Multicultural synthesis, ethnic identity, and the case of Phoenician-Punic Malta

Abstract

It is a commonplace that the issues connected with cultural and ethnic identity are extremely complex when placed in an archaeological framework and that often there is no simple equation between archaeological remains and ethnic identity. This becomes even clearer when one remembers, for example, that the African Nuer themselves did not know that they were Nuer! This name had been attributed to them by their neighbours and by the ethnographers who had studied them in the 1930s.1

In this paper I shall focus my attention on the problem of multicultural synthesis and ethnic identity with special reference to Phoenician-Punic Malta. It is generally agreed that the Phoenician-Punic period of Malta lasted for at least about five centuries from circa 700 BC at the latest up to 218 BC.2

The Phoenician period proper, when the Maltese archipelago was under the direct influence of the Phoenicians from the Levant, lasted for about a century from circa 700 BC up to the sixth century BC, whereas the Punic period, when these islands were under the direct political rule of Carthage, lasted from the sixth century BC up to 218 BC. This latter date is precise because we know from historical records that this is when the Romans took over Malta from the Carthaginians during the second Punic war.3

It is important to note that the chronological divisions just

mentioned are largely historical and political and that they are not based on any considera- tions of material cultural remains relative to the two different periods – any correlations

between the Phoenician period and Phoenician culture and between the Punic period and the Punic culture are essentially coincidental. Thus, for example, we do know that in the Maltese islands there were Phoenician artefacts from the Levant during the Punic period.4 Indeed, it would be preferable to affirm that an artefact is Punic if it exhibits characteristics similar to those of Carthaginian material culture and if it shows appreciable differences to

the material culture of the Phoenician homeland, even if this happens during the ‘Phoeni- cian period’.5

Given this state of affairs and in view of the fact that the Phoenicians (as will be shown below) seem to have called themselves ‘Canaanites’, in this paper I shall often refer to them and to the Carthaginians in Malta by this name.