Affiliation: Oklahoma University
Clockwise from Carthage on the Tunisian coast sits the harbor site of Acholla. Probably founded in Punic times, it had a lengthy and prosperous Roman, and possibly post-Roman, history. It has an amphitheater. It has baths. It has a theater. It has several significant houses with beautiful mosaics, many now in the Bardo Museum – including the one with the eponymous lobster. It has signs of past construction sticking up out of the ground everywhere. Yet for all that: we don’t know much about the place.
The Acholla Archaeology Project (AAP), begun in 2025, is working to fill in our understanding of this significant, but neglected coastal site and its surrounding region using surface collection, mapping and other investigative strategies. While putting Acholla ‘back on the map’ is in itself a worthy goal, we have other imperatives. Site preservation, not least in view of the impact of climate change on the Mediterranean coast, is a growing concern – for Acholla and many other unprotected sites.
The famous ‘rose-red city half as old as time’ – Petra in southern Jordan – is both a wonder of the world and on just about everyone’s bucket list. And rightly so.
This paper will explore aspects of fieldwork at the city over the past two decades, including work by the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (co-directed by the speaker), discussing changes in the research questions and investigative tactics applied to the Nabataean capital city. It will also consider the various demands placed on the beautiful, but fragile, site: pressures owing to global geopolitics, internal economies, and climate variabilities.
