A decade of fieldwork in westernmost Sicily has revealed a previously unnoticed pattern: high quantities of North African artifacts in virtually all periods, from the Paleolithic to the present day. From prehistoric stone tools, to Carthaginian amphoras and Roman finewares, to the soda bottles of contemporary migrants, a picture emerges of a deep and enduring localized connection between Sicily and Tunisia.  In this talk, Emma Blake (Ph.D. University of Cambridge),  presents the material traces of Tunisian influence in western Sicily from two field surveys and a new excavation, and explores the significance and nature of those complex interactions across the Sicilian Channel.  

About the speaker: Emma Blake is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is Editor-in-Chief (with Robert Schon) of the American Journal of Archaeology. Blake is a Mediterranean archaeologist, focusing on identity construction in Italy in the second and first millennia BCE. She is the author of Social Networks and Regional Identity in Bronze Age Italy (Cambridge University Press 2014), as well as numerous articles. She has conducted fieldwork in western Sicily for many years and directs an archaeological field survey tracing the extent of Tunisian influence in western Sicily in all periods. She is co-directing new excavations at the ancient city of Segesta, Sicily.