Persistenze, cambiamenti e identità etnico-culturali nelle necropoli della Sardegna della prima età punica

Between the 6th and the 4th century B.C., the island of Sardinia became a site of a significant migration from Western North Africa, due to the conquest of the island by the growing Carthaginians. This conquest brought a profound and significant change to the material culture of the island, developed in a few decades after the conquest . In this paper, through an extensive study and reinterpretation off all available data surrounding the mortuary rites and the funerary world in the first century of the Punic presence in Sardinia, we tried to list the most important features in the funerary world of Punic Sardinia, underlining what has changed and what was persisting after the Punic colonization; then we attempted to explain how is possible to recognize in the necropolis, elements concerning cultures that were not Punic, such as the North-African and Berber cultures, and the significant differences and gaps between the necropolis and the communities of the island: differences and gaps which are possibly suggesting the existence of ethnic and cultural peculiarity. This study shows a complex and varied cultural reality in Sardinia, revealing indigenous and foreign identities, covered by apparently a homogeneous Punic material and funerary culture.