Les cimetières des officiales avant les officiales: occupation républicaine et proto-impériale du site de Bir-ez-Zitoun
Abstract
Between 1880 and 1917 in Carthage, the White Father Alfred-Louis Delattre uncovered two funerary spaces containing the burials of a numerous staff working in the provincial offices. In cemetery A (at Bir-ez-Zitoun), successive phases of reoccupation are highlighted and documented by drawings and photographs, although this information is never repeated later. The site seems in fact to have been occupied before the 2nd-3rd century AD, the period from which inscriptions relating to the functioning of the procuratorial offices are dated. Within the epigraphic material, it is possible to isolate eighteen funerary inscriptions, qualified as "ancient" by Delattre. However, despite the contextual indications given at the time of its discovery, this file has always been treated as if it formed a homogeneous whole with the mass of more recent inscriptions from the same site. The purpose here is to highlight the use of the area as a necropolis before its occupation by the officiales and thus, to better understand the diachronic topography of an important space in the administrative history of Carthage.