Phoenician and Punic archaeology have long been overlooked by
Mediterranean archaeologists, whose attention has mostly been focused on
Greek and Roman cultures. Moreover, obscured by a strong urban bias, the
rural landscapes of the Punic world have only begun to be investigated
over the last two decades.
This book offers the first comprehensive overview of rural settlement in
the Punic world by bringing together and comparing evidence from across
the western Mediterranean. A substantial part of the volume is taken up
by a detailed discussion of the literary and archaeological evidence for
Punic rural settlement in Sardinia, Sicily, Ibiza, Andalusia and North
Africa. It also explores the multiple connections between rural
settlement, agrarian organisation and regional colonial situations to
offer new insights in Carthaginian colonialism and local Punic rural
settlement, and their role in the wider Mediterranean context.
By publishing this evidence and new interpretations in English, this
book intends to draw attention to Punic archaeology in general and to
these rural studies in particular, and to situate them in the wider
Mediterranean context of both classical antiquity and Mediterranean
archaeology.