Description: The role of the Phoenicians in the economy, culture and politics of the ancient Mediterranean was as large as that of the Greeks and Romans, and deeply interconnected with that 'classical' world, but their lack of literature and their oriental associations mean that they are much less well-known. This book brings state-of-the-art international scholarship on Phoenician and Punic studies to an English-speaking audience, collecting new papers from fifteen leading voices in the field from Europe and North Africa, with a bias towards the younger generation. Focusing on a series of case-studies from the colonial world of the western Mediterranean, it asks what 'Phoenician' and 'Punic' actually mean, how Punic or western Phoenician identity has been constructed by ancients and moderns, and whether there was in fact a 'Punic world'.
Brief description: Nicholas C. Vella is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta. His research interests are varied and include the historiography of antiquarianism and archaeological practice in the Mediterranean, later Mediterranean prehistory, and Phoenician and Punic ritual practices. He has co-edited Debating Orientalization (2006) with Corinna Riva, and has recently published another collection of essays on the Maltese Bronze Age with Davide Tanasi. He supervised the University of Malta excavations at the Phoenician sanctuary site of Tas-Silġ in Malta between 1996 and 2005, and has co-edited the final report that is forthcoming with Peeters (Leuven). He co-directed the excavations of a small Punic shrine in Gozo (Malta) between 2005 and 2010, and is co-director of a field-walking project in Malta.
Review Quotes: '... the work coordinated by Quinn and Vella contributes brilliantly to the deconstruction and reformulation of 'Punic' (and 'Phoenician') identities through concepts - heterogeneity, connectivity, fluidity, negotiation, local agency and hybridism.' Manuel Álvarez Martí-Aguilar, Antiquity