van Dommelen & Bellard/Rural Landscapes, 8. Agrarian Landscapes and Rural Communities

This chapter provides a comparative discussion of Punic rural settlement in its wider western Mediterranean context. It discusses similarities and differences in the archaeological evidence and settlement patterns of the Punic regions. Moreover, it considers the agrarian background of rural settlement in order to gain an insight into the agrarian and regional organisation of the rural landscapes. The involvement of Carthaginian colonial expansion in these processes is further analyzed, as well as the social realities of peasant life and agrarian production in the Punic world.