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Leptiminus before Rome: Constructing Identity in the First Millennium BCE

David L. STONE
p. 17-38

Résumés

Dans les études sur le premier millénaire avant J.-C. en Afrique du Nord, les chercheurs ont adopté une approche historico-culturelle visant à localiser les groupes ethniques dans des lieux particuliers sur la base d’éléments spécifiques de la culture matérielle, tels que les styles de céramique ou l’architecture funéraire. Cet article examine l’occupation initiale de Leptiminus, plutôt par des approches ancrées dans les théories de l’identité et de la mondialisation. Il soutient que pour comprendre les premières phases de la ville, il faut déplacer le débat sur les peuples d’Afrique du Nord au premier millénaire avant J.-C. en passant d’une focalisation sur les groupes culturels distincts vers les façons dont la culture matérielle a été utilisée pour affirmer le pouvoir, l’identité et le statut social. Les témoignages les plus probants proviennent des espaces funéraires, où les habitants ont opéré des choix parmi une gamme de pratiques et d’objets, afin de manifester diverses facettes de leur identité.

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1The study of sites of the first millennium BCE has been neglected since the origins of research on the archaeology of the Maghreb. As a result of this disregard, the interactions between local peoples and colonizers at these sites have been poorly understood. Leptiminus is no exception to this trend. Beginning in the late 1800s its cemeteries were excavated in pursuit of museum artifacts, but limited efforts were made to understand the center of the city and its occupation history. Some of the more complete artifacts remain but few records were kept. This article aims to present a better understanding of the initial occupation of the city, which has been far less investigated than its later Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine phases. It draws heavily on recent excavations by the Institut National du Patrimoine (INP) that have contributed important new information. The article likewise utilizes the results of the Leptiminus Archaeological Project (LAP) to understand the expansion of the city. It offers some suggestions about the encounter between local Africans and outsiders that may have taken place at Leptiminus from the fifth to the second centuries BCE prior to the Roman conquest. It stresses the evidence for urbanism as well as the range of choices in the funerary realm that inhabitants considered as they buried their dead. It is argued that we can see in this evidence how the inhabitants constructed identities for themselves and their city at a time when influences from the eastern Mediterranean were starting to become prominent in the Maghreb. The recently excavated cemeteries enable us to move beyond discussions of whether artifacts signify the presence of cultural groups at Leptiminus to the consideration of how inhabitants of the city used material culture to demonstrate values or status.

1. Ethnicity and Identity: “Phoenician”, “Punic”, “Libyan”, and “Libyphoenician”

  • 1 For tombs at Leptiminus identified as “phéniciens”, de Smet 1913, p. 330.
  • 2 Cintas 1961, p. 78: “Le Sahel tunisien est la seule région de l’Afrique du Nord où il ait été pos (...)
  • 3 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 17.
  • 4 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 61.
  • 5 Leptiminus 1 1992, p. 60; Gascou 1972, p. 81.

2Previous scholars have advanced several ideas regarding the inhabitants of Leptiminus before the fall of Carthage. Focusing on cemeteries, these studies at Leptiminus have picked out certain features in the remains and identified these as “Phoenician”, “Punic”, “Libyan”, or “Libyphoenician”. Thus, graves featuring a shaft leading to an underground chamber have been called “Phoenician” or “Punic”, while handmade pottery (céramique modelée) and red ochre have been identified as “Libyan”, and the usage of the elements in combination have been regarded as “Libyphoenician”.1 It has in fact been most common to refer to the blending of cultures: Pierre Cintas wrote of the cemeteries at Leptiminus (and those of neighboring towns) that they represented “the only region in North Africa where it was possible to have before one’s eyes necropolises full of Libyans who, although won over to Punic civilization, nevertheless preserved a good part of their practices”.2 The last two research teams to conduct fieldwork at Leptiminus have suggested that the city was occupied by “locals who drew from both Phoenician and Libyan cultural traditions”3 and represented “une expression de la culture Libyphénicienne”.4 In some respects the emphasis on Libyan influence here is a departure from identifying the city as a “Punic foundation” or “an old Punic town”, as was done previously,5 and reflects greater importance given to the contributions of indigenous Africans. Yet in other respects the shift does not indicate that there is now more clarity surrounding some basic questions: what are the origins of Leptiminus? Who were its early inhabitants? Should we try to identify the inhabitants of Leptiminus as part of a certain cultural group? Or should we take an approach that focuses on power, identity, or social status rather than cultural issues?

  • 6 For a sample of approaches that have sought to identify funerary remains with specific cultural g (...)

3Approaches focusing on identifying ethnic groups have taken prominence over these other issues in North Africa. One explanation is the prominence of the culture-history approach in the discipline of archaeology during the time that the initial investigations of North Africa were occurring, and another is the modern history of the region, in which external colonizers subjugated the inhabitants of North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, and sought to identify parallel processes of the rule of one ethnic group by another in the past in order to lend a greater legitimacy to modern rule. Therefore, it is not surprising that many studies have concentrated on identifying “Phoenician”, “Punic”, “Libyan”, and “Libyphoenician” characteristics in the ancient remains. Funerary practices have in particular been a major aim of research from the initial scholarship of the 19th c. onwards, as it has been assumed — often implicitly — that these can be readily associated with specific cultures.6 Studies have often placed considerable emphasis on imported materials but paid little attention to local manufactures, and this choice has made it far easier for scholars to reach conclusions that differentiate between locals and outsiders.

  • 7 Important discussions of these terms may be found in: Ghaki 2005; Prag 2006; Desanges 2008; Zimme (...)
  • 8 Crawley Quinn 2017; Prag 2006.
  • 9 For the debate, see Rural Landscapes 2008, p. 5 and Maraoui Telmini et alii 2014, p. 114-116.

4Recent studies have exposed several problematic issues regarding the use of ethnic terms. As these treatments have examined each term and its background, I will only summarize the findings of relevant discussions here.7 The main problems relate to the derivation of ethnic terms about North Africans from the texts of ancient authors from Greece or Italy. Josephine Crawley Quinn and Jonathan Prag have separately pointed out that almost all attestations of individuals as “Phoenician” or “Punic” in antiquity were made by Greek or Roman authors.8 A dependence on external sources for our views of these people means not only that we may easily be deceived by the biases in the sources, but also we know little about how members of North African groups conceived of themselves. Debate about the term Punic additionally concerns several regions of the western Mediterranean (western Sicily, southern Sardinia, Ibiza, Andalusia, and the Maghreb); these have been associated with groups that have certain similarities in religious practices and material culture, but also differences in mortuary behavior and political organization, among other traits. This has led some scholars to question whether “Punic” applies broadly to a culture and a geographical area or only more narrowly to a chronological period (sixth-second centuries BCE).9 Even if we accept a certain level of cultural cohesion among these regions of the western Mediterranean, there remains a need to explore different ways of “being Punic”.

  • 10 Zimmermann 2008, p. 4387: “flotant”.
  • 11 Ghaki 2005, p. 40: “les Libyens se sont ‘punicisés’ et les Phéniciens sont devenus des ‘Libyphéni (...)
  • 12 M. Fantar writes “En fait pour l’Afrique du Nord, la civilisation punique correspond dans une lar (...)
  • 13 Kallala 2021, p. 71.
  • 14 “Ni la signification du nom des Libyphéniciens, ni leur statut, ni enfin leur localisation ne son (...)

5The term “Libyan” is not without confusion and multiple meanings as well. As Klaus Zimmermann has pointed out, the term was employed in a “shifting” fashion by the ancient sources.10 Greek and Roman authors applied it to diverse peoples in Africa, including Cyrenaicans (Hdt. 4.197.2), native Carthaginians (D. Chr. 25.7), and Carthaginian subjects (Plb. 1.65.3). “Libyphoenician”, like “Libyan”, is also quite variably employed by ancient authors in geographical, cultural, and ethnic senses. Polybius (7.9.5) and Diodorus Siculus (20.55.4) categorized Libyphoenicians according to social status — living under the same laws as Carthaginians and having the right of intermarriage, thus possessing more rights than Libyans. Livy defined the Libyphoenices as a hybridized population, “a race of Punic people mixed with Africans” (mixtum Punicum Afris genus: 21.22.3). Modern scholars have tended to disregard the conflicting accounts of the ancient sources, and to think of a two-way encounter. Thus, for Mansour Ghaki “Libyans ‘punicised’ themselves and Phoenicians ‘became Libyphoenicians’”,11 while for M’hamed Fantar “Punic” and “Libyphoenician” could be equated in both a cultural and a geographical sense across North Africa.12 Nabil Kallala considered the site of Ruspina to have been settled in two neighboring locations by Libyans and Punic peoples, who merged over time into one population.13 Not all have concurred with an easy equivalence between the groups comprising the Libyphoenicians. Jehan Desanges made the point from a study of ancient textual sources that “neither the meaning of the word ‘Libyphoenicians’, nor their status, nor even their geographic location is clear”.14

  • 15 Horden, Purcell 2000; Broodbank 2013; Hodos 2020.

6This summary of the terms “Phoenician”, “Punic”, “Libyan”, and “Libyphoenician” has shown that they have been variously employed rather than clearly understood by both ancient sources and modern researchers. Using these terms presents a false expectation that we know and agree upon their meaning, and it is dubious that undertaking archaeological investigations to identify these cultures constitutes a valid research goal. The debate about these and other Mediterranean peoples is trending towards a view that it is both difficult and unproductive to apply such ethnic labels, since the concept of a discrete culture is itself an outdated one in modern scholarship, and should not be uncritically applied to the past. There is now greater recognition that Mediterranean peoples interacted with each other and exchanged ideas over many thousands of years.15 My position here should not be taken as tantamount to the argument that there were no cultural groups in the past, either self-proclaimed by their members or recognized by contemporaries. Rather, my intention is to declare that it is time to shift the debate on North African peoples in the first millennium BCE away from a focus on discrete cultural groups, and in particular toward how material culture was employed to make statements regarding power, identity, and social status. I propose therefore to talk about Leptiminus and its material remains prior to the Roman conquest of 146 BCE without reference to ethnic terms in order to build an understanding of the site from the material and textual evidence without immediately assigning evidence to one or another cultural group.

  • 16 An anonymous referee for the journal asked whether the patterns in the use of local and global ar (...)
  • 17 D. J. Mattingly (2023) considers the multiple signals that material culture can send about indivi (...)
  • 18 Among the literature on prestige goods, see Social Life 1986.
  • 19 Hodos 2015.

7My focus lies on the ways that identity was actively constructed. Leptiminus serves as my case-study in this article, and I consider how the ideas I develop could be applied to neighboring coastal sites in the conclusion.16 The clearest evidence derives from the city’s cemeteries, where, as I argue below, inhabitants selected from among a variety of possible burial practices and artifacts to display multiple aspects of identity — by which I am referring to aspects such as gender, diet, wealth, social status, and funerary practices but not ethnic identity.17 I consider concepts of power and social status as fundamentally related to identity. The presence of certain rare items may signal an inhabitant’s elevated social status or power as demonstrated by the ability to acquire imported “prestige” goods.18 At the same time, such prestige goods employed in burial contexts may manifest the legitimacy of the heirs who perform ceremonies in honor of the deceased. I will also pursue a different approach grounded in globalization theory to make my case. This approach focuses on the combination of elements that are both global (i.e., widespread) and local (i.e., of limited distribution). This idea of “glocalization” may well fit the blend of elements present in first-millennium BCE settlements in North Africa.19 These theoretical approaches offer a framework through which we can consider what these various elements of material culture tell us about the ways that the site’s earliest inhabitants manipulated local and global elements, not with the aim of determining whether these inhabitants belonged to one particular ethnic group or another, but with the aim of thinking about what the use of these elements means in combination.

2. Origins of the City: Evidence from Older Excavations the Cemeteries

8For the most detailed information about the early inhabitants of Leptiminus we must turn to funerary evidence. A minimum of 125 pre-Roman tombs have been discovered in three cemetery areas to the east, southwest, and northwest of the city: Dhahret Slama, Henchir Methkal, and Sidi el-Marrakechi (table 1).

Date

Location

Tombs

Excavator

Publication

1895

H. Methkal, S. Marrakechi

Unknown number

Hannezo

Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897

1913

H. Methkal

87

de Smet

de Smet 1913

1953

H. Methkal

Unknown number

Cintas

Unpublished

1955

H. Methkal

2

Foucher

Foucher 1967

1978

D. Slama, H. Methkal

14

Ben Younes

Ben Younes 1981

1997

D. Slama

4

Ben Lazreg

Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018

2011

D. Slama

17

Ben Younes

Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018

2015

H. Methkal

1

Sghaïer

Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018

Table1: Leptiminus: Excavations of tombs prior to the Roman period

  • 20 Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897; de Smet 1913.
  • 21 Ben Younes 1995.
  • 22 Ben Younes 1989; Camps 1997.
  • 23 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018.

9The recording and publication of most of these tombs have been brief, or nonexistent. While this might be expected for the excavations of more than 100 years ago,20 the 1953 excavations of Pierre Cintas, a prominent archaeologist who wrote the Manuel d’archéologie punique, were never disseminated to the public. The information that exists from many of these excavations has been sufficient to examine architectural features,21 or ceramic styles,22 but has not been gathered in a way to allow examination of full assemblages from individual tombs, or to permit quantification. The situation has now improved significantly after a recent investigation in which 19 tombs were carefully excavated and thoroughly published in a volume.23 The majority of these tombs were discovered intact between 1997 and 2015 by Nejib Ben Lazreg, Habib Ben Younes and Yamen Sghaïer of the INP. In order to provide a solid understanding of previous studies and their conclusions about the tombs of Leptiminus, I will begin my discussion of tombs at Leptiminus with funerary architecture and ceramics, before considering the enhanced perspective provided by the newer analyses.

  • 24 For sizes, see the catalogue of J. J. de Smet (1913, p. 335-342).
  • 25 For sizes, see the catalogue of J. J. de Smet (1913, p. 335-342)
  • 26 Bénichou-Safar 1982.
  • 27 Ben Younes 1995.
  • 28 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 23.

10Between the fifth and third centuries BCE, the inhabitants of Leptiminus chose to build most of the tombs that have survived using a style of architecture consisting of vertical rock-cut shafts from which one, or occasionally more, chambers open. At Leptiminus the local limestone has a hard cap near the ground surface, but once this is pierced, the stratum below is friable and amenable to construction. As the vertical shaft is cut, a set of stairs is often carved into one side, to provide access. The dimensions of the vertical shaft were regularly around 1.5 × 1.5 × 3.0 m.24 At the bottom of the vertical shaft, a rectangular opening was cut horizontally for c.20 cm. Beyond this, a burial chamber was carved. The dimensions of the burial chamber were smaller than the shaft,25 and care was taken not to break though the cap of the limestone and cause any structural weakness (at S285, one cutting into the limestone appeared to be a tomb that was started and then abandoned). The burial chamber may contain a niche placed high on one of the walls, but rarely has any additional architectural elaboration. This type of grave construction with a shaft and chamber has many parallels at Carthage,26 and in the Tunisian Sahel.27 As Ben Younes has noted, a small number of rectangular cist burials close to the surface have been found at Leptiminus, in addition to the deeper shaft graves.28

  • 29 Cf. Ghaki 1999; Stone 2007; Longerstay 1995.
  • 30 Camps, Longerstay 2000.
  • 31 Kallala 2021, p. 73-156.

11While Carthage has been seen as the primary influence on the inhabitants at Leptiminus at the time of its foundation, an unresolved question concerning funerary architecture at the site is whether haouanet,29 single chambers cut into a vertical rock face rather than excavated underground, were constructed here. The presence of settlements with both haouanet and shaft tombs is known at a few other sites, such as Bizerte, Monastir, Kelibia, and elsewhere on Cap Bon. Haouanet have often been regarded as an indigenous style of architecture (though also seen as derived from Sicily).30 If these could be documented, as they have been at nearby Monastir,31 it would provide evidence for a wider range of architectural choices exercised by the inhabitants of Leptiminus — though one must at the same time resist the temptation to equate the presence of a type of funerary architecture with that of a specific cultural group.

  • 32 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 57.
  • 33 “Creusées dans la paroi verticale d’une masse rocheuse” (Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897, p. 297)
  • 34 “Autour d’une sorte d’antichambre, plusieurs salles” (Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897, p. 297).
  • 35 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 154, fig. 20.
  • 36 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 539-540.
  • 37 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 540-541.

12Habib Ben Younes has suggested that some of the burials at the Sidi el-Marrakechi cemetery of Leptiminus (S59), excavated in the late 19th century by Hannezo, Molins and Montagnon, were haouanet rather than shaft graves.32 Ben Younes derived this conclusion from the report of Hannezo, Molins and Montagnon, who mention two types of tombs at Leptiminus. The authors report that one type consists of a shaft descending from the ground surface and leading to an opening into a single burial chamber, as we have already seen. They characterize the other type as “cut into the vertical wall of the rock face”,33 a description that fits the construction of haouanet tombs. Yet the three late 19th-century authors also describe these same tombs as consisting of “many rooms surrounding a sort of antechamber”,34 a description that fits shaft tombs with multiple chambers rather than haouanet. Examples of such multi-chambered shaft tombs are known from de Smet’s excavations at Leptiminus, and four are discussed and illustrated by Ben Younes and Sghaïer.35 This contradictory information leaves me unconvinced that sufficient evidence exists to document the presence of haouanet at Leptiminus. Indeed, all the tombs visible today at Leptiminus, both at Henchir Methkal36 and in the face of quarry opposite the marabout of Sidi el-Marrakechi37 are clearly shaft- or cist-type burials, and impossible to identify as haouanet. We must remain open to the possibility that other tomb types were constructed here, but what is present at the site today along with the evidence in the report by Hannezo, Moulins and Montagnon does not confirm the presence of haouanet.

  • 38 de Smet 1913, p. 336.
  • 39 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, cat. nos 184-365, 371-380.
  • 40 Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 27; Morel 1980, p. 37; Younes 1999, p. 129, 136-137.
  • 41 Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 29-30; Younes 1999.
  • 42 Ben Younes 1995.

13The excavations at Leptiminus from the late-19th to the mid-20th centuries did not record ceramic evidence in detail. It is often difficult to find information in the records about the pottery forms discussed, except at a general level (e.g., tomb 20 from Henchir Methkal contained “2 amphorae, 4 cups, 1 ceramic brazier containing clay, and 2 round black-covered lamps without handles”).38 Numerous vessels and lamps from these excavations are currently located in the displays or storerooms of various museums, mainly at Lamta, but also at the Bardo and elsewhere. Many of these are assembled by Sghaïer in the catalogue of his recent publication on Leptiminus.39 Although this material cannot be associated with individual tombs, much of it was whole and well-preserved at the time of discovery; thus, complete examples of imported types, or imitations of imported types, have permitted the dating of the cemeteries. The imported material tends to include lamps or vessels for pouring and drinking such as lekythoi and bolsals. Imitations include regionally-made Greek and Sicilian amphora types, fish plates, and lamps. Local pottery includes a mix of handmade and wheelmade cups and bowls for drinking and serving. The material found in the tombs of Leptiminus was similar to that of many of its neighbors. At Thapsus, for example, the earliest datable material consisted of a Carthaginian amphora of the seventh century BCE, a Corinthian aryballos of the mid-sixth century BCE and Greek drinking cups or lamps belonging to the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.40 Amphorae of the same period were mainly of the Punic tradition or imitations of Greek and Sicilian types.41 The cemetery at El Hkayma, excavated by Ben Younes in the 1980s, contained a range of imported and locally-made vessels with parallels to those of Leptiminus. These similarities do not mean that burial practices should be seen as identical at any of these sites: Ben Younes has argued that cemeteries in the Sahel displayed considerable regional variation in architectural and pottery styles, as well as mortuary practices.42 The use of wooden sarcophagi for burial at Leptiminus is one of the more notable elements of variation.

  • 43 Ben Younes 1989.
  • 44 Ben Younes 1989, p. 74.

14Locally-made vessels accounted for the majority of the material in the cemeteries of Leptiminus. These vessels contain a number of interesting features. Some have been found in both wheelmade and handmade shapes, sometimes plain and in other instances decorated with a thick red slip. In the 1980s Ben Younes examined the surviving vessels from previous excavations at Leptiminus and neighboring sites and recognized that they combined local and foreign elements in their manufacture. He characterized these as “hybrid pottery of the Sahel”.43 At Leptiminus, the elements combined might include a handmade drinking cup that was painted, or a wheelmade cup whose shape was derived from earlier handmade forms and which was given a familiar thick red slip.44 The absence of detailed recording in the 19th-century excavations makes it difficult to assess how the features of the vessels may have been combined in individual tombs at Henchir Methkal, Dhahret Slama, and Sidi el-Marrakechi, though these features are certainly visible in the surviving material. The “4 cups” from tomb 20 at Henchir Methkal mentioned in the previous paragraph are almost certainly of local production, for example, but whether these were wheelmade or handmade is uncertain. What is perhaps most noteworthy at these sites in the Sahel is that they seem to represent a key moment when the inhabitants of the Sahel came into closer contact with eastern Mediterranean peoples (perhaps but not necessarily mediated through Carthage).

3. Origins of the City: Evidence from Recent Excavations of the Cemeteries

  • 45 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018.
  • 46 H. Ben Younes and Y. Sghaïer (2018, p. 115-136) discuss the conditions of preservation at each to (...)

15Leptiminus is a logical place to examine the contact between these local and Eastern Mediterranean peoples in the second half of the first millennium BCE. Excavations carried out by the INP during the last 25 years have resulted in a publication of the architecture, grave assemblages, burial practices, and osteological analyses from 19 tombs dating between the fifth and mid-third centuries BCE.45 The tombs represent about 15% of all known from the site prior to the Roman conquest (table 1), but our capacity to analyze them, however, is high, due to the extent of documentation that far surpasses that available for tombs excavated from the 1890s all the way to the 1970s. The tombs were found at Dhahret Slama (1) and Henchir Methkal (1), where previous investigations have taken place, and at Bir el Ayeb (17), a previously unexplored location a short distance to the northeast of the Dhahret Slama ridge (fig. 1). The Dhahret Slama tomb is the only one dating to the fifth century BCE, and is thus the earliest known from Leptiminus. The tombs from the Bir el Ayeb cemetery all date between the mid-fourth and early third centuries BCE. The excavators did not assign a date to the newly excavated tomb at Henchir Methkal; its three artifacts (an ostrich-egg cup, a razor and a metal rod) as well as its construction technique (shaft with steps leading to funerary chamber) attest that it was clearly of the pre-Roman period, and probably contemporary with the cemetery at Bir el Ayeb. According to the excavators, eight of these tombs were well preserved in intact condition, and one in good condition; five other tombs were damaged but partially preserved, while the conditions of preservation at five tombs were poor.46 Together these tombs bring us much closer to understanding the earliest inhabitants of Leptiminus.

Fig. 1: Satellite photo showing the main cemeteries of the early settlement at Leptiminus

(author, based on image from Google Earth)

  • 47 The detailed recording of the contents of each tomb represents a major advance over earlier studi (...)
  • 48 The table includes data from the 17 tombs dug in 2011 at Bir el Ayeb, the intact Dhahret Slama to (...)

16In this section I analyze the full range of data now available about the most recently excavated tombs at Leptiminus. I first show how the data indicate the choices that inhabitants made when burying their dead, such as the application of red ochre to the corpse, the inclusion of handmade and wheelmade vessels, the proportion of imported to local pottery, and the selection of storage, serving, and drinking vessels. Then I present a close analysis of three of the burials to show the similarities and differences visible in these choices and I argue that the new data gives us a much greater opportunity to examine the city’s early inhabitants. I focus on questions relating to the patterns visible in the assemblages. We cannot know whether the items found in these tombs were selected by the deceased themselves, or by their survivors. We are also uncertain as to the reasons that these choices were made. Perhaps the contents of the graves were meant to convey to those watching the funerary procession or otherwise participating in the interment the importance of the deceased’s life? Perhaps these observers were instead to interpret them as transmitting legitimacy to the surviving family members? It is also conceivable that the main purpose of the artifacts was to accompany the deceased in the afterlife, since, once the graves were closed, the contents would no longer be visible to the living. In evaluating the evidence that has recently come to light, we must keep in mind that aspects of funerals, such as processions, ceremonies undertaken at the grave, or perishable items deposited in the tomb, remain unknown to us at Leptiminus. Despite limitations such as this in our ability to analyze these tombs, we can still make more progress than has been possible with the earlier excavation data.47 The newly recovered data are presented in table 2.48

Table 2: Leptiminus: Data from recent excavations of 19 Pre-Roman tombs (compiled from Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018)

Key: BA = Bir el Ayeb; DS = Dhahret Slama; HM = Henchir Methkal; Pres. = Preservation; Import = Pottery manufactured outside N Africa; Region = Pottery probably manufactured outside Sahel region, perhaps at Carthage; Local = Pottery probably manufactured at Leptiminus or in Sahel region; Hand = Handmade; Wheel = Wheelmade; Drinking = cups of all types; Storage = transport amphorae; Serving = table amphorae, pouring vessels of all types; Metal = nail, rod, coin, razor ; Unid = Unidentified metal object.

17The data show that inhabitants had a range of choices that they could make when burying the dead. The choices included the shape of the funerary chamber, the presence of niches on the interior, the application of red ochre to the body or its placement around the body, and the position of the body at the time of the burial. Inhabitants chose a range of artifacts, from pottery (most common), to metal and stone to place in the tomb. They decided whether to include vessels that were imported or locally-made, wheelmade or handmade, and for serving, drinking or eating. They also decided whether or not to include large storage jars, most probably associated with wine. Inhumation was practiced in almost all tombs, but they selected a position in which to bury the dead, and decided whether or not to apply red ochre to the body, before or after decomposition. Tombs had the shape of a cist or a shaft leading to an underground room. These tombs show practices and artifacts that were commonly found as well as areas where there was greater room for variation in the disposal of the dead. The choices, I argue, exemplify the agency of the inhabitants of Leptiminus in their interaction with cultural practices that were both of long standing in the Maghreb or more recently arrived.

18To examine the construction of identity through burial practices and funerary assemblages, I first focus on the Bir el Ayeb cemetery, whose datable tombs can all be placed within a century of each other. They provide evidence for a shared approach to burial practices from about 350 to 264 BCE at Leptiminus. Next, I look closely at three tombs from the Dhahret Slama and Bir el Ayeb cemeteries, which are located approximately 170 meters apart on the eastern side of Leptiminus (fig. 1). I have identified these three tombs to highlight the variety of choices made at the time of deposition in the tomb by those responsible for burying individuals at Leptiminus.

3.1. Burial Practices at the Bir el Ayeb Cemetery

  • 49 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 115-130.

19In considering the Bir el Ayeb cemetery, I use the typology of artifacts created by Ben Younes and Sghaïer in their recent study,49 but take the analysis of this material in a new direction, considering vessel function, which has not been examined to date in studies of the pre-Roman tombs at Leptiminus. Aspects of vessel function such as whether the vessel was used for drinking, serving, or storage can in many cases be clearly determined from the open and closed shapes of the pottery in the tombs of Leptiminus; without ceramic residue analysis, it remains impossible to determine the function of other vessels. Nevertheless, I will argue that an examination of vessel function in this cemetery supports the argument that a shared set of cultural practices characterizes these tombs as much as the differences that we have seen in the tombs already discussed.

  • 50 There were 148 ceramic vessels, but the shape and manufacturing technique of three fragmentary ve (...)
  • 51 I translate “caliciforme” as “S-shaped” here, although I recognize that “goblet” is an alternativ (...)
  • 52 “Il est à noter que 200 bols coquetiers et caliciformes n’ont pas été intégrés à la présente étud (...)

20At the Bir el Ayeb cemetery there is a consistent emphasis on wine consumption as part of burial practices. Drinking, serving, and storage vessels comprise the majority of the funerary assemblage. Drinking is the function most evident in the funerary artifacts. More than one-third (56 of the 145 ceramic vessels)50 comprised shapes suitable for drinking, rather than other functions. The most common drinking vessel was the handmade “ostrich-egg” cup (bol coquetier) with 32 examples; there were no wheelmade examples of this shape. It was followed by 12 handmade “S-shaped cups” (bols caliciformes).51 Drinking vessels also came in wheelmade forms. These included 8 S-shaped cups, 2 small cups, 1 bolsal, and 1 two-handled drinking vessel. On the whole, handmade drinking cups far outnumbered the wheelmade drinking vessels (44 to 12), although the total number of handmade pots (80) was not much higher than that of wheelmade pots (65). Another way to consider the importance of drinking vessels is to recognize that almost every tomb contained at least one. Drinking cups are found in Bir el Ayeb Tombs 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 17 (cf. table 2). Tomb 4 was the sole example of a burial without drinking cups where more than 3 artifacts were found, but it was not well preserved. All 12 of its artifacts were fragmentary, and the shape of some of these was undetermined, so it is possible that it did contain a drinking cup. The excavation of 6 other tombs (7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16) did not reveal any drinking cups, but all of these were either poorly preserved or partially excavated, and yielded just 7 artifacts in total. Both of the recently excavated tombs at Dhahret Slama and Henchir Methkal also contained drinking cups. Ben Younes and Sghaïer include 64 drinking cups from the 19th and earlier 20th century excavations in their catalogue, and report that they omitted a further 200 ostrich-egg and S-shaped cups “due to their repetitive character”.52 That decision further confirms the prominence of these drinking cups in pre-Roman tomb assemblages at Leptiminus.

21Vessels for storing and serving liquids were nearly as common as drinking cups in the Bir el Ayeb cemetery. A few of the storage and serving vessels have been imported, but the majority are vessels of local manufacture that have derived their shapes from foreign vessels. Transport amphorae were deposited within 9 burials at the cemetery, including Tomb 4 but excluding the other poorly preserved tombs. While the contents of the 16 amphorae found at Bir el Ayeb are uncertain, it is worth noting that 2 of these were imported Greco-Italic types, and a further 8 were local or regional imitations of Greco-Italic types. The remaining 6 were amphorae of the Punic tradition. The probability that all of these vessels functioned as containers of wine appears high, though not certain. There were 14 serving vessels, including table amphorae (7), oinochoai (3), lekythoi (2), and jugs (2). The oinochoai, lekythoi, and jugs appear to have functioned as pouring vessels for liquids. Without ceramic residue analysis it is impossible to say whether the liquid in question was wine, although again this appears probable. One of the table amphorae functioned as a cinerary urn (Tomb 6); the others may have been pouring vessels, possibly for wine. Serving vessels were found in many (7) of the well-preserved tombs. All the storage and serving vessels were manufactured on the wheel, in contrast to the majority of the drinking cups, which were handmade.

  • 53 Similar bowls have been identified at Thapsus (Ben Jerbania 2008) and El Hkayma (Ben Younes 1986; (...)

22The other common ceramic artifact was the bowl, which Ben Younes and Sghaïer subdivided into various categories, such as truncated bowls (16), carinated bowls (9), flared bowls (9), deep bowls (5) and paterae (3). At the Bir el Ayeb cemetery, bowls were found in 10 tombs, and handmade versions of these bowls were found in 9 of these tombs. Some burials (Tombs 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15, 16) contained few bowls, though as we have seen above with drinking cups this was mainly due to a poor state of preservation. Bowls had open shapes and may have been utilized for serving food or for drinking at Leptiminus; in the absence of ceramic residue or use-wear analysis, it is not clear what function they had. At neighboring sites, where they appear in quantity in funerary assemblages, their function is also unknown.53 About two-thirds of bowls were handmade and one-third wheelmade. A small number of plates may have functioned for serving food; these were both of fish-plate (2) and flat (2) shapes, and were all found in different tombs.

  • 54 H. Ben Younes et Y. Sghaïer (2018, p. 108) also make this observation.

23This consideration of the function and shape of vessels has led to new conclusions about the Bir el Ayeb cemetery. First, there is significant overlap in the composition of tomb assemblages, with the nearly all of the well-preserved tombs provided with a drinking cup, and many others with an amphora for storage, or a vessel for pouring. The presence of these vessels appears to signal a shared approach to the inclusion of vessels for wine consumption in the burial assemblages at the Bir el Ayeb cemetery. This observation remains valid if we also include the recently excavated Dhahret Slama and Henchir Methkal tombs in our analysis. In addition, one or more handmade ostrich-egg cups is found in 8 of 11 tombs at Bir el Ayeb with partial (or better) preservation.54 Another is found at Henchir Methkal. The ostrich-egg cup is the most common element in the burial assemblage at Leptiminus, followed by the handmade bowl, and the provision of these two artifacts constitutes a shared burial practice among the inhabitants of the pre-Roman city. This consideration of vessel function has shown that while wine consumption was part of North African funerary rituals at the time of Leptiminus origins, inhabitants introduced new serving and storage vessels to be used in burial practices. These new vessels enhance the creation of new meanings and identities that were part of the burial practices in the fifth-third centuries BCE at Leptiminus.

24The shared features in the burial assemblages at the Bir el Ayeb cemetery reflect the ways in which members of the city carried out repeated practices over the course of the century in which it was in use. Such continuity is to be expected. Funerary settings are locations where individuals can select from among several possible choices, creating a range of meanings. The fact that certain elements are persistent in the tombs shows a strong degree of collective agreement regarding what was important in local practices. I turn in the next section to an analysis of specific tombs to show more closely the choices that individuals made.

3.2. Dhahret Slama (S285): The Earliest Tomb at Leptiminus

  • 55 The lithic assemblage considered by E. Faro (2011, p. 289-293) was found in secondary contexts. G (...)
  • 56 Three additional tombs were found at S285. One had not been completed; the other two appear to ha (...)
  • 57 I assisted in the recovery of human remains from the tomb floor at Leptiminus in 1997.

25Let us now consider our first secure evidence of occupation at Leptiminus.55 This is a tomb discovered in 1997 on Dhahret Slama (S285) by Nejib Ben Lazreg. The shaft leading to the underground chamber of the tomb was identified during a rescue excavation that revealed traces of a Roman mosaic.56 It was clear that the doorway of the chamber had been blocked in antiquity, and that the tomb was intact. Excavation yielded 5 artifacts, the poorly preserved skeletal material from one individual, and red ochre (table 3; fig. 2).57

Artifact

Material

Origin

Date

Black-figure lekythos

Ceramic

Imported (Attic)

480-470 BCE

Black-gloss lamp

Ceramic

Imported (Attic)

500-480 BCE

Black-gloss kylix

Ceramic

Imported (Attic)

500-450 BCE

Amphora (Ramón T-2.2.1.2)

Ceramic

Regional

c.400 BCE

Wheelmade bowl

Ceramic

Local

Uncertain

Table 3: Artifacts from intact tomb at S285 on Dhahret Slama discovered in 1997

Table 3: Artifacts from intact tomb at S285 on Dhahret Slama discovered in 1997

Fig 2: Red ochre mixed with human remains from the earliest known tomb at Leptiminus (S285), discovered in 1997

(photo: author, courtesy of Nejib Ben Lazreg)

  • 58 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 68; Moret 1984, p. 172, cat. nos 58-61.
  • 59 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 96; Howland 1958, p. 32.
  • 60 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 67.
  • 61 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 95; Ramón 1995, p. 179.
  • 62 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 80.

26Ben Younes and Sghaïer do not report on the excavation, but do discuss the five artifacts from this tomb and publish profile drawings. The lekythos was painted with black figures on a red background, and the design shows an iconographic field demarcated by two columns, between which there is an image of a sphinx sitting on a small column, and two individuals leaning on a stick who frame the sphinx. Ben Younes and Sghaïer cite parallel scenes to suggest that the lekythos was imported from Athens and is the work of the Painter of Emporion.58 According to the authors, this attribution dates the lekythos to 480-470 BCE. There were two other artifacts from Athens in the tomb, a kylix and a lamp. These were painted with a black glaze, but do not feature figural decoration. The lamp was found in a niche carved on the back wall of the tomb. A parallel from the Athenian Agora (Type 16B) dates to 500-480 BCE, approximately the same as the date of the black-figure lekythos.59 The kylix was placed as a lid atop the amphora in the rear corner of the tomb; Ben Younes and Sghaïer offer a date of the “beginning of the fifth century BCE”.60 An amphora with large vertical handles and three pairs of two parallel horizontal lines painted in red on its belly is of regional production. Several similar amphorae have been discovered in Tunisia, Sicily, and Malta, and the type appears to be produced at Carthage and Soluntum (Sicily).61 It dates to the fifth century BCE. The final artifact found in the tomb was a carinated bowl, manufactured on the wheel. It has three parallel lines painted in red on the upper half of the bowl. Ben Younes finds parallels with handmade pottery at Leptiminus, as well as with bowls from an unpublished excavation at Thapsus dating to the third century BCE.62 This bowl is of local manufacture, and is difficult to date precisely.

  • 63 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 67-68.
  • 64 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 610.
  • 65 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 94.
  • 66 It is of course possible that earlier evidence will be discovered in the future.

27Ben Younes and Sghaïer propose a date for the tomb of 480-470 BCE, on account of its earliest material.63 In a previous publication, I suggested a broader date range (475-425 BCE), on account of the totality of the ceramic evidence in the tomb.64 My dating took into consideration the possibility that the lekythos either dates later in the fifth century BCE or may have been an heirloom at the time it was deposited in the tomb.65 In either case, the difference is a few decades, and there is no dispute that this is the earliest tomb yet excavated at Leptiminus.66 It places the origins of the city at least as early as the middle of the first millennium BCE. Beyond establishing the chronology of the site, what else do we learn from this tomb? Most strikingly, its artifacts and burial practices show that the city’s earliest inhabitants demonstrated affiliations with longstanding traditions of North Africa at the same time as they were incorporating pottery manufactured in Greece for drinking ceremonies and lighting in a tomb. First, the wheelmade bowl and practice of adding red ochre to the body imply the indigenous origins of the earliest known inhabitants. Second, this tomb in fact contains 3 items imported from Athens, more than any of the 18 other well-recorded tombs (tables 2-3). It also contains a Ramón T-2.2.1.2 amphora, most probably identified as a container for wine, which may have been produced in Carthage or Sicily, but probably not at Leptiminus.

  • 67 Trigger 2003.
  • 68 Ben Jerbania 2013, p. 124. An unusual element at Leptiminus is the presence of a lekythos, as clo (...)
  • 69 Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 27.

28I want to highlight two aspects of this earliest example of a tomb from Leptiminus. First, the deposition of three vessels imported from Athens as well as one regionally-manufactured amphora (probably for wine) may indicate how material culture is employed to create social distinctions at the time the new city is being settled. As is often common when social hierarchies are being established in new cultural contexts, certain individuals may use rare objects to signify prestige and to claim a social status above that of their peers.67 We may cite parallels from other sites in the region for the disposal of imported pottery and other materials in tombs. A necropolis at Hadrumetum, in use between the fifth and third century BCE contained 29 imported Athenian vessels, whose shapes (cups, bowls, bolsals, fish-plates, lamps) were mainly similar to those found at Leptiminus.68 The Zbid necropolis and the site of El Gâala at Thapsus contained a number of Greek vessels of the mid-sixth to fourth century BCE.69

  • 70 Sghaïer 2023b, p. 67
  • 71 Sanmartí et alii 2019, p. 272 citing Carthage 2010.

29Two tombs in Moknine of approximately 300-250 BCE included Attic lamps.70 Likewise, a dolmen at Henchir Mided yielded an Attic vicup (small kylix) of the mid-fifth century BCE.71

  • 72 Kallala et alii 2014, p. 39-53.
  • 73 Sanmartí et alii 2019, p. 273.
  • 74 In this respect the later S304 cemetery stands out as an example of the extremely thorough docume (...)

30Outside of Carthage and Utica, however, it is rare to find imported vessels in North Africa prior to the fifth century BCE, making it reasonably likely that the tomb at S285 offers a context in which the deposition of three Attic vessels was intended to signify prestige. A range of metal (razors, rods, coins) or other artifacts (unguentaria, a figurine, a pendant, a stela) deposited in the tombs may have signaled prestige. These artifacts are not well preserved and are not considered in depth by Ben Younes and Sghaïer, but the provision of metal or other artifacts may also have been one of the ways that inhabitants distinguished the burial assemblages of one tomb from another. Second, it is clear that wine-drinking was established as part of burial rituals as soon as we can detect occupation of the city. This observation is not surprising, since wine-drinking has been established in indigenous burials at other sites in the region of Leptiminus. In Dolmen 53 at the El Ksour Necropolis near the settlement of Althiburos, dated to the seventh-fifth centuries BCE on the basis of 14C analyses of human bone, ceramics from the lower level of the tumulus around the funerary chamber are associated with drinking,72 and the excavators have suggested that the remains were those of funerary banquets.73 The ceramic material consisted of handmade cups and a large jar covered with a red slip. The production techniques of the ceramic as well as the similarity of usage in the funerary rites at Leptiminus point to shared practices. Much about the disposal of the dead from this period at Leptiminus is now lost to us, so we no longer have the remains of funerary meals, traces of clothing, or other elements of burial rituals,74 but I have tried to sketch here a plausible scenario for this earliest burial at the site, one that can be modified if other tombs of the fifth century BCE or earlier are discovered.

3.3. Bir el Ayeb Tombs 5 and 12

  • 75 On this tomb, see Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 120-121.

31The two other tombs that I examine here both date to approximately 300 BCE. Their juxtaposition is useful because, on the basis of the recorded burial practices and artifacts (table 2), we see a range of different approaches to the incorporation of foreign and local elements among the inhabitants who buried their dead in these tombs. Tomb 5 at Bir el Ayeb was comprised of a shaft leading to an underground chamber in which one adult was buried.75 The shaft contained 4 local pottery vessels: a handmade cup of the ostrich-egg shape; a wheelmade lekythos, a wheelmade oinochoe, and a wheelmade plate. Within the chamber the body was placed in a sarcophagus carved from the floor along the back wall; it was laid out in the lateral flexed position. Red ochre was applied to the skull. Three niches were also carved in the tomb chamber, two on the rear wall and one on the left, all close to the ceiling. A total of 10 pottery vessels were found within the rectangular chamber, 1 imported lamp, 2 amphorae of regional manufacture, and 7 local ceramic shapes. A lamp was placed in the center of the chamber, and a handmade cup of the ostrich-egg shape was placed inside the sarcophagus with the deceased. Two amphorae stood along the right wall of the chamber. The majority of the local wares had been manufactured on the wheel, but some used techniques of local handmade pottery, such as a thick red slip applied to the surface of the clay. Most of the pottery shapes involved wine consumption, from the amphorae (3), to the wheelmade pouring vessels (2), to the handmade cups (2) and S-shaped cup (1). Tomb BA5 was dated to 350-275 BCE, on the basis of the imported lamp and the comparison with other tombs.

  • 76 On this tomb, see Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 127.

32Tomb BA12 was constructed by digging a shaft that led to a rectangular chamber.76 The tomb contained a single burial lying on its back. No trace of red ochre was noted. Ten vessels were discovered in the left rear corner of the tomb. All of the pottery was made locally, with the majority (7) handmade, rather than wheelmade (3). Eight of these vessels were for drinking, and two for serving. A fragmentary limestone block in the tomb has been interpreted as a carved stela; it is not possible to make out its decoration. This tomb has been dated to 300 BCE.

  • 77 Pitts 2019; Hodos 2020.
  • 78 Coarelli, Thébert 1988; Ben Younes 2007; Stone 2007; Crawley Quinn 2013; Ben Younes, Krandel-Ben (...)

33I have selected Tombs 5 and 12 from Bir el Ayeb in order to highlight similarities and differences in burial practices that I have identified at Leptiminus around 300 BCE. This decision reflects my own emphasis on the importance of the various burial practices and artifacts recorded in the tombs, rather than the arguments of the excavators themselves. My approach is derived in part from recent approaches to material culture that emphasize the ways that global and local practices may both be present at the same time, particularly in cultures that are encountering new ideas and in contact with outside influences.77 Such an interaction between locals and outside groups has been recognized elsewhere in the tombs of North Africa in the second half of the first millennium BCE.78

  • 79 T. Hodos (2020) describes this shared Mediterranean culture in more detail.
  • 80 Roubet, Amara 2013; Sanmartí et alii 2019; Sanmartí 2021.
  • 81 Usage of red ochre has been identified in Africa from as early as c.500,000 BCE, but much more co (...)

34Burial practices and artifacts in Tombs 5 and 12 at Bir el Ayeb can be compared in table 2, where we can see a range of different choices made regarding more global practices and more locally-specific ones. Global practices that can be found here include the custom of drinking wine in funerary contexts, and the provision of imported and wheelmade pottery and storage vessels. I define these as global practices because they represent elements that define a culture shared among different regions the Mediterranean during the first half of the first millennium BCE.79 Local practices include the placement of red ochre on bones and the use of handmade pottery. Both of these practices have been noted throughout North Africa prior to the arrival of Phoenicians in the early first millennium BCE.80 Tomb 5 contained red ochre, one imported pot, a large percentage of wheelmade pots, and three storage vessels, which probably contained wine. This tomb therefore was provisioned with several items that we can recognize as part of a “global” Mediterranean culture around 300 BCE. At the same time, the occupant of the tomb was still buried with red ochre, a practice of long standing in the Maghreb, as well as other areas of Africa.81 Tomb 12, on the other hand, did not have red ochre or imported pottery, but a large percentage of handmade pots. This tomb was therefore provided with more “local” than “global” artifacts, although it still had wheelmade vessels, including two for serving wine. These differences between the tombs are notable, though not pronounced; they articulate how inhabitants could signal connections to local or global patterns of behavior.

4. Origins of the City: Evidence from the Settlement

  • 82 A lack of interest in the excavation of early levels has also been noted at Ruspina, about 11 km (...)

35What are the earliest indications of the settlement at Leptiminus? What do these indications tell us about the first inhabitants? No securely datable civic or domestic structures of the pre-Roman period have been identified at Leptiminus. Indeed, the site is characteristic of the limited attention paid to the first millennium BCE in North Africa in that, outside the funerary sphere, the initial phases of urbanism have been almost completely ignored.82 That does not mean that we should exclude the possibility that the remains of the settlement contain information about power, identity or social status, as we will see.

  • 83 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 273-274.
  • 84 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 296.
  • 85 Leptiminus 4 2021, p. 495-498.

36The Leptiminus Archaeological Project (LAP) has suggested that the settlement was founded on a c.3.5-ha hill overlooking the Oued Bou Hajar in between the Dhahret Slama and Henchir Methkal ridges.83 This central hill of Leptiminus, which the LAP has, with some exaggeration, termed the “citadel hill”, has several features that may be associated with early organization at the site (fig. 1). Field survey across the cityscape recovered a concentration of black-glazed pottery fragments on this hill (fig. 3). Most of these fragments date from the third-first centuries BCE, but some have a fabric that appears to be earlier.84 The map also shows a concentration of black-glazed fragments in the area of the Henchir Methkal; this was a cemetery zone, however, and probably not a place of settlement. Pre-Roman coins have also been discovered in different parts of the site, though to date these have mainly been in cemeteries.85

Fig.3: Distribution of black-glazed pottery fragments from the Leptiminus Field Survey, showing concentrations in the area of the probable settlement on the central hill and at the Henchir Methkal cemetery

  • 86 cf. Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 129-130.
  • 87 At the S edge of the hill there is a large collapsed mortared rubble structure that resembles an (...)
  • 88 Fantar 2012.

37Although we cannot clearly identify and date pre-Roman civic and domestic structures, it is likely that some existed. The citadel hill does not reach a high elevation (17 m asl), but is defensible on account of its prominent rise above the shoreline. There are several good reasons to think that a fortification wall was constructed around the citadel hill prior to the Roman conquest, although one of this period has not been found.86 First, the author of the Bellum Africum mentioned an “outstanding fortification” (egregia munitio: 29, 2) and the “gates of the town” (portae oppidi: 7, 2) in the mid-first century BCE.87 The absence of visible construction materials for other elements of a wall is not necessarily a reason to think that such a wall surrounding the citadel did not exist. The paucity of good quality building stone at Leptiminus means that a wall may not be discoverable without excavation, and none has taken place here. Furthermore, if quarried cut-stone blocks had been used in a defensive wall of the pre-Roman period, they may have been repurposed at some point in the Roman imperial period when the wall was not needed, or in the late-antique period when a different 3.5-ha fortified enclosure (S55) was constructed near the port. Finally, a wall may have been constructed of mudbrick or pisé on stone foundations, an idea that the LAP did not raise in previous discussions, but that merits consideration. Pliny the Elder mentioned the existence of durable mudbrick walls in Africa (nat. 35.169). Two concentric mudbrick walls on stone foundations have been found at Kerkouane. The outer appears to have been constructed prior to the attack on the city by the Agathocles in 310 BCE, and the inner built between this initial attack and the demise of the city around 256 BCE.88 It seems reasonable that Leptiminus might have had a similar fortification wall at least by the early third centuries BCE prior to the start of the First Punic War. Such a wall would constitute the first evidence of coordinated public activity at the site.

  • 89 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 124-126.
  • 90 Ben Tahar et alii 2020, p. 100.

38For a second example of urbanism at Leptiminus prior to the Roman conquest, we can also look to a small amount of surviving ancient evidence at the site and then compare this with better-documented evidence at other late first-millennium BCE settlements. Many of the modern field boundaries on the citadel hill are aligned at an orientation of c.10°. The alignment indicates the presence of a grid on the citadel, and for two reasons it is probable that this grid predates the Roman period. First, the orientation of fields at lower elevations elsewhere at Leptiminus is c.20° and c.30°, suggesting that multiple phases of urban layout took place as the city expanded.89 The successive layout of cities at different orientations has parallels at Sabratha and Lepcis Magna, for example. Second, the existence of an orthogonal (or near-orthogonal) grid prior to the arrival of Rome is probable at these two sites, as well as at Kerkouane and Henchir Bourgou. The latter two sites may offer good parallels for the settlement at Leptiminus in the fifth-second centuries BCE. At c.5 and c.4 ha., these sites are slightly larger than the 3.5-ha. settlement atop the central hill at Leptiminus. Both have a plan that is roughly oval and influenced by the local topography. Kerkouane contains a dense network of houses of roughly equivalent size within its double fortification walls. One structure has been identified as a temple, another as a public bathing facility, though the distinction between residential and public architecture is not easily apparent. The layout is guided by a road ringing the inside of the wall, and several cross streets in a near-orthogonal arrangement. A similar plan has recently been revealed through magnetometer survey at Bourgou.90 There an oval-shaped mound appears to contain internal divisions reflecting a ring around the exterior and streets crossing at right angles.

  • 91 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 149.
  • 92 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 627.

39The other information that may be suggestive of pre-Roman structures at Leptiminus relates to water storage. Between the citadel hill and the shoreline, René Cagnat and Henri Saladin excavated a cigar-shaped cistern in some of the earliest excavations at Leptiminus.91 Two more of these early type cisterns were identified by Ben Lazreg during a rescue excavation in 2008, although it was not possible to investigate them in detail.92 Cigar-shaped cisterns featured in houses of the second century BCE at Carthage. It is probable that these cisterns at Leptiminus pre-date the Roman conquest, although we cannot be certain without further investigation.

40While few remains of the early settlement at Leptiminus have been examined, what we have does intimate that the city shared a number of the characteristic features of first millennium BCE sites in North Africa. Set on an elevation, probably surrounded with a wall and provided with a grid pattern, the city contains traits that have been found more widely in the eastern Maghreb during the first millennium BCE. There is more to learn about domestic structures and domestic ceramic assemblages both at Leptiminus and elsewhere at this time. My suggestion here is that an investigation of the early settlement would shed light on the way that local and global elements interacted in the creation of distinct individual and group identities.

Conclusions

  • 93 For earlier discussions, see Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 273-274; Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018.

41One aim of this article has been to bring together all evidence from Leptiminus prior to the Roman conquest of 146 BCE together to create a more detailed synthesis of material from this period of the city than has previously been achieved.93 We learn from this exploration that the earliest phases of urban growth date at least as early as the first half of the fifth century BCE, on the evidence of a tomb at S285, a cemetery along the Dhahret Slama ridge. Although no excavations have taken place on the “citadel hill” in the center of the ancient site, this appears to be the location of the ancient settlement contemporary with the cemetery at S285, and the three other pre-Roman cemeteries, Henchir Methkal, Bir el Ayeb, and Sidi el-Marrakechi. The presence of cigar-shaped cisterns and black-glazed pottery are suggestive of the locations of habitation prior to 146 BCE (fig. 3). It has also been suggested here that the city had a regular gridded layout and a fortification wall at this time.

  • 94 Sanmartí et alii 2019.

42A second aim of the present undertaking has been to shift the debate about cities in the first millennium BCE away from the identification of inhabitants as “Punic”, “Libyan” or “Libyphoenician” peoples, and toward the use of archaeological information as evidence of how the inhabitants utilized material culture to signify ideas of status and value. At Leptiminus, and even more commonly elsewhere in the study of the first millennium BCE in North Africa, scholars have employed a culture-history approach that aims to locate ethnic groups in particular places on the basis of specific elements of material culture, such as ceramic styles or funerary architecture. That sort of approach has been shown to be flawed; it equates “pots with people”, and at the same time it ignores many important questions about human agency. Instead, we should investigate how individuals used material culture for expressions of status, power, and identity, or for what it can tell us about how societies were changed as a result of new encounters at this time period. The results of the recent excavations of cemeteries on the eastern and western sides of Leptiminus have enabled us to see how burial assemblages can be examined to show the construction of identities in funerary contexts, identities that take us beyond cultural groups. Wine consumption appears to already be part of the funerary practices of local society at the origins of Leptiminus, as indeed it was at neighboring sites of a slightly earlier period.94 We see this in the imported drinking, serving, and storage vessels present in the tomb of the middle of the fifth century BCE at S285 on the Dhahret Slama ridge. The artifacts of the fourth-third centuries BCE at the neighboring Bir el Ayeb cemetery suggest that consumption of wine remained part of the funerary practices of local society throughout this period. The most common items found in the tombs at Leptiminus during this period are locally-made drinking cups and bowls, but we also see the introduction of new storage and serving vessels that reshaped local practices.

  • 95 Kallala, Sanmartí 2011, p. 31-43.
  • 96 Urbanisation 2020.
  • 97 Ben Tahar 2016; 2018; Ben Tahar et alii. 2021.
  • 98 Lancel 1992, p. 52.
  • 99 For this view, see Shaw 2003. For an argument against the view of the Maghreb as isolated, see St (...)

43The new evidence from Leptiminus prior to 146 BCE contributes to the revised picture of the Maghreb and Sahara during first millennium BCE that discoveries from several other sites have recently produced. Explorations at Althiburos have identified the beginnings of agriculture and urbanism, and possibly metalworking, prior to contact with foreign settlers who arrived at Carthage and Utica in the tenth and ninth centuries BCE.95 Similar investigations have taken place in the Sahara, where the emergence of urban centers and agriculture prior to extensive contact with outsiders has also been documented at Zinkekra and elsewhere.96 It is also possible to suggest that parallel developments may have taken place at Henchir Bourgou, Henchir Tawrirt, and Mezraya on Djerba, where the data from recent excavations from levels of the first half of the first millennium BCE have started to be published.97 These new discoveries from Althiburos, Djerba, and the Fazzan have overturned our impressions of the agricultural knowledge and technical skills of indigenous groups in prior to the arrival of Phoenicians. Much remains to be investigated about the subsequent interaction between North African peoples and outsiders beginning in the middle of the first millennium BCE. On the one hand this period has been characterized as a time when the inhabitants of growing urban centers were fashioned by the arrival of Phoenicians, often assumed to have brought a “superior” culture: “Ce que nous appelons la civilisation punique — des pratiques religieuses et funéraires, des modes de vie, un artisanat — est né de la rencontre en terre africaine d’un substrat libyco-berbère encore immergé dans la protohistoire et d’une culture sémitique déjà éprouvée par l’histoire. C’est, en quelque sorte, le produit d’une greffe réussie”.98 On the other hand, the period has been identified as a time during which the Maghreb remained an island disconnected from the currents sweeping much of the rest of the Mediterranean.99

  • 100 Ben Tahar, Drine, Aoudi 2024, p. 48-49.

44Instead of focusing on outside influences, or postulating a delay in the uptake of social changes due to an ignorance of Mediterranean trends, it is possible to look within North African cities to build a picture of local developments. This article has suggested that the inhabitants of Leptiminus themselves shaped the early phases of the city by placing local or imported goods in the tombs of their family members, deciding how to conduct funerary banquets, and planning their city’s layout and fortification walls. Like Leptiminus, several other coastal cities of the central Maghreb can be dated near the middle of the millennium, including Hadrumetum, Gigthis, Sabratha, Ghizène and Ruspina. Still others, such as Thapsus and Lepcis Magna, predate them by a century or two. Cemeteries at these sites have been extensively excavated, although the documentation and publication does not often match the well-presented recent study of the Bir el Ayeb cemetery at Leptiminus. Nevertheless, investigations of the totality of evidence in funerary assemblages at more recently excavated cemeteries — as opposed to the more common emphasis on imported materials at the expense of locally made artifacts — might indicate how inhabitants of other cities similarly negotiated their identities during a period of profound cultural contact. Another strategy that has shown much promise to understand change has been the excavation of stratigraphic trenches exposing the full chronological history of a site. Such trenches have been dug at Althiburos, Henchir Bourgou, Ghizène and Gigthis. Here stratigraphic contexts have clearly shown the presence of handmade and wheelmade pottery in close association. While the contexts revealed were not as deliberately constructed as funerary assemblages, some levels may show a mixture of these vessels in dining contexts (as, for example, in the cups, bowls, pouring vessels, and amphorae in Phase 1a at Gigthis).100 The new conclusions reached by many recent studies of first millennium BCE North Africa suggest that significant progress is being made in understanding the inhabitants of cities at this time, overcoming their neglect in earlier scholarship.

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Notes

1 For tombs at Leptiminus identified as “phéniciens”, de Smet 1913, p. 330.

2 Cintas 1961, p. 78: “Le Sahel tunisien est la seule région de l’Afrique du Nord où il ait été possible d’avoir sous les yeux des nécropoles entières de Libyens qui, bien que gagnés à la civilisation punique, n’en avaient pas moins conservé une bonne part de leurs propres usages, en effet”.

3 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 17.

4 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 61.

5 Leptiminus 1 1992, p. 60; Gascou 1972, p. 81.

6 For a sample of approaches that have sought to identify funerary remains with specific cultural groups, over the last century, see: Anziani 1912; Camps 1961; Akkari-Weriemmi 1985; Ben Younes 1995; 1998; Ben Jerbania 2015. For more critical discussions of this practice, see Ben Younes, Krandel-Ben Younes 2014; Sanmartí 2019.

7 Important discussions of these terms may be found in: Ghaki 2005; Prag 2006; Desanges 2008; Zimmermann 2008; Crawley Quinn 2017; López Ruiz, Doak 2019.

8 Crawley Quinn 2017; Prag 2006.

9 For the debate, see Rural Landscapes 2008, p. 5 and Maraoui Telmini et alii 2014, p. 114-116.

10 Zimmermann 2008, p. 4387: “flotant”.

11 Ghaki 2005, p. 40: “les Libyens se sont ‘punicisés’ et les Phéniciens sont devenus des ‘Libyphéniciens’”.

12 M. Fantar writes “En fait pour l’Afrique du Nord, la civilisation punique correspond dans une large mesure à la civilisation libyphénicienne. Le terme ‘libyphénicien’ s’avère beaucoup plus adéquat si l’on désire souligner la spécificité du punique d’Afrique par rapport au punique d’Espagne, de Sicile, ou de Sardaigne” (Decret, Fantar 1981, p. 63).

13 Kallala 2021, p. 71.

14 “Ni la signification du nom des Libyphéniciens, ni leur statut, ni enfin leur localisation ne sont clairs” (Desanges 2008, p. 4395).

15 Horden, Purcell 2000; Broodbank 2013; Hodos 2020.

16 An anonymous referee for the journal asked whether the patterns in the use of local and global artifacts suggested here for Leptiminus and the Tunisian Sahel might be extended to Phoenicio-Punic settlements on Malta, on Sicily, or in other regions. These patterns are potentially relevant elsewhere, although the scope of my study does not allow a more extensive examination.

17 D. J. Mattingly (2023) considers the multiple signals that material culture can send about individuals, and has an excellent discussion of identity. An approach that utilizes the handmade pottery from tombs in the Tunisian Sahel to demonstrate an ethnic identity is suggested by Y. Sghaïer (2023a).

18 Among the literature on prestige goods, see Social Life 1986.

19 Hodos 2015.

20 Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897; de Smet 1913.

21 Ben Younes 1995.

22 Ben Younes 1989; Camps 1997.

23 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018.

24 For sizes, see the catalogue of J. J. de Smet (1913, p. 335-342).

25 For sizes, see the catalogue of J. J. de Smet (1913, p. 335-342)

26 Bénichou-Safar 1982.

27 Ben Younes 1995.

28 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 23.

29 Cf. Ghaki 1999; Stone 2007; Longerstay 1995.

30 Camps, Longerstay 2000.

31 Kallala 2021, p. 73-156.

32 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 57.

33 “Creusées dans la paroi verticale d’une masse rocheuse” (Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897, p. 297).

34 “Autour d’une sorte d’antichambre, plusieurs salles” (Hannezo, Molins, Montagnon 1897, p. 297).

35 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 154, fig. 20.

36 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 539-540.

37 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 540-541.

38 de Smet 1913, p. 336.

39 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, cat. nos 184-365, 371-380.

40 Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 27; Morel 1980, p. 37; Younes 1999, p. 129, 136-137.

41 Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 29-30; Younes 1999.

42 Ben Younes 1995.

43 Ben Younes 1989.

44 Ben Younes 1989, p. 74.

45 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018.

46 H. Ben Younes and Y. Sghaïer (2018, p. 115-136) discuss the conditions of preservation at each tomb.

47 The detailed recording of the contents of each tomb represents a major advance over earlier studies. Human remains were poorly preserved, and not all analytical techniques have been performed; thus, we lack information from stable isotopic analysis, DNA analysis, ceramic residue analysis, and faunal and botanical studies.

48 The table includes data from the 17 tombs dug in 2011 at Bir el Ayeb, the intact Dhahret Slama tomb dug in 1997, and the Henchir Methkal tomb dug in 2015. The data from tombs are presented in Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018. The data reflect all information that can be determined; for instance, Tomb 4 contained 12 vessels, but it was possible to determine information about the manufacture of only 9 of these.

49 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 115-130.

50 There were 148 ceramic vessels, but the shape and manufacturing technique of three fragmentary vessels from Tomb 4 was not determined.

51 I translate “caliciforme” as “S-shaped” here, although I recognize that “goblet” is an alternative term sometimes used.

52 “Il est à noter que 200 bols coquetiers et caliciformes n’ont pas été intégrés à la présente étude vu le caractère répétitif des formes” (Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 66).

53 Similar bowls have been identified at Thapsus (Ben Jerbania 2008) and El Hkayma (Ben Younes 1986; 1988).

54 H. Ben Younes et Y. Sghaïer (2018, p. 108) also make this observation.

55 The lithic assemblage considered by E. Faro (2011, p. 289-293) was found in secondary contexts. Given the origin of the lithic material several dozen kilometers from Leptiminus, some prehistoric occupation at the site seems probable, but cannot yet be demonstrated with certainty.

56 Three additional tombs were found at S285. One had not been completed; the other two appear to have been plundered at an uncertain date. They have not yet been published.

57 I assisted in the recovery of human remains from the tomb floor at Leptiminus in 1997.

58 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 68; Moret 1984, p. 172, cat. nos 58-61.

59 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 96; Howland 1958, p. 32.

60 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 67.

61 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 95; Ramón 1995, p. 179.

62 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 80.

63 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 67-68.

64 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 610.

65 Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 94.

66 It is of course possible that earlier evidence will be discovered in the future.

67 Trigger 2003.

68 Ben Jerbania 2013, p. 124. An unusual element at Leptiminus is the presence of a lekythos, as closed shapes for pouring have rarely been found at Carthage, Hadrumetum, and elsewhere in North Africa (ibid., p. 135).

69 Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 27.

70 Sghaïer 2023b, p. 67

71 Sanmartí et alii 2019, p. 272 citing Carthage 2010.

72 Kallala et alii 2014, p. 39-53.

73 Sanmartí et alii 2019, p. 273.

74 In this respect the later S304 cemetery stands out as an example of the extremely thorough documentation that enables even more conclusions to be drawn (Leptiminus 4 2021).

75 On this tomb, see Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 120-121.

76 On this tomb, see Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018, p. 127.

77 Pitts 2019; Hodos 2020.

78 Coarelli, Thébert 1988; Ben Younes 2007; Stone 2007; Crawley Quinn 2013; Ben Younes, Krandel-Ben Younes 2014.

79 T. Hodos (2020) describes this shared Mediterranean culture in more detail.

80 Roubet, Amara 2013; Sanmartí et alii 2019; Sanmartí 2021.

81 Usage of red ochre has been identified in Africa from as early as c.500,000 BCE, but much more commonly from c.160,000 BCE (Dapschauskas et alii 2022).

82 A lack of interest in the excavation of early levels has also been noted at Ruspina, about 11 km to the north of Leptiminus (Kallala 2021, p. 167). Likewise, the pre-Roman period is attested exclusively through funerary evidence at Thapsus, approximately 17 km to the southeast of Leptiminus (Sghaïer et alii 2023, p. 12). It is worth noting here that the permit for the Leptiminus Archaeological Project did not allow excavations of pre-Roman phases of settlement.

83 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 273-274.

84 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 296.

85 Leptiminus 4 2021, p. 495-498.

86 cf. Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 129-130.

87 At the S edge of the hill there is a large collapsed mortared rubble structure that resembles an arch or gateway (S20; Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 516-517); it may very well have marked an entrance to the citadel, although the structure probably postdates the Roman conquest.

88 Fantar 2012.

89 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 124-126.

90 Ben Tahar et alii 2020, p. 100.

91 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 149.

92 Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 627.

93 For earlier discussions, see Leptiminus 3 2011, p. 273-274; Ben Younes, Sghaïer 2018.

94 Sanmartí et alii 2019.

95 Kallala, Sanmartí 2011, p. 31-43.

96 Urbanisation 2020.

97 Ben Tahar 2016; 2018; Ben Tahar et alii. 2021.

98 Lancel 1992, p. 52.

99 For this view, see Shaw 2003. For an argument against the view of the Maghreb as isolated, see Stone 2024.

100 Ben Tahar, Drine, Aoudi 2024, p. 48-49.

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David L. STONE, « Leptiminus before Rome: Constructing Identity in the First Millennium BCE »Antiquités africaines, 61 | 2025, 17-38.

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David L. STONE, « Leptiminus before Rome: Constructing Identity in the First Millennium BCE »Antiquités africaines [En ligne], 61 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 octobre 2025, consulté le 16 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/antafr/8462 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/153nq

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