Unraveling the Western Phoenicians under Roman Rule: Identity, Heterogeneity and Dynamic Boundaries.

Abstract

It has become increasingly clear that during the first millennium BC, southern Iberia, later to be known as the Roman Baetica, constituted from an ethnic point of view a dynamic and complex reality, resulting from successive political, social and cultural changes. This paper intends address the question on the integration of Phoenician communities in Iberia into the Roman empire, focusing on identity and cultural issues during the process. Graeco-Roman sources speak of an early and qualitative integration of these communities into the Roman structure, despite the strong ‘Phoenician-Punic component’ reflected in the archaeological record, both in the Cadiz bay and in the Guadalquivir valley, at least until the beginning of the first century AD. Joining this evidence with a revision of the classical texts, suggests that the strategies of integration and identity construction of the Phoenician communities of southern Iberia after the Roman conquest were not necessarily reduced to an imitation of ‘Roman ways’. On the contrary, these communities may have experienced a reinforcement of ‘Phoenician ways’, although not as a contradiction, but as a ‘Phoenician way of being Roman’. Phoenicians were very much aware of their ancient and prestigious past and may have articulated a new collective identity, in order to face the tensions brought on by the Roman conquest.