Nearly complete Numidian house mapped at Sidi Saïd, Tunisia

Archaeologists in northern Tunisia have mapped almost the entire floor plan of a Numidian house for the first time, and the building appears to be far more elaborate than the team expected. The multi-room home sits at Sidi Saïd, in the Bargou area of the Siliana region, and it may date to the 4th century BCE or earlier, roughly 2,300 years ago or more.

A lost Numidian town beside a modern road

The Numidians were the Berber-speaking peoples of ancient North Africa, and they often appear in history only through the writings of their Carthaginian and Roman neighbors. Settlements of the Numidians themselves are hard to find, which makes Sidi Saïd valuable.

The site came to light by accident. Widening work on the GP4 road, which links El Fahs and Siliana through Bargou, exposed the southern edge of an ancient settlement. A rescue excavation ran from December 2017 to April 2018 and revealed a town plan and a defensive wall. The team tentatively dated the wall to the middle of the first millennium BCE. Nobody lived there again afterward, so the town stayed relatively undisturbed.

Since then, Tunisia’s National Heritage Institute (INP) and the Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC) have turned the rescue dig into a long-term research project under an international cooperation agreement. The Palarq Foundation backed the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Yamen Sghaïer and Chokri Touihri of the INP, together with Maria Carme Belarte and David Montanero of the ICAC research group MIRMED, directed the 2026 season, and researchers, conservators and students from Tunisia and Catalonia took part.

What the 2026 season found

The second season ran from 16 September to 6 October 2026. In zone 3, in the northeast of the settlement, the team mapped nearly the whole plan of a house. It has several rooms and a more complex layout than researchers had anticipated. Its owners changed it several times during its life, which suggests a household that adapted the building as its needs shifted. The house leans against the settlement’s defensive wall, a stretch of which the team recorded in another sector in 2025.

In zone 1, the researchers studied construction methods, building materials, household fittings and hearths. They found local pottery, vessels made in Carthage, and objects used to hold pots over a fire. Some pieces survive in excellent condition, and some are nearly whole. Together, the local and Carthaginian wares point to a community that made its own goods while also trading with, or at least reaching, the wider Carthaginian world.

Dating the settlement

The 2025 and 2026 seasons indicate that people lived at Sidi Saïd from the second half of the 5th century BCE to the end of the 3rd century BCE. That span covers a formative period for Numidian society, before the Roman conquest reshaped the region. Because the town was not reoccupied, the layers record a single, fairly short chapter of settlement rather than a tangle of later rebuilding.

A cemetery in the hinterland

Survey work around the settlement, begun in 2025, has also found a pre-Roman burial ground. The team has now logged at least 85 funerary monuments there. Studying the town and its tombs together could show how the living and the dead related to the landscape, and who held status in the community.

Why it matters

Early Numidian homes are poorly known. A nearly complete plan lets researchers ask practical questions: how rooms were arranged, where families cooked, how the building met the town wall, and how owners altered the space over time. It also gives a local baseline against which to compare Carthaginian and later Roman houses in the region.

Caveats and open questions

Several points remain open. The 4th century BCE date for the house is a minimum estimate, and the team says it may be earlier. Other news outlets have described the house as roughly 2,400 years old, while La Presse reported more than 2,300 years, so the exact age will need the team’s final publication. The excavation reports so far come from news coverage of the ICAC announcement, and detailed analyses of the pottery, the architecture and the tombs are still to come. The cemetery’s monuments have only been surveyed, not excavated, so their dates and builders remain uncertain.

For now, Sidi Saïd offers a rare, well-preserved look at how Numidians lived in a town of their own, and the next seasons should show how much more the site can tell us.

Sources

• INP (Tunisia) and ICAC Sidi Saïd project, 2026 season announcement (ICAC news, 28 October 2026): https://icac.cat/es/actualidad/noticias/
• Archaeology News Online Magazine, 4 November 2026: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/11/nearly-complete-numidian-house-at-sidi-said/
• La Presse de Tunisie, 30 October 2026: https://www.lapresse.tn/2026/10/30/decouverte-archeologique-a-sidi-said-une-habitation-numide-de-plus-de-2-300-ans-documentee-photos/