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

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.

Cemetery or sacrifice? Infant burials at the Carthage Tophet

“…They are consistent for all tooth types examined, with the highest frequency of infant deaths occurring between one and two months of age and dropping markedly in the following months. Schwartz et al (2010Schwartz et al ( , 2012 refer to three types of age assessment: (i) bone measurements, (ii) tooth development and (iii) the location of the neonatal line. All were inaccurate because they misjudged the effects of heat-related shrinkage:…”

Gestation Length, Mode of Delivery, and Neonatal Line-Thickness Variation

“…Images at 100x and 400x were captured with a high-resolution digital camera (Polaroid Digital Microscope Camera, DMC 1) attached to an optical transmitted light microscope (Laborlux S, Leica AG) and exported into Adobe Photoshop, which was used to assemble montages of relevant areas of tooth sections from adjacent images. Contrast enhancement convolution filters (3x3 and 5x5 kernels) achieved sharper detail and a change in the look-up table function increased site-specific contrasts of intensity profiles (Rossi et al 1999;Schwartz et al 2010). Depending on individual tooth size, each cross-section was reconstructed in a digital photomosaic of ten or so (up to 15) partial images.…”

“…This marker is routinely used in forensic investigations (e.g., Gustafson 1966;Skinner and Dupras 1993;Stavrianos et al 2010;Whittaker and Richards 1978) and its presence/absence, position and variation patterns are also increasingly considered in studies on population samples from archaeological sites (e.g., Alexandersen et al 1998;Antoine et al 2009;Bondioli and Macchiarelli 1999;FitzGerald and Saunders 2005;FitzGerald et al 1999FitzGerald et al , 2006Macchiarelli and Bondioli 2000;Macchiarelli et al 2006a;Rossi et al 1997Rossi et al , 1999Schwartz et al 2010;Smith and Avishai 2005;Smith et al 2011). However, likely because of methodological constraints related to the only recent availability of noninvasive highresolution investigative methods in paleobiology (e.g., Macchiarelli et al 2004Macchiarelli et al , 2008Mazurier et al 2006;Tafforeau 2004;Tafforeau et al 2006;Smith and Tafforeau 2008), its use in the study of the human fossil record is still very limited (e.g., Macchiarelli et al 2006b;Smith and Tafforeau 2008;Smith et al 2010a;Tafforeau and Smith 2008;Zanolli et al 2011).…”

Prenatal factors associated with the neonatal line thickness in human deciduous incisors

“…For that reason, the neonatal line is most often used for forensic purposes in order to determine a child's age at the moment of death and to assess whether a child was stillborn or was possibly the victim of infanticide (Janardhanan et al, 2011;Lewis, 2007;Skinner and Anderson, 1991;Skinner and Dupras, 1993). The presence and assessment of the NNL thickness is also of crucial importance in bioarchaeological and palaeoanthropological contexts for the interpretation of birth conditions as well as for the assessment of pre-and perinatal environments of past populations (FitzGerald et al, 2006;Macchiarelli et al, 2006;Schwartz et al, 2010;Zanolli et al, 2012).…”