Los primeros fenicios en Tartessos

Abstract

The recent archaeological findings in the city of Huelva have supposed an important turn in the investigation on the first contacts of the Phoenicians in the Iberian Peninsula, now dated in the last years from century X a.n.e. This circumstance allows us to consider a fluid commercial relation between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, through Straits of Gibraltar, before which until now it was possible to be defended. Nevertheless, in some areas of the interior of the peninsular southwest objects and cultural manifestations of clear Eastern origin are detected previous to the Phoenician presence in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, which takes to us to propose a route of continental penetration previous to the Phoenician colonization from the south-east French, where some products of clear Cypriot origin would be introduced, case of the found ones in some deposits of the Portuguese Beira or the represented ones in the stelae of warrior. After the Phoenician colonization of the peninsular southwestern coast a territory of more or less homogenous culture will be formed that the Greeks denominated Tartessos, and that must be understood as the amalgam arisen between the powerful original culture of the Eastern Mediterranean introduced by the Phoenicians and the native, of Atlantic origin.