwork,involving teams from Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,Holland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Tunisia, the UK and the US. Their workhas not only vastly improved our knowledge of ancient Carthage, but alsoserved as a training ground and laboratory for field and post-excavationtechniques which makes the programme one of the most significant inMediterranean archaeology.This programme has spawned literally hundreds of major publications,though as yet there are few wide-ranging syntheses in English (for animportant French offering, see Ennabli 1992). One of the best is nowSerge Lancel's Carthage: a history, a translation of a book firstpublished in France in 1992. The author is professor of archaeology atthe University of Grenoble You may be seeking Universit�� Joseph Fourier also known as Grenoble I Universit�� Pierre Mendes-France also known as Grenoble II Universit�� Stendhal also known as Grenoble III and director of excavations at the remarkablywell-preserved 'Hannibal quarter' on the south slope of theByrsa, the acropolis acropolis(əkrŏp`əlĭs)[Gr.,=high point of the city], elevated, fortified section of various ancient Greek cities.TheAcropolis of Athens, a hill c.260 ft (80 m) high, with a flat oval top c. of Carthage. Although the Romans swept away themonumental heart of Punic Carthage in their attempt to make a largeracropolis platform for their own structures, excavations have revealedPunic houses and streets, industrial establishments, harbour facilities,parts of the city walls and the infamous tophet, associated by theRomans with child sacrifice. Lancel adeptly discusses the tophet in thecontext of Semitic sacrificial rituals, and continuously relatesCarthage to other Punic sites and to their Near Eastern culturalbackdrop; it is this breadth of scholarship which makes the book muchmore than a narrative on the site and its archaeology. There is a usefulaccount of the commercial thalassocracy of Punic traders in the westMediterranean and of their voyages of exploration, including theastonishing periplus of Hanno down the coast of west Africa. Throughoutthe book Lancel judiciously weighs up the literary evidence, from themurky history of its first centuries through to the propagandist Romanaccounts of the Punic Wars. The book is accessibly written and superblytranslated, with copious well-selected illustrations, and should serveas the standard introduction to Punic Carthage for many years to come.Lancel's book will be a grave disappointment to anyone seekingan account of Carthage after 146 BC, and indeed it is a pity that theword 'Punic' was not added to the title; the Roman period isonly briefly sketched in terms of Punic survivals in the final chapter.Instead the archaeology of post-Punic Carthage must be sought in thenumerous interim and monograph reports by teams who have excavated sitesof later periods. Among the most informative has been the work of theBritish Mission, under the direction of Henry Hurst, who wereresponsible for three main sites during the 1970s: beside the Avenue duPresident Habib Bourguiba, Salammbo, near the southern boundary of theRoman city; at a site abutting the north side of the circular harbour;and on the island at the centre of the circular harbour, the Ilot del'Amiraute. The first of these sites was published to considerableacclaim in 1984 as a pair of volumes (Hurst & Roskams 1984 andFulford & Peacock 1984; hereafter AHB AHB Advanced High-performance BusAHB Assault Helicopter BattalionAHB Air Historical BranchAHB Attack Helicopter BattalionAHB Automatic Half BarriersAHB Aussie Home BrewersAHB Active Hyper Bass ), and mainly concerned the4th-7th centuries AD. The two volumes under review, both attractivelyproduced and splendidly illustrated, are the final report on the northharbourside site. Although the main focus is Roman to Byzantine, bothharbour sites also produced extensive Punic remains, and theirimportance lies in the breadth of evidence for maritime and commercialactivities which are pivotal to our understanding of the success ofCarthage at all periods.The excavation report is divided into three sections: Part 1, Aims,methods and principal results; Part 2, Stratigraphy stratigraphy,branch of geology specifically concerned with the arrangement of layered rocks (see stratification). Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition, which states that in a normal sequence of rock layers the youngest is on top and the oldest on the ; and Part 3, Findsreports and analyses (specialist reports covering all material otherthan pottery, from coins (by Richard Reece) to burials and faunal andbotanical remains). The site lay between the hypothetical lines of CardoXIV and Cardo XV of the Roman orthogonal city plan, and within an areaof about 50x40 m (comprising about 0.04% of the Roman city walled area).For much of their Roman and later history the buildings on this sitewere centres of craft activity, as well as residences; a persistentactivity appears to have been cloth-working, and Hurst plausibly arguesthat the site may have been part of a late imperial cloth-making complex(gynaeceum Gyn`ae`ce´umn. 1. That part of a large house, among the ancients, exclusively appropriated to women. ), the first time that such an establishment has been securelyidentified. Beneath the Roman-Byzantine foundations were the remains offive Punic shipsheds, dated not before c. 200 BC; both the island andthe mainland waterfronts of the circular harbour were surrounded bywarship warship,any ship built or armed for naval combat. The forerunners of the modern warship were the men-of-war of the 18th and early 19th cent., such as the ship of the line, frigate, corvette, sloop of war (see sloop), brig, and cutter. sheds in the years leading to 146 bc, and there is evidence fortheir destruction by fire. Three of the eleven chapters in Part I aredevoted to the shipsheds and to the topography and development of theharbours, a subject of enormous complexity and debate for which this isnow the best critique. It seems clear that the developed militaryharbour dates to the very late Punic period, which marries uneasily withthe punitive Roman control supposed to have following the second PunicWar Parameter not given Error...''Template needs its first parameter as beg[in], mid[dle], or end. Parameter not given Error... (images of 1930s German rearmament re��arm?v. re��armed, re��arm��ing, re��armsv.tr.1. To arm again.2. To equip with better weapons.v.intr.To arm oneself again. spring to mind). Hurst alsoelaborates usefully on the idea presented in his interim reports thatthe circular harbour was re-used as an administrative focus for theRoman annona, the imperial foodstuffs foodstuffsnpl → comestibles mplfoodstuffsnpl → denr��es fpl alimentairesfoodstuffsfood npl → requisition agency.The blurb blurb?n.A brief publicity notice, as on a book jacket.[Coined by Gelett Burgess (1866-1951), American humorist.]blurb v. tells us that 'This is as comprehensive a publicationof an urban excavation as has ever been published', and this ismanifestly so in a volume of 348 pages, much in fine print. Hurstdeliberately eschews the compromises and short-cuts which havebedevilled archaeological publication since economization E`con`o`mi`za´tionn. 1. The act or practice of using to the best effect. became thecatchword in the late 1970s. The greatest benefit of new technology inarchaeological publication has not been microfiches, or the internet,but rather desk-top systems which allow us to transcend much that wasuneconomical about the production of a report of this magnitude in thepast. In this case readers have all they could possibly want in onevolume. The arrangement of the report is innovative in providingaccessible synopses early on, and in flagging the sections which thegeneral reader might wish to skip (for instance, the detailed discussionof stratigraphy). Another innovation for this type of archaeology is thespace devoted to methodological issues, often presented in afirst-person, introspective in��tro��spect?intr.v. in��tro��spect��ed, in��tro��spect��ing, in��tro��spectsTo engage in introspection.[Latin intr style, which range from how we constructnarrative stories in archaeology (p. 9) to ideas about the meaning ofspace (chapter 6) to a critique of the term 'context' as anexcavation tool (p. 127). Hurst explicitly responds to Ian Hodder'splea (1992: chapter 18) to make report-writing more personal andhistorically contextualized: 'This is attractive both because ofits appropriateness to the type of intellectual constructions we make inarchaeological "reports" and because it could make them lessboring' (p. 8). He has succeeded in producing a richly layered bookwhich shines just as much for its 'empirical' archaeology andold-fashioned classical scholarship.AHB is probably most widely known for the ceramics report by MichaelFulford & David Peacock, whose volume on the harbourside assemblageforms a self-contained companion to the excavation report. In AHB theypublished a detailed methodology for their Carthage work which has sincebecome a standard reference for ceramic quantification andcharacterization procedures in archaeology. The harbourside reportconsequently has less on methods, though the volume as a whole repays acareful read for its many small refinements of approach andpresentation. The pottery is treated in broad categories - finewares,lamps, amphorae, and cooking and domestic wares - followed by a sectionon the deposits, in which a helpful feature is the illustration of'phase groups' of coarse wares. Other highlights include asection on Punic amphorae, and the best available typology typology/ty��pol��o��gy/ (ti-pol��ah-je) the study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. typologythe study of types; the science of classifying, as bacteria according to type. of Africancoarse-ware lids; some of the lids may have covered baskets of yarn, andbeen pierced to let the thread through. Another valuable section is onthe lamps (by Kathryn Knowles). Over 40% of the 120 lamp fragments werethin-sectioned, producing the first petrographic pe��trog��ra��phy?n.The description and classification of rocks.pe��trogra��pher n. fabric types for northAfrican lamps. The accumulation of petrographic data in this volume andAHB represents one of the major achievements of the British Mission, andwill be increasingly significant as more comparanda are collected fromkiln sites and production areas in Tunisia.The pottery assemblage spans the late Punic, Roman, Vandal andByzantine periods, and is particularly important for the late 1stcentury BC-2nd century AD sequence which is otherwise poorly representedat Carthage. This is reason enough for the detailed treatment of anassemblage which contained a high element of residuality; the authorsfurther argue that residuality does not disqualify To deprive of eligibility or render unfit; to disable or incapacitate.To be disqualified is to be stripped of legal capacity. A wife would be disqualified as a juror in her husband's trial for murder due to the nature of their relationship. an artefact See artifact. frombeing evidence for trade, and that 'residual groups can embodyassemblages of earlier material which have not lost theirintegrity' (p. vii). These concerns apply especially to thesupposed hiatus of 146-44/27 BC. The harbourside site has produced nocertain evidence for occupation during that period. However, Fulfordsuggests (p. 53) that some of the Punic cooking wares found in Augustanand later contexts are not residual, but instead represent a continuityof local production and thus a greater survival of socio-economicstructures than might be supposed. This is a useful reminder that weshould be concerned with the wider question of continuity and change in'sub-Punic' north Africa - a matter considered by Lancel inhis final chapter on the Romanization of Punic Africa - and not simplywith whether or not people happened to be living in the ruins of PunicCarthage.Following the Augustan establishment Carthage was again drawn swiftlyinto overseas trade, a development reflected by the import of Italianand Spanish pottery during the first two centuries AD. The westMediterranean focus of this period contrasts sharply with the easternimports of the AHB site, where the pottery was predominantly late4th-7th century AD. The shifting orientations of early and middleImperial amphora trade are fairly well-established, particularly fromexcavations at Ostia Ostia(ŏs`tēə), ancient city of Italy, at the mouth of the Tiber. It was founded (4th cent. B.C.) as a protection for Rome, then developed (from the 1st cent. B.C.) as a Roman port, rivaling Puteoli. and from shipwrecks, but it is extremely importantto have quantified evidence from Carthage as well as fresh scholarlysyntheses. One of the most invigorating features of AHB wasFulford's final chapter on the trading relations of Carthage inlate antiquity; I for one look forward eagerly to another synthesis,this time on earlier trade, which will undoubtedly come with the finalpublication of the Ilot de l'Amiraute site.ReferencesENNABLI, A. (ed.). 1992. Pour sauver Carthage. Paris: UNESCO/Tunis:Institut National d'Archeologie et d'Art.FULFORD, M.G. & D.P.S. PEACOCK. 1984. Excavations at Carthage:the British Mission I, 2: The Avenue du President Habib Bourguiba,Salammbo: the pottery and other ceramic objects from the site. London:British Academy/Sheffield University.HODDER, I. 1992. Theory and practice in archaeology. London:Routledge.HURST, H.R. & S.P. ROSKAMS. 1984. Excavations at Carthage: theBritish Mission. I, 1: The Avenue du President Habib Bourguiba,Salammbo: the site and finds other than pottery. London: BritishAcademy/Sheffield University.