Deirdre Fulton (Baylor): Animals as Offerings: The Non-Human Faunal Remains from the Carthage Tophet

Date: 

Wednesday, February 24, 2016, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Tozzer 203

The non-human faunal remains found in the Carthage tophet represent a substantial sample of animal bones from a single site.  Partial or whole sheep carcasses are found in abundant numbers in the sample of urns excavated during the 1976-79 ASOR Punic Project.  The non-human animal remains reveal a consistent offering of sheep and in some cases, birds.  Overwhelmingly, the animals appear to be whole-burnt, or holocaust offerings, where the entire carcass is sacrificed as an offering to the deity or deities and then interred in the tophet. The consistency of the age of the cremated sheep that were interred in the urns allows for a window into determining possible peak seasons in which the animals were sacrificed, based to the timing of reproduction in a managed herd. We will outline the non-human animal bone finds and also discuss the kinds of behaviors of these sacrificing at the tophet at Carthage.