Utica Project. Research of the Phoenician-Punic city

RESULTS

• The most significant archaeological results obtained in the project consist, first of all, in the location of an architectural complex in the oldest area of occupation of the city dating back to the 9th century BC, making Utica the oldest Phoenician colonial settlement in the Mediterranean according to the calibrated C14 dates.
• Secondly, Hispano-Tunisian excavations have exhumed a large area in use from the 8th century BC to Roman times. In this area, the remains of two temples have been discovered, superimposed on each other, and associated with elements of Phoenician-Punic monumental architecture, unique for the time being in the Central and Western Mediterranean. 
As far as the oldest area is concerned, forming part of the Phoenician architectural complex, a 4 m deep ritual well has been located, filled with the remains of a collective banquet, which we can date with conventional archaeological chronology in the Middle Geometric period II, between 825/800 and 750 B.C.
• The constructive Phoenician remains located in the IX century B.C., are associated to Phoenician, Greek geometric and Sardinian archaeological material, of the same type to those that define the oldest Phoenician horizon documented in Huelva, in El Carambolo and in La Rebanadilla, in the airport of Malaga.
• The well was part of a complex composed of a large building preserved only in its northern half, which was in use in the ninth century BC, which are associated with the remains of metallurgical activities
• Finally, excavations have uncovered a monumental wall of ashlars provisionally dated in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC which followed the same orientation as the Phoenician building and which we relate to a monumental building, possibly a temple.
  It has been possible to verify that the organization of the space in Utica follows orthogonal patterns as it has already been shown in the urbanism of Cartago. Likewise, productive functions have been identified in this area by means of remains of metallurgical activity and a ceramic production oven in the VI-IV centuries B.C. Next to this area, two superimposed monumental temples were in use successively, from the VII and IV centuries B.C., of which the oldest is quite destroyed for the construction of the most recent one, which presents a better state of conservation, although it was partially destroyed as a consequence of an urban restructuring of the late Roman Republican 
period.