Phoenician maritime pioneering and Punic expansion : reconstructing trade and dietary patterns

Abstract

Perhaps the most significant legacy attributed to the Phoenicians was their mastery of the seas, which led them to establish the first grand commercial Mediterranean network, expanding from Lebanon to beyond the Pillars of Hercules between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. The Punic culture, which flourished in the central and western Mediterranean from Phoenician colonies, maintained the exceptional navigation skills of the Phoenicians, but developed into more settled and structured territories that allowed the communities to intensify their exploitation of Mediterranean resources. Their rise to prominence can be measured by the threat they posed to the Roman Republic, while the salvage of the agronomic treatises by Mago after the sacking of Carthage attests to their renowned agrarian competence. The paucity of Phoenician and Punic written sources essentially means that material culture provides the data with which to model community lifeways, including daily dietary patterns, and trade more generally. The aim of this session was to bring together research focused on diet and trade in the Phoenician and Punic world, building on the work that has been done on foodways to model community interaction (Mata Parreño et al. 2010; Delgado and Ferrer 2011a and 2011b). The session comprised five oral contributions and a poster presentation. The focus was on central and western Mediterranean mainland regions and island territories. Findings from more recent archaeological excavations were described and discussed, and scientific applications to archaeological material were outlined and interpretations put forward and discussed.