Brien K. Garnand, Joseph A. Greene, Infants as votive offerings: Phoenician tophet precincts in context. Journal of Ancient History, 11.2. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2023. Pp. 323. ISSN 23248106.Alas, this is the fate of all too many archaeological excavations. Final reports still unpublished long after the passing of the chief excavator. That project director, by the way, was Larry Stager. I remember that when I participated in the Ashkelon excavation in the late 1980s, some of the staff there had previously worked at this Carthage excavation. Hopefully the final report will come out soon.Review by
Matthew M. McCarty, University of British Columbia. matthew.mccarty@ubc.ca... Overall, this volume is a welcome—if ultimately preliminary—contribution of excavation data and related thematic studies on the Carthage tophet. Until the final publication of the ASOR excavations, it will serve to offer a rough approximation of finds from the site: the most current data that we have. If nothing else, the volume points to the difficulty in drawing together and interpreting disparate forms of material and data from an excavation run over 40 years ago, studied by different teams of specialists in relative isolation and sometimes with contradictory results—a problem exacerbated by the untimely death of the project director. ...
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
