"Phoenician” metal bowls : boundary objects in the Archaic period

Abstract

Defining cultures and explaining cultural interaction takes us back to the formative years of archaeological thinking in the first half of the nineteenth century, when contributions to leading debates often came from prehistorians and concerned prehistoric times. For later periods, for which literary sources are available, it has been noticed that in ordering archaeological data into cultures and periods, archaeologists and ancient historians were essentially characterizing continuity and change, an exercise often affected by the interplay of disciplinary structures and professional goals. This is a theme that has been explored for the Punic period by P. van Dommelen in several writings published over the last decade. In exposing the relationship between archaeological representations of ancient colonial situations and the contemporary world he has shown how the dualist conception of colonial situations as a confrontation between distinct entities does not work. Colonial situations are murky and ambiguous; he argues that Punic Sardinia from the mid-sixth century BC onwards is a good example of such a contact situation. Influencing, imitation and creative subversion of a hegemonic Punic culture resulted in the creation of local inventions of material culture, artefacts which are essentially a hybrid. It is not the author's intention here to question the existence of a hegemonic Punic culture, although he believes that to be a valid query. This paper looks at cultural interaction in the Archaic period and takes as a point of departure a class of diagnostic artefacts – metal bowls – commonly held to be Phoenician on account of stylistic idiosyncrasies. The author's principal point in reviewing the definition of a culture considered to be the progenitor of the Punic one is to widen the limited perspective that considers only the ultimate origin of certain stylistic features in material culture so that it includes one that takes as its central aims a social analysis.