Local Communities and Archaeological Sites in Tunisia: A Case Study at Dougga (Ancient Thugga) about Cultural Memory and Cultural Markers in the Longue Durée

The experience and legends of local communities in Tunisia who lived within archaeological sites and shared long-standing connections with those sites has been poorly recognised and documented. The extent to which elements of the cultural memory of local communities refer back to the pre-Islamic period has often been hinted at, but rarely explored in detail. The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between local communities and archaeological sites in Tunisia, and the extent to which modern cultural memory in a community embeds elements or cultural markers from the Roman, Punic and Numidian past. This case study examines the cult of Oum Khoula at the site of Dougga (ancient Thugga). The marabout of Oum Khoula is in the cisterns of Aïn El-Hammam, at the end of the major Roman aqueduct to Dougga. Oum Khoula is remembered by local inhabitants as associated with a range of legends stretching back to the Roman and pre-Roman past. The cult has continued to be revered to the modern day. Whether the cultural memory illustrated by the cult of Oum Khoula at Dougga represents continuity with the past cannot be proved or disproved and is ultimately not the important issue. The cult of Oum Khoula at Dougga represents an example of the persistence of references from Numidian, Punic and Roman periods in the Maghreb. That cultural memory is a function of the community’s sense of place and significant references to that place derive from the archaeological remains and its associated oral traditions and symbols found at Dougga. The question of how modern archaeologists respond to and interpret this cultural memory is discussed.