continuities and contexts: tophets of roman africa

7/25/2019 Continuities and Contexts: Tophets of Roman Africa

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ISSN 2239-5393

Studi Epigrafici e Linguistici29-30, 2012-2013: xx-xx

Continuities and ContextsThe Tophets of Roman Imperial-Period Africa

Matthew M. McCarty(Princeton University, Princeton, U.S.A.)

Abstract

The stele-sanctuaries of Roman imperial-period North Africa have long been taken as prime examples ofboth cultural and cultic continuity from the first millennium BC through late antiquity. Rather than seeingcontinuity as a neutral redescriptive category in narrativizing the past, it may be more useful toexamine the means by which individual sanctuary communities created connections to their pasts throughtheir practices and spaces, and of what these pasts may have consisted. In order to do so, I examine two

of the type-cases for the types of transformations seen in the religious life of Roman Africa: the tophetsand later temples at Hr. el-Hami and Thugga, where the material remains draw into question traditionalaccounts of clear continuity.

Keywords

Tophets, North Africa, Saturn, Roman, continuity, ritual.

Du Ve sicle av. jusqu la fin du IIe sicle ap. J.-C., cest donc le mmedieu quont vnr les Africains, bel exemple de continuit que nanullement entame limplantation romaine. (LE GLAY1966b: 13)

The central Maghreb occupies a distinct space in both the raw geographic and thecultural imaginings of the ancient world an island between the Mediterranean andSahara whose geography ensured a balance of connectivity with the wider Classicalworld and buffering from it1. In other words, a land where the changes that marked theRoman imperial period might look very different from, or lag behind, other parts ofempire: a phenomenon generally cast as an inability to Romanize, as resistance tonew ideas and models of comportment, as survival, or as persistence. And the imperial-

period tophets the conventionalized term for sanctuaries where infants and/or lambswere burned, their remains collected in an urn, buried, and often marked with a carvedstele as well as the deity worshipped, Baal Hammon/Saturn, often stand as theforemost indices of this historical, cultural, and cultic continuity.

Certainly, in contrast to Sardinia and Sicily, where such sanctuaries seem to havebeen abandoned in the generations following the islands incorporation into the sphereof Roman hegemony, North Africa presents a very different trajectory: not only didvisitors still make sacrifices in older tophets, including the sanctuary at Hadrumetum,well into the imperial period, but from the late second century BC onwards,communities established large numbers of new tophet-style sanctuaries (fig. 1). Thelandscape of stele-sanctuaries in North Africa was as much a product of Roman

1 SHAW 2003.


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2 M. M. McCarty, Continuities and Contexts

hegemony in the generations following the destruction of Carthage as of Punicprecedent2. Why tophets in these two regions followed such different trajectories in thesecond-first centuries BC has yet to be explained convincingly; here, though, I want tofocus specifically on the nexus of problems surrounding religious continuity in theimperial period.

Given that cults often make claims of tradition and antiquity, that even the mostradical religious innovations are often cast as revivals, it is not surprising that religion

whether in tophets, other sanctuaries, or necropoleis often forms the basis ofarguments for relative cultural and religious stasis in North Africa through the imperial

period3. Not only are tophets and sanctuaries of Saturn treated as guarantors of therelative permanence of the religious, social, and political landscapes of North Africasimply by virtue of their presence, but by their long periods of use.

Such a picture of stasis has been compounded by the nature of the discoveries fromthese sites, which stand in contrast with the preserved and carefully excavated stratigra-

phy of tophets in Sardinia and Sicily, through which diachronic changes in practice canbe charted in detail. Often, North African tophets are attested only by the discovery of

their stelae on the surface, or in poorly-documented excavations4

. Stripped from theirassociation to related finds, made by local workshops who rarely participate in the typesof technical or stylistic changes seen in cosmopolitan marble-carving workshops, suchstelae are nearly impossible to order chronologically independent of a presupposednarrative of Romanization, where deeper relief, more Classical forms, and Latinscript/onomastics are evidence of second- and third-century dates5. If this scheme worksin some cases, the meta-narrative of stylistic progress fails in others; it leads, forexample, to the Boglio stele having long been dated nearly 150 years too late6.

The problems of charting material chronologies as opposed to meta-narrativechronologies are equally present in other North African tophets where nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century amateur archaeologists documented at least some architecture,

pottery, and small finds. A few sanctuaries, like Thuburnica, never had plans published,while others, like Thinissut and El-Knissia, only plotted horizontal relationships

between features and finds. Such plans themselves can be implicated in creating an

2 MCCARTY2010a.3 BELL 1997: 212-242, on rituals claims to traditionalism. In Africa: L E GLAY 1966; BNABOU

1976; FONTANA 2001 on Punic continuity at Leptis Magna through religion/burials; BRIAND-PONSARTHUGONIOT2005: 141-273.

4 LE GLAY1961; 1966a.5 LE GLAY1966b: 14-57; MCCARTY 2010a: 20-25. For the style of the works, the availability of

skilled and dedicated stone-carvers may matter more than chronology: cf. JOHNS2003. As for theproblems with Latin script/onomastics as evidence for dating (this model articulated most clearly inMCHAREK 1982), particular contexts might call for different perhaps deliberately archaizing choices: for example, the son of Marcus Avianus a perfectly Latin name when making adedication to Baal chooses not only the Punic language, but a markedly Punic name for himself:Baalshillek (JONGELING2008: 66-67).

6 The Boglio stele, long dated to the late third/fourth century, actually finds its closest parallel in asecond-century AD stele from Hr. el-Hami, suggesting not only the need to down-date the Bogliostele, but the problems inherent in such a predetermined, evolutionary chronological schema.


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illusion of stasis, collapsing several centuries of material to a single, visible horizon7.More recent attempts to understand the phasing of these sanctuaries are often basedeither on general ideas about architectural evolutions, or on the findspots of individual

pieces of mobilier, as though such objects could not be moved and re-used8. As with thefinds of groups of stelae, such analyses presuppose certain narrative schemes: of eitherunidirectional change, with no room for archaisms or quotations of the past, or absolutestasis, with objects never moving or being re-deployed in new contexts of use.

Even those sanctuaries that have been scientifically excavated more recently (Hr. el-Hami, Hr. Ghayadha) and offer some evidence of different phases and diachronicchange lack clear stratigraphy. Still, transformations of the types of activities practicedat the sites can be mapped: above all, the end of child sacrifice and its replacement withother types of rites9. These shifts raise a series of basic questions: how do weunderstand the changes that took place in tophets in the Roman imperial period? Underwhat circumstances does an individual or community take up new ritual practices, orabandon old ones? Are such changes, in fact, ruptures with the past?

When recognized, transformations in tophet-cult usually get described via one of two

metaphors: as new features grafted onto old, or as cosmetic veneer. Both imagesclaim that the rites performed, and the range of significances they might create (or befreighted with), were static and unchanged, just as the deity to whom the offerings weredirected was simply an old, Punic god Baal Hammon updated with a new, Latinname Saturn10. Individual signs might be replaced by substitutes, but the largersemiotic field remained constant. The model embraced by Alfred Merlin in his 1910account of Thinissut still underlies many accounts of tophets and other cult sites in theimperial period: Enfin, nous constatons la vitalit persistante des anciennesreligions au temps de la suprmatie de Rome ce sont les mmes dvotions quisubsistent, avec les mmes symboles et les mmes pratiques; enrichies dapports plusou moins rcents 11.

Yet both notions continuity and change (alongside its variants, including all of thesynonyms for Romanization) are but modern, redescriptive schemata used tonarrativize the past, to link our momentary historical and archaeological snapshots, andto set those linked chains within the political frameworks of the present. A number ofrecent studies have examined how these narratives have been mobilized andinstrumentalized in modern North Africa12; my goal here is not to revisit the uses to

7 While CARTON (1908) was acutely aware of diachronic change in architecture and rites at El-Knissia, for MERLIN (1910: 51), Thinissut proved long-term continuity from the Punic to theimperial period.

8 LZINE1959; DRIDISEBA2008.

9 E.g., CINTAS1948; ELHAM:110; SHAW2013. Perhaps the most important account of the supposedchange from human to animal victims, RICHARD 1961, remains a deeply flawed study, presupposinga trajectory inherited from Pierre Cintas (MCCARTYforthcoming). MCCARTY2010a focuses on thesocial dimensions of these changes.

10 E.g., LE GLAY (1966: 485) on limpossibilit de la romanisation des mes; more recently,CADOTTE2007. On Hr. el-Hami: La culture punique apparat lpoque romaine non pas commeune persistance mais comme une permanence. Quant aux influences dpoque romaine, elles viennentse greffer sur lhritage carthaginois (ElHami:123).

11 MERLIN1910: 51.12 DONDIN-PAYRE1994; GUTRON2010.


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which these pasts are put post-antiquity, but to reflect on how we interrogate epigraphicand material evidence from tophets to arrive at notions of continuity. Too often, theconcept of continuity in accounts of individual stele-sanctuaries is used loosely anduncritically, without articulating exactly what constitutes continuity: a problemshared in the study of cult sites across the ancient world13.

Is the best index of cultic (and cultural) continuity, as Le Glay, Cadotte, and othershave argued, the worship of a particular deity14? If so, and if we acknowledge that anyidentity for a god is negotiated through the gods name, image, and the way that wor-shippers deal with the deity, then surely the choice of a new name (Saturn), a new epi-thet (Augustus), a new image-type (enthroned, himation-clad elder male with pruning-knife), and new types of interaction (including the end of child sacrifice) problematizesa claim of continuity based on the god15. Likewise, giving priority to the person (or

personality) of the deity often stems from Christianizing assumptions about gods rather than either symbol-systems or practices sitting at the heart of ancient religion16.

Is continuity best examined as the persistence of a particular symbol-system, asMerlin implies? As ritualized activity of various forms in the same place a definition

favoured by those working on the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages17

? Arepeated set of ritualized activities, which as with all ritual, especially in the absenceof a master-script might undergo variations and innovations, but somehow still relateto an ideal and abstract archetype?

In what follows, I want to make two central claims. First, that rather than pre-supposing redescriptive grounds for navigating between the poles of continuity andchange, it may be more fruitful to look at how cult communities themselves markedaspects of their religious life as connected to and contiguous with or disjoined from

particular pasts18. Moving beyond a general notion of invented tradition, I willexplore the specific strategies and grounds upon which two different communities, atHr. el-Hami and Thugga (fig. 2), created and imagined links to particular pasts and

presents. Since the significances created by ritual participants depend on how theiractions are set within relational contexts, especially between sets of gestures and

between gestures and their environment, I will focus here instead on cult practices, andhow communities set their ritual acts within wider frameworks via both the objects andgestures used and via their placement in space19. My second claim, on a more positivistlevel, is that the evidence for continuity in ritual practice regular use of a site in a

13 SOURVINOU-INWOOD1989; HUSSLERKING2007, where the concepts remain central structur-ing principles even if clear explanations are hardly given.

14 LE GLAY1961, 1966a-b; CADOTTE2007; BRIAND-PONSARTHUGONIOT2005: 153.

15 Cf. LIPKA 2009 for constructing gods based on names, images, practices, times, and institutions. Onnaming: MCCARTY2010a: 44-59; images: MCCARTY2011b. For rites, see below. For placing thegod in time, see the changes outlined in SCHRNER2008.

16 RPKEforthcoming; I am grateful to Nic Terrenato for drawing my attention to Rpkes argumentshere.

17 Recently: FELSCH1996-2007.18 This is not, of course, to deny that even the concept of religion in the ancient world is problematic,

and itself a redescriptive (though not unuseful) category: NONGBRI2013.19 MCCARTY 2011a for the connection between ritual and representations at Hadrumetum; more

generally, BELL1997: 173-177.


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similar manner over a given period at these two sites is much less secure than oftenacknowledged. In the absence of material evidence, such regular usage cannot simply

be assumed, but must be proved as much as any suggestion of disjunction.

1. Henchir el-Hami: Recreating Rites

Since its excavation between 1992 and 1994, the sanctuary at Hr. el-Hami has beentaken as the type-case for the transformations of pre-imperial sanctuaries in the Romanimperial period: from Baal Hammon to Saturn, from human to animal and vegetalsacrifice, from tophet to temple, and from Punic/Numidian to Roman in the forms (butnot substance) of art and rites20. The excavator, Ahmed Ferjaoui, describes the signifi-cance of the site as proof of the permanence of Punic culture in the Roman imperial

period albeit with a few Roman influences grafted on, particularly in thesubstitution of different types of offerings21. As with the general story told of tophets in

North Africa, it is the worship of a particular god Baal Hammon/Saturn thatguarantees continuity in the face of some ritual changes. Yet a fifth-century AD depositfrom the sanctuary suggests that this narrative is hardly so neat, revealing how

individual aspects of a rite could be made deliberately archaizing in order to create linksto a sanctuarys past.

Although the shallow depth of sanctuary below the modern surface precludeddetailed understanding of change based on stratigraphy, the pottery assemblage,alongside Punic, Numidian, and Republican coins minted at Utica, suggests that thesanctuary was founded at the end of the second century BC, or more probably, in theearly first century BC22. Up until the late second century AD, infants and lambs were

burned, buried in locally-made two-handled amphorettesin neat rows, and some of thedeposits marked with stelae in an open-air sanctuary (fig. 3, A). Towards the middle-end of the second century AD, the cultic activity on the site moved north of the stele-

field: an altar, small multi-roomed structure which used some older stelae in its founda-tions, and enclosure wall were built (fig. 3, B). Hundreds of unguentariadiscoveredaround the altar suggest a shift towards offerings of perfumed oil, while cookwaressuggest animal sacrifice and dining, rather than holocaust. The god to whom such riteswere directed is assumed to have been Saturn, the Romanized Baal-Hammon,although there is no direct evidence. Such a move, from open-air stele field to templeand altar parallels contemporary changes suggested to have taken place at other sites,especially Thugga, in the late second century/early third century AD23.

If the building of the temple marked a clear disjunction in practices, links with thepast were still maintained via the sanctuarys location adjacent to the stele field. Thenew temple and altar seem to avoid disturbing earlier offerings, although the precise re-

lationship between the two parts of the sanctuary is unclear. Some of the earlier stelae

20 FERJAOUI2002; ElHami.21 ElHami:123.22 ElHami: 62-63.23 None of these cases, save Hr. el-Hami, is wholly certain. Thugga: see below; Ammaedara: LE GLAY

1961: 323-324; Thubursicu Numidarum: LE GLAY1961: 366-367, proposes that a sanctuary in theforum area was moved c. 202 to a hill south of the city; Mactar: PICARD1984, though the evidencethat the temple under the museum was the site of the stele-sanctuary is inconclusive at best.


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were removed and built into the walls of the temple; others seem to have fallen in situin the stele field, though whether this happened at time of the temples construction, or

post antiquity, is not certain. Some of the stelae could have remained on view while thesanctuary community conducted their new rites just to the north, visible reminders of

past practice, even if they were not curated for re-display the way stelae at Thinissutand Ammaedara were24. Likewise, the transition from one rite to another may have

been gradual rather than abrupt, given the crossover of unguentariumtypes between thetwo areas25.

One of the most remarkable features of the site is a late-antique deposit, cited as evi-dence for continuity at the site in an era when urban pagan temples were going outof use and often being repurposed and when sacred violence was raging in someareas between newly-empowered Christian groups and non-Christians26. In late antiq-uity, visitors made what may have been the final offering at the site, and the last attestedtophet-style rite in all of North Africa: a cooking pot, filled with ash and burnt bonefrom a lamb or goat, surrounded by four miniature chalices, each containing graysediment and topped with a clay plug; four lamps; and two coins (fig. 3, C; fig. 4)27.

The dating of the deposit is contested. Although Ferjaoui focuses on the coin ofConstantius II to suggest a date in the fourth century for the offering, the ceramicassemblage suggests a slightly later date, in the fifth-sixth century. While there are two

parallels for the cooking-pot, unusual for its lack of everted rim, in the sanctuary, otherexamples come from dated contexts at Carthage in the fifth-sixth century28. Two of thelamps are Deneauve VIII, and probably datable to the mid-late third century; the othertwo are Deneauve XII, and find their closest parallels in the fourth-fifth century AD29.If pottery chronologies in this period are slightly fuzzier than the more rigid terminus

post quemprovided by a coin, the ceramic assemblage seems to point at the earliest tothe fifth century AD. In addition, given the problems in the supply of base-metalcoinage in the late fourth and fifth centuries (especially acute in North Africa

immediately after the Vandal invasion), and that fourth-century coins seem regularly tohave stayed in circulation through the fifth century, the coins in the deposit offer only a

24 MCCARTY2011a.25 ElHami: 25.26 LEONE2007 may paint too uniform a picture of this transition following imperial legislation; Hr. el-

Hami provides an important exception and alternative, albeit in a less urban context. Unfortunately,stratigraphic excavation of Roman-late antique sanctuaries in Africa is rare, and I am unaware ofevidence for similar types of offerings, save for the late antique statue-caches: a very different type of

phenomenon. Sacred violence: SHAW2011, ch. 5.27 ElHami:78. The latest datable stele dedicated to Saturn was set up in AD 323: BESCHAOUCH1968.

New material from Hr. Ghayadha, however, shows activity that may have taken place there to theseventh century, and given the sites remoteness, such activity was most likely cultic (MCHAREK etal. 2008). Otherwise, evidence for late-antique visitation of sanctuaries dedicated to Saturn comes

primarily from coins recovered; whether these represent the cultic use of the sites, their destruction, orother activities remains debated, as at Bou Kournein.

28 Parallels at Hr. el-Hami: DEL VAISin ElHami: 340, nos. 54-55. Carthage: FULFORD1984: 163, nos.16-17, with dating suggested between 425-500, with earliest example in a deposit of around 450.

29 DEL VAIS in ElHami: 357-358. Lamp no. 3 is Bonifays Deneauve VIII.2 (225-250) Lamp no. 4 isBonifays Deneauve VIII.4 (250-300).


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very loose terminus post quem30.Altogether, this special deposit seems more probablyto date from the early-mid fifth century AD, rather than the fourth31.

Identifying the offrands, even in general terms, remains the other main challenge ininterpreting the deposit. Whether an individual, a family, a temple-community or othervoluntary association, or a civic group is impossible to determine on the grounds of thedeposit itself. Tophets/temples of Saturn and the rites practiced within them seem tohave structured very different types of communities at different times and places some focused on small, family units, others on larger, hierarchical communities with

prestigious sacerdotes32.Changes in the society of participants at Hr. el-Hami seem tohave followed a trajectory common at other sites: in the tophet, individual/familyofferings that responded to occasional pressures; in the temple, more formalized,regular community-based offerings around an altar that included large numbers ofunguentaria. Yet there is no guarantee that this unusual fifth-century deposit was made

by a similar sanctuary community33.Rather than evidence of a clear continuity, an unbroken progression of rites from the

first century BC, this fifth century offering instead indicates an imaginative re-creation

of much earlier practices. The central feature of this structured deposit was the burntoffering: the other items in the deposit orbit around the cooking-pot, with the lamp-nozzles all aimed inwards towards it to highlight its importance. Although it is unclearwhether the pot contained the full holocaust of an ovicaprine, or the selection of some

parts of an animal following butchery and consumption, curating the burnt remains ofan offering and burying them had not been done at Hr. el-Hami for roughly 250 yearswhen this offering was made. Not only had the rite of holocaust and deposition beenabandoned at Hr. el-Hami much earlier, but no buried holocaust deposits later than theend of the second century AD have been discovered anywhere in North Africa 34. Evenif some stelae date from later periods, these did not necessarily accompany burned and

buried remains; at Hadrumetum, for example, carved stelae continued to be erected in

the final stratum (second century AD), even if burned and buried offerings largelyceased35.

The particular rite of holocaust and deposition, central to tophets, was reprisedafter seemingly being abandoned everywhere for two hundred years. Of course, theopen-form cooking pot used for this deposit is a very different shape than the closed-form amphorettespreferred earlier: this was not a direct replication of earlier rites andtheir trappings. As such, the deposit raises the questions of how the dedicants composed

30 REECE 1984; GUEST 2012. Cf. SAUER2011 for coin-circulation and offerings in the late-antique

northwest.

31 DEL VAISin ElHami: 358 offers a similar date.32 E.g., BENSEDDIK2006 for family being central to the cult around Sitifis; MCCARTY2010a: 91-151.33 MCCARTY, forthcoming.34 Second century deposits: Lambafundi (LE GLAY 1966a: 114-115); Thamugadi (LE GLAY 1966a:

125-129). If Tertullian, Apol. 9 has been used to suggest the continuity of child sacrifice after around200, not only is his claim unverified archaeologically, but the lack of urn-deposits after this date alsosuggests that substitution sacrifices (as practiced earlier) were also abandoned around this time:SHAW2013.

35 MCCARTY2011a.


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their ritual act, and how memories of such practices were preserved and maintainedover several generations in the absence of regular ritual performance.

Other aspects of the Hr. el-Hami deposit similarly look back to much earlier offeringpractices. The two coins placed in this deposit recall the coins dedicated alongside burntremains in the first phase of the sanctuary. If there were around 200 coins found in theurn-field up to the reign of Domitian, these coin offerings seem almost entirely todisappear from the site in later periods, and the few later coins found might well have

been lost rather than intentionally deposited36. Coin-offering, like the deposition ofburnt sacrifice, was very much a practice of the distant past at Hr. el-Hami when thisspecial deposit was made.

Nor do coin offerings seem to have been common in other North African sanctuariesin the imperial/late-antique period, judging from the paucity of finds. At bothHadrumetum and Hr. Ghayadha, for example, coins, common in the first century BC,largely disappear in the first century AD37. The same is true at El-Knissia, where justas at Hr. el-Hami the Roman imperial coins disappear after the reign of Domitian,despite later cultic activity on the site38. While arguing from absence is always

dangerous, especially when it involves valuable and re-usable metal objects, the dearthof coin-offerings attested in second-fifth century North Africa stands in sharp contrastto the situation in the northern provinces, where low-denomination coins were amongthe most common dedications39. This does not, of course, preclude the possibility thatany such offerings in North Africa were simply given to the sanctuaries differently,

perhaps collected in a coin-box rather than deposited individually. Nevertheless, thededicants of this special fifth-century deposit at Hr. el-Hami were not simply borrowingfrom contemporary practices in other sanctuaries to piece together their own offering,

but again drawing on a ritual practice that seems to have fallen out of regular use forseveral hundred years.

The four lamps arranged around the central burnt offering suggest that the fifth-

century offrands were not simply looking to previous rites that took place at Hr. el-Hami. At Hr. el-Hami, lamps do not seem to have played a large role in most of therites from the first century BC to the third century AD. In the stele-field, fragmentsfrom only five lamps were recovered: one late Hellenistic and three Deneauve VII,datable to the second century AD. The only nozzle fragment shows signs of burning.This is hardly enough evidence to suggest that the rites were regularly held at night,

both because the lighting of lamps as a votive act need not be confined to the provisionof light and because of the paucity of material40. In the north part of the sanctuary at Hr.

36 ALEXANDROPOULOSin ElHami: 448.37 At Hadrumetum, coin offerings seem to decline rapidly in the first century AD, similar to the pattern

seen at Hr. el-Hami. While the majority of coins found at Hr. Ghayadha come from the sanctuary,most are Punic-Numidian (8 as opposed to 3 Roman imperial coins), suggesting that coin offeringwas practiced early.

38 CARTON1908: 19 Numidian/Republican coins, 12 Roman imperial coins to Domitian.39 SAUER 2011. Admittedly, the northwest provinces have been more extensively surveyed and

excavated.40 Nighttime: ElHami:110. The notion that such sacrifices took place under the cover of night, really

supported only at Nicivibus by the epigraphic formula sacrum magnum nocturnum, has more to dowith the trope of bad (or illicit) religion being done secretly in darkness than actual evidence for


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el-Hami, the area of the altar and temple, a larger though still relatively small number of lamps was recovered (18); the majority of these show clear signs of having

been lit.The relative lack of lamps in the sanctuary stands in contrast to their regular

appearance at other North African stele-sanctuaries of the late Hellenistic/early imperialperiod, hinting at the local variations in tophet rites. At Salammb in the third-secondcentury BC, lit lamps were a regular feature of the rites surrounding urn-deposits, withtheir smoke blackening the bases of some stelae; at El-Knissia, over three thousandlamps were discovered in favissae with the stelae, almost all (except for votiveminiatures) showing signs of having been lit; at Thuburnica, over a hundred lamps were

placed in front of the niches of the temple and found in a deposit of mixed ash andpottery adjacent to the stele-field; at Bou Kournein, sixty lamps were discovered aroundthe altar41. In the temple at Thinissut, which itself seems to have replaced an urn-field inthe first century BC/AD, lamps were found in situ,placed around the niches for statue-display; not only would they have illuminated the statues, but lighting them would haveserved as a devotional act in its own right42. Lamp-lighting continued to be an important

ritual act, especially at many tophets, through late antiquity: two late deposits,consisting primarily of lamps and plates, were buried in the sanctuary at Hr.Ghayadha43. If illuminating lamps was a regular practice at many tophets and othersanctuaries, a rite that continued regularly through late antiquity, this had not been thecase in the earlier phases at Hr. el-Hami. This suggests two things: first, that despitecommonalities among offerings across tophets, there was not a fixed script for thedenouement of rites shared among different sanctuaries, but a family of loosely related

practices that orbited around the central triad of holocaust, burial, and stele-erection.Second, when the fifth century deposit was made at Hr. el-Hami, the dedicants were notnecessarily looking back to how exactly earlier rites had been conducted there, but wereinstead including practices and ritual forms drawn from a wider pool of options.

The fact that the lamps in the fifth-century Hr. el-Hami deposit were buried as partof the offering also suggests a different use of the objects44. Only one is recorded asshowing signs of burning on its nozzle, and it is one of the lamps datable to the thirdcentury; the traces of burning may be from another use context during the roughly 150years between its creation and its burial. The other three lamps may have been unused:they were not apparently lit as part of the rites themselves, but simply removed fromcirculation45. The lamps found in all of the sanctuaries cited above were eitherdiscovered in situ, having been lit at the base of a stele or statue as part of a devotionalact, or found collected in favissae, having been culled and buried with earlier offerings.Unlike the assemblage from Hr. el-Hami, these lamps were not part of individual

practice. Of course, given the amount of time necessary for a fire to burn a complete holocaust, whensuch sacrifices were made, it is possible that they, like funeral pyres, were left to burn overnight.

41 Salammb: BNICHOU-SAFAR 2004; El-Knissia: CARTON 1908: 96-105; Thuburnica: CARTON1907; Bou Kournein: TOUTAIN1892.

42 MERLIN1910.43 MCHAREK et al.2008: 143-144, dating the deposits to the fourth-fifth century AD, contemporary

with the one at Hr. el-Hami. For the ceramics, BOURGEOIS2008: 257-258.44 DEL VAISin ElHami: 357-359.45 Cf. STEWART2003: 195-207 on lamps in Roman cult.


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structured deposits. Not only are the lamps a new addition to the rite at Hr. el-Hami,and not reflective of earlier practices there, but employed in the ritual in afundamentally different manner.

The most unusual feature of the Hr. el-Hami deposit is the group of four double-handled chalices with clay plugs. Two were opened by the excavation team, and theircontents examined; the other two were subjected to non-invasive x-ray analysis. Underthe covers, only a grey sediment was found, with very few inclusions: tiny fragments of

bone and small land-snails46. What is clear is that the chalices did not hold burnedbones collected from a holocaust. In the absence of further analysis, little can be saidabout these offerings, except that whatever the cups contained originally, it wasimportant enough to merit the clay seals. If the forms of the vessels are themselvesunusual, with parallels more easily attested in the iconographic repertoire of mosaicsrather than in other ceramic assemblages, at least one other, similar chalice was foundon the site47.

Rather than a custom order of ceramics and offerings for this particular rite, theobjects instead seem to have been drawn from a variety of sources. Two of the lamps

used had potentially been in circulation for over a century when paired with the twomore recent ones. While very unusual, and without obvious published parallels, thechalices were all hand-made using clays that vary in fabric/inclusions. If the general

profiles are commensurate, the base of the handles, mouldings on the body, anddecoration of the foot differ considerably. The chalices were thus not objects producedtogether as a group for this specific occasion. The opportunistic collection of offeringsto be used for the fifth-century rite (alongside the uniqueness of the deposit), hints that,rather than being an occasion planned-for and provisioned well in advance, the rite wasenacted to respond to a specific set of unforeseen pressures at a given moment48.

This fifth-century deposit thus represents another disjunction in practice, a fifthcentury break from the communal sacrifices and meals that may have continued around

the altar49. Yet in breaking with contemporary norms of practice and technologies fordealing with the gods, the offrands drew connections with a cultic past.

The special deposit at Hr. el-Hami was the product of a hybrid set of rites, andreveals much about the way ritual practices might be re-imagined, re-interpreted, andaltered. Certain features of the deposit and the acts that resulted in its formation the

burning and burial of a sacrificial victim, the inclusion of coins seem deliberately ar-chaizing, meant to create resonances with much earlier practices that had not been per-formed at Hr. el-Hami, or anywhere else, for over 200 years. To speak of this deposit as

46 BDOUIOUESLATIin ElHami: 452-453.47 Parallels: DEL VAISin ElHami: 358, no. 13. Other chalice at Hr. el-Hami: DEL VAISin ElHami: 339,

no. 45. The lack of other parallels in published ceramic assemblages from sanctuaries, settlements,and necropoleis including early excavations where such unusual forms stood a better chance of

being recorded, may attest the rarity of this form in ceramic. The incised contour lines and tonguepattern on the foot of no. 10 may hint at metal prototypes.

48 While a number of vessels used for the burnt remains of sacrifice in tophets are opportunistically re-used, this too may be a product of the lack of institutionalization of the rites and their response tospecific, unplanned stressors: MCCARTY forthcoming.

49 The chalice and cooking-pots from the temple area that parallel those of the special deposit, alongsidelamps and African D ware in forms datable to the fourth-fifth century (CAMPISIin ElHami:366; DELVAISin ElHami: 375-376), suggest that some form of occupation continued on the site.


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a continuity from earlier cult rites is not wholly accurate; on the other hand, for theoffrands who engaged in this rite in the fifth century, these archaisms created a link toearlier sacrificants at the site and their technologies for dealing with the gods. Theoffrands, though, did not exactly reproduce such earlier offerings. The fifth-century vo-taries may not have been directly familiar either the liturgical order (and its variations)

practiced at Hr. el-Hami or other sites in earlier generations, for the rite iselaborated substantially and includes features not regularly present at Hr. el-Hami lamps and chalices and used in a manner distinct from earlier practices at other sites the lamps.

Explaining this single, late deposit is more difficult in the absence of clear parallelsor other structured ritual deposits datable to this period. Shifting the date of the depositto the fifth century moves it into a very different historical context than the mid-latefourth century. Even if the ritual itself was meant to respond to an unforeseen stressorin the life of the community the proximate cause for the deposit being created theunusual form chosen may relate to wider pressures.

The early fifth century was, after all, an era of increasing repression of practices seen

as incompatible with orthodox Christianity. In 399, Honorius sent agents and legislationto Africa to help stamp out non-Christian practices; two years later, church councils atCarthage issued canons specifically targeting rural cult-centers50. It was also an erawhen a number of temples in North African cities had possibly been abandoned, andwhen others were being retrofitted for new civic or Christian cult use; the temple ofSaturn at Thugga, for example, was quarried for materials to build the fourth-early fifthcentury church just below, while at Thuburbo Maius, a temple was converted to achurch in the mid-late fourth century51.

It may be overly facile to call this strange, archaizing deposit a form of resistance tothe Christian conflicts and pressures of the early fifth century, and yet it seems difficultto withdraw the offering entirely from this frame. Perhaps, as with the original

establishment of many tophets along the African littoral and down into the Medjerdavalley/Siliana plain in the first century BC, the late-antique offering at Hr. el-Hamirepresents an attempt to reclaim and reconnect with a past under pressure from a newhegemonic power. If nothing else, the attempt to reanimate a long-dead form of ritual

practice suggests that the cult community held a very different view of thereproducibility of the past, of that pasts potentially continuous presence, than the view

being loudly championed by a contemporary North African bishop52.To speak of the deposit at Hr. el-Hami in terms either of continuity or change, in

terms of persistence or Romanization, misses the central tension at play in the offering:between deliberately and recognizably archaizing features of this offering, its new andstrange dimensions, and the more typical sacrificial rites taking place in the temple. Thededicants at Hr. el-Hami rejected contemporary ritual forms and technologies thoseattested around the altar for dealing with the gods, in favour of revived, remembered,and adapted tophet-style rites. The offrands reprised what they thought had taken

place in that place: re-establishing old ritual acts was as important as where in space

50 CCL 149: 196-197, canons 58, 60. Cf. RIGGS 2001.51 Most recently, SEARS 2011, demonstrating the problems in dating these changes archaeologically.52 For Augustines notions of progress: MOMMSEN1951.


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those rites were performed. Neither place alone, nor the deity (to whomever the offeringwas directed), was a full guarantor of ties to antiquity: the forms of offering werenecessary to set this act in line with past tradition. This is a very different strategy, andway of establishing contexts and frames for tophet rites, than those chosen by asanctuary-community at Thugga.

2. Thugga: New Contexts and TraditionsIn many ways, the narrative told of the sanctuary of Saturn at Thugga parallels that

at Hr. el-Hami. A late second/first century BC stele-field was replaced by a built templetowards the end of second century AD; indeed, the shift observed at Thugga has offeredthe main context for historical interpretation of the Hr. el-Hami sanctuary and others(Mactar, Thubursicu Numidarum, Hr. Ghayadha), creating the tophet-to-templenarrative. Yet two features in the archaeology of the site caution against this neat

picture: first, the evidence for continuous ritual use of the site is problematic, andsecond, the new rites adopted, and the architectural context into which they are put,frame those rites very differently: not as practices tied only to a past, but as deeply

entwined with the contemporary religious life of the city.Under and alongside a temple dedicated in AD 195 by L. Octavius Victor Roscianus,

set along a sharp slope to the northeast of the city centre, numerous remains of earliertophet-style rites were discovered, including approximately 500 stelae and urns with

burnt offerings, some in situ, tucked into crevices and along ledges across the slope, therest collected in favissae (fig. 5)53. If the few published ceramics from the site indicateactivity from the second century BC onwards, the stelae suggest a similar chronology54.The inscribed dedications include communal offerings in neo-Punic of a type commonin the area between Thugga and Mactar in the first centuries BC/AD, as well as Latindedications by offrands whose names (Sittius, C. Iulius) likewise suggest a terminus

post quem in the mid-late first century BC

55

.In AD 36/7, a patron of the Thuggan pagus, Lucius Postumius Chius, built a templeto Saturn whose inscription survives built into the Byzantine wall. At the same time,Chius also paid for a number of other monuments: given that these benefactions seemto cluster in the forum area, it is most likely that the new temple to Saturn was alsolocated there56. Two further inscriptions, found at a distance from the sanctuary, recordthe building and the subsequent restoration of a temple to Saturn, probably in the firstand mid-second century AD respectively57. The first was found 6km away from the site,at Hr. Ben Mansoura. The second, recording the restoration of the temple vetustateconsumptum, was found in the forum area, built into a modern house; this led LouisPoinssot to speculate that the original temple had been the same temple dedicated in

53 CARTON1897; LANTIERPOINSSOT1942; POINSSOT 1958: 66.54 KRANDEL-BEN YOUNS2002: 163-171.55 Communal dedications: JONGELING2008: 78-79, nos. 1-3; 81, no. 1; 95, no. 11; 106, no. 39; 137,

no. 105; 139, nos. 110-111; 140, no. 116; 149, no. 13; 152, no. 21; cf. M CCARTYforthcoming. DFH250-252 for the Latin stelae.

56 AE1914.172=DFHno. 23.57 CIL 8.10619=27417; ILAfr 551 = DFH no. 126. The letter-forms on the restoration inscription

suggest a date in the early second century AD: DFH 252.


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36/7, and that the temple stood somewhere nearby and may even have been one of therooms opening onto the west edge of the forum58. Of course, many of the inscriptionsfound around the forum and reused in post-antique buildings themselves come from asecondary context: the Byzantine wall59. As a result, most recent commentators havesuggested that the restoration inscription refers to a sanctuary over the tophet site, to thenorthwest of the town60. The history of the sanctuary would thus run as follows:established as a tophet in the late second/first century BC, with a small temple-buildingadded in the first century AD (possibly Chius temple or the one referred to in theinscription from Hr. ben Mansoura); this temple was restored in the second century, andthen replaced by Roscianus grander temple in AD 195.

I want to suggest instead a very different narrative of the sanctuarys use. From thefoundation of the sanctuary in the second-first century BC, both individuals and the b!l"(citizens?) of the town offered cult in the open-air sanctuary, including the burial of

burnt sacrificial remains and commemoration with stelae61. These rites can be docu-mented continuously through the early/mid first century AD by the onomastics on thestelae. Then, a period of either abandonment or of greatly reduced activity on the

hillside: the cult may have been displaced to the city-centre with the building of eitherChius or the civitas temple, adopting new rites in the new location, or these new tem-ples might have been cast as newly-founded sanctuaries without a link to hilltop tophet.

Rather than originating from the hilltop sanctuary, it seems more likely that this setof building/repair inscriptions instead comes from multiple sanctuaries. If the findspotof the restoration inscription does not guarantee that the temple stood directly on theforum, it is also worth noting that none of the blocks built into the Byzantine wall can

be associated with the temple of Saturn on the hill. At the time the Byzantine wall wasbuilt, the Saturn sanctuary was already out of use, and a potential quarry for materials:the late fourth/early fifth-century chapel near the temple cannibalized its stones62.Likewise, the dedication to Saturn for the health of Commodus, reused in a wall

running through the Temple of Concordia near the city centre, does not necessarilycome from the sanctuary on the hill; such dedications are common in public spaces andin sanctuaries devoted primarily to other deities63. It thus seems probable, given thatmaterial from the Saturn-temple does not seem to have made its way down to theforum-area for re-use, that the temple-restoration inscription similarly did not originatefrom the hillside sanctuary. This would mean that there were at least two sanctuaries toSaturn at Thugga, and perhaps a third at Hr. ben Mansoura, where the civitas templeinscription was found: such duplication of sanctuaries is not uncommon within a town,and for stelae-sanctuaries, finds a parallel at second-century Lambaesis64.

In addition, no material recorded from the hillside sanctuary can be dated betweenthe mid first century AD and the construction of Roscianus temple. If there was an

58 POINSSOT 1916: 31, followed by LE GLAY1961: 208.59 DFH253.60 DFH251-2; SAINT-AMANS2004: 348-357.61 Communal dedications: JONGELING2008: 76, no. 2; 78, no. 5.62 POINSSOTLANTIER1925: 231.63 ILTun1399.64 MCCARTY2010b: 38. RIVES1995: 147 also favours multiple sanctuaries.


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earlier building on the site, the later temple obliterated its architectural presenceentirely; nothing is visible on-site, nor did excavators record any structures. Carton doesrecord a few objects datable to the imperial period excavated at the northwest corner ofthe sanctuary under the portico: glass unguentaria, a Roman-style lamp with tondo, anda piece of terra sigillata with a stamp that Carton read as C!NAMF inplanta pedis65.The piece is almost certainly Italian sigillata, given general import and consumption

patterns at Carthage and documented by the Thugga survey; this, however, would meanthat Carton misread the stamp, as no comparable stamps are attested among Italian

producers66. The most likely reading of the stamp is CN!AT!M, with elision of the Aand T and Cartons Fbeing the toes of the foot; this is the reading given in CIL and byPoinssot, who includes this stamp, rather than a second piece of terra sigillata from thesanctuary, in his publication of inscriptions from Thugga67. This reading is furthersupported by the presence of Cn. Ateius Ma()s wares at Carthage, Leptiminus, andsites in Tripolitania, showing that the workshop exported to North African markets68.The potter provides a date for the piece in the early-mid first century AD69.

Nevertheless, the materials mentioned by Carton were seemingly part of a deposit

formed when Roscianus temple was built, and may be residual; they thus do not offer afirm chronological indicator for the activity in the sanctuary itself. That said, even if thematerials do come from cult activity on the site, they do not rule out a hiatus in ritual inthe sanctuary between the mid-late first century AD and 195.

The number of stelae found at the sanctuary just under 500 also does not argueagainst a shortened period of use. There are no numbers provided for the sacrificial urnsat Thugga, so the stelae serve as only surviving proxy for the frequency of cult activity.Stele-dedication was not a necessary part of tophet rites, and different communities atdifferent periods dedicated stelae alongside their burnt sacrifices at different rates. If 52stele-fragments are attested at the relatively rural sanctuary of Hr. el-Hami over theroughly 250 years when tophet rites were practiced (0.25/year), at the more urban Cirta,

more than 850 stelae are attested over approximately 350 years of use (2.4/year). Ifactive from c. 150 BC-AD 50, the sanctuary community in the equally urban Thugga replete with a temple to Massinissa, a princely tower-tomb, and a substantial number ofimported goods attesting the citys wealth and cosmopolitan character would have

been dedicating stelae at a similar rate (2.5/year). Although these numbers are highlyartificial, they at least demonstrate that the sheer number of offerings at Thugga doesnot rule out an abbreviated period of stele-dedication and activity in the tophet.

Nor should the choice of this site for Roscianus temple indicate an unbroken chainof regular ritual practices until that moment. Such re-activation, and appropriation ofthe perceived antiquity, of a cult site is hardly a unique phenomenon in the Roman (or

65 CARTON 1898: 383. Both CARTONand LE GLAYread this as C. Namf(amo).66 FULFORD PEACOCK 1995; RICE 2011; CIOTOLA2000: 59, who draws attention to the lack of

Gallic wares, in contrast to sites in Algeria and Libya. LE GLAYs assertion (1961: 210) that it mustbe an ARS imitation of Italian ware is unlikely.

67 CIL8.22645, 44d; POINSSOT1911: 67. LE GLAY(1961: 210) assumes that POINSSOTis referring toa second stamp, when it is clear from CIL and POINSSOTthat they are re-publishing the piece foundby CARTON.

68 OCK no. 298, vessels no. 22.582-3.69 Ateius pieces were also found, in great quantity, at Pompeii.


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post-Roman) world: examples abound, including the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore onthe slope above Corinth70.

Arguing from archaeological absence, especially given how material was recordedby Carton and Poinssot, is dangerous. Verification of a gap in ritual activity on the sitewould require a new campaign of excavation. Yet what is clear is that the case forregular use of the tophet area from the first century AD to AD 195 is no more certainthan a potential hiatus. Continuity cannot be assumed any more than rupture in theabsence of evidence.

At the very least, then, we are confronted at Thugga with a gap in the evidence ofregular ritual use of the hillside sanctuary from the mid first century AD, when the sitemay have been replaced by a temple in another location and with the new temple, a

potentially very different style of ritual that did not involve burned offerings and theirburial. This potential change has important ramifications for the larger narrative told oftophets in the imperial period, since the dating of the transition at Thugga has been oneof the anchors of accounts that recognize a sea-change in the religious life of the

province in the late second century AD. The tophet to temple transition at Thugga

may look rather different in both chronology and continuity than the shift seen at Hr.el-Hami, when a temple was built in the late second century adjacent to the older stelae-field. The rates and forms of ritual change in North Africa were hardly homogenous,

but varied widely among different communities; there was no set trajectory to theRomanization of cults, even if similar patterns, similar families of the modalities ofchange, can be observed at different sites71.

Seeing a sharp reduction or disappearance of cult activity in the hillside tophet fromthe mid first century AD also lends new importance and interest to the building ofRoscianus temple. If the offrands of the fifth-century deposit at Hr. el-Hami sought torecall a cultic past by reactivating and reimagining past rites in an archaizing pastiche,Roscianus and the community of temple-users at Thugga employed a very different

strategy for creating a link to past cult.The ritual practiced within Roscianus temple a courtyard surrounded by a vaulted

portico, with three vaulted cellae on the west side seems to have been markedlydifferent than that of the earlier tophet. Instead of incineration of a victim on a pyre, the

burial of those remains, and commemoration via a carved monument in the midst ofdensely-packed rows of stelae, the open courtyard created a stage for a more publicsacrifice, likely with a sacrificial altar at center, although the paving-stones of the courtand anything above them were robbed out post-antiquity72. A marble statue of Saturnenthroned, almost certainly carved by a workshop from Carthage, could watch thedenouement of these rites, as could a large group assembled in the shade of the

portico73. The other main architectural evidence of what happened in the new templecomes from the cisterns common in most North African buildings with a large surfacearea to aid in the catchment of an important resource and from the wear on thestylobates supporting a small propylon at the center of the east portico (fig. 5, A),

70 BOOKIDISSTROUD1997. Cf. HORDENPURCELL2000: 406-411, arguing for the importance oflandscape itself, rather than its sacralization by human agency, as the cause of such survivals.

71 MCCARTY, forthcoming.72 Cf. EINGARTNER2003 for a similar phenomenon at Thamugadi.73 MCCARTY2011b.


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implying frequent foot-traffic around the portico. In terms of ritual forms, there was aclear disjunction with past practices, whether they continued at Thugga up until the

building of Roscianus temple, or whether they had petered out earlier with the buildingof the first century AD temple(s) in the town.

Instead, the placement of the new temple was what ensured the sanctuary and itscults ties to antiquity. Rather than simply replacing an active stele-field with changedforms of sacrifice, placing the temple over an older, if defunct, sanctuary created aresonance with these past practices and cultic life, in spite of the disjunction in practice.

The plan of Roscianus temple may also draw connections to the past in a slightlydifferent way. Laid out as a so-called temple cour, with three cellae set on one side ofa porticoed courtyard, the sanctuary follows a temple design popular across NorthAfrica74. Patrizio Pensabene has demonstrated that such plans owe their origin toPhoenicio-Punic sanctuaries, even if the basic layout could be adapted in various waysto suit the needs of different communities and/or deities75. The choice of such a plan atThugga to replace an earlier open-air stele-field was not to reproduce the cult as it hadexisted before in that place, or was imagined to have existed. Up until the terrace of the

temple was built, burying sections of the tophet under up to 2m of earth to create a levelplatform for the temple, earlier stelae and deposits seem to have remained on view,potential reminders of the type of cult that had been practiced there (fig. 6). The plan ofRoscianus temple then is not an example of conservatism, of preserving things as theywere, or of continuity with a Punic or Libyan past, but of inserting the sanctuary withinan imagined sense of what might constitute traditional forms. Perhaps moresignificantly, this new layout also set the sanctuary within a genre of temples being

built and/or reconstructed at Thugga in the second-third centuries, including Temple Band the Temple of Tellus76.

If the placement of the temple created a resonance with past cult of a different kindon the site, and the plan of the temple partook in imaginations of a particular tradition, a

renovation of the temple shortly after its dedication suggests how the cult could also beset into other, contemporary contexts as well, and placed within a wider web of civicand cultic life. Roscianus temple was originally entered from the east, via two stepsleading to a door that opened onto the portico (fig. 7, A). There are no foundations formonumental exterior embellishments: no columns, no porch, just the stairs and theouter wall of the precinct. Soon after the temple was built, though, a new porch andfaade was added to the sanctuary77. This new porch sits on a separate foundation than

74 TILMANT1989 offers a useful overview of the temples courand scholarship on the topic.75 PENSABENE 1990; TILMANT 1989 removes the temples from a Levantine sphere and sets them

wholly in the west.76 TILMANT 1995. The identification of Temple B remains problematic: SAINT-AMANS 2004: 287-

293. Temple B, as it stands now as five rooms opening onto a large court, was built in the middle-endof the second century based on ceramics; the Temple of Tellus dates by its inscription to AD 261(SAINT AMANS2004: 362-363), but reuses a much earlier lintel dedicated to Tellus in its entryway:another means by which connections to the past were made. Given the archaeological focus on urbanfacies of the High Empire, earlier levels and antecedent temples have rarely been excavated atThugga.

77 The column bases on the porch reproduce, in slightly larger form and with slightly differentproportions, the moulding sequence of the interior colonnade, suggesting an attempt to link the twospaces architecturally and potentially a close chronology.


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the terrace upon which the temple was built, guaranteeing a later date for the porchsconstruction. Four Corinthian columns stood atop a stylobate set along the front side ofthis porch (fig. 7, B). The fact that the stylobate sits at the same level as the entrance tothe sanctuary suggests that the floor-level of the porch would have been at the samelevel as the entryway, obsoleting the two steps from the earlier phase. In addition,

probably as part of a third phase of reconstruction, a raised platform, not architecturallybonded into the porch, was built extending outward.

One of the problems created by this new faade was of access to the temple: thereare no traces of a staircase or any other means of negotiating the sharp drop between thelevel of the porch and the sloping ground below. Instead, entrance to the precinct seemsto have been provided via a side door and set of rooms constructed on the south side ofthe portico (fig. 5, D). The new columnar faade, erected at some point in the thirdcentury AD, did not serve as an entrance to the temple; it was built as a monumentalshowpiece atop a tall podium that heightened the visibility of the already monumentalmonolithic columns set at front to the building. If much has been made of the plan ofthe temple of Saturn as a temple cour, leading to the suggestion of the cult as native

and bracketed off from civic and Roman cults in the city, the elevation of thetemple the sanctuary as presented to those looking at it from the outside firmly setthe sanctuary in relation to the range of other temples with podia and columnar facadesthat had been (and were being) built in the town from the mid second century onwards,from the Capitolium to the Temple of Pietas. As much as the temples cult might have

been framed by the fuzzy context of tradition in its plan, it was also set firmly withinthe wider sphere of the contemporary religious life of the town.

3. Conclusions

To speak of continuity or rupture in the cultic life of North Africa and its tophets is

to create a narrative relationship between a given site and some imagined past: anarrative potentially constructed quite differently than it would have been by thecommunities using these sanctuaries. All too often, the grounds for claims ofcontinuity are based, as in the cases of Hr. el-Hami and Thugga, upon problematicassumptions, concealing a host of disjunctions: in the deity, in the types of rites

practiced, in the architectural arrangements of the sanctuaries, in the move from tophetto temple. Assuming continuity and stasis in cult also leads to overlooking potentialgaps and hiatuses in ritual, as may be the case on the tophet site at Thugga.

Rather than tallying aspects that seem to remain constant versus those that seem tochange (the deity, the place, the rites, the symbol system), it may be more fruitful toexamine the strategies by which communities created their links to the past, how they

made their cults traditional and situated them in relation to some past. This did nothappen in any static form, via continuous reproduction of ritual scripts, but via animaginative recreation of cultic traditions. At Hr. el-Hami, moving the second-centurytemple to a space adjacent to the earlier tophet, with some stelae potentially left onview, maintained links to past cult in the face of a wholly changed ritual apparatus:links that were seized upon when a group of fifth-century worshippers reprised thelong-defunct tophet-style rites. These offrands, rather than directly copying ritualswhich had ceased 250 years earlier, recreated these rites by combining a set ofarchaizing offerings (burnt remains in a pot, coins) with new and unusual contemporary


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types of offerings (chalices), and elements sometimes used in tophet-rites (lamps), evenif not at Hr. el-Hami, put here to new use. If one basis for ties to the past depended onthe place itself, reconstituting an abandoned ritual practice served as a second basis, atleast for one group of fifth-century worshippers. At Thugga in the second-third centuryAD, the site of the earlier tophet was re-activated as a locus of cult, though for a vastlychanged set of practices. These practices, though, were framed via an architectural linkto traditional cult in the form of Roscianus temple cour. Here, the tie to the past isnot just reimagined as a reprise of what had come before in that place, as with thereconstitution of a particular rite at Hr. el-Hami, but in a more generic way, via atemple-layout accepted as part of a traditional repertoire. At the same time, the framingof the rites and temple were soon updated, to set the cult not just within the sphere oftradition, but within the realm of contemporary civic display and cult at the site: even ifthis meant re-orienting the entrance to the entire sanctuary.

No group exists without a sense of its ties to some history, and religion especiallyin ritual practice serves as one of the central discourses wherein the past isremembered, maintained, and colonized78. Rather than seeing continuity as natural, or

as the default, any such sense of continuity is the product of particular means andmedia, of strategies that might vary across time and communities. Indeed, the types ofresonance and evocation of both particular past places and practices and more generalimaginations of tradition seen at Hr. el-Hami and Thugga already seem to differmarkedly from the strategies used at other, earlier tophets. At Carthage andHadrumetum, for example, imagined pasts, lived presents (and perhaps evenaspirational futures) were woven together via a most unusual sacrificial rite, freightedwith imagined antiquity; via monumental forms that could evoke a Phoenician past; andabove all, via extended genealogies of individual offrands: a feature conspicuous by itsabsence from most imperial-period stelae-sanctuaries79.

Plus cest la mme chose, plus a change

78 ASSMANN2006.79 BONNET2011,pace DANDREAGIARDINO2011.


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Figures

Fig. 1: Stele-sanctuaries established between 2ndcentury BC and 2ndcentury AD(author; base-map data under license from Esri, USGS, NOAA)

Fig. 2: Sites discussed in the text (author; base-map data under license from Esri, USGS, NOAA)


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Fig. 3: Sanctuary at Henchir el-Hami, 1stcentury BC-5thcentury AD(ElHami, plan, reproduced with kind permission from A. Ferjaoui)


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Fig. 4: Special deposit at Hr. el-Hami, 5 thcentury AD(ElHami fig. 85, reproduced with kind permission from A. Ferjaoui)

Fig. 5: Roscianus temple to Saturn, Thugga, AD 195 (after POINSSOT 1958, fig. 7)


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Fig. 6: Tophet deposits, with carved stelae over buried urns,in situbelow temple at Thugga, 2ndcentury BC-1stcentury AD (POINSSOT 1958, pl. 19)


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Fig. 7: Stairs of the original entrance to Roscianus temple,Thugga, later obsoleted by building of porch, AD 195 (author)

continuities and contexts: tophets of roman africa

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