Microscopic bone analysis undermines the child-sacrifice reading of the Carthage Tophet.
Evidence
In 2010, Jeffrey Schwartz, Frank Houghton, Roberto Macchiarelli, and Luca Bondioli published, in PLoS ONE, an article titled “Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants.” The Schwartz team had re-examined the actual bone material from a substantial sample of urns using techniques — microscopic dental examination, neonatal-line dental analysis, growth-plate examination — that had not been available to Stager and Wolff in the 1980s. Their finding: the age-at-death profile of the urn occupants includes a substantial proportion of infants who died at or shortly before birth — neonatal deaths, premature deaths, stillbirths — which would not be expected in a sacrifice population but would be expected in a population of infants who died of natural causes in a high-infant-mortality society. — , The Rod and the Child, 1182
Categorization
- XREF: A concrete case of forensic method overturning a literary-source narrative, paralleling the reader’s work on evidence vs propaganda. — connects to: Skeletal evidence from Carthage’s tophet does not confirm systematic infant sacrifice — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 12318; Neonatal dental analysis undermines the child-sacrifice reading of Carthaginian Tophet remains. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 11575; The Carthage Tophet sacrifice debate remains genuinely unresolved by current evidence. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 11577
Related
- Skeletal evidence from Carthage’s tophet does not confirm systematic infant sacrifice (similarity 0.93)
- Neonatal dental analysis undermines the child-sacrifice reading of Carthaginian Tophet remains. (similarity 0.93)
- The Carthage Tophet sacrifice debate remains genuinely unresolved by current evidence. (similarity 0.90)
Broader Connections
- Skeletal evidence from Carthage’s tophet does not confirm systematic infant sacrifice
#corroborates(0.95) — , The Rod and the Child, 12318 - Neonatal dental analysis undermines the child-sacrifice reading of Carthaginian Tophet remains.
#corroborates(0.90) — , The Rod and the Child, 11575 - The Carthage Tophet sacrifice debate remains genuinely unresolved by current evidence.
#complicates(0.60) — , The Rod and the Child, 11577