Origines of the Phoenician Colonization in the Western Mediterranean and the Kingdom of Tartessus. The State of the Problem
Blasques Martinez J.-M.
The author presents a historiographical survey of the problem of the Phoenicians' commercial and colonial activity on the Iberian Peninsula, of their contacts with Tartessos and its allies, the Greeks. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the modern approaches to the problem of the so-called Phoenician pre-colonization, as well as to the geography, the essence, local peculiarities and the scope of Phoenician influence on the Iberian Peninsula. According to the author, the greatest achievement of the last decade is connected with the introduction of the term «Tartessization» and with defining the civilization of Tartessos as a variant of local culture which sprang up and existed on the vast territory in the South Pyrenean Peninsula from Alicante in the east to the Atlantic coast in the west under various influences of eastern and western Phoenicians in the 8th-7th centuries ВС. An important part belonged also to the process of acculturation supported actively by the indigenous elites.