Local Responses to Colonization in the Iron Age Mediterranean

Book excerpt: The Iron Age is one of the most dynamic periods of Mediterranean history, with unprecedented material and ideological exchange between its various populations, facilitated by Greek and Phoenician overseas settlements. This book explores the responses to these colonies by populations in North Syria, Sicily and North Africa, areas where Greeks and Phoenicians were in competition with one another via the same local communities, as seen in material culture. No study to date has brought together such a breadth of data to compare responses to colonization during the Iron Age in the Mediterranean. This work highlights the diversity of interest displayed by local populations in these foreign cultural offerings, and charts their selective adaptation, modification and reinterpretation of Greek and Phoenician goods and ideas over time as their own cultures evolve.