Fingere l'identità fenicia: confini culturali e cultura materiale in Oriente

This paper is focused on the topic of the Phoenician identity in the Levant paying special attentionto the history of studies and to the perspectives of a new research. The Phoenician identityis discussed here as an "ideal type" (using Max Weber's words). First of all, we try to adopt somemethodological notions issued from anthropology: the identity concept has been recently deobjectivizedand consequently the supposed concrete features of the Phoenician identity nowbecome less signiicant in the historical reconstruction. Moreover, we suggest here that a specialattention has to be paid to the study of "boundaries" (their continuous creation, transformation,negotiation). Finally, we discuss the contribution possibly provided to the question of identity bythe study of the "pottery boundaries" in the Levant.