2012/09/01 by Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Frank Houghton, Luca Bondioli +1 · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Ancient Egypt and Archaeology #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies #Sacrifice #Phoenician #Interpretation (philosophy) #Iconography #History #Art #Classics #Ancient history #Philosophy #Archaeology #Linguistics
paper · doi:10.1017/s0003598x00047888
openalex publication_date 2012/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/08
Writing about the ‘Tophet’, a children's cemetery in Carthage, Smith et 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 Schwartz et al. restate their position for Antiquity readers, showing that the verdict on the Phoenician practice of child sacrifice is, at best, not proven.