Cartagine: scavi italiani 1973–1977 presents the final report of the Italian mission of the multinational UNESCO: Save Carthage campaign. The Italian team excavated a zone in the north-western sector of the city, farther inland than any of the other projects in the UNESCO initiative. As laid out in the introduction, ‘lo scopo principale era quello di studiare i tempi e i modi dell’urbanizzazione di Cartagine nella zona interna, di seguire i limiti e la fortificazione della città, di studiare le necropoli ed il rapporto tra impianto urbano e centuriazione rurale’ (xix). These goals were achieved, and the results of the excavations proved fruitful in illuminating the long-term urban history of this major Mediterranean capital.
The current volume presents the stratigraphy and finds from seven excavation trenches situated along Decumanus V North at intersections with Cardines I, II, V and VI West and nearby locations (Figure 1). Looming over the discussion of the individual trenches is the preface. This includes a reprint of the first section of the 1983 preliminary report, containing Andrea Carandini’s examination of building activity at Carthage from the foundation of the Roman colony to the end of the Byzantine period (Carandini et al. Reference Carandini, Anselmino, Panella, Pavolini and Caciagli1983, 9–20). This masterful overview has long been the most plausible story of the urbanisation of the city, and it is only enhanced by the publication of the full results that follows. The other key aspect of the preface is the consideration of the particular topographic questions that inspired the Italian mission: could the city boundaries that Charles Saumagne (Reference Saumagne1924) proposed long ago be verified on the ground by archaeological evidence (xix)? The result was that much of Saumagne’s boundary (xviii; cf. Figure 1) indeed demarcated the limits of the city. But the Italian team found no urban buildings outside the Teurf Es-Sour escarpment between Decumani V and VI (xviii; cf. Figure 1). Saumagne’s plan (Reference Saumagne1924, 133) had shown the city extending into this zone. By providing evidence to reject Saumagne’s hypothesis, the Italian team thus contributed to a clearer understanding of the urban layout.
Location of the Italian team’s excavation trenches (IA, IB, etc.), the street grid of Roman Carthage, the Theodosian Wall and Saumagne’s boundary between the urban layout and the rural centuriation (D.L. Stone; satellite image: Esri World Imagery; street grid and other features: Digital Roman Carthage Project by C. Saladin).
Figure 1 Long description
The image includes labeled areas such as Decumanus V and Cardo I, II, IV, V and VI. The Teurf Es-Sour escarpment is visible, along with excavation trenches labeled IA and IB. A scale bar indicates distances in meters and a north arrow is present for orientation.
The 1983 preliminary report had offered a summary of these excavation results, but it lacked a detailed presentation of the artefactual evidence. The thorough discussion of the pottery and other finds, reported here for different trenches by the three authors of the current volume, Lucilla Anselmino Balducci, Clementina Panella and Carlo Pavolini, enables a more complete understanding of the excavations. The earliest phase comprised a cemetery in use from the fourth century BC until the Roman conquest in 146 BC (Trench IB). It was the only location where the project encountered Punic levels, but this was sufficient to demonstrate that the zone lay outside the Punic-period city. There was a gap before the next phase, the levelling of the area and the construction of the Roman street grid in the Augustan era. A simple beaten earth road, detected at Decumanus V and Cardo II, was constructed (Trench IB). To the interior along Decumanus V there were cemeteries until ca. AD 200, showing that the area lay on the periphery of Carthage for a long time after the foundation of the Roman colony (Trenches IIA, IIIA). During the third century, insulae began to be constructed at the intersection of Decumanus V and Cardo II (Trench IB). Decumanus V was paved at this time. The beginning of the fourth century marked the peak of urbanisation, with an insula built at Decumanus V and Cardo VI (Trench IIIA). In the first quarter of the fifth century, however, the city was rapidly building the great defensive circuit, the Theodosian Wall, that dominated the urban layout during its last centuries. The Wall was placed along the slope known as Teurf Es-Sour (‘edge of the city wall’). Within the Wall, the structures along Decumanus V were abandoned in the fifth century, and the subsequent centuries – until the fall of Carthage in the late seventh century – were marked by the accumulation of garbage (Trenches IB, IVA). Outside the Wall there were cemeteries and short-lived suburban constructions (Trenches IIB, IIIA, IVA). The final phases documented by the team marked the abandonment of the city, the robbing of building stone and the restoration of the area for agricultural purposes.
In this volume there are few differences from the phasing and interpretations of the 1983 preliminary report, but one important revision came in the discussion of Period 6 in Trench IIIA (229–53, esp. 230), where the authors no longer posit a mass grave (‘fossa comune’) along the Theodosian Wall (cf. Carandini et al. Reference Carandini, Anselmino, Panella, Pavolini and Caciagli1983, 246). Instead, they conclude that during the continual digging of new graves in a cemetery with insufficient surface markings, many old burials were disturbed, and their bones were gathered together along the Wall (230). This idea emerged through parallels with subsequently published excavations (Dietz Reference Dietz1984; Stevens et al. Reference Stevens, Garrison and Freed2009).
‘Time to publication’ is the other major issue that this review must mention. The authors are painfully aware of the long delay between the completion of their fieldwork and the publication of this volume. To their credit, they do not offer excuses, but refer to the subject as a ‘thorn’ (xi), which undoubtedly they are now grateful to have removed. But we might rightfully ask whether the final publication has done more than assuage their guilt at carrying an incomplete publication for decades like a millstone around their necks. The conclusions of the Italian mission were initially presented in 1983, in a preliminary report by the field director Andrea Carandini that is republished here (xvii–xxvii). The coherence between Carandini’s synthetic overview and the current volume’s detailed presentation of data is striking. The intervening 40+ years have brought greater understanding of certain categories of finds, such as African amphorae and cookwares, but there are almost no major interpretative differences present in the final report. What, then, is the value of final publication after such a long period?
I can make a humble suggestion or two in validation of the efforts of these authors. The evidence from a project conducted 50 years ago certainly merits the designation ‘legacy data’, but without it where would we be? The area of the Italian team’s excavations is today occupied by a public park with sports facilities and other constructions (Figure 1). The Malik Ibn Anas Mosque and its enormous parking lots stand adjacent. Changes to this modern landscape have thus rendered further excavation unlikely, if not impossible. So, if we are going to learn any more about this area, it is going to be from a detailed examination of the legacy data in this report. I have argued previously that there is much more to be done with legacy data from North African projects (Stone Reference Stone and Hitchner2022, 12–13), but these previous statements do not obligate me to be enthusiastic. The reality with all archaeological publications is that some finds are especially suitable for further analyses, while others – perhaps because they were studied hastily or are lacking key information – will never be able to be examined further. In this case the report presents the pottery, with lots of up-to-date comparanda, in such a way that additional quantitative analyses of wares and types should certainly occur, and the same is probably true of glass fragments and coins. But other categories of evidence including faunal and botanical remains cannot be assessed. The most notable absence in the report is human osteology. By my count, around 150 different partial to complete skeletons were recovered, though the number is not specified, and the human remains are treated so cursorily that any effort at comparison with well-published contemporary cemeteries at Carthage, such as the one adjacent to the Italian team’s Trench IIIA (Stevens et al. Reference Stevens, Garrison and Freed2009), would be futile.
Readers of this report may also feel like they are taking a trip down memory lane. The report begins with praise for the team’s place in the annals of Italian archaeology (xi–xv): the single-context recording system that is today ubiquitous across Italy was first employed by Italian archaeologists here at Carthage. The innovative nature of the fieldwork is undeniable, but at the same time I was struck by the prominence given to topographic questions. The project, which started in 1973, was in reality field-testing Saumagne’s idea of the city limits – an idea itself produced 50 years earlier (Saumagne Reference Saumagne1924). Major issues in the study of ancient urbanism today barely make an appearance: e.g., craft production, inequality, migration, neighbourhoods and domestic space.
The criticisms mentioned here should not detract from the overall impact of the volume. The 12 countries and 18 missions of the UNESCO: Save Carthage Project have variable publication records. Let the appearance of this volume be a lesson to those who have not yet published final reports that such activities are still worthwhile, and (speaking as an archaeologist with unpublished fieldwork myself) that one day they too may liberate the skeletons from their closets.
