Image Details

Photo by Hershel Shanks

Perched on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, Selinunte’s modest homes (shown here) were built in the opus Africanum style, in which upright stones are separated by sections of smaller stones. The same technique was used to build the homes of the Punic village of Kerkouane, Tunisia (see photo of homes of the Punic village of Kerkouane, Tunisia). Both communities were settled by the descendants of Phoenician seafarers from the Levant, who in the late-ninth century B.C. established the Punic-Phoenician settlement of Carthage.