To date, Rome’s intervention to the West from the mid-second century BC has not really been looked at with any sense of overview. Instead, there has been an unconnected series of micro-regional studies looking at particular areas, from the river Ebro in Spain round to Italy on the land front, and from the Balearic Islands to Corsica, Sardinia and even Sicily as regards the seaborne aspect. In contrast, the aim of this volume is to push the historical and archaeological debates about Rome’s expansion beyond these traditional geographical boundaries and the discipline-based previous research. The entire north-western Mediterranean is treated as a micro-region and is addressed using various interdisciplinary approaches. The result is to provide an innovative and comprehensive overview of the north-western Mediterranean in a period of historical crossroads, aided particularly by focusing on the connectivity and integration within this region as two interrelated issues. While Republican Rome enforced itself as an expansive power towards the West, all sorts of polities, military operations and individuals also played a significant role in creating interconnectivity and integration of the north-western Mediterranean into a new hybrid reality. In order to uncover such processes of hybridisation, contributors to this volume were encouraged to focus on the historical, archaeological and numismatic material from several areas within the region, and to incorporate aspects of interdisciplinary methodologies in order to address the region’s military, political, social and economic interconnections with Italy, Rome and each other within the overall period.

• Cover page
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: The Agency of Integration and Connectivity in the North-Western Mediterranean
• Rome, Italy and the West
  • 1 Rome and the Western Mediterranean (150–70 BC): Empire and War
  • 2 Non-Roman Coins in Italy: The Influence of Western Connections (3rd–1st centuries BC)
  • 3 Military Connectivity between Romans and Non-Romans in the West
  • 4 Transactions, Trading Practices and Structures in the Western Mediterranean: The Impact of Roman Hegemony
  • 5 Ligurians, Gatekeepers of the West 197–118 BC
• Hispania Citerior and Transalpine Gaul
  • 6 Initial Indications of a Roman Presence East of the Pyrenees: A Possible Transition Zone between Gaul and Iberia in the Late 3rd and Early 2nd Centuries BC
  • 7 Numantia. A Green and Pleasant Land. Not Once the Romans Arrived!
  • 8 Trading Networks in Transalpine Gaul before and after the Conquest of 125 BC
  • 9 Late Iron Age Iberians from Coastal North-Eastern Hispania and Rome
  • 10 Late Iron Age Iberians and Rome in the Segre Valley (North-East Hispania): Transformation and Integration
  • 11 Tolosa Tectosagum: A Wide-Ranging Connectivity Hub between Transalpine Gaul, Aquitania and Hispania Citerior
  • 12 Coinage from North-East Hispania Citerior and Rome, c. 150–70 BC
  • 13 A Fistful of Denarii. Coinage, Conquest and Connectivity in Southern Gaul (c. 150–c. 70 BC)
• Seaborne Connectivity
  • 14 Shipwrecks and Trade in the North-Western Mediterranean during the 3rd and 2nd Centuries BC: The Sea as an Agent of Connectivity
  • 15 Emporion and its Port during the 2nd Century BC
  • 16 Exploring the ‘Cultural Revolution’ in Ancient Sicily between Hellenisation and Romanisation: A Reassessment
  • 17 Between Carthage and Rome: Artisans, Businessmen and Colonists in Roman Republican Sardinia (150–50 BC)
  • 18 Rome and the Political Dimension of Piracy in the North-Western Mediterranean
  • 19 Between Traders and Pirates. Connectivity in the Balearic Islands from the Second Punic War to the Mid-1st Century BC
  • 20 Rome and the North-Western Mediterranean: Ports-of-Call and Sea Routes
• Epilogue
  • 21 The Roman and Italian Economic Diaspora as a Factor of Connectivity between Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean, 150–70 BC
  • 22 A Message in a Bottle Crossing the North-Western Mediterranean
• Index
• Backcover