Description
Book SynopsisPhoenician and Punic archaeology have long been overlooked by Mediterranean archaeologists, who focused their attention on Greek and Roman cultures. Although the Punic cities and their rural landscapes are to be found along the southern shores and on the islands of the western Mediterranean basin, comprehensive studies of these archaeological remains are virtually non-existent. It is the aim of this book to investigate Punic rural settlement in the western Mediterranean by bringing together and comparing the currently dispersed existing evidence for rural Punic settlement. The core of the volume is accordingly made up by a detailed discussion of the archaeological evidence for Punic rural settlement from Sardinia, Sicily, Ibiza, mainland Spain and North Africa.Because agriculture and agrarian produce have always been assumed to have played a critical role in the Carthaginian colonial expansion, the connections between the various colonial contexts and the local characteristics of rural organisation explored in detail in order to enhance our understanding of these colonial contexts. This in turn provides better insight in Carthaginian colonialism and local Punic rural settlement and their role in the wider Mediterranean context. By publishing this evidence and these interpretations in English, we hope to draw attention to Punic archaeology in general and to these rural studies in particular and to situate them in the wider Mediterranean context of both classical Antiquity and Mediterranean archaeology.
Table of Contents1 Defining the Punic World and its Rural Contexts2 Rereading Punic Agriculture: Representation, Analogy and Ideology in the Classical SourcesVeronique Krings3 Ibiza: the Making of New LandscapesCarlos Gomez Bellard4 The Iberian Peninsula: Landscapes of TraditionJose Luis Lopez Castro5 North Africa: Rural Settlement and Agricultural ProductionElizabeth Fentress and Roald F. Docter6 Sicily and Malta: between Sea and CountrysideAntonella Spano Giammellaro, Francesca Spatafora and Peter van Dommelen7 Sardinia: Diverging LandscapesPeter van Dommelen and Stefano Finocchi8 Agrarian Landscapes and Rural Communities9 Conclusions: Rural Landscapes of the Punic World
