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Bones, teeth, and estimating age of perinates: Carthaginian infant sacrifice revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015

Extract

Writing about the ‘Tophet’, a children's cemetery in Carthage, Smithet al. argued in these pages that the age distribution of the children peaks at 1–1.49 months, supplying “another link in the chain of evidence—funerary practices, texts, iconography—that supports the interpretation of the Phoenician Tophets as ritual sites set aside for infant sacrifice” (2011: 871). In this they had challenged Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues, who previously argued (2010) that “skeletal remains from Punic Carthage do not support systematic sacrifice of infants”. Here Schwartzet al. restate their position forAntiquity readers, showing that the verdict on the Phoenician practice of child sacrifice is, at best, not proven.

Type
Research article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012 

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