Excavations at Carthage, 1975: Second Interim Report

Abstract

SummaryIn the second season of excavation by a British team participating in the UNESCO Save Carthage project it was found that the topography of the island in the circular harbour underwent a radical change in the fourth century B.C., after which there appear to have been first timber and then stone ship-sheds and other installations associated with the Punic naval harbour. The Roman quaysides were found both on the island and on the mainland and much new information obtained, partly from underwater survey, about the bridge or causeway which linked the island with the mainland. A reconstruction was attempted of the presumed Roman pharos. Apart from modern features, the latest stage in the archaeological sequence on the island was a series of burials in stone cists at the centre and another, of apparently uncoffined inhumations, at the north edge, both groups dating not earlier than the sixth century A.D. On the Circular Harbour, North Side an 18 m.-wide strip was cleared across the insula between kardines XV and XVI and north of the quay wall, but excavation of the stratigraphical sequence is still in its early stages. At the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, Salammbo, immediately north of the city wall a sequence of a building, probably of the sixth–early seventh century A.D., followed by a period of burials, followed by another building, may span the change from the Byzantine to the Arab occupation of Carthage. South of the city wall there are signs of a metalled berm and defensive ditch, which could belong to the time of Belisarius, the presumed ditch being at least partly filled in before the construction of a building aligned on the so-called Gracchan centuriation.