A Fresh Approach to Seaborne Trade and Maritime Connectivity Between the Levant and the Aegean in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods
Résumé
Previous studies have highlighted the existence of intense trading activities between the Levant and the Aegean throughout the Classical and Hellenistic periods. However, the available material evidence concerning these commercial connections is still quite limited and most of the
academic literature is based on written sources and epigraphic finds. Our contribution aims to provide a new set of archaeological data and, on that basis, to review the current hypotheses on the post-Archaic Levant-Aegean interactions. In fact, several documents allow sketching an innovative picture regarding the economic and trading networks that developed linking the Levantine coast, some Aegean islands and mainland Greece. Epigraphic data illustrate the presence of “Phoenician” communities who lived (and died) in various Greek cities. Additionally, several unpublished finds from key underwater contexts and an exceptional Levantine and Punic amphorae assemblage found in the southeastern Aegean (off the coast of Levitha Island) provide fresh data on the consumption of Phoenician wine in the Classical and Hellenistic Aegean. By confronting these historical sources, a connection between these commercial relations with specific historical circumstances is proposed, and also the most likely design of the
main maritime routes is explored. The paper examines the continuity of the connectivity and mobility of people and goods from the 5th to the 3rd centuries B. C. In any case, the evidence studied in this paper can be considered just as the tip of the iceberg of a quite larger amount of similar unpublished finds that still need to be studied and integrated within the conventional historical narrative.
Domaines
Archéologie et Préhistoire
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