The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

by Carolina Lopez-Ruiz

  Strong evidence of interaction comes from ongoing excavations at the large multi-towered nuraghe S’Urachi. The nuraghe was surrounded by a village, as survey material collected at the adjacent site at Su Padrigheddu has documented. While excavations have only very recently started to reveal settlement contexts dating from the eighth century bce (Stiglitz et al. 2015), targeted research on ceramic material from old excavations has revealed complex phenomena of interaction. From the late seventh century bce, typologically Iron Age Nuragic and Phoenician pottery started to be locally produced according to Phoenician manufacturing techniques (Roppa 2012). The training required to learn new and complex techniques, such as the use of the potter’s wheel, as well as the local production of Phoenician domestic ware, point to the inclusion of groups of Phoenicians within the local community from the late seventh century bce (Roppa 2014a). This evidence is matched by close connections with the coastal Phoenician settlements at Tharros and Othoca, as contemporary distribution of Phoenician pottery shows at the site starting at the end of the seventh century (Roppa 2015).

  The Phoenician Diaspora on Sardinia and Interaction with Nuragic Local Communities

  The archaeological evidence presented here shows that the Phoenician diaspora on Sardinia was a multifaceted phenomenon varying both chronologically and spatially across the island. Based on the almost complete absence of permanent settlements until the second half of the seventh century bce, specific patterns of interaction with Nuragic communities, and what we know about the Phoenician activity in the broader Mediterranean scenario, we can outline a framework for the Phoenician diaspora on Sardinia. Two chronological phases and their broad cultural and social contexts emerge: a first one dating between the late ninth and mid seventh centuries bce and a subsequent phase from the late seventh century through the sixth centuries bce.

  From Tyre to Huelva: A Mediterranean-Wide Network—Late Ninth to Mid-Seventh Centuries bce

  In this period, the island is part and parcel of a network spanning the entire Mediterranean, from the coasts of the Levant, particularly Tyre, to the Atlantic shores of Iberia and Africa. In this network, Phoenician trade and interaction with Sardinia’s local communities are shown by early evidence at Sant’Imbenia, consumption patterns of Phoenician material at inland Nuragic sites, and the establishment of the Phoenician settlement at Sant’Antioco.

  Finds from Sant’Imbenia show that it was most likely the quest for metal that led groups of Phoenicians to reside at least temporarily at this site. Just as the local community’s consumption patterns of imported material were based on economic rather than social criteria, the local production of the “Sant’Imbenia”-type amphorae might be related best to satisfy “marketing requirements” within the international commercial network managed by the Phoenicians (Hayne 2010: 156). At the same time, the distribution of imported material at larger inland sites and sanctuaries shows that precious metal and “exotic” ceramic objects were incorporated into locally rooted social practices, specifically related to traditional consumption and ritual spheres. From this scenario of mainly commercial interaction, the colonial foundation at Sant’Antioco stands out, whose establishment is conventionally three to five decades later than Phoenician presence at Sant’Imbenia. To be sure, as it has been recently suggested, the earliest Iron Age ceramic repertoire from the west, in particular from Huelva, finds no match in the assemblage from Sant’Imbenia. The Huelva repertoire includes Greek and Phoenician forms consistently dating to the ninth to mid-eighth centuries bce, earlier than the bulk of the Sant’Imbenia materials. Since the dating of the Phoenician presence at Sant’Imbenia to the late ninth century bce is based only on a handful of ceramic shapes, chiefly the Euboean pendent semi-circle shyphos which could well be dated to 780–770 bce, it is better to propose that the establishment of the Phoenician settlement at Sant’Antioco, on the one hand, and trade at Sant’Imbenia, on the other, are roughly contemporary, and are only two apparently different aspects which mark the beginning of the Phoenician diaspora on Sardinia (Bernardini 2014). This does not exclude earlier trade, but evidence from Carthage, Cádiz, Málaga, and Huelva—to mention only some examples—consistently shows that in the ninth century bce the main sea route for Phoenician westward expansion was along the southern Mediterranean, leaving Sardinia on the margins. This is hardly surprising, as in the Mediterranean the stretch of sea between Sardinia and the Balearics is the one more frequently affected by severe sea conditions. From the early eighth century bce, the island became involved in a wide western Mediterranean network. Material from Sant’Antioco shows close material connections with Pithekoussai and Carthage.

  In turn, the involvement of Nuragic communities in Phoenician trade is now increasingly demonstrated by the distribution of Nuragic material at sites such as Huelva, which was the focus of Phoenician trade in the Atlantic (González de Canales et al. 2004: 183), and at a number of Phoenician settlements in Iberia, among them Cádiz, Málaga, and Las Chorreras (Botto 2015). Strong links with Carthage are evidenced by the substantial amounts of “Sant’Imbenia”-type amphorae found in contexts dating between 760 and 675 bce, when this type of container accounts for almost 50 percent of the imported amphorae (Bechtold and Docter 2010: 91, 102).

  The establishment of the Phoenician settlement at Sant’Antioco, conveniently located on the island’s extreme south, might be related to the needs of Phoenician trade, as it conveyed trade among Sardinia, Sicily, and Africa, and from there to the eastern and western Mediterranean. From the beginning of the Orientalizing period, conventionally dating to ca. 720 bce, Phoenician presence in the Tyrrhenian Sea increased to meet the demand of the Etruscan elite for exotic, precious imported items. As a result, trade on the sea route connecting northeastern Sardinia to Etruria intensified, as shown by contemporary evidence from Olbia, and the distribution of Etruscan material on the island, which increased from the following century (Santocchini Gerg 2014; for the Phoenicians on the Italian peninsula, see also chapter 33, this volume).

  Mid-Seventh to Sixth Century bce: Phoenician Settlements and Mixed Communities

  From the second half of the seventh century bce, the Phoenician presence on the island substantially grew, with the appearance of permanent settlements, and the establishment of groups from Phoenician background within Nuragic communities. This may be due to a demographic increase within the western Phoenician network, leading to migration and intra-colonial mobility (Van Dommelen 2005), an explanation the type of imported materials found at these newly established sites supports.

  During the seventh century bce, the western Mediterranean was already made up of Phoenician colonial compounds, marked by different “communities of ceramic practice” on Sardinia, in Iberia, and North Africa by the end of the century (Botto 2009: 343). The typological features of these pottery assemblages differ substantially from Phoenicia’s traditional ceramic repertoire. While the establishment of the site at Sant’Antioco could be ascribed to Levantine—particularly Tyrian—groups, the “second wave of colonization” may be a western Mediterranean phenomenon. Strong connections with the material culture of North Africa and Sicily—as well as with older Phoenician settlements such as Sant’Antioco—may point to the provenance of people involved in these migrations. Contact with North Africa, in particular, has been documented since the eighth century bce. These connections became stronger in the course of the sixth century and later throughout the Punic period.

  On the other hand, the contemporary appearance of mixed communities is firmly rooted in the long history of interaction between Phoenician and Nuragic communities on Sardinia. Unsurprisingly, clearer evidence of this phenomenon comes from the two core areas of Phoenician settlement on the island, southern and west-central Sardinia. The increasing levels of interaction between newcomers and local communities led to the formation of specifically Sardinian cultural compounds within the Phoenician western Mediterranean by the late seventh century bce. While the island’s interior and northern regions
retained stronger local cultural traits, and the outcomes of interaction varied greatly across Sardinia, the island’s connectivity increased and most communities became involved in the wider western Mediterranean Phoenician network, which eventually led to the development of shared cultural and social practices all over the island during the following Punic period (Roppa 2014b).

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