User guidelines and FaQ
The GREPURE project aims to overcome an old vision of intercultural relations among the different shores of the Mediterranean with the objective of better understanding the extent of the contacts between Phoenicians, Punics and Hellenes throughout the Aegean Sea. In fact, this research program aims to move away from the traditional view that tends to consider a deep division between the eastern and western Phoenician spaces, on the one hand, and the territories occupied by the Hellenic populations, on the other. It is true that the city-states of ancient Greece have on numerous occasions opposed the communities belonging to the Phoenician and Punic culture. Various episodes of war and military confrontations bear witness to these oppositions and clashes, events of which the ancient sources have transmitted to us a somewhat distorted, if not truly exaggerated, vision.
In order to improve our scientific knowledge of ancient times, it is essential to be able to build up a solid documentary base founded on the latest advances in Archaeology and History. This fundamental objective requires a profound renewal of historical documentation, using the most recent tools. The first goal, in our case, concerns the revision of the already existing documentation, as many of the excavations carried out in Greece took place before the development of Phoenician and Punic archaeology. Nowadays, new classifications and increasingly sophisticated techniques allow us to accurately identify the provenance of many objects from the past, as well as to better establish their chronology of production and use. The GREPURE project team aims at four main material sources: ceramics, coins, metal and glass objects, and, finally, epigraphic marks. Each of these sources of information allow us to lift the veil on specific aspects of the relationship between Greeks and Phoenicians. As such, the study of each of these categories of materials benefits from the expertise of one of the researchers associated with the project.
The data obtained by our team, whether from field missions in Greece or from a review of Greek documentary collections, are displayed on this website. In the end, the research activities of this project intend to study at least 75 archaeological sites, from both terrestrial and marine contexts, connected with the Greek world in the Aegean. For each of these sites, the database on our website presents different sets of archaeological materials, organized by chronological range and category, illustrating the state of the contacts established between the Phoenician and Punic population, on the one hand, and the Hellenic cities-state around the Aegean Sea, on the other. These data are presented here in the form of Data Sheets, redacted as scientific notes and published in PDF format available to users of the site. These documents can be consulted and downloaded through the Map page. As this is a public research program, no content is or can be commercialized and all data is freely accessible.
Our team does not pretend to be able to collect all the available documentation on this topic, as we are sure that there are other archaeological materials that could contribute to the scientific objectives of our project. Therefore, we invite every member of the academic world, agent of heritage institutions or individual to contribute to the GREPURE project.
If you wish to publish sets of Phoenician or Punic materials connected with the Aegean world, you can download our sample empty archive and submit your document to us. Each author of a Data Sheet must have authority over the published material, and each file will be signed by its author as any scientific document, benefiting also from a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), an identifier that makes each document eligible for academic referencing. After review and validation by the scientific and editorial committee of GREPURE, each file will be uploaded to our database and published on the website, free of charge and with free access to the public.
We hope that the results obtained by the GREPURE project will motivate many other colleagues and heritage managers to publish their archaeological data with us, as well as help to reach a better understanding of the ancient world.
