Colonisation? Imperialism? Provincialisation? – Resources between Conflict and Integration in the Phoenician-Punic West during the 1^st Millennium BC

Project B05 examines the socio-cultural dynamics triggered by the Phoenician expansion from the Levant into the western Mediterranean during the 1^st mill. BC in the target regions of this process. In the beginning the project’s focus was on the formative phase (10^th to 6^th cent. BC) of West-Phoenicia newly created by numerous settlements in North Africa, on Malta, Sicily, Sardinia and on the Iberian Peninsula. During this period Carthage developed into a more and more dominating power for the Punic settlements in the West. Now the centre of our interest is on the period when Carthage had achieved hegemonic power (6^th to 2^nd cent. BC) in this region. The basic archaeological data from Punic centres and their hinterland – amongst others from ongoing collaborative field research at Carthage, Pantelleria and Solunt – is analysed with the help of the methodological inventory of SFB 1070. The most important questions are: How would it be possible to identify a postulated hegemony of Carthage? How would it affect the western Punic settlements that had been founded in the formative phase? How does the use of resources and the establishing of ResourceComplexes change under the Carthaginian domination? What are the tangible aspects of the West Mediterranean, Punic influenced ResourceCulture in comparison to contemporaneous processes in Classical and Hellenistic Greece and the Italic/Roman world?

Fieldwork in the wadi of the Oued Miliane, south west of Carthage, is supplementing the sparse database for the Carthaginian hinterland. This region, exceedingly fertile and rich in raw-materials, in Roman time belonged to the province Africa Proconsularis was and one of the most densely inhabited parts of the Roman Empire. In all likelihood it was developed by Carthage already from the 4^th cent. BC onward. Archaeologic surveys and sondages are tracing this process of spatial development.