harden, d. b. -- punic urns from the precinct of tanit at carthage.pdf

Punic Urns from the Precinct of Tanit at CarthageAuthor(s): D. B. HardenReviewed work(s):Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1927), pp. 297-310Published by: Archaeological Institute of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/497821 .Accessed: 26/02/2013 12:02

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PUNIC URNS FROM THE PRECINCT OF TANIT AT CARTHAGE

THE excavations in the precinct of Tanit, which were undertaken by the Franco-American expedition in 1925 under the directorship of Professor F. W. Kelsey of Michigan, have been dealt with in general by Professor Kelsey in his preliminary report published last spring.' I propose in this paper to confine my remarks entirely to a treatment of the pottery found during the excavations. Over one thousand cinerary urns of local Carthaginian fabrication were unearthed, and they date from the eighth to the second century B.c. I wish to trace in the briefest manner possible the sequence of types, and also to show how closely these Carthaginian urns are paralleled by finds at western Phoenician sites in Sicily,2 Sardinia,3 Malta,4 the Balearic Islands,5 and Spain.'

The precinct lies a little to the west of the so-called commercial harbor of Carthage 7 and would consequently, according to the traditional topographical theory, lie within the walls of Punic Carthage. It is simply a burial ground. No trace of a Punic tem- ple has so far been found on the spot. The urns found contained ashes and remains of charred bones, and were buried in the earth either beneath cairns of small stones, or beneath stelae. It has been established that some at least of the bones in the urns belonged to human infants.8 Others probably belonged to small animals or

1 Francis W. Kelsey, A Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Carthage. (Macmillan Company, New York, 1926). For the Tanit precinct see especially pp. 33-51. A report of previous excavations on the site conducted by the French government has been published by L. Poinssot and R. Lantier, Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions, 1923, p. 32 ff.

I wish to express hearty thanks to Professor Kelsey, without whose encourage- ment this paper would not have been written. The photographs nos. 1-5 and 7-12 were taken by Mr. George R. Swain, photographer to the Near East Research of the University of Michigan. Figure 14 is from a photograph taken by Mr. Enoch E. Peterson. The remainder are from my own negatives. For permission to take the photographs of Motyan, Maltese and Sardinian urns I am indebted to the kindness, respectively, of Mr. J. I. S. Whitaker, the owner of Motya; Professor T. Zammit, the curator of the Museum at Valletta; and Sig. A. Taramelli, the director of the Cagliari Museum.

2 J. I. S. Whitaker, Motya, a Phoenician Colony in Sicily (1921). 3 Patroni, Mon. Ant., XIV (1904), p. 109 ff. (Nora); Taramelli, Mon. Ant., XXI (1912), p. 46 ff. (Cagliari). 4 The early Punic pottery found in Malta has not so far been published. The

pottery of the latest Punic and of the Romano-Punic age is described by A. Mayr, Sitzungsb. der bayer. Akad., Philos-Philol. Klasse, 1905, p. 484 ff.

5 C. Roman, Antiqiiedadas Ebusitanas (1913); Vives y Escudero, La Necropoli de Ibiza (1918). 6 L. Siret, Villaricos y Herrerias, Mem. de la Real Acad. de la Hist. (Madrid),

XIV, p. 381 ff. For a fuller bibliography of the whole field of Punic pottery see the footnotes to S. Gsell, Histoire Ancienne de 1'Afrique du Nord, IV, pp. 57-74. 7Kelsey, op. cit., p. 23, fig. 10, for map showing position. 8 Poinssot and Lantier, op. cit., p. 55; Anthony, Revue Tunisienne, August, 1924.

297


298 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY

birds. That we have here burials of infants sacrificed alive to Tanit is possible but by no means proved.'

Three distinct strata of burials are to be distinguished.2 The first stratum stands at rock level and consists of cairn burials

set down irregularly at a distance of about one metre from each other (Fig. 1). The urn was first filled with cremated remains and its cover sealed on, and it was then placed in a hollow of the rock surface and a cairn of stones built up all round it. The average height of the urns is about 25 cm.

It seems probable that this stratum was begun early in the eighth

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FIGURE 1. PRECINCT OF TANIT: VIEW OF CAIRN BURIALS IN LOWEST STRATUM

century B.C. if not actually before 800 B.C., that is, it was begun almost as soon as Carthage was founded. The earliest Punic tombs so far found at Carthage are dated about 700 B.C. by the excavators.' Now, the earliest of these tombs contain pottery corresponding in shape and technique, not to this early Tanit ware, but to that of the next period. We can be sure then that most, if not all, of this first stratum pottery dates back to the eighth century B.C.

We find here three main types of urn. The commonest is the amphora with vertical or horizontal handles and ovoid body (Fig. 2).

'1For the most recent discussion of the subject see G. Pinza, Mon. Ant., XXX (1925), I, p. 44 ff.

2 MM. Poinssot and Lantier, op. cit., p. 39 ff., distinguish four strata. The latest evidence does not support such a fourfold division. Cf. Kelsey, op. cit., p. 43.

3A. L. Delattre, Mem. de la Soc. des Antiquaires de France, vol. LVI, pp. 255- 395 (Douimes tombs); P. Gauckler, Necropoles puniques de Carthage, tombs nos. 1-232 (Dermech).


HARDEN: PUNIC URNS FROM PRECINCT OF TANIT 299

Another shape is a vase with high-spreading neck and no handles, a shape which, for want of a better name, I call thistle-shaped (Fig. 3). The third common type is a round pot with a small circular handle

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FIGURE 2A, B. AMPHORAE WITH (A) HORIZONTAL AND) (1) VERTICAL hIAN- I)LES, STRATUM 1-

at the neck (Fig. 4a). Besides these, other shapes occur including some obvious prototypes of later shapes.'

The clay of these Tanit 1 urns is well fired to a red-brown color. The urns are wheel-made and quite graceful and symmetrical, and the outside surface is smoothed and polished except in the case of the round pots. In all cases the clay is for Punic ware remarkably fine and soft in texture. As to decoration, the round pots are merely covered with a white color wash. The amphorae are decorated with horizontal bands of red paint on the neck and body: these bands being often connected together by vertical black lines which form a

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FIIGURE, 3. THISTLE-SHAPED VASE WITH LID, STRATUM 1

1 Figure 5, for instance, shows an obvious prototype of the middle Tanit 2 type seen in figures 9 and 10. Again, a few examples occur which are undoubted fore- runners of the early Tanit 2 types represented by figures 7 and 8.

For convenience of reference I henceforth use the terms Tanit 1, Tanit 2, Tanit 3, to describe the pottery of the three strata respectively, beginning from the earliest.



triglyph-metope design. The vases without handles have similar red paint decoration, and on both these and the amphorae there are also traces of a white color wash which not only seems to be used on

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FIGUR"EL 4. (A) ROUNI POT W'ITH C'IRCULAR HANDLE, TANIT 1. (B) AMPHORA OF EARLY TANIT 2 TYPE ((f. FIGURE 8)

the unpainted parts but also at times seems to have covered the painted bands. This white color wash has often vanished owing to

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FIGURE 5. TANIT 1 PROTOTYPE OF THE POTS FROM MIDDLE TANIT 2

the action of the damp soil in which the vases were found, but traces of it are found on some urns of all three strata.'

Stratum 2 lies immediately on top of stratum 1, only separated 1 Can we have here an example of some ritual which entailed the covering of

ordinary household vases with a white coating when they were to be used for religious purposes? Countless other instances of the ceremonial and religious use of white or whitened objects might be cited, and especially the very common practice of whitewashing tombs and shrines. Cf. also the white lekythoi found in Athenian tombs, though these differ from our vases in having been made specially, it would appear, for funerary uses.



from it by a well-defined layer of viscous yellow clay of about 5 cm. thickness.

We now get an entirely different type of burial. Instead of the urns being encircled by cairns, they are set in the earth in groups of three or four, each group being surmounted by a stele. Figure 6 shows a good view of a vertical section of this stratum. Moreover, the urns are now much more numerous. In stratum 1 we found on an average one urn per square metre. In stratum 2 we often find as

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FIGURE 6. PRECINCT OF TANIT: VERTICAL SECTION OF STRATUM 2

many as half a dozen. The average height of the urns is again about 25 cm.

This stratum ranges in date from about 650 B.C. to about 350 B.c. The earliest urns in it are exactly similar to urns of seventh century date from the Punic tombs.' Urns of the latest type are found also at Lilybaeum,2 which was a Punic town founded shortly after the destruction of Motya in 397 B.C., so that the form must have been prevalent at Carthage in the fourth century B.C.

The shapes (Figs. 2, 3, 4a) that are common in stratum 1 either become rare in stratum 2 or else die out altogether. On the other hand, the majority of urns in stratum 2 are of shapes that are obvious developments of three rather uncommon stratum 1 types.3 Thus a de- finite development from one stratum to the other can be established.

1 E.g., urns found in the Douimes tombs and in the Dermech tombs. For these see Delattre, op. cit., and Gauckler, op. cit. 2 These Lilybaean urns are identical in every way with the Carthage examples, and in all probability they were imported from Carthage-perhaps for themselves, perhaps for their contents. 3 See note p. 299.



As a general rule the finish of the pottery becomes coarser as time goes on and the shapes become uglier and less symmetrical. The same deterioration in technique and finish is noticeable in the series of pottery found in the Punic tombs at Carthage, and also in the

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FIGURE 7. ONE-HANDLED URNS OF EARLY TANIT 2 TYpE

Punic ware found in Sardinia, Sicily and Malta. Everywhere fourth century B.C. Punic pottery is inferior in quality to that of the earlier periods.1

Of the urns in this stratum the earliest in date are upright urns

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FIGURE 8. AMPHORAE OF EARLY TANIT 2 TYPE

with ovoid body, high perpendicular neck and vertical handles; the smaller urns have one handle (Fig. 7), and the larger ones two (Fig. 4b and Fig. 8). The decoration now consists of black horizon-

1 The clay of the earliest stratum pots is uniformly red in color, but that of some of the pots in this stratum takes on a brownish, greenish or whitish tinge. Such differences are, at least in the majority of cases, due to insufficient firing.



tal lines on the neck and body of the vase, and sometimes bands of red or purplish paint as well.

Not long after this earliest type-perhaps about 600 B.c.-there

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FIGURE 9. OLLAE (FoRM 1) OF MIDDLE TAN[T 2 TYPE, WITH HANDLES

CIRCULAR IN SECTION

came into vogue quite a different type of urn. Two main varieties of the type are found concurrently for some time, though form 2

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FIGURE 10. OLLAE (FORM 2) OF MIDDLE TANIT 2 TYPE, WITH HANDLES CIRCULAR IN SECTION

eventually outlasted form 1. They are barrel-shaped urns or ollae with small handles, circular in section, at the neck. Form 1 (Fig. 9)



has its greatest diameter lower down its body than form 2 (Fig. 10) has. These urns are for the most part undecorated, though some of the early examples show horizontal bands of red-brown or purple-

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FIGURE 11. AMPHIORA TYPE, MII)DLE TANIT 2. A DEVELOPMENT OF TANIT 1 TYPE (SEE FIGURE 2)

black paint on the body and lip. A less common type in this period is a development of the amphora type of stratum 1 (cf. Fig. 2 with

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FIGURE 12. OLLAE (FORM 2) OF LATE TANIT 2 TYPE, WITH HANDLES ELLIP- TICAL IN SECTION

Fig. 11). The technique is the same as that of the urns in Figures 9 and 10.

In the latest group, which perhaps began about 450 B.C., descend- ants of form 2 of the previous group predominate (Fig. 12). The handles of all urns are now flat ellipses in section instead of being



round as in the last group.1 The shape of the neck varies very much, but this is just another instance of the diminished care used in manu- facture. None of these urns has any decoration.

The third and last stratum probably began about 300 B.C. and is contemporaneous with the Punic wars.

The urns are similar in shape to those found at many late Punic colonies along the shores of North Africa (e.g. at Collo 2 and Had- rumetum3), and in Spain.4 In technique and finish the pottery is identical with that found in the latest Punic graves at Carthage, i.e. those on the hill of S. Monique 5 and those on the Odeon hill." There is thus no reason to doubt that this burial ground was in use up to the last years of Punic Carthage.

The urns of this period are exceedingly uninteresting. Most of

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FIGUREm 13. OLLAE OF SIMPLE FORM, TANIT 3

them are identical in shape with those of the latest stratum 2 type (Fig. 12), but a few (Fig. 13) are simple forms without the angular neck contour characteristic of that class. All the urns are now much smaller and the average height is only 17 cm. Decoration, consist- ing of red-brown horizontal lines, is confined to one or two examples. The majority are coarsely made plain vases of reddish or greyish clay. The number found is again five or six per square metre.

This stratum has been badly disarranged by subsequent building 1 This change in the shape of the handle is a sure criterion of date, not only at

Carthage, but, I venture to suggest, at the other western Phoenician sites as well. The early urns (Tanit 1 and first half of Tanit 2) have handles round or double round in section (o or oo). Both these types degenerate from the fifth century onwards into a handle elliptical in section. The round handle degenerates from o to a, and the double round works through distinct stages, 0o c' a , to the same ultimate ellipse.

2 S. Gsell, Fouilles de Gouraya, figs. 25 and 26. 3 Leynaud, C. R. Acad. Inscr., 1911, p. 470 ff. 4 L. Siret, op. cit. 5 A. L. Delattre, Carthage: Nicropole punique voisine de S. Monique, a series of

articles in Cosmos, 1899-1906. 6 P. Gauckler, Necropoles puniques, tombs 234-279.



operations (Fig. 14).1 A few broken stelae are found, but most of the original stones were removed for building purposes by the Romans. As can be seen from the illustration, many of the urns are broken, and others are found lying on their side or upside down- undoubted proofs of disturbance. No early imperial sherds are found on the site-nothing prior to the third century A.D.-and the style of the later masonry is late Roman. Consequently it was perhaps the spread of Christianity at Carthage that caused people to forget Tanit and desecrate her enclosure.

Exact parallels to most of these Tanit types of urns have been

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FIGURE 14. VIEW OF PART OF STRATUM 3

brought to light in the other western Phoenician colonies.-

At Motya in Sicily Mr. J. I. S. Whitaker has excavated two early Phoenician cemeteries," which, on independent evidence, he dates from about 700 B.c. onwards. In these he has found amphorae (Fig. 15a) 4 in many cases identical in shape and decoration with those of Tanit 1, but more akin in technique to early Tanit 2 types.

1 Kelsey, op. cit., p. 34 f., and Poinssot and Lantier, op. cit., p. 38. 2 An attempt to correlate some of this western Phoenician pottery has recently

been made by B. Pace in Mon. Ant., XXX (1925), I, p. 181 ff. His paper, however, almost entirely confines itself to a discussion of the Motyan and Carthaginian finds. No real systematic attempt has yet been made to collect the available evidence from all the sites.

3 J. I. S. Whitaker, Motya, p. 206 ff. and p. 257 ff. For the pottery see further p. 290 ff.

4 Ibid., fig. 72.



One-handled pots 1 similar to Tanit 1 type are also very common. Again, one-handled urns (Fig. 16) 2 with perpendicular neck identical in shape and decoration to the early Tanit 2 type are numerous, while Mr. Whitaker also found many examples of low-bellied ollae

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FI(URIE 15. (A) AMPHORA AND (B) OLLA FOUND IN THE EARLY CEIM- ETERY AT MOTYA

(Fig. 15b) 3 of the middle Tanit 2 type. In the later Motyan and in the Lilybaean cemeteries we find some late Tanit 2 and Tanit 3 types.

Further parallels occur at Malta. The few early Phoenician tombs that have so far been discovered give us similar types to both

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FIGURE 16. ONE-HANDLED URNS FROM EARLY CEMETERY AT MOTYA

Tanit 1 and Tanit 2 pottery. Figure 17 shows an interesting parallel to an early Tanit 2 amphora. Figure 18 is like the early Tanit 2 one-handled type, but is still more like those prototypes of it that I have mentioned from stratum 1.

1 Ibid., fig. 76 (top right-hand corner). 2 Ibid., figs. 72, 76, 77. 3 Ibid., figs. 72, 77.



And so, too, in Sardinia, though there I have so far found no parallels to Tanit 1 types. The Phoenicians were perhaps not established there as early as they were in Sicily and Carthage. We have, however, later parallels in abundance. First, developments of the high-necked vases, early Tanit 2 (Fig. 19).1 Second, complete parallels to the later olla type of Tanit 2 and 3 (Fig 20).2

A comparative study of all these western Phoenician fabrics seems to warrant the following conclusions:

I. The early types, those of the eighth to the sixth century B.C., are very much akin to each other. Yet they show sufficient minor differences in technique and decoration to exclude the possibility that they were exportations from one common source and fabric.

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FIGURE 17. AMPHORA IN VAL- LETTA MUSEUM, MALTA, OF EARLY

TANIT 2 TYPE

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FIGURE 18. ONE-HAN- DLED VASE FROM AN EAR-

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The types must have been brought from the East by the Phoenician colonists of Carthage, Sicily, Sardinia and Malta, after which local industries were set up in each colony.

II. From the sixth century onward these local industries developed on independent lines for the most part, though trade and commerce never allowed them to be entirely independent of each other.

III. Eventually the Carthaginian mercantile hegemony in the fourth and third centuries caused the pottery types prevalent at the time in Carthage to be spread abroad in her Phoenician dependencies in North Africa, Spain and Sardinia. The late Phoenician vases

1See also, for amphora type, Mon. Ant., XXI (1912), p. 103, figs. 22.2 and 4. 2 See also Mon. Ant., XXI (1912), p. 93, figs. 16.3 and 17.1. The mushroom-

topped and the pear-shaped oinochoai in figure 20 are typical early Punic types in the Carthage tombs (e.g. at Douimes and at Dermech). They are also common at Motya.



found in these localities were in part imported from Carthage and in part local imitations of Carthaginian wares. It is significant that Sicily and Malta show this later Carthaginian influence less than the

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FIGURE 19. ONE-HANDLED POTS OF EARLY TANIT 2 TYPE, CAGLIARI MUSEUM

more westerly lands do: a fact easily explicable from our knowledge of the history of the last centuries of Punic hegemony.

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FIGURE 20. IN CENTRE, Two OLLAE OF LATE TANIT 2 AND TANIT 3 TYPE. LEFT AND RIGHT, PEAR-SHAPED AND MUSHROOM VASES OF

TYPICAL PUNIC FORM, CAGLIARI MUSEUM



I have been able merely to indicate the main lines of research that are opened up by the discovery of this series of Punic pottery, which extends in date over six centuries or more. Hitherto, apart from the detailed accounts of her wars, first with the Sicilian Greeks and afterwards with Rome, our knowledge of the relationship of Carth- age with the outside world has been meagre in the extreme. Now, with this complete series of pottery from the Tanit burial ground to guide us, we may hope that at last a proper correlation of the pottery of the western Phoenicians will be worked out and that thereby much light may be shed, not only on the commercial relationships between Carthage and these other Phoenician colonies, but also on the origin of the various settlements themselves. What was the date of the founding of Motya, Panormos, Caralis, Sulci, Tharros and the rest? HIow many of them were founded by the parent com- munities of the east and how many, if any, were founded by the daughter state of Carthage? These are some of the questions that are still without an answer, the answers to which have, I believe, been brought appreciably nearer by the discovery of this precinct of Tanit at Carthage.

D. B. HARDEN UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN


Article Contentsp. 297p. 298p. 299p. 300p. 301p. 302p. 303p. 304p. 305p. 306p. 307p. 308p. 309p. 310

Issue Table of ContentsAmerican Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1927), pp. 281-404Notes on Representations of Socrates and of Diogenes and Other Cynics [pp. 281-296]Punic Urns from the Precinct of Tanit at Carthage [pp. 297-310]The Origin and Development of the Alphabet [pp. 311-328]A Late type of Wheel-Made Lamps from Corinth [pp. 329-337]A Graeco-Parthian Portrait Head of Mithradates I [pp. 338-344]Some Inscriptions on Vases [pp. 345-353]Archaeological News [pp. 354-391]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 392-394]Review: untitled [pp. 394-397]Review: untitled [pp. 397-398]Review: untitled [p. 399]Review: untitled [pp. 399-400]Review: untitled [pp. 400-402]Review: untitled [p. 402]Review: untitled [pp. 402-403]Review: untitled [p. 403]Review: untitled [pp. 403-404]Review: untitled [p. 404]

harden, d. b. -- punic urns from the precinct of tanit at carthage.pdf

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