This volume, containing 16 chapters in English and French, is dedicated to
Jean-Paul Morel. It is in two parts: 'Greeks and Celts in Provence and
Languedoc before Roman Rule' and 'From Etruria to the Black Sea'.
The
first part, on Greeks and Celts in southern France, demonstrates the
vitality of archaeological research and the new discoveries and new
methodological approaches it has fostered: excavations and surveys,
geomorphological and paleo-environmental studies have shed new light on
the evolution of indigenous cultures and relations between Celtic
communities, Greeks and others, studied in their geographical and
historical contexts. Massalia's domination of the coast began in the
Archaic period but was firmly established only three centuries later,
after the Second Punic War. Old theories of a general and regular
Hellenisation of the whole region must be discarded once the complexity of
relations between Celts, Greeks, Etruscans and Ibero-Punic communities is
brought into focus.
The second part looks at Demaratus of Corinth and
the Hellenisation of Etruria, recent research at Apollonia Pontica, the
urbanism of Histria, the prosopography of the Greek cities and native
peoples of the northern Black Sea, and various scenes depicted on pottery,
their interpretation, and the interpretation of pottery itself.
The
book is amply illustrated.