This unique collection of essays contains a synthesis of recent works by distinguished archaeologists and historians in their field, illuminating extensive research in the Southern Gaul and on the territory of the Greek city of Marseille. Investigating the occupation of Massalia territory before the foundation of the Greek city to the Roman period, these findings provide an overview of the diverse issues behind the circulations between Greeks from Phocaea and Celtic populations. This reflection on a key region of the Euro-Mediterranean space rests on the analysis of archaeological findings, including: urban excavations, spatial studies, analysis of necropolis, submarine remains, paleo-environmental data, and reviewing the ancient literary documentation. These new and innovative findings in Greek Marseille and Mediterranean Celtic Region will be of particular interest to both students and scholars exploring the political, economic and cultural fields of relationships between the Greek migrants and the populations they started to meet at the end of the seventh century BC.

As far back as 600 B.C., long before the Romans, cities such as Marseilles, Antibes, Nice, and Monte Carlo were founded by settlers who emigrated from mainland Greece and the older Greek colonies of the Ionian coast in Asia Minor. Tracing the history of Provence and the French Riviera back to its earliest roots, Trevor Hodge gathers together the evidence for this far-flung outpost of ancient Greek civilization. Starting with a survey of Phocaea, the Ionian metropolis, Ancient Greek France follows the settlers' fleet overseas to Provence and the foundation there of Massalia-modern Marseilles. Subsequent chapters outline Massalia's topography, archaeology, history, economy, politics, and culture. The book provides site-by-site commentary on the other, later Greek colonies along the Mediterranean coast between Ampurias, in Spain, and Monaco, and a study of the Celts of inland Gaul and their relations, both commercial and cultural, with the Greek colonists. Hodge assesses the characteristics and achievements of Massalia, and considers the place it held in the Greek imagination. A readable, original contribution, this book will appeal to scholars and students of ancient history, archaeologists, general readers, and travelers interested in the south of France.

The archaeologist-author of The Ancient Celts provides an in-depth account of the fourth-century B.C. expedition of Pytheas, a Greek explorer who traveled from the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseille) to the distant lands of northern Europe, including Britain, Denmark, and, possibly, Iceland.

This book presents a theoretically informed, up-to-date study of interactions between indigenous peoples of Mediterranean France and Etruscan, Greek, and Roman colonists during the first millennium BC. Analyzing archaeological data and ancient texts, Michael Dietler explores these colonial encounters over six centuries, focusing on material culture, urban landscapes, economic practices, and forms of violence. He shows how selective consumption linked native societies and colonists and created transformative relationships for each. Archaeologies of Colonialism also examines the role these ancient encounters played in the formation of modern European identity, colonial ideology, and practices, enumerating the problems for archaeologists attempting to re-examine these past societies.

In addition to Phoenician, Greek, and Latin, at least four writing systems were used between the fifth century BCE and the first century CE to write the indigenous languages of the Iberian peninsula (the so-called Palaeohispanic languages): Tartessian, Iberian, Celtiberian, and Lusitanian. In total over three thousand inscriptions are preserved in what is certainly the largest corpus of epigraphic expression in the western Mediterranean world, with the exception of the Italian peninsula. The aim of this volume is to present the most recent cutting-edge scholarship on these epigraphies and on the languages that they transmit. Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach which draws on the expertise of leading specialists in the field, it brings together a broad range of perspectives on the linguistic, philological, epigraphic, numismatic, historical, and archaeological aspects of the surviving inscriptions, and provides invaluable new insights into the social, economic, and cultural history of Hispania and the ancient western Mediterranean. The study of these languages is essential to our understanding of colonial Phoenician and Greek literacy, which lies at the root of their growth, as well as of the diffusion of Roman literacy, which played an important role in the final expansion of the so called Palaeohispanic languages.

With the decline in popularity of the term “Romanization” as a way of analyzing the changes in the archaeological record visible throughout the conquered provinces of the Roman Empire, scholars have increasingly turned to the important concept of “identity” to understand the experiences of local peoples living under Roman rule. Studies of identity in the Roman Empire have thus emphasized how local peoples, rather than simply passively copying Roman culture, actively created and recreated complex and multi-faceted identities that incorporated local traditions within the increasingly connected and “globalized” world of the empire. How did the violent nature of Roman rule in the provinces impact local communities and the ways in which individuals interacted with one another? This book provides a detailed study of the ways in which the Celtic-speaking peoples of the ancient settlement of Lattara in Roman Mediterranean Gaul fashioned their lives under two centuries of Roman rule,and in particular the ways in which the creation of these lived experiences wasentangled in the larger processes of Roman colonialism. The important archaeological settlement and port of Lattara (located today in modern Lattes in Mediterranean France), was occupied from ca 500 BCE to 200 CE, and has been the focus of extensive excavations by international teams of archaeologists for over 35 years. The author seeks to understand the ways in which the daily lives of the inhabitants of Lattara were shaped and constrained by the particular historical circumstances of Roman rule, involving the violent conquest of the province between 125-121 BCE, the pacification of numerous revolts in the in the first half of the first century BCE, and the imposition of an oppressive system of taxation, land redistribution, and grain levies. Through a detailed analysis of the large corpus of archaeological evidence dating from ca. 200 BCE to 200 CE at Lattara, the author argues that the violent establishment of Roman rule in Mediterranean Gaul engendered very different forms of social relationships and interactions that structured the community during the late first century BCE and onward. This involved a new organization of domestic space and living arrangements, new relationships structuring the production and exchange of material goods, different relationships between the community and the wider spiritual world, and new strategies for acquiring political influence and power, based upon the increasing importance of material wealth. All of this occurred by the very end of the first century BCE despite the continued persistence of many aspects of local identity, particularly evident in religious practices. Furthermore, these new social relationships were arguably paramount in the daily practices of reproducing Roman rule at Lattara, and in the larger province of Mediterranean Gaul more generally; practices that were in particular rooted in an ever-increasing socio-economic hierarchy.