The Bir Messaouda Basilica: Pilgrimage and the Transformation of an Urban Landscape in Sixth Century AD Carthage

By Richard Miles and Simon Greenslade

This volume charts the radical transformation of an inner city neighbourhood in late antique Carthage which was excavated over a five-year period by a team from the University of Cambridge. Bordering the main thoroughfare leading from the Brysa Hill to the ports, the neighbourhood remained primarily a residential one from the second century until 530s AD when a substantial basilica was constructed over the eastern half of the insula. Further extensive modifications were made to the basilica half-a-century later when the structures on the western half of the insula were demolished and the basilica greatly enlarged with the addition of a new east-west aisles, a large monumental baptistery and a crypt. By carefully reconstructing the complex architectural plan of this innovative building, this study shows how the re-modelled Bir Messaouda basilica was transformed into a major pilgrimage centre overturning established tradition that located such complexes outside the city walls. The Bir Messaouda basilica provides important insights into the transition between Vandal and Byzantine control of the city, the development of a new Christian inter-mural urban landscape in the sixth century AD, and the significance of the pilgrimage in reinforcing ecclesiastical authority in post-Justinianic North Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781785706813

Richard Miles

Richard Miles is Professor of Roman History and Archaeology at the University of Sydney. He has written extensively on the archaeology and history of Punic, Roman and Late Antique North Africa.

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1

Late Antique Carthage: archaeological and historical contexts

Richard Miles

Introduction

Approximately a century and a half after its celebrated destruction by the legions of Scipio Aemilianus in 146 BC, the city of Carthage, Rome’s greatest historical rival, was, after a number of false starts in the late Republican period, re-founded by the Roman emperor Augustus.¹ Carthage was the provincial capital of Africa Proconsularis and remained one of the most politically, economically and culturally important urban centres in the Roman Empire throughout the Imperial period. Carthage was the major mercantile hub for a region that was a significant producer of grain and oil and the African headquarters for the annonae fleet that transported foodstuffs to Rome on a massive scale.² Even after its capture by the Vandals in AD 439 Carthage preserved its dominant position acting as the regnal capital for the Vandal kings throughout their tenure. After the conquest of Africa by the armies of the Eastern Roman emperor, Justinian, in AD 533–534, Carthage once more preserved its supremacy in the region serving as the administrative capital of the Byzantine administration until the late 7th century and the Arab Conquest.

It is with the later periods of Carthage’s long history that this study primarily concerns itself. The Bir Messaouda Basilica was first built in the 530s AD before experiencing a further major building phase in the 570s. The relatively well-recorded series of events that led to the control of the city changing hands three times in late antiquity, combined with the city’s status as one of the most important centres of western Christianity, mean that our understanding of the period in which The Bir Messaouda Basilica was in use is heavily influenced by a strong set of historical narratives. These are narratives with which the archaeologist must engage, yet the terms of that engagement firstly need to be carefully considered.

Historical sources generally present both opportunities and challenges for archaeological fieldwork and interpretation, and Late Antique Carthage serves as an excellent example of both the possibilities and limitations of the textual record to the archaeologist. The experience of over a century of excavation in Carthage has shown that archaeologists who treat contemporary historical and religious texts as mines of empirical data will almost always be disappointed. A particularly pertinent case in point is Carthage’s rich Christian legacy. A considerable number of churches and other cult buildings are mentioned in letters, sermons, council records, treatises and histories. However, not one of the significant number of ecclesiastical structures that have been uncovered by archaeologists in Carthage can unequivocally be matched with textual descriptions.³ During and after the gradual abandonment of the city from the late 7th century AD onwards its structures were extensively plundered for buildings materials for the nearby city of Tunis as well as other settlements, meaning that very few inscriptions which might act as identifiers have survived in situ.

Rather than providing opportunities for factual crossreference, the rich material and textual records of Late Antique Carthage are largely parallel narratives. Yet, it is often that very dissonance that makes the historical record such an important aid in the broader contextualization of often disparate and extremely fragmentary archaeological data, whilst material evidence with its emphasis on longterm continuities provides an important counterpoint to the dramatic political and religious changes that dominate the literary testimony. This is certainly the case with The Bir Messaouda Basilica.

Narratives: vandal neglect and imperial restoration

Two powerful interconnected narratives have dominated the history of Late Antique Carthage: Vandal neglect followed by a renaissance under Justinian, saviour of Africa. Each has had a significant but problematic impact on how the material evidence from these periods has been interpreted.

In the AD 480s, the African churchman Victor of Vita in his History of the Vandal Persecutions described the ruinous legacy of the Vandal kings on the physical fabric of Carthage:

In some buildings, in particular mansions and houses where fire had not succeeded, they smashed the roofs into pieces and razed the fine walls, so that the past beauty of the towns can no longer be appreciated. There are a multitude of cities with few or no populations, for after what took place, those that still stand remain desolate. Here at Carthage they completely destroyed the odeon, theatre, temple of Memoria and what people called the Via Caelestis.⁴

According to Victor, the Vandal king’s neglect and destruction of the city of Carthage was symptomatic of their barbarism and heretic (Homoian) beliefs, both of which stood as the root causes of the main subject of his work: the grievous persecution of the African Homoousian Church and their Romano-African congregations. In Victor’s work, Romanity and the Homoousian cause were one and the same in opposition to barbarity and Homoianism.

The dominant theme of African Nicene sources was the dogged resistance shown by both ecclesiastical and lay Romano-African communities against the relentless persecution by the Vandal kings and their Homoian Church.⁵ In Victor’s History of the Vandal Persecutions, the Vandal kings were portrayed as Homoian zealots willing to use extremely violent and repressive measures to stamp out the Homoousian Church in their North African dominions. Victor’s work creates an escalating scheme of persecution that commences with the leadership and clergy of the Homoousian Church before engulfing the Romano-African lay elites and then all socio-economic groups in North Africa. Victor described how under the Vandal king Huneric (AD 477–484), the Romano-African Homoousian population, men, women and children, were punished with forced labour, starvation, exile, torture and death.⁶ Thousands of members of the North African Homoousian bishops and clergy were sent into desert exile.⁷ All the churches and property of the Homoousian Church were to be closed and handed over to the royal treasuries or the Homoian Church.⁸ Nicene clergy were banned from association, practising baptisms or ordinations.⁹ Homoousian treatises were to be burnt. The Homoousian laity were forbidden from receiving legacies or making bequests. Members of the Homoousian Romano-African elite including estate owners and palace officials who refused to give up their faith were threatened with dismissal and huge fines. Judges who did not enforce these laws were to be sentenced to death, and other legal officials received fines.¹⁰ Homoousian bishops had their property confiscated and were sent off to work in forced manual labour.¹¹ Across the Vandal kingdom Homoian thugs set upon Homoousian congregations and priests.¹² Other Homoousian contemporary accounts such as the Passion of the Seven Monks, which recounted the savage martyrdom of seven ascetics from Gafsa, further reinforced the image of the Romano-African population suffering severe religious persecution under the Homoian Vandals.¹³ Even during the supposedly less repressive reigns of later Vandal kings such as Thrasamund, Homoousian writers proclaimed that the threat of violence and intimidation was always present.¹⁴

In terms of Carthage’s Christian buildings, contemporary hostile commentators sometimes portrayed the city’s churches and other ecclesiastical property as the victims of violent appropriation or impious neglect. For instance, Victor described how the Basilica Fausti was used as a holding station for captives that the Vandals brought back from Rome.¹⁵ For Victor the Vandals’ treatment of the basilica stood as a powerful metaphor for the harsh treatment that was meted out to the Homoousian community in Carthage. Victor also recounted how a couple of years before the persecution had begun, one member of the congregation experienced a vision of the church shining with candles, cloth coverings and lamps before it went dark and the air became stale, and its congregation was expelled by menacing Ethiopians. A priest also dreamt of the building being used as stabling for pigs and goats.¹⁶ This narrative, which projected an image of the Vandal epoch as a period of destruction and neglect for Carthage and Africa as a whole, was further bolstered after the Byzantine conquest by Justinian’s imperial legislation that even repeated the accusation that the Vandals had used churches as stables.¹⁷

The religious policies of the Vandal kings were also portrayed by hostile African and Eastern Roman writers as having a profoundly negative impact on the urban (particularly Homoousian) topography of Carthage. Those accounts recorded how Vandal kings seized many of Carthage’s churches and handed them over to their fellow Homoian priests. Despite a possible reference in the Anthologia Latina to a church or another kind of religious building being founded by Thrasamund, it appears that the Vandals largely appropriated the Nicene churches in Carthage.¹⁸ It was reported that Vandal king Geiseric had seized the two large and impressive churches dedicated to St Cyprian, Carthage Africa’s most famous martyr, one of which was the site of his martyrdom and the other where his body was interred.¹⁹ Victor listed the Basilicas Maiorum, of Celerina and the Scillitan martyrs and the Basilica Restituta as having also been handed over to the Homoians. A number of these basilicas were famed as the burial places of Carthage’s most celebrated Christian martyrs. The Scillitani had been tried and martyred in Carthage in AD 180. The Basilica Maiorum, which has been tentatively identified as the Mcidfa basilica, was the resting place of the remains of Saints Perpetua, Felicitas and their companions in martyrdom.²⁰

Victor, and later Procopius, were strident in their emphasis on the Homoousian Church’s rightful ownership of these basilicas and the Nicene loyalties of the saints whose relics rested within them. For Victor, the seizure of these churches by the Vandal kings was yet more evidence of their tyrannical and illegitimate rule.²¹ Procopius emphasised Cyprian’s partisanship towards the African Nicene church in an account of how during the Homoian stewardship of Cyprian’s church and festival, the martyr had often appeared in a dream to the Nicene telling them not to be concerned because he would be his own avenger.²²

If the Vandal ruination of Carthage was symptomatic of their barbarous and heretical beliefs then the physical restoration of the city was portrayed as symptomatic of the restoration of Roman rule and Christian Nicene orthodoxy to North Africa. Sympathetic contemporary commentators and imperial legislature portrayed the invasion of Africa by Justinian’s imperial forces as a divinely sanctioned mission to save the orthodox Homoousian Romano-Africans from their savage persecution by the heterodox Homoian Vandals.²³ In an imperial edict issued in Constantinople in AD 534 after the successful military invasion of Africa, the victorious emperor marvelled at:

By what language, therefore, or by what works worthy of God that He deemed it proper that the injuries of the Church should be avenged through me, the least of his servants.²⁴

In his work, On Buildings, Procopius of Caesarea presented the towns and cities of Justinian’s newly enlarged empire not only as recipients of imperial largesse but also as physical testament to the glorious restoration of Romanity and doctrinal orthodoxy. In the case of Carthage, Procopius presented an image of a restored Carthage enjoying the benefits of Roman imperial patronage after decades of Vandal neglect. Carthage, renamed Justinianê in honour of the emperor, was the beneficiary of new shrines to the Virgin Mary within the palace and to a local saint Prima as well as the Mandracium, a fortified monastery. The city walls were also repaired, the maritime forum was remodelled and new baths, named after the empress Theodora were built.²⁵ The surviving historical sources generally painted the period of Vandal control over Carthage as an unmitigated disaster for its buildings and inhabitants alike.²⁶ In contrast, the Byzantine regeneration under Justinian was presented as an image of a restored Carthage enjoying the benefits of Roman imperial patronage after decades of ruin and neglect under the Vandal kings.²⁷

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Figure 1.1. Plan of the Pronsular Palace (after Duval 1972a, fig. 20).

To what extent does the archaeological record substantiate these claims of bust and boom? A number of secular and ecclesiastical public buildings in Carthage do appear to conform to the narrative of Byzantine era construction projects to remedy Vandal era destruction and neglect. Epigraphic records indicate that in late antiquity a number of new government buildings were added on the Byrsa Hill, the traditional administrative and religious centre of Carthage, with two large three-aisled basilicas, originally dating to the 4th century AD, having been tentatively identified as the ‘proconsular palace’ and ‘judicial basilica’ respectively (Fig. 1.1).²⁸ In seeming agreement with the textual representations of the city’s decline under Vandal rule, the central apse of the ‘judicial basilica’ had suffered from stone robbing and its eastern nave had partly collapsed, probably rendering the building unusable.²⁹ After the Byzantine conquest the basilica was repaired, with a new apse also being constructed, although the central nave was now the only area in use after the colonnades of the structure were walled up. It has also been argued, but not conclusively proven, that the Byrsa hill might also have been fortified in this period.³⁰

Carthage’s fortifications, the so-called Theodosian Walls, have also provided evidence of Byzantine initiatives to rectify Vandal era neglect. Despite having only been built relatively recently in AD 425, some stretches of the wall had within a few decades been compromised by the construction of ad hoc rough housing of mudbrick and wood in close vicinity to it.³¹ After the Byzantine conquest, the walls were repaired and habitations around it were cleared, although later in the 6th century dwellings had once more been built up against the fortifications.³² There was also a major investment in the restoration and maintenance of the water supply, street drains, waste channels and sewers in the mid-6th century, possibly as a result of previous Vandal neglect of the city’s infrastructure.³³ Carthage’s theatre, situated in a northeastern district of the city was certainly in use in the second half of the 4th century AD when it was the beneficiary of some repairs in AD 382/83 after an earthquake. However, the original excavators of the structure found extensive evidence of a violent end with statues and inscriptions smashed and a thick layer of ash and debris covering the stage and orchestra. Archaeological excavation has shown that the theatre had ceased functioning sometime in the first half of the 5th century AD with one of the substructures in the cavea being used as a rough dwelling, and other sections being subsequently backfilled and used as a cemetery.³⁴

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Figure 1.2. Christian Carthage in the 6th century (after Leone 2007).

It is however, in Carthage’s Christian topography that the greatest transformation between the Vandal and Byzantine era seem to exist. Despite Carthage’s later fate as a building stone quarry meaning that no basilicas contain in situ epigraphic evidence to determine their identities, an extraordinary twelve churches, three chapels, two ‘monasteries’ and a substantial circular monument, probably associated with martyr veneration, have been uncovered which were either built, or had significant building phases during this period (Fig. 1.2).³⁵ Within the city walls constructed on an insula next to the theatre a dome roofed circular monument, thought to be a memoria for a martyr cult, was destroyed in the 5th century before being subsequently rebuilt in the Byzantine period. According to its most recent excavators the circular monument probably acted together with an adjacent (very poorly preserved) basilica as a church-memoria-complex (Fig. 1.3).³⁶ Also within the city walls close to the Antonine Baths in the Dermech district, two basilicas have been excavated: a large five-aisled structure with a substantial baptistery and chapel (Dermech I) and a smaller three-aisled church (Dermech II) (Fig. 1.4). Close by another structure has been tentatively identified as a basilica but is more likely to have been two high status mausolea (Dermech III).³⁷ Further to the south between Cardines IX and X east and Decumani II and III south, the so-called ‘Carthagenna’ basilica, a three aisled, double-apsed building with a baptistery, was built over an earlier 5th century AD three-aisled colonnaded hall, ‘the Monument of the Columns’ (Fig. 1.5).³⁸ Also within the city, two unidentified structures with a domestic footprint, decorated with mosaics celebrating African and non-African martyrs, have been discovered. However, their identification with the Monasteries of Bigua and St Stephen remains unproven.³⁹

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Figure 1.3. Plan and reconstructed elevation of the Circular Monument (after Ennabli 1997, figs 52 and 53).

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Figure 1.4. The Christian basilicas in the Dermech area (after Duval 1972a, fig. 2).

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Figure 1.5. The so-called Carthagenna Basilica (after Ennabli 2000, plan 4).

Outside the city walls on the northern fringes stood a number of large suburban cemetery churches and ecclesiastical complexes. A seven-aisled basilica was uncovered in the Mcidfa district. This basilica is generally thought to have been the Basilica Maiorum due to the discovery of an inscription honouring Perpetua and her companions found at the Mcidfa church where, according to the 5th-century polemicist Victor, their relics were interred (Fig. 1.6).⁴⁰ Nearby on the seashore the St Monique basilica, another seven-aisled structure, has been located (Fig. 1.7). Also, in the northern suburban districts the so-called Damous El Karita was located, a vast complex with a nine-aisled main basilica, a semi-circular atrium with a triconch structure, a baptismal font, halls and other smaller rooms, as well as a rotunda with a semi-circular exedra (Fig. 1.8). At Bir Ftouha a complex was built in the AD 540s close by to an older ecclesiastical building to its west, comprising a three-aisled basilica, a polygonal entry hall, ambulatory, two conjoining peristyle courtyards and a large baptistery (Fig. 1.9).⁴¹ On the southern fringes of the city another three-aisled basilica was discovered at Bir el Knissia (Fig. 1.10).⁴² Despite, there being no correlation at all with a description of buildings in the text, this astonishing collection of mid-6th century AD ecclesiastical monuments undoubtedly provides the strongest case for the type of coordinated imperially supported construction activity presented in Procopius’ Buildings.

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Figure 1.6. Basilica Maiorum (after Duval 1972a, fig. 19).

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Figure 1.7. Basilica of Sainte Monique, also known as Saint Cyprian (after Duval 1972a, fig. 14).

Figure 1.8. Damous El Karita (after Lapeyre 1938, fig. 71).

Fig. 1.9. Bir Ftouha area (after Stevens 2005, fig. 15).

Figure 1.10. Bir Knissia basilica (after Ennabli 1997, fig.67).

Figure 1.11. Carthage in the Late Antique period (after Leone 2007, fig 14).

Counter narratives: vandal regeneration and urban continuities

However, recent scholarship, often based on previously less well-explored textual evidence from 5th and 6th century Africa, as well as a growing body of more recently garnered archaeological evidence, has effectively questioned and problematised these supposed clear-cut distinctions between Carthage under the Vandal kings and the imperial rule of Justinian. Indeed, the case for strong continuities between the late Roman, Vandal and Byzantine periods in Carthage is now difficult to refute (Figs 1.11, 1.12 and 1.13).

The infrastructure and buildings of Late Antique Carthage generally follow a pattern of continuity, presenting a far more complex and nuanced picture that defies simple linear periodisation. Even in some instances where Byzantine era renovation is evident, the neglect that the works sought to rectify sometimes predated the Vandal tenure over Carthage. This was the case with the celebrated Antonine Baths, which at their greatest extent spanned an area of six full insulae next to the shoreline. The central area of the baths was partially renovated in the Byzantine period, but the building was already in a state of considerable disrepair with the roofs of both the caldarium and the frigidarium having collapsed in the early 5th century AD prior to the Vandal takeover of Carthage.⁴³

Other amenities, which had fallen into disuse prior to the Vandal period, were not brought back into service. Despite Victor’s accusations of Vandal agency in the destruction of the Odeon, the building was no longer being used for its original purpose by the early 5th century AD, first acting as a burial ground before later being used a rubbish dump.⁴⁴ These developments were certainly not exclusive to Carthage but rather echoed a general pattern found across the Roman Empire in this period, and might be explained by the growing influence of Christianity in the highest echelons of late Roman society, with potential patrons increasingly likely to commit funds to church building rather than activities that were regularly condemned by the Church.

Figure 1.12. Carthage in the 5th century AD (after Leone 2007, fig. 41).

In contrast to the theatre, other public entertainment amenities in Carthage also appear to contradict the historical orthodoxy of Vandal decline. As a major city of the Roman Empire, Carthage had long been well-served with public entertainment mainly situated on the fringes of the city grid. Carthage’s amphitheatre has been estimated to hold up to 36,000 spectators whilst in the southwest of the city the circus seated between 60,000 and 75,000 people.⁴⁵ The introduction of reserved seating into the amphitheatre indicates that it was still functioning in 4th and perhaps 5th centuries AD.⁴⁶ In the Vandal era Africa, the poet Luxorius wrote a series of poems on the gladiators and other entertainers and the audiences that watched them. These references do not represent definite proof that the amphitheatre was in use during the Vandal period but make it a very likely scenario.⁴⁷ Recent archaeological excavations have shown that the circus at Carthage, also mentioned in the poems of Luxorius, was functioning until at least the early decades of the 6th century AD, and perhaps longer.⁴⁸ This conforms to wider development across the Late Antique Mediterranean where similar stadia in the large cities of the Mediterranean world remained in use throughout that period.

In other areas of the city archaeologists have also discovered that long-term continuities rather than dramatic transformation often defined the urban development of Carthage in late antiquity. During the 4th century AD the ports of Carthage had seen developments that reflected the city’s ongoing position as the main African headquarters for the annona fleet. The rectangular harbour was redeveloped with new warehousing and a paved open area was added between the building and the quay wall. A colonnade was subsequently built and the quay wall repaired. In the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, the old Punic circular naval harbour had been transformed into a monumental complex with a temple and other structures surrounded by a circular wall faced by colonnades and accessed by a causeway with a three-bay arch or gate. Ostraca dating to AD 373 show that part of the state transport of olive oil was being administered from the island complex with large quantities being stored, weighed and shipped from there.⁴⁹

Figure 1.13. Carthage in the 6th century AD (after Leone 2007, fig. 45).

By the second half of the 5th century AD part of the circular harbour, perhaps as a result of the end of the annonae system under the Vandals, had fallen into neglect and was being used as a burial ground.⁵⁰ However, in the northern sector of the circular island a range of industrial activities including glass, metal and bone working and most significantly cloth preparation operations, which had commenced in the 3rd century AD, continued uninterrupted until the 7th century AD. The complex included a large mosaic-floor room that, it has been speculated, could have been a guildhall for a collegium of cloth workers or dyers who might at times have been under state supervision.⁵¹ During the Byzantine period the monumental character of the island was maintained with the construction of a new colonnade and the rebuilding of the entrance archway and bridge.⁵²

Figure 1.14. Maison de la Rotonde (after Balmelle 2012, fig. 383).

Striking continuities also exist with regard to some of the prestige domestic dwellings within the city walls. During the 4th century AD a number of districts experienced something of a building boom with a considerable number of wealthy private residences being constructed or renovated. For instance, the Junon Hill close to the Byrsa hill appears to have been extensively redeveloped in this period with the construction of several houses including the impressive Domus of Dominus Julius.⁵³

In the theatre district a number of fine and extensive houses show firm evidence of continued use and even highquality refurbishment in the Vandal period. The so-called Maison de la Rotonde, which lies between Cardines IX and X east, and south of the Decumanus IV north, appears to have been initially constructed on an industrial complex for the production of garum, which had then been transformed into a residential dwelling in the early 3rd century AD. In the late 4th century AD the area underwent a significant transformation with previously separate properties being united in order to build a single large luxurious house (Fig. 1.14). However, once the floor plan, with two large well-appointed apsidal reception rooms, a circular dining room and a reception hall at its heart, was completed, the house fell out of use. It was then restored in the late 5th century AD, when the building was extensively redecorated whilst maintaining its original architectural plan. The house then appears to have been continuously occupied until the mid-7th century AD.⁵⁴ In the same neighbourhood, the excavators of the House of the Cryptoporticus, a fine mansion close to the House of the Rotunda on the Odeon Hill, found no evidence of any impact following the Vandal invasion besides some interruption in building work (Fig. 1.15).⁵⁵ To the south on the insula between Cardines VIII and IX east and Decumani II and III south, the ‘House of the Greek Charioteers’, a peristyle mansion built in the early 5th century AD, went through several phases of redecoration and redevelopment including the repaving of a number of good quality geometric mosaic floors in the area of the porticos during the Vandal period.⁵⁶

Figure 1.15. House of the Cryptoporticus (after Balmelle 2012, fig. 5).

Other aspects of the urban topography of Late Antique Carthage also highlight the extent to which the development of the city in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries AD was often the result of long term trends which do not conform to rigid historical periodisations of the epoch. Carthage’s cemeteries traditionally ringed the perimeters of the city. In the Late Antique period, however, the situation became increasingly more fluid with new burial grounds emerging often around new or reused landmarks sometimes inside the city perimeters. These new cemeteries mirrored the socio-economic stratification of the city with elite burials associated with living communities in the form of purposebuilt cemetery churches whilst the less well-to-do were interred in fringe or unpopulated areas of the city.⁵⁷ Disused high status public or private structures were being reused for cemeteries such as the so-called Villa Scorpianus, an abandoned local bathhouse on the periphery of the city. On the west side of the city at Bir Jebbana, another bathhouse that had fallen into disuse in the first half of the 4th century AD had also become a burial ground.⁵⁸ It has been suggested that the increase in burials in abandoned high status public and private buildings might reflect a desire on the part of Carthage’s non-elites to capture some of the prestige of identification with a particular place for themselves. Other burials found in disused public spaces, such as the scaenae frons and orchestra of the theatre, might have been associated with now disappeared small Christian shrines or other cultic structures that were installed to take advantage of an impressive monumental setting. These abandoned public stadia were also useful because they provided a ready supply of stone for graves.⁵⁹

Other burial sites inside abandoned structures might have been the result of pressing circumstances rather than a desire to impress. At Falbe Point 90, rooms of a villa were used for a large number of burials during the Vandal period. In one room alone the bodies of 30 different individuals, including a number of children and infants, had been interred. The disorderly manner of these burials suggests that the deaths might have been the result of a special set of circumstances such as an epidemic or a famine.⁶⁰

Another marked characteristic of Late Antique Carthage was the narrowing of the city’s streets due to encroachment by new structures. Recent research has suggested that an encroachment of 1.50 m (roughly the width of the pedestrian pavement) would have been almost universal across Carthage by the second half of the 4th century AD. To the east of the Byrsa Hill a number of streets, including cardines, IX, X, XII and XVII, have been found to have been greatly encroached upon by large new structures.⁶¹ The outer walls of the Maison de la Rotonde, were built over Cardines IX and X east (see Fig. 1.14). Similarly the subterranean gallery of the so-called House of the Cryptoporticus, a fine mansion close to the theatre, lay entirely on Cardo IX east (see Fig. 1.15).⁶² On the Byrsa the portico along the Cardo Maximus was walled up in either the 4th or 5th centuries AD and converted into housing and perhaps shops.⁶³ These encroachments continued all over the city during the 5th century AD and accelerated after the Byzantine takeover when a number of very large structures were built in already densely packed urban neighbourhoods, a development that probably explains a number of the large quantity of street and drainage repairs that have often been put down to Vandal neglect.⁶⁴

In regards to its religious topography, despite the extraordinary transformation of Christian Carthage in the decades after the Byzantine capture of the city, many of the ecclesiastical structures emphasize important continuities with the recent past as much as they represent change. A number of large suburban cemetery churches that were located on the northern fringes of the city including St Monique, Damous El Karita and Mcidfa basilicas, dated back to the late 4th and 5th centuries AD, and were almost certainly officiated over by Homoian clergy during the Vandal period.⁶⁵ Other ecclesiastical buildings that were in use during the Byzantine epoch also appear to have been constructed during the Vandal period. Within the city walls the so-called Dermech I basilica had Vandal era origins. The large three-aisled cemetery church of Bir el Knissia and a subterranean baptismal complex at Sayda were also built in the late 5th century AD (Fig. 1.16).⁶⁶

Figure 1.16. Plan of the Baptistery, Sayda (after Ennabli 1997, fig. 60).

Taking into account these examples of a developing as opposed to dramatically changing city a closer and more ecumenical reading of the existing textual record puts into question just how emphatic a circuit break from the Vandal past these ‘Justinianic’ building projects actually were. The accuracy of these contemporary but partisan assessments of Late Antique Carthage have long concerned archaeologists who have conducted excavations in the city. Over recent decades scepticism has grown amongst archaeologists and historians alike over Procopius’ claim of a Justinianic rebuilding programme in North Africa and across the Byzantine Empire as a whole. Scholars have pointed to the apparent discrepancy between Procopius’ survey and the actual surviving physical record, with many building inscriptions in which Justinian’s name is mentioned which do not appear on Procopius’ list.⁶⁷ Others have also highlighted the role of the Buildings as imperial panegyric rather than as a factual account of Justinian’s physical restoration of the Roman Empire.⁶⁸ A recent study of building inscriptions associated with Justinian has underlined how much of the restoration programme were in fact local initiatives conducted by imperial military officials, bishops and other secular and religious functionaries.⁶⁹ Other scholars, such as the archaeologist John Humphrey, have expressed concern that the default for 6th-century AD structures in Carthage has been to label them as ‘Justinianic’ when it seems highly unlikely that the building and renovation activity that took place in Carthage was limited to Justinian’s reign.⁷⁰

Once the mirage of an imperial building programme can largely be jettisoned then other continuities between Vandal and Byzantine era Carthage begin to emerge. Although no epigraphic or other data exists that illuminates the identities of those individuals or groups who commissioned or donated towards the construction of the ecclesiastical structures built, or renovated in Carthage during the decades after the Byzantine conquest, useful contemporary evidence does exist in other North African cities. With regards to the imperial authorities, epigraphic evidence from various towns in North Africa, highlights the involvement of his senior officials such as Solomon, who acted as Justinian’s Praetorian Prefect in during two spells in the AD 530s and 540s.⁷¹ Although Procopius’ statement that ‘it was impossible to build or to restore a church except with imperial support, not only in Constantinople but everywhere in the empire’ seems implausible, some sort of informal imperial permission might well have been needed for prestigious public construction projects.⁷² Legislation such as Justinian’s novella 67 also shows that the imperial government were keen to encourage provincial elites across the empire to contribute to the repair of churches and other religious buildings, and also that the government wanted to retain some kind of oversight over such projects.⁷³ The involvement of the imperial authorities might be detected in the increased amounts of marble and other prestige building materials from the quarries and masons’ yards of the eastern Mediterranean transported to North African cities in the 6th century.⁷⁴ At Bir Ftouha, Bir El Knissia, and Damous El Karita basilicas, Proconnesian marble and a wide range of other prestige stones from across the eastern empire were used in conjunction with locally sourced materials.⁷⁵ However, although the imperial authorities might have exercised some form of supervisory control over the shipping of prestigious quarried material, it is also clear from the sources that there was a market that could be accessed by other non-governmental parties.⁷⁶

However, most ecclesiastical building work was clearly supported by local dignitaries. At Ammaedara a local dignitary, Marcellus, commissioned an elaborate commemorative cenotaph, with inscribed mosaic and balustrade, in the so-called Church of Candidas to thirty-four local Christians martyred during the Great Persecution and buried elsewhere in the building.⁷⁷ The church at Rusguniae in Mauretania Caesariensis was rebuilt by Maurice, the magister militum, Master of the Soldiers, after it had fallen into dereliction. However, the fact that Maurice and members of his immediate family were buried in the church suggests that he had undertaken the cost of the repairs in a private rather than official capacity.⁷⁸ Inscriptions also illustrate the role played by local clergy in the construction of churches and baptisteries in the Byzantine period.⁷⁹ At Ammaedara, under the direction of Bishop Melleus, the Byzacena Basilica I, commonly identified as the cathedral of the city, received new depositions of relics of Cyprian, which were put under an altar in the western choir and probably in the eastern area of the restored church in AD 568/569.⁸⁰ Byzantine North Africa, therefore, like the much better documented contemporary case study of Ravenna, offers a variegated model of building patronage but one that was largely funded by the same local elites who had practised similar acts of public evergetism in the previous Roman imperial and Vandal epochs. The imperial authorities were just one (although the most important) of a number of different stakeholders all attempting to establish, maintain or bolster their respective authority and prestige.⁸¹

The local lay and ecclesiastical elites who were largely responsible for the ambitious re-framing of the Christian topography of Carthage after the Justinianic Conquest represented obvious continuities to the past. Despite religious tensions, the Vandal kingdom in North Africa was a successful state whose stability was founded on considerable cooperation between the Vandal kings and their Romano-African secular elites, with many even serving in prominent roles within the royal administration.⁸² This crucial détente was often reflected in a shared commitment to the city of Carthage, the capital of the Vandal kingdom, a commitment articulated through royal construction projects in Carthage and its environs on the part of the king, and poetic praise of this royal evergetism by the Romano-African lay elite.⁸³

Despite their hostile and partisan tenor, important continuities with the Vandal past are also albeit grudgingly acknowledged by contemporary Homoousian writers who acknowledge that efforts on the part of the Vandal kings to induce their Romano-African subjects to join the Homoian Church were relatively successful. Indeed, in contrast to the shrill protestations of division and difference propagated by Homoousian writers, the borders between the two churches appears to have been relatively fluid and porous in the Vandal period.⁸⁴ This was particularly the case with the capital Carthage and Africa Proconsularis where the Vandal kings understandably concentrated most of their efforts.⁸⁵ Former Arians are reported as coming over to the Nicene Church whilst a Homoousian bishop, Revocatus, converted to Homoianism.⁸⁶ Some Romano-Africans appear to have changed creed because of the career opportunities that it afforded. For example, Mocianus, Justininian’s African envoy to Carthage during the Three Chapters controversy, had previously defected to the Homoian Church in the Vandal kingdom before returning to the Nicene Church and a powerful job in the eastern imperial service.⁸⁷ From the 480s onwards collective and individual efforts were made by North African Homoian churchmen to stem the follow of apostasies.⁸⁸

Thus, these new and remodelled ecclesiastical structures simultaneously represented both a break with, and continuity with, the past. Recent scholarship has argued that the large monumentalised baptistery at Bir Ftouha might have acted as a facility for the ritual purification and reconciliation with the Nicene Church of large numbers of Homoian penitents.⁸⁹ More generally these magnificent new structures might have acted as the symbolic focus of the development of a new narrative that commemorated heroic resistance against Homoian violence on the part of the Romano-African lay elite that glossed over the painful fissures of a much more complex and difficult recent past.⁹⁰

Conclusion

As well as providing important context for the Bir Messaouda excavation, this introduction has sought to highlight the significant problems associated with attempting to integrate the textual and archaeological record, a practice that has sometimes hampered rather than illuminated our understanding of Late Antique Carthage, the period in which the Bir Messaouda site experienced a series of major transformations. The textual and physical material relating to the urban topography of Vandal and early Byzantine Carthage highlights the existence of a multitude of sometimes complementary, other times conflicting narratives concerning the city. Nor is this a question of simple juxtaposition between ‘text’ and ‘archaeology’. The physical archaeology of 5th- and 6th-century Carthage reflects markedly differing circumstance between different neighbourhoods. There is simply no overarching super narrative of Vandal decline and Byzantine revival rather, long-standing trends that encompass the whole Late Antique period. Similarly, different elements of the textual record often contradict one another depending on the vested interests behind its production. Thus, Late Antique Carthage generally and, as will become clear in this volume, the Bir Messaouda site specifically, not only illustrates the difficulties of presenting an integrated holistic analysis, but also invites both the archaeologist and historian to view the city as the catalyst for a plethora of diverse narratives, experiences and memories.

Notes

1On the re-founding of Carthage see Rakob 2000; Gros 1990 and 2000; Miles 2003, 131–3.

2On Roman Carthage see Gros and Deneauve 1996 and 1980; Gros 1997; Wightman 1980.

3For a collection of the historical references to ecclesiastical structures in Carthage see Ennabli 1997, 15–44. For a discussion of the texts and their limitations specifically with regards to the Vandal epoch see Bockmann 2013, 29–129. The one partial exception is the Mcidfa church on the northern fringes of the city, where an inscription discovered on the site suggests that the building is very likely to be the Basilica Maiorum (Ennabli 1997, 132–3; Bockmann 2013, 93–4).

4Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.8.

5For examples in Victor of Vita see 2.29–30; 2.21–8; 3.47–52. Even slaves who refused to recant their Catholic faith are mentioned (Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.30–5). For the Vandal kings’ relations with the African Homoousian Church see Merrills and Miles 2010, 177–203.

6Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 2.8–9; 23–5. More generally on the tortures inflicted by the Vandals on Romano-Africans see Cod.Iust. 1.27.1.4.

7Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 2.26–37; Vict.Tun. a.c.479.

8Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 3.2.

9Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 3.3–14.

10 For example Count Sebastian who was put to death on spurious grounds by Gaiseric after refusing to become a Homoian (1.19–21). For other examples see 1.48 and 3.27.

11 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 3.15–20.

12 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 3.21–54. See also Ferrandus VF 7.

13 Passio Septem Monachorum, Petschenig 1881. For a discussion of the text see Merrills and Miles 2010, 186.

14 E.g . V . Fulg . 20; Procop., Bell . 3.8. 811.

15 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.25.

16 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 2.18.

17 Cod.Iust. 27.1 repeats the charge that the Vandals had turned churches into stables.

18 hic quoque post sacram meritis altaribus aedem egregiasque aulas ( AL 204. 5–6 [R.213]).

19 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.5.16. Procop., Bell . 3.21.17–25.

20 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.3.9. Basilica Restituta = 1.15.

21 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.9.1.

22 Procop., Bell . 3.21.17–22.

23 See for instance Procopius, BV 3.10–21. For the same view from Ostrogothic Italy see Cassiodorus, Variae. Nov. Just. 30.11.2. Maas 1992, 45–48.2.3.

24 Cod.Iust. 1.27.1.1–2. It was even said that Justinian himself had been persuaded to undertake the conquest after the African bishop Laetus of Nepta, who had been martyred by the Vandal King Huneric, had appeared to him in a dream (Vict. Tun. MGH, a.a., t.11, 198).

25 Procop., Aed . 6.5.8–11.

26 There is a growing recent corpus of scholarly literature on Vandal North Africa including Merrills and Miles 2010, and Conant 2014. Modern works on Byzantine Africa are scarcer but includes Pringles’ study of fortifications, Conant 2014, Stevens and Conant 2016, and Heather 2018.

27 The charge that the Vandals had turned churches into stables was later repeated in Justinian’s legislation ( Cod.Iust. 27.1).

28 Ladjimi Sebai 2005, 250–2.

29 Gros et al. 1985, 33–4 and 113–4.

30 Leone 2007, 174; Gros 1985, 113–26.

31 Leone 2007, 120–2. Unusually, due to its former notoriety as Rome’s greatest enemy, Carthage had no city walls until AD 425 when fortifications were built on the orders of the emperor Theodosius II. The walls seem to have largely followed the plan of the Augustan city and included a series of towers and in some areas, a defensive ditch. The building of the walls clearly had an impact on the districts that now abutted it with some structures falling into disuse or being demolished, and the creation of new cemeteries (Hurst and Roskams 1984, 12–27).

32 Leone 2007, 194–5. By the late 6th century, however, these dwellings had been re-built compromising the wall’s defensive capabilities (Hurst and Roskams 1984, 12–27). See also Wells and Wightman 1980.

33 Leone 2007, 172–3. In terms of the restoration and maintenance of the water supply see the construction of vats and channels in substructures such as at the Maison de la Chasse on the Junon Hill.

34 Ros 1996, 482.

35 Ennabli (1997) has attempted to marry the textual references with the archaeological evidence. Two of these ‘Christian’ structures (the triconch on the Byrsa and the ‘Judicial Basilica’), however, display no physical evidence to back up such claims. Other structures, including a chapel partially uncovered close to the Circus, the so-called Chapel Gauckler, a subterranean chapel and the ‘oratory’ chapels at the Juno Hill and the Theatre, are currently impossible to date either because they were excavated in periods before modern archaeological techniques were developed or were only partially excavated. See Baratte et al. 2014 for a brief synopses of the scholarship on these sites.

36 Senay 1992, 109–10.

37 Ennabli 1997, 73–82.

38 Ennabli 2000.

39 Duval 1997; Bockmann 2013.

40 Duval 1982, 13–6; Ennabli 1997, 131–5; Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 1.15; Bockmann 2013, 93–6.

41 Stevens 2005, Barratte et al. 2014, 139–42, Bockmann 2013, 98–100.

42 Stevens et al. 1993.

43 Thébert 2003, 141–3; Lezine 1969, 40. This repair was despite there being evidence of considerable investment in the upkeep of a number of these structures in the late 4th century AD with inscriptions commemorating the restoration of a number of honorific statues in the theatre in AD 382 and a major refurbishment seven years later. The argument has been made that the increasing prevalence of private bathrooms in houses in Vandal era Carthage might have been to make up for a lack of public bathing facilities. If that was the case then the problem itself appears to have predated the Vandal period (Freed 2013, 814; Bockmann 2013, 58–60).

44 Bockmann 2013, 60–4. The Odeon was built in the first decade of the 3rd century AD.

45 Ampitheatre = Bomgardner 2000, 128–46; Projected audience size of the circus = Norman 1988, 18.

46 Bomgardner 2000, 147.

47 Stevens, 1988, 153–4.

48 Bockmann et al. 2018, 182–3. Earlier excavations indicated that the circus had certainly fallen into disuse by the early 7th century AD when some of the walls of the cavea were removed (Ellis 1988b, 57 and 91).

49 Godfrey 2004.

50 Hurst 1994, 109–14.

51 Despite the end of the annonae , maritime trade certainly did not come to an end during the Vandal period. For instance, a study of Vandal era African transport amphorae highlights the expansion of new markets such as with Visigothic Spain and new manufacturing centres such as pottery kilns in the district of Sayda were established (Keay 1984). For a useful synopsis of the archaeological evidence for Vandal Carthage see Bockmann 2013, 60–4.

52 Hurst et al. 1994, 114–5. Hurst has hypothesised whether this was the location of Carthage’s martime agora whose renovation by Justinian was mentioned by Procopius (Procop., Aed . 6.5.10). For a new discussion on the location of Carthage’s maritime Forum see Whitehouse and Harize in this volume.

53 Leone 2007, 112–3.

54 Balmelle et al. 2012, 15–150.

55 Balmelle 2001, 331. For other examples of houses in Carthage that remained in use or indeed were renovated during the Vandal period see Leone 2007, 160–4.

56 Humphrey 1980, 106–7.

57 Stevens 2008.

58 Rossiter 1996 and 2003.

59 Leone 2007, 198–208; On Carthage’s cemeteries see Stevens 2008.

60 Poulsen 1986. It is worth noting that the establishment of new cemeteries on the peripheries of the city did not cease in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. For example, during the Vandal period a new well-ordered cemetery was established in an area adjacent to the northern section of the Theodosian wall.

61 Humphrey 1980, 113–4; Miles 2006.

62 Broise 2012, 333–59.

63 Humphrey 1980, 113–5.

64 Humphrey 1980, 113–5; Broise 2012, 333–59.

65 Merrills and Miles 2010, 189; Bockmann 2013. Architecturally there is no obvious way of discerning Homoousian from Homoian churches (see Bockmann 2014; Modéran 2004, 36–7).

66 Stevens et al. 1993; Ennabli 1997, 107–8; Bockmann 2013, 114–5.

67 Feissel 2000, 101; Reynolds 2000.

68 Cameron 1985, 84–112; Cameron et al. 2000.

69 Feissel 2000, 87–8.

70 Humphrey 1980, 88.

71 This is the case at Calama, Cululis (Theodoriana) and Timgad.

72 Procop., Aed . 1.8.

73 Nov. Just 67. Justinian ordered potential evergetes to turn their attention to the necessary task of repairing the decaying churches of Constantinople and the provinces, rather than endowing yet more small churches. Procopius (Procop., Aed . 1.8) also states that imperial permission was required for the building or renovation of churches across the Empire.

74 Ward-Perkins 1951, 103 points to a thriving Mediterranean marble trade in the mid-6th century AD.

75 Sodini 2002; Stevens 1993, 225–55; Bessiere 2005, 209–302; Leone, 2013, 200–2. Where it has been closely studied, the overseas marble decorations show very little sign of having been reused spolia .

76 Sodini 2002, 134.

77 The commemorative inscription was inscribed not only on the mosaic but also on one of the slabs that made up the balustrade that enclosed the mosaic. Duval 1982, 101–15.

78 ILCV 234b. Pringle 2001, 333–4. For discussion of Maurice’s background see Conant 2012, 243–4.

79 Duval 1971.

80 Duval 1981, 111–27; Bockmann 2013, 202–7. Inscription = Duval and Prevot 1975, no. 1: 20–21.

81 For Ravenna see Mauskopf Deliyannis 2010, 201–76.

82 For example Merrills 2004; Berndt and Steinacher 2008; Merrills and Miles 2010; Conant 2012; Modéran 2014.

83 Miles 2005; Clover 1986; Stevens 1988.

84 Shanzer 2004, 287.

85 Modéran 1998.

86 Vict. Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 3.33;.38; 39; Courtois 1954, 224–7; Greg. Tour., Historia Francorum 2.3.

87 Dossey 2003, 52–3. Elpidophorus, one of Huneric’s religious enforcers, left the Arians for the Nicene Church before eventually returning to them (Vict.Vit., Hist . Persec . Vandal . 3.34).

88 For instance, the council of Rome held in AD 487 was attended by four African bishops and discussed what should happen to both Nicene bishops and clergy who had lapsed from their faith (Mansi, VII, Col, 1171). For a list of references to Homoian conversion see Courtois 1955, 225, f/n.3 and 227, f/n.3. Evidence for the pressure that the African Nicene Church was now under is found in the revisions that were added in 487 to the Notitia provinciarum et civitatum Africa, a list of names of 459 African Nicene bishops present at the 484 conference. The late Yves Modéran convincingly argued that the acronym prbt , a modification found in connection with 88 of these bishops, which stood for qui perierunt, had nothing to do with the actual physical deaths of these individuals but their spiritual demise. It appears that these formerly Nicene bishops, who made up approximately 20% of the total of the African Nicene episcopate, had lapsed within three years of the great conference (Modéran, 2006, 165–82). More generally see Schwarcz 1994, 117–8 for the argument that Victor of Vita wrote his History as an attempt to not only galvanise support with overseas Nicene communities, particularly Rome, but also to try and stem the flow of apostasies amongst both lay congregations and their bishops and clergy, and to stiffen resistance within Africa. Later Fulgentius of Ruspe spent much time providing responses to Homoian proselytising ( V . Fulg ., 20.41; 21.44; Fulgent., Ad Mon 2.1; Ep De Incarn 2; Ep ad Vict ).

89 Jenson 2011, 1673–95.

90 Merrills and Miles 2010.

2

The early history of Bir Messaouda: Punic and Roman

Simon Greenslade and Richard Miles

Introduction

This chapter discusses the occupation of the site in the Punic and Roman times. Although the main focus of the excavation was on the Late Antique layers, the cuts caused by the extensive robbing of the site provided opportunities for gaining important insights into its earlier occupation. These investigations revealed some Punic remains and a number of Roman town houses fronting Cardo X, as well as significant information on the transitioning of these houses to a single hall-like building in the early 6th century AD.

Punic period

The most recognisable Punic features on the site were a number of narrow rectangular cisterns (Fig. 2.1). The majority of the cisterns were found in the western area of the site directly below the mosaic flooring of the late 6thcentury basilica. These structures were revealed where the overlying floors had collapsed into the voids of the cisterns. In a typical Punic house design cisterns were closely related to residential buildings. Their occurrence along the western area of the site suggests a possible continuation of the living quarters discovered in the University of Hamburg excavations to the north.¹

Further occupational features dating to the Punic period consisted of a series of floor surfaces (10767, 10907 and 10910), located in the area of the Byzantine era baptistery. Two of the surfaces (10767 and 10907) were situated beneath a deposit of mid-orangey brown silty sand (10888/477), a levelling layer associated with the re-founding of Carthage in the Augustan period and appear to be part of the same floor (Fig. 2.2). Floor 10767 was a light grey compact mortar surface containing small green and blue limestone chippings. Measuring c. 4.20 m north to south by c. 2 m east to west, the northern extent of floor 10767 had been truncated by the construction of an east–west Roman-era wall (944/10758), while its southern extent had been disturbed by the drain of the baptistery (10759) (Fig. 2.3). Surface 10907 was located to the north of 10767, the two separated by the northern colonnaded wall of the baptistery (10770), with a further fragment of the floor surviving on an island of stratigraphy below the late 6th century mosaic 450 (Fig. 2.4). Both surfaces sat on a 40 mm thick layer of light whitish compact mortar (10908). Beneath this mortar was a light orange-brown compact silty-sand deposit with frequent limestone, mortar and wall plaster fragments (10909). This demolition/ levelling deposit sealed an earlier floor surface (10910), which was laid over a light whitish brown compact mortar make-up layer (10991). Below this layer was a sterile sand (10912) (Fig. 2.5). Although no firm evidence was available to date these floor surfaces, they are most likely related to two distinct phases of Punic housing as the initial floor surface 10910 was very early in the overall sequence, while the demolition deposit 10909 probably represented a major period of upheaval before the laying of the second floor surface (10767) at some point prior to the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.

These surfaces, while fragmentary, still add to our understanding of this area in the Punic period. In the areas to the north and south of our site, more extensive evidence for the Punic period in Carthage has been uncovered. To the north, excavations by the University of Hamburg produced information on a very important early Punic cultic site and housing up to c. 4 m below the Punic layers on Bir Messaouda.² To the south, excavations by the University of Ghent produced Punic remains at varying levels although with a bias towards a similar consistent high level to those found on our site.³ As the University of Hamburg’s excavations were slightly further east and closer to the eastern slope of the Byrsa Hill,