Culture Study : Carthaginian Child Sacrifice

A cutural anthropology study of Phoencian or Punic or Carthaginian child sacrifice, that explores the loaded semantics and politics involved:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/journal/newdraft/garnand/paper.pdf

So far, I've read to page 22 : "Bernal’s expectation of a static British/Jewish Phoenician identity reveals the appeal of
essentialism — the reduction of peoples to their static essence — one of the broad categories of
ills that he and Said wish to combat. In reference to identity, this essentialism portrays and
understands social and cultural practices and institutions 'as what they are for all time, for
ontological reasons that no empirical matter can either dislodge or alter' (Said 1995 [1978]:70). It
is a distortion that suppresses temporality and 'assumes or attributes an unchanging primordial
ontology to what are the historically contingent products of human or other forms of agency'
(Herzfeld 1998:189). Of the forms of essentialism addressed by Said and Bernal, I summarize two
here: racism, and Orientalism."

'Supposititious', appearing in that below, means " (1)fraudulently substituted as a genuine heir; (2) illegitimate; (3) of the nature of, or based on, a supposition; hypothetical."

http://rogueclassicism.com/2010/02/17/child-sacrifice-at-carthage/

Latest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/africa/8536313.stm