Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants

Jeffrey H Schwartz,Frank Houghton,Roberto Macchiarelli,Luca Bondioli,Karen Rosenberg

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009177

Abstract

Two types of cemeteries occur at Punic Carthage and other Carthaginian settlements: one centrally situated housing the remains of older children through adults, and another at the periphery of the settlement (the “Tophet”) yielding small urns containing the cremated skeletal remains of very young animals and humans, sometimes comingled. Although the absence of the youngest humans at the primary cemeteries is unusual and worthy of discussion, debate has focused on the significance of Tophets, especially at Carthage, as burial grounds for the young. One interpretation, based on two supposed eye-witness reports of large-scale Carthaginian infant sacrifice [Kleitarchos (3rd c. BCE) and Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BCE)], a particular translation of inscriptions on some burial monuments, and the argument that if the animals had been sacrificed so too were the humans, is that Tophets represent burial grounds reserved for sacrificial victims. An alternative hypothesis acknowledges that while the Carthaginians may have occasionally sacrificed humans, as did their contemporaries, the extreme youth of Tophet individuals suggests these cemeteries were not only for the sacrificed, but also for the very young, however they died. Here we present the first rigorous analysis of the largest sample of cremated human skeletal remains (348 burial urns, N = 540 individuals) from the Carthaginian Tophet based on tooth formation, enamel histology, cranial and postcranial metrics, and the potential effects of heat-induced bone shrinkage. Most of the sample fell within the period prenatal to 5-to-6 postnatal months, with a significant presence of prenates. Rather than indicating sacrifice as the agent of death, this age distribution is consistent with modern-day data on perinatal mortality, which at Carthage would also have been exacerbated by numerous diseases common in other major cities, such as Rome and Pompeii. Our diverse approaches to analyzing the cremated human remains from Carthage strongly support the conclusion that Tophets were cemeteries for those who died shortly before or after birth, regardless of the cause.

Highlights

Some biblical scholars maintain that the Carthaginians frequently and systematically practiced infant sacrifice perhaps as early as Queen Dido’s founding of the Phoenician colony on the northern coast of Africa in the 9th or 8th century BCE until 146 BCE, when the Romans won the third and last Punic War [1,2,3,4,5]
The ‘‘all humans were sacrificed’’ thesis rests on the argument that, since the animals interred in the Tophet were surely sacrificial victims, so too were the humans interred in the Tophet [4,5]
In cases where one or two individuals were hypothesized present on the basis of minimum numbers of individuals (MNI), the suite of preserved skeletal elements typically demonstrated that entire individuals had been interred

Summary

Introduction

Some biblical scholars maintain that the Carthaginians frequently and systematically practiced infant sacrifice perhaps as early as Queen Dido’s founding of the Phoenician colony on the northern coast of Africa in the 9th or 8th century BCE until 146 BCE, when the Romans won the third and last Punic War [1,2,3,4,5]. This interpretation derives from the following: 1) Kleitarchos Other biblical scholars [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14], upon reviewing the evidence from the Tophet at Carthage and others at Carthaginian settlements in Cyprus and Sardinia, admit that humans may occasionally have been sacrificed, and argue that sacrifice alone was not the primary factor underlying human interment in Tophets because: 1) perinatal humans, perhaps stillborn, have tentatively been identified at these sites; 2) the general agerepresentation of these human samples is consistent with infant mortality, which would have been high; 3) the presence of the very youngest humans in marginally rather than in crossgenerational and centrally located cemeteries attests to attributes specific to the young, such as death before at age at which they would have been accepted into society as real individuals; 4) postmortem human cremations were offerings to the deities; and 5) the classical ‘‘descriptions’’ of repeated, large-scale infant sacrifice were exaggerations if not anti-Carthaginian propaganda

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