Matthew McCarty, Whitney Humanities Center, Yale: Carthaginian "child" sacrifice: evidence, -isms, and the personal in archaeological knowledge

Friday, February 3, 2012

5 pm

HUMN 250

Since its discovery in 1921, interpretation of the archaeological finds from the tophet of Salammbô at Carthage (and at other, related sites) has focused almost exclusively on answering the question of whether or not child sacrifice occurred in the Punic world. Historiographic analysis of the interpretation of the site not only offers a case-study for how archaeological and historical knowledge is produced, but has important ramifications for how we interrogate data and model the ancient world.