Abstract

In 1992, as part of the ongoing international UNESCO campaign to save Carthage, a team from the University of Alberta led by Dr. J.J. Rossiter undertook a small excavation at the suburban site of Bir Ftouha. Two separate areas of Bir Ftouha had been previously explored by Delattre and P. Gaukler. Delattre published a plan of a triple-apsed room containing a number of sarcophagi. A so-called baptismal font and bath building were also found, although their precise location was never published. Gaukler's findings of an early Christian basilica were even more sketchily recorded, as no plan or adequate description of the building or its whereabouts was ever published. Despite their close proximity, there seems to have been little interest in determining the nature of the relationship between the two sites. The 1992 project aimed to further investigate this area. A magnetometer survey carried out by a University of Alberta team in 1991 had shown two areas of disturbance: one located near the bath-house complex and another approximately 60 m to the east. Several trenches placed near the bath-house complex revealed part of a building wall and a series of floor surfaces. The latest phase of these features has been tentatively dated to the late 6th or early 7th centuries A.D. Due to limited resources and time, a more thorough exploration of this building was not possible in 1992. Of particular interest in the 1992 excavations were an extensive series of midden pits. The pits contained a dense mixture of pottery and organic remains. The pottery, consisting of local coarse wares, cooking wares, and Islamic glazed wares, bas been provisionally dated to the 9th-11th centuries A.D., or the Early Islamic period. The faunal remains, studied by Michael MacKinnon, suggest that sheep, goat, and cattle formed a significant part of the diet of the inhabitants of the site in its later periods. The ceramic and faunal material is especially important as there has been very little information available about the early Islamic period in Carthage. Further study may suggest that there is greater continuity between the Late Roman and the Early Islamic periods than previously believed.