L’inumazione in “spazio urbano” a Cartagine tra V e VII secolo d.C.

Abstract

Studies on intra-mural burials have been developed in the last ten years, focussing especially on Italy. The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon in North Africa, particularly in Carthage, the capital of Africa Proconsularis during the Vandal and the Byzantine period. Study in this province has two main limitations: the first is that urban burials are already common at the end of the 4th century (earlier than in other parts of the Roman Empire) and the “urban” sectors are often difficult to define clearly; the second is due to the reliability of data, as much archaeological evidence was destroyed by excavations in the 19th-beginning of the 20th century. In spite of this Carthage is peculiar, because a large amount of information is available (even if not always securely dated). In considering the difficulty in defining the concept of “urban” especially in Late Antiquity, the analysis focuses more on what can be said to be “urban space”. Data are presented following a topographical order from north to south, after a short summary of the archaeological evidence from sites along the city wall. Analysis of burials seems to show that in the Vandal period the very few recorded tombs (always simple pits) were randomly located in completely abandoned sectors of the city. Later, in the early Byzantine period it seems possible to suggest a phase of re-organisation, with burials located all around churches, both inside and outside the city wall. Starting from the end of the 6th and the 7th century AD the situation seems to change and a larger number of burials in small groups are recorded, usually located in strict connection with the living and production areas. In the same period well organised cemeteries inside the city wall have also been excavated; as seen in the cemetery of the circus. The typology of well constructed graves (all stone cists) and in the case of the circus, the absence of reuse of decorated stone or marble fragments, seem to suggest the presence of a systematic and organised reuse of building material in that area. Finally it has to be pointed out that we have very few examples (and not surely dated) of graves belonging to the Early Arab period; which seems peculiar as we know that the city certainly survived and was inhabited after the Arab conquest. This anomaly is probably due to lack of knowledge, complicated possibly by similarity between late Byzantine and Islamic graves and maybe also by the waste of data resulting from old excavations.