Greeks and Phoenicians in the Western Mediterranean 335have learned to deal with objects from every angle, dynamically and in the context of
interactions (production, practical and symbolic use, staging, transmission, and so on) in
order to “think with the object,” rather than to treat them statically and merely as items to
be classified (Boissinot 2011). The polymorphous concept of identity that archaeologists
face (that is to say, in an extra-linguistic context and based on material remains) is still
useful and, in fact, necessary, but, to borrow Philippe Boissinot’s example, the identity
of a body found in a tomb as defined by archaeologists based on a series of indices is not
the same thing as the identity of the person who lived, died, and was buried in that tomb.
The relations between Greeks and Phoenicians were, during the first centuries of their
cohabitation, of a commercial nature. Corinthian and proto-Corinthian ceramics are
present in considerable quantity at Phoenician sites in Sicily, just as, inversely, objects
of Phoenician manufacture have been found in Greek funerary contexts in eastern
Sicily, such as at Syracuse and Messina. In the archaic necropolis of Milazzo, Phoenician
amphoras used to transport foodstuffs were reused as funerary vessels. Ethnic markers
are thus mixed up, and the fluidity of uses runs counter to any neatly bounded “nation-
al” logic. Even when the political relations between Phoenicians and Greeks become
conflicted, funerary practices remain fluid. The vast Punic necropolis of Palermo,
whose apogee lies between the sixth and fourth centuriesBC(Di Stefano 2009), shows
that Punic material (ceramics, jewels, weapons, and so forth) lies beside Greek wine
amphoras, as well as Corinthian and Attic perfume vases, and so on. Furthermore,
inhumation and incineration coexist there. The indigenous necropoleis confirm the
porosity of usages and symbolic practices. The Sicanian tombs of Gela’s hinterland,
for example (Panvini 2008), also contain luxury items, in particular small faience vases
oralabastron-type vases of colored glass, which are certainly of eastern manufacture
and which were imported to Sicily by Greek colonies acting as intermediaries, notably
Gela and Akragas, both Rhodian colonies. An identical scenario holds for certain
sanctuaries of the same region dating from the sixth to the fifth centuriesBC. In fact,
typically, “oriental” products (ceramics, glass, jewels) are found in funerary contexts
and with indigenous votives (e.g., at Vassallaggi), alongside lekythoi, kraters, or other
black-figure and red-figure Attic vessels, as much as with locally manufactured items.
It is usual to see here objects acquired by indigenous élites, male and female, eager to
display, in accordance with a certain eclecticism, their rank, their wealth, and indeed
their social prestige. These trends continue until the third and second centuriesBC,
and involve Phoenician objects produced both in the East and the West, with possible
Aegean intermediaries, such as Rhodes or Cyprus. Some Sicanian centers, such as
Vassallaggi, even provided redistribution of Phoenician luxury items to other, smaller
indigenous centers. One must conclude, finally, that the data from the material culture
does not allow us in any way to map the presence of given “ethnic” groups. Instead, it
confirms, on the one hand, the existence of complex commercial distribution networks
that are “mixed” from the start (witness the acculturation of Rhodian artists by their
Phoenician “masters”), and, on the other hand, the functioning of social strategies
of the appropriation of exogenous symbols of power, refinement, and prestige. Often
discovered in secondary contexts, namely funerary contexts, these objects, however, in
all likelihood, originated in settings associated with social practices connected to luxury
and aristocratic sociability, such as the banquet, for which there are models in both the
Near Eastern monarchies and archaic Greece.