This paper examines the Greek Geometric pottery recovered during the Tunisian excavations by the Heritage National Institute at Utica. Skyphoi decorated with various motifs and dating to the Subprotogeometric IIIb/Middle Geomtric II and Late Geometric I periods represent the most common shape analysed by Neutron Activation Analysis. In the first place, the contexts where these pottery finds were used and deposited are placed under scrutiny. Following a typological examination, the study treats the use of these wares in their local context in association with handmade ceramics and pottery imported from other regions such as the eastern Mediterranean and Sardinia. The emphasis is thus put on the diversity of drinking and eating habits that indicate the multicultural nature of the first Phoenician community of Utica.

The importation of an ensemble of Greek Geometric pottery found in the city of Huelva (south-west Spain) has been attributed to Phoenician trade. Conversely, thousands of Archaic ceramics of both Aegean and local origin must be linked to the establishment of Greeks and the allusions of ancient sources to the emporion of Tartessos. This article explores the domestic, ritual and other social contexts of that pottery’s use at that multicultural site.

The epigraphic documentation in the Phoenician language of the island of Cyprus makes it possible to approach the exploration of the semantic field of the force (’z) in the conceptual universe of the Phoenicians. Gods ‘of strength’ appear in inscriptions commemorating victories, both at Kition and at Larnaka-tis-Lapithou. Baal and Anat are discussed: the profession of war is not a male prerogative in the world of the gods. Strength is also present in the world of men: anthroponomy conceals a few names, albeit not many, constructed using the root ‘zz ‘to be strong’. At the same time Anat, Resheph, Baal and Mikal, gods present in the Phoenician context of Cyprus with also (but not only) warlike attributes, are implicated in the formation of anthroponyms, most of the time without reference to weapons and shields, if they are only those who serve their worshippers to face the daily battles from the delicate moment of birth onwards.

This chapter discusses the Table of Nations pattern and the motif of the ethnic groups issuing from the offspring of the Flood hero in both biblical lists (Gen 10) and Greek genealogical traditions. In striking contrast to both biblical literature and Greek genealogical traditions, the Mesopotamian Flood hero is not the father of a new lineage, but rather leaves this world to live among the gods, and his descendants are not heard of again.

Northern Greece is much less well known than regions further south, and the Black Sea area is rarely referred to in works about historical economies. Despite this lack of modern curiosity about the region, its importance in economic terms cannot be underestimated. The southern parts of what is now Ukraine and Russia were one of the great bread baskets of the ancient Mediterranean, and merchants from various Greek islands, and coastal cities of the Aegean, shipped foodstuffs (wine, olive oil, nuts, fish products) in the opposite direction. Surviving written and archaeological evidence offers a very broadbrush picture of these relations. Inscriptions and graffiti from a limited number of exporting, recipient, or transshipment centres (notably Kallatis, Methone, Olbia, Pistirus, Thasos, Pantikapaion), give more detail and nuance, as well as pointing towards dimensions of these economic relations that have not fed back into the dominant economic models. The economic power of some players, notably Byzantium and Pantikapaion, as well as rulers of inland states, including Thrace, and cities of the Hellespontine Straits and Bosporus, deserve greater recognition. Lead letters and contracts, as well as commercial graffiti, also provide important data on the infrastructure of trade.

This chapter traces a path across the Mediterranean in locating the sites where Greek, Semitic (in particular Phoenician) and native populations interacted, the author’s premise being that ‘the literary and mythological entanglements, for the most part, followed the human entanglements’. Starting from the same Mount Hazzi or Jebel al-Aqra (here called Mount Saphon, by its Semitic name) and crossing first to Crete and from there to Iberia, López-Ruiz draws attention to Near Eastern Storm God narratives that are less well-known than the Song of Emergence but that similarly shaped Greek mythological and cultic conceptions of Zeus: these historically less successful narratives tend to furnish the Storm God with a fuller life cycle, including birth, journeys in maturity, and even death.