Matthew M. McCarty’s 2025 monograph offers a decolonial intervention in the study of religion in Roman North Africa, in which he systematically dismantles colonial and Orientalist paradigms, especially those established by Marcel Le Glay, which framed molk-style rites and Saturn worship as static expressions of resistance to Roman integration (5, 8–10, 14–15; cf. M. Le Glay, Saturne africain, 3 vols., 1961/1962/1966). Instead, he contests such ‘essentializing and ideal culture histories’ (7) by applying a pragmatic semiotic approach, grounded in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, to the votive stelae associated with molk rites. Focusing primarily on the Roman imperial period, he argues that votive stelae functioned as active material agents through which local populations negotiated power, constructed hierarchies and embedded themselves within the material hegemony of the Roman Empire (23). In this respect, McC.’s work aligns with recent scholarship on Roman North Africa that seeks to overcome colonial perspectives, such as D. J. Mattingly (Between Sahara and Sea. Africa in the Roman Empire, 2023) or S. Ardeleanu (Numidia Roma, 2021), or the German Research Foundation network on African cities and their hinterlands led by D. Beck and L. Gilhaus (https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/542539020?language=en).
The book is divided into two parts, with appendices, a bibliography and an index. The first part consists of the first two chapters and establishes the broader framework by deconstructing colonial approaches to religion in Roman North Africa (ch. 1). Ch. 2 provides a chronological overview of tophet-like sanctuaries, situating stelae and molk-style rites within a ‘chronological, geographic, and productive framework’ (28). McC. divides their development into four phases, from the Phoenician diaspora to imperial-period expansion (29). Notably, he rejects any connection between the so-called tophet boom and the fall of Carthage in 146 b.c.e. Instead, he dates this expansion to the late second and first centuries b.c.e., thereby moving away from explanations rooted in imperial political history alone (58–61).
The second part shifts from chronological contextualisation to thematic analysis. McC. examines how stelae, images, rituals, and sanctuary architecture shaped community formation and Roman imperial hegemony. Ch. 3 argues that ‘Africa’ was not a pre-existing ethnic or cultural entity, but was actively made in the long first century b.c.e. through shared signs. Through his analysis of the transformation of Carthaginian signifiers, McC. demonstrates how local elites created ‘a sense of “Africa”’ as ‘an imagined community of signs’ between Roman and Numidian authority (84). Thus, ch. 4 rejects the idea that Saturn was simply the Roman name for a static Punic Baal Hammon. Instead, it treats divine identity as historically constructed through a ‘meshworks of signs’ (116). Saturn emerges as a deity materially remade within Roman imperial hierarchies.
Chs 5 and 6 shift the spotlight from gods to human actors. Ch. 5 argues that North African votive stelae underwent a transformation between the Hellenistic and Roman periods, evolving from monuments that fostered a horizontal ‘community of equals’ to monuments that constructed vertical social hierarchies. McC. rejects class- or ethnicity-based identifications as insufficient (180). However, the stark contrast drawn between Hellenistic egalitarianism and Roman hierarchy occasionally risks oversimplifying earlier Carthaginian social dynamics. His interpretation of sacerdos Saturni as an honorific office stripped of mystical connotations is particularly convincing (220–5). Ch. 6 provides an analysis of depictions of children on stelae, arguing that child offerings were reconceptualised as prospective social persons bearing Roman citizenship markers, such as the bulla (232–4, 260). Together, these chapters demonstrate how a local religious tradition was absorbed into Roman hegemony, transforming altar victims into imagined subjects of the empire (269).
Chs 7 and 8 extend this argument to ritual practice and architecture. McC. rejects explanations of ritual change as Roman ‘civilizing’ intervention, presenting it instead as the result of localised social renegotiations (e.g. 279). This shift is especially clear in his discussions of Hadrumetum and Thignica (289–308). Ch. 8 locates these transformations in sanctuary spaces. Rejecting older typologies that classified courtyard temples as essentially ‘Semitic’ (322), McC. argues that monumental, elite-funded sanctuaries reorganised relations between deities, dedicants and communities (324). Particularly persuasive is the use of spatial affordance theory: architecture did not simply house ritual, but actively directed movement, visibility, and social positioning (e.g. 338, 345). In the concluding chapter, McC. synthesises these arguments by asserting that molk-style rites and Saturn worship were not remnants of an unchanging ‘Berber’ mentality (384), but practices through which local elites naturalised power within the Roman Empire.
Ultimately, McC. rewrites the cultural and religious history of Roman North Africa. He shows that ‘Roman Africa’ was not passively conquered or culturally erased, but actively made from below through localised cults. This well-researched and clearly written book will certainly become a new point of reference for the study of religion in Roman North Africa. McC.’s careful use of terminology is also noteworthy. Concepts such as ‘child’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘tophet’, ‘Africa’ or ‘tradition’ are not treated as self-evident, but are defined and problematised throughout. Equally valuable is his awareness of the methodological difficulties that shape the field, from old excavation records and dating issues to the colonial legacy of Western scholarship. If one criticism remains, it concerns the accessibility of the underlying research data. Given the amount of data, an open-access publication of the stelae-database would have been highly desirable, both for transparency and for stimulating further research. However, this does little to diminish the importance of the book. McC. offers a powerful, theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded reinterpretation of North African religion.
