Archeologists From Around World Chip In : Ancient Carthage Revealed in Huge Dig

The ancient city of Carthage is only dimly remembered by most as the rich African home of Hannibal before it was sacked, looted and burned to the ground by Romans who sowed salt into the fields for good measure.

Carthage was later rebuilt as a colony by the Romans, only to be sacked and destroyed a second time 800 years later by Islamic forces.

A decade ago, the remains of doomed Carthage were subject to a third assault.

Houses, stores and a network of roads were springing up on the far-ranging archeological site near the capital city of Tunis on the Tunisian coast. Fearing the site would be lost under modern development, the North African nation invited archeologists from around the world to help conduct a massive dig.

The result of the unprecedented program, which brought in experts from the Middle East, Europe, the United States and Canada, has been a new perspective on the historic city.

“There was no big surprise, no rewriting of history,” said Jeffrey Schwartz, a professor of archeology at the University of Pittsburgh, who participated in the project.

“We do have a better picture of daily life than has existed before, probably more so than from other sites because of the nature of the project, the sheer manpower and the willingness to share data,” Schwartz said.

Assembled for Exhibit

Many of the new finds, along with Carthaginian treasures long held by the Tunisian government, have been collected into a major exhibit that is touring the United States this year.

Most of the artifacts date from when the city was a Roman colony, well after its initial destruction by Romans in 146 BC.

Archeologists have found few remains from before the Roman destruction. But Schwartz said the intricate series of harbors built by the seafaring Phoenicians with mounds of earth and rocks in the 4th Century BC were identified with the aid of computer programs that can project topographical features based on existing ruins.

Recently, workers at the American Museum of Natural History were busy unpacking massive crates of intricate mosaic floors that portray daily life in ancient Carthage.

In various scenes the mosaics show hunters returning triumphantly with a wild boar on their shoulders, actors trying on tragic masks, two boys wrestling and men seated around a banquet table engaged in animated conversation.

“You can get a wonderful sense of how they lived from the mosaics alone,” Schwartz said. “One floor mosaic is covered with discarded food. I guess real food thrown from the table was supposed to blend in.”

Later Life Described

The Carthaginians of the early centuries after the birth of Christ lived in a city of multistoried houses, paved streets and a faulty sewer system. The wealthy ate melons, fish and wild game in airy dining rooms decorated with lavish mosaics. Most of their business involved trade.

They had an amphitheater to rival the Colosseum in Rome where bloody gladiator tournaments and chariot races were held regularly.