Elusive Phoenicians: Perceptions of Phoenician identity and material culture as reflected in museum records and displays

This project aims to investigate the part played by different historical and modern perceptions of Phoenician culture and identity in the presentation and interpretation of what is (and has been over the last 100-150 years) regarded as Phoenician material culture in different Mediterranean and European museums. Given the chequered history of perceptions of Phoenicians in different national and intellectual contexts from antiquity until relatively recently, it seems likely that perspectives on what constitutes objects of Phoenician material culture will also have varied from place to place and from time to time. The research is based on an appreciation of accounts of, and attitudes to, Phoenicians from antiquity onwards, which have undoubtedly fed into more modern European views. This is gained from key ancient (Greek, Roman and Biblical) sources, as well as more modern (especially 19th and 20th century) European writings, both literary and archaeological/historical. The core of the research focuses on museum displays and records pertaining to Phoenician material culture. Museum displays and archives are investigated to see what is identified as Phoenician, why it is identified as such, and how it is interpreted, as well as whether views of what is Phoenician have changed over time. The project therefore focuses on interpretation aspects at the level of the museum, tracking mappable trends, at the level of the labelling tracking stereotypes, and at the level of artefacts tracking stylistic definitions of the term Phoenician. It lays these patterns against the literary perceptions, showing the importance of contextuality within the framework of defining and interpreting Phoenician identity.