This elegantly produced and lavishly illustrated volume illuminates the earliest excavations of Carthage from 1817 to 1859, with particular attention given to the work of Nathan Davis from 1856 to 1859. Synthesising hitherto unpublished material including personal correspondences, committee reports and sketch books with published material such as Davis's own volume, Carthage and Her Remains, F. reconstructs the life and career of an often overlooked pioneer of North African archaeology. F. is careful to locate Davis's work within the wider context of archaeological excavations in Tunisia during the mid-nineteenth century and, in so doing, provides an enthralling insight into the social and political intrigues which influenced archaeological investigation in North Africa at this time. Other topics addressed in the opening chapters include: the role of antiquarians in the early excavations of Carthage, the colonialist dimensions to archaeological surveys in Tunisia during the nineteenth century and the original goals of Davis's excavations. In contrast to previous scholarship, subsequent chapters offer a more forgiving analysis of Davis's archaeological strategies including the style and consistency of his record keeping, his use and understanding of stratigraphy, and his relationship with his native workforce. In fact, a more sympathetic view of Davis's achievements underpins much of the volume: thus, although recognising his inherent flaws as an archaeologist and as an academic, F. is keen to demonstrate that there is much to be admired about his work. As part of this recuperative process F. meticulously catalogues all of Davis's less well-known, but nevertheless illuminating, excavations at Carthage, Gammarth and Utica during 1857–1858. Particular prominence is given to the 1857 excavation of the so-called ‘Punic Mine’, a venture that produced nearly a hundred Punic votive stelae and which radically changed scholarly understanding of Carthaginian culture and society. As is to be expected, F. devotes a significant proportion of the volume to analysing the numerous mosaics recovered by Davis and his team. The discovery of the Mosaic of the Months and Seasons, Davis's most impressive find and the one which prompted him to devise his revolutionary technique for raising mosaics intact (a technique still in use today), forms the centrepiece of this discussion. However, the most innovative, and indeed impressive, aspect of F.'s volume is her topographical analysis. Having established the precision of Davis' cartographic techniques and his efforts to ensure exactitude in the charts he produced, F. uses his extant sketch-maps to try to identify the probable locations for each of his trenches. These are then plotted on the street-grid map of Roman-Carthage produced under the auspices of UNESCO's ‘Save Carthage’ project in the early 1970s. The results are remarkable: F.'s map not only begins to provide a meaningful context for each of Davis's finds but also helps to illuminate the differing socio-economic function and status of the regions he excavated. F. succeeds in presenting a fresh and sympathetic assessment of Davis's substantial contribution to the archaeology of Roman-Carthage, a contribution more than worthy of recognition.