Ricerc@Sapienza

In several articles published between the end of the 60s and the 70s, Anna Maria Bisi dealt with the style of Phoenician painted pottery in the colonies in a specific way. The scholar recognizes the complexity and the importance of the historical and cultural issues related to the study of this ceramic class, and her remarks are current still today. In particular, she stressed the wide contribution of the Cypriot and the Hellenic decorative tradition into the formation of the West Phoenician figurative repertoire. Both scholars identified the beginning of the Western tradition with the diffusion of the Red Slip Ware, as this was – at that time – more consistent with the chronological timeline of the Phoenician colonization. Recent discoveries, however, have raised this colonial scenario and have allowed to recognize the earlier presence of Bichrome Ware inspired productions in the West, which point to a date of Phoenician expansion between the 10th and the 8th century BC.