Hannibal Olive Trees In The West Of Kalea Seghira In The Sahel
The city of Kalea Seghira is very rich by its terroir, its position, its history and its exceptional heritage. Only this city is paradoxically little studied. My contribution to know better her will focus on a recent discovery around this city. This is to present an unpublished discovery of an ancient farm located a few kilometers west of the city at a place called "Ennagar". This farm contains olive trees with an immense trunk that proves their ancient age. Remains related to water management and a preliminary collection of ceramics bear witness to occupation from antiquity to the Islamic period. Even though this material culture is worthy of a thorough record. My investigations allowed me to put this farm essentially olive with a literary testimony to which little attention was given to the olive trees planted by the Punic General Hannibal throughout the Sahel region. This discovery confirms that this textual testimony is not myth. Moreover, this exploitation would be in some of the testimonies of the very complex Carthaginian system. It has an original military and security aspect related to the systems of Phoinikoi Tapoi literally Phoenician Fosses that pass further west not far from this area. This farm also reveals a demographic aspect by fixing farmers at the margins of the territories of a large city such as Hadrumète. This mainly olive-growing operation also has an undoubted economic vocation for managing and making profitable the peripheral territories of the Punic era. The publication of this Punic farm enriches this file on our knowledge of this culture especially in the famous region of Byzacène became the Sahel one of the historical fiefs of Carthage and in the hinterland of the city of Hadrumète major Punic city
