This chapter asks the question what being ‘local’ really means. How many generations must people of Phoenician ancestry live locally before they are considered ‘locals’? Analysis and comparison of ceramics and burial rituals in Iron Age South Iberia show that locality is produced daily by myriad actors who were differentiated and connected by ethnicity, social status, age, and gender. Who is considered ‘local’ in one place might look alien compared to how other communities and individuals perform their locality elsewhere. Ultimately, this chapter debunks the persistent notion of stable ethnic identities in the ancient Mediterranean that add little to our understanding of selfhood and cultural and colonial contacts.

This analysis of the relationships between the Late Nuragic communities of Iron Age Sardinia and Phoenicians focuses on their contributions to the formation of urban centres. Both the near-absence of colonial settlements in the eighth century BCE and the evidence of recurrent Phoenician coexistence with Indigenous communities suggest that the emergence of a small number of urban centres in the following century owed much to these cultural interactions. The role of central places in Nuragic society was instead fulfilled by a small number of major regional sanctuaries that flourished in precisely these centuries.

The varied topography and climate of Iberia posed challenges for prehistoric hominids, as well as for later traders, fishers, farmers, and herders attracted by the peninsula’s mineral wealth, arable land, and diversity of marine and land animals. Iberians arrived from North Africa, Celts later arrived from the north, and Phoenicians and Greeks arrived from the Mediterranean. All of these diverse peoples brought their culture and language to Spain – founding cities, farming the land, mining, herding, trading, and therefore connecting what the Greeks called Iberia to the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Northern Europe.

The Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex, or SACC, a collection of city-states that surrounded the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea during the early first millennium BCE, is traditionally understudied by researchers interested in contacts between the Aegean and the Near East. In part this is due to the interest garnered by the Phoenicians and their far-flung colonies, but it is also because the complicated ethnolinguistic composition of the city-states themselves defies easy categorization. This chapter presents an overview of the material evidence for the robust exchange between the Aegean and SACC during the early first millennium BCE. Syro-Anatolian finds in the Aegean, especially luxury items including worked ivory and bronze objects, couple with Aegean ceramics in the Levant and southeastern Anatolia to index a surprisingly robust exchange between the two spheres. Although the mechanisms of this exchange remain unclear, it is now apparent that SACC was a major component of Iron Age eastern Mediterranean cultural and economic networks.

During the tenth through the seventh centuries BCE, the Cypriot Iron Age city-kingdoms were established and Cyprus gradually emerged on the international stage of the ancient Near East within the sphere of the Phoenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians. According to later tradition, Greek heroes (e.g., Teucros of Salamis) founded most of the city-kingdoms, there was an indigenous stronghold at Amathus, and Phoenicians founded a colony at Kition. Inscriptions support this picture of three distinct population groups resident on Cyprus, each preserving its individual language. Archaeological evidence reveals very little of the Cypriot way of life during these centuries within the settlements; we are chiefly dependent on funerary remains and the evidence from religious sanctuaries; however, the material culture from these sites sheds some light upon the concerns of the inhabitants and how they expressed their diverse identities. The funerary record also reveals the emergence of an elite group who buried their dead in elaborate built tombs – most spectacular are the wealthy so-called Royal Tombs of Salamis. This chapter examines changes in the geopolitical organization and how Cyprus was incorporated within the East Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age, namely through emerging trade with the Aegean and political relationships with the Assyrians.

During the Geometric period (ca. 900–700 BCE), the sociopolitical structure of Big Men became collaborative aristocratic rule. Most Geometric buildings had fieldstone foundations, mudbrick walls, and pitched thatch roofs, or, in the Cyclades and Crete, fieldstone walls and flat roofs. Larger dwellings were usually apsidal or rectangular, smaller dwellings often oval. In the eighth century, a large household could include separate buildings and areas inside an enclosure (Oropos, Eretria). By 700, multi-room rectangular houses with a courtyard appear (Zagora). Sanctuaries in settlements were usually open-air. Sanctuaries outside settlements proliferated in Late Geometric as sites of elite display and competition; rituals included animal sacrifice, communal feasting, and votive offerings. Monumental temples were built 725–700 at Eretria, Amarynthos, Naxos, Samos, Kalapodi, and Ano Mazaraki, all extra-urban except Eretria. Geometric burials were generally inhumations, though cremation was common in Athens/Attica. On pottery, angular geometric motifs replaced Protogeometric circular designs. Figured scenes (funerals, battles) appear in the mid-eighth century and possibly mythological scenes in the late eighth century. Greeks, probably Euboeans, borrowed the Phoenician alphabet ca. 800 BCE; early inscriptions were scratched on pottery, some in poetic meter. By ca. 700, many settlements had developed into the politically organized community called a polis.

The twelfth–eleventh centuries BCE mark the transition between the Late Bronze Age (LBA) of Cyprus and the very different social world of the Early Iron Age. The end of the LBA is marked by violent destructions, the abandonment of urban centers and rural communities, and a subsequent dramatic shift in settlement pattern. There is a clear break in material production on the island – especially in pottery production – and significant changes in funerary and ritual practice. Within the wider East Mediterranean, international maritime trade broke down, major palace economies and overarching empire states disappeared, and populations relocated. The direct effect on Cyprus is debated, particularly the presence of Mycenaean colonizing communities. The island’s copper trade apparently persisted, at a reduced scale from the LBA, and cultural and trading links continued with Crete and Philistine communities of the southern Levant. Using settlement and cemetery archaeology, this chapter explores the establishment of new communities on Cyprus ancestral to the Iron Age city kingdoms, the changing material world of the new settlements, contacts beyond the island, the earliest Phoenician activity on Cyprus, and the degree to which the island was a part of the emerging world of Iron Age Greece.

Homer lived in Ionia, which he probably never left, around 700 BC. His birthplace and patronymic are unknown; he is associated with many legends. There were probably more than one poet and poems. Homer would have been the one who gave to the epics their final form. The Greeks of the historical period knew next to nothing about the Mycenaean era. Homer is the one who gave a ‘memory’ to their past. He described a country that did not exist, an idealized, heroic and aristocratic society with kings and walled palaces. When the poems were written down in the 6th century BC, all Greek cities wanted to be connected with a hero and acquire noble roots. The historicity of the poems is much debated. Homer is a precious source for Mycenaean studies, but he is a poet and oscillates between the poetic and the historical world and two eras, the prehistoric and the historical. The fact is that epic poems existed in Mycenaean times; they were transmitted orally; the core of Homeric epic could have been created around them.

In the late Iron I, the Galilee was dotted with small farming villages. In the early Iron II, these were all abandoned while at the same time, large, fortified towns such as Hazor were built in the adjacent regions. The two processes were connected, reflecting the Israelite takeover of the region. As the highland polity expanded into the hilly Galilee, the local groups, many of which had a similar background and lifestyle, had to choose whether to affiliate with it or fight against it. Many, especially in more mountainous regions, simply became Israelite “tribes,” whereas settlements that were regarded as non-Israelites (“Canaanites”) were mostly destroyed. Like in other regions, the result was a complete reshuffling in settlement patterns, and the new polity built new centers to control the area. Here, however, the new polity had to contend with another polity, Tyre, with which it wished to remain on friendly terms. Thus, the western part of the Galilee (along with the Galilee coast) was left in Phoenician hands.

The Sharon Plain suffers from drainage problems and poor soil. For much of history, the region was only sparsely inhabited, suffering severe demographic fluctuations. The Iron Age IIA stands out as a period during which settlement in the Sharon, and especially in the Yarkon basin (the Sharon’s southernmost part), reached a peak before plummeting in the Iron Age IIB. What caused this unusual fluctuation? The only reason to build new settlements in the swampy Sharon was for serving as an inland polity’s outlet to the sea, so the key is to understand who could benefit from investing in this region, and especially in the Yarkon basin. A center in Samaria or the Hebron hill country would have had better port cities – Dor or Ashkelon, respectively. Only a polity with a center in the area around Jerusalem could benefit – and greatly so – from a port in the Yarkon basin. This, along with other lines of evidence (e.g., Excursus 8.1), suggests that the highland polity expanded to this area and controlled it for a few generations. Once the United Monarchy collapsed, there was no incentive to maintain the swampy region and the settlements were gradually abandoned.

We have met the Philistines in practically all previous chapters and noted their significant impact on the political and cultural landscape of the Iron Age I. In this chapter, we focus on their settlement in Philistia and analyze the drastic changes the region experienced during the Iron I–Iron II transition. While in the Iron I, this was the densest region in the country, boasting the largest settlements, in the Iron IIA, Philistia was transformed; most of the Philistine megacities shrank (Gath being an exception), whereas the mid-sized and small settlements were mostly abandoned. Even the material culture in the region was dramatically altered, as expressed, for example, by the complete cessation in the production of the so-called Philistine pottery (see Chapter 5). What happened to the Philistines in this transitional period? They lost the battle for hegemony and the power shifted to the new highland polity, leading to demographic changes. Subsequently, the Philistines became increasingly drawn into the Phoenician sphere and the Mediterranean trade, which had a major impact on their material culture and symbols. From the neighborhood bully, the Philistines became just one of the neighbors.

This paper examines the Greek Geometric pottery recovered during the Tunisian excavations by the Heritage National Institute at Utica. Skyphoi decorated with various motifs and dating to the Subprotogeometric IIIb/Middle Geomtric II and Late Geometric I periods represent the most common shape analysed by Neutron Activation Analysis. In the first place, the contexts where these pottery finds were used and deposited are placed under scrutiny. Following a typological examination, the study treats the use of these wares in their local context in association with handmade ceramics and pottery imported from other regions such as the eastern Mediterranean and Sardinia. The emphasis is thus put on the diversity of drinking and eating habits that indicate the multicultural nature of the first Phoenician community of Utica.

The importation of an ensemble of Greek Geometric pottery found in the city of Huelva (south-west Spain) has been attributed to Phoenician trade. Conversely, thousands of Archaic ceramics of both Aegean and local origin must be linked to the establishment of Greeks and the allusions of ancient sources to the emporion of Tartessos. This article explores the domestic, ritual and other social contexts of that pottery’s use at that multicultural site.

The epigraphic documentation in the Phoenician language of the island of Cyprus makes it possible to approach the exploration of the semantic field of the force (’z) in the conceptual universe of the Phoenicians. Gods ‘of strength’ appear in inscriptions commemorating victories, both at Kition and at Larnaka-tis-Lapithou. Baal and Anat are discussed: the profession of war is not a male prerogative in the world of the gods. Strength is also present in the world of men: anthroponomy conceals a few names, albeit not many, constructed using the root ‘zz ‘to be strong’. At the same time Anat, Resheph, Baal and Mikal, gods present in the Phoenician context of Cyprus with also (but not only) warlike attributes, are implicated in the formation of anthroponyms, most of the time without reference to weapons and shields, if they are only those who serve their worshippers to face the daily battles from the delicate moment of birth onwards.

This chapter discusses the Table of Nations pattern and the motif of the ethnic groups issuing from the offspring of the Flood hero in both biblical lists (Gen 10) and Greek genealogical traditions. In striking contrast to both biblical literature and Greek genealogical traditions, the Mesopotamian Flood hero is not the father of a new lineage, but rather leaves this world to live among the gods, and his descendants are not heard of again.

Northern Greece is much less well known than regions further south, and the Black Sea area is rarely referred to in works about historical economies. Despite this lack of modern curiosity about the region, its importance in economic terms cannot be underestimated. The southern parts of what is now Ukraine and Russia were one of the great bread baskets of the ancient Mediterranean, and merchants from various Greek islands, and coastal cities of the Aegean, shipped foodstuffs (wine, olive oil, nuts, fish products) in the opposite direction. Surviving written and archaeological evidence offers a very broadbrush picture of these relations. Inscriptions and graffiti from a limited number of exporting, recipient, or transshipment centres (notably Kallatis, Methone, Olbia, Pistirus, Thasos, Pantikapaion), give more detail and nuance, as well as pointing towards dimensions of these economic relations that have not fed back into the dominant economic models. The economic power of some players, notably Byzantium and Pantikapaion, as well as rulers of inland states, including Thrace, and cities of the Hellespontine Straits and Bosporus, deserve greater recognition. Lead letters and contracts, as well as commercial graffiti, also provide important data on the infrastructure of trade.