Phoenician Networks in the Mediterranean from Greece to Iberia, ca. 700-500 BCE
FAIN: FA-232741-16
Carolina López-Ruiz
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)
A book-length study on the impact of Phoenician traders and colonists in the Mediterranean region during the late Iron Age, from about 700-500 BCE.
Between the eighth and early sixth centuries BCE, flourishing cultures from Greece, Italy, and Iberia engaged in a process of contact and adaptation of Near Eastern styles and technologies known as the "orientalizing" phase or "orientalizing revolution." These include tangible as well as non-material cultural capital (literacy among them). The Phoenicians in particular, in their mercantile and colonial expansion in this period, were crucial agents in this story of encounters, offering and exploiting the "oriental" models of the urban, sophisticated, complex societies of the Near East. This novel monograph will offer the first systematic, comparative treatment of this transformative period across the Mediterranean, focusing on the process through which Iron Age societies entered the first transnational cultural and economic network. It will also call into question our stark, artificial historical division between "classical" and Semitic cultures and their respective civilizing roles.
Associated Products
The Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean: A View from Tartessos,” Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology, Brown University (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean: A View from Tartessos,” Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology, Brown University
Author: Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
Abstract: This talked discusses my research on the Phoenician cultural impact in the western Mediterranean as well as the issues regarding the orientaliizng phenomenon across the Mediterranean and the Phoenicians' role in impulsing this process, an agency which is often overlooked by classicist and art historians.
Date: 10/5/2016.
“Phoenician networks from the Aegean to Iberia: rethinking the ‘orientalizing’ Mediterranean,” American University of Beirut (Department of History and Archaeology), Lebanon (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Phoenician networks from the Aegean to Iberia: rethinking the ‘orientalizing’ Mediterranean,” American University of Beirut (Department of History and Archaeology), Lebanon
Author: Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
Abstract: Discussion of the role of the Phoenicians in the spread of Near Eastern culture throughout the Mediterranean from the Aegean to Iberia, during the co-called "orientalizing period" (8th-7th centuries BCE). Discussion of methodological porblems regarding the interpretation of this process in different countries and disciplines (Classics, western Mediterranean archaeology)
Date: 10/20/2016
Occidentalism, or Why the Phoenicians Matter: Scholarly Approaches to Cultural Contact in the Mediterranean (ca. 800-600 BCE),” Society of Classical Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Occidentalism, or Why the Phoenicians Matter: Scholarly Approaches to Cultural Contact in the Mediterranean (ca. 800-600 BCE),” Society of Classical Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto
Author: Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
Abstract: Discussion of methodological problems regarding the interpretation of Phoenician presence and the "orientalizng phenomenon" in different countries and disciplines (Classics, western Mediterranean archaeology).
Date: 1/6/2017
The Phoenicians and the ‘Orientalizing’ Mediterranean: a View from Tartessos,” 2017 Octopus Lecture, Oxford Centre for Phoenician and Punic Studies, Oxford, (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: The Phoenicians and the ‘Orientalizing’ Mediterranean: a View from Tartessos,” 2017 Octopus Lecture, Oxford Centre for Phoenician and Punic Studies, Oxford,
Author: Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
Abstract: This talked discusses my research on the Phoenician cultural impact in the western Mediterranean as well as the issues regarding the orientaliizng phenomenon across the Mediterranean and the Phoenicians' role in impulsing this process, an agency which is often overlooked by classicist and art historians.
Date: 3/29/2017
We Need to Talk about the Phoenicians,” conference on “The Connected Iron Age: Interregional Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean, 900-600 BCE,” University of Chicago (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: We Need to Talk about the Phoenicians,” conference on “The Connected Iron Age: Interregional Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean, 900-600 BCE,” University of Chicago
Author: Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
Abstract: This talk discusses the disciplinary positions in which the Phoenicians are deconstructed as a sort of fiction created by the classical (Greco-Roman) sources, and presents a case for the cohessiveness of their culture and their agency as cultural transmitters in the Iron Age Mediterranean.
Date: 1/13/2018
“Greek Literature and the Lost Legacy of Canaan,” in J. Aruz, ed. From Assyria to Iberia. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017, 316-21. (Book Section)Title: “Greek Literature and the Lost Legacy of Canaan,” in J. Aruz, ed. From Assyria to Iberia. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017, 316-21.
Author: Carolina Lopez-Ruiz
Abstract: This book chapter discusses the porblems with our study of the Phoenician legacy in the Iron Age Mediterranean as we do not have literary sources from this culture, but can reconstructe their legacy through archaeological and comparative evidence, which shows their important role in the spread of Near Easetrn culture.
Year: 2017
Publisher: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean (Book)Title: Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean
Author: Carolina López-Ruiz
Abstract: Imagine you are a traveler sailing to the major cities around the Mediterranean in 750 BC. You would notice a remarkable similarity in the dress, alphabet, consumer goods, and gods from Gibraltar to Tyre. This was not the Greek world―it was the Phoenician. Based in Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and other cities along the coast of present-day Lebanon, the Phoenicians spread out across the Mediterranean building posts, towns, and ports. Propelled by technological advancements of a kind unseen since the Neolithic revolution, Phoenicians knit together diverse Mediterranean societies, fostering a literate and sophisticated urban elite sharing common cultural, economic, and aesthetic modes.
The Phoenician imprint on the Mediterranean lasted nearly a thousand years, beginning in the Early Iron Age. Following the trail of the Phoenicians from the Levant to the Atlantic coast of Iberia, Carolina López-Ruiz offers the first comprehensive study of the cultural exchange that transformed the Mediterranean in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Greeks, Etruscans, Sardinians, Iberians, and others adopted a Levantine-inflected way of life, as they aspired to emulate Near Eastern civilizations. López-Ruiz explores these many inheritances, from sphinxes and hieratic statues to ivories, metalwork, volute capitals, inscriptions, and Ashtart iconography.
Meticulously documented and boldly argued, Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean revises the Hellenocentric model of the ancient world and restores from obscurity the true role of Near Eastern societies in the history of early civilizations.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674988187Secondary URL:
https://www.amazon.com/Phoenicians-Making-Mediterranean-Carolina-López-Ruiz/dp/0674988183/ref=asc_df_0674988183/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=509360428262&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=14877520084986680190&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&Publisher: Harvard University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0674988183