Mobile identities in the melting pot of the Strait of Gibraltar: Bailo, the “Libyophoenician” cities and the Lusitanians

Abstract

 The comparative analysis of the funerary practices of the Silla del Papa hill fort (Tarifa, Cadiz, Spain), identified as the site of the city of Bailo, opens up new perspectives for understanding the ethnic and identity processes in which the Strait of Gibraltar was immersed between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. Although Bailo is one of the misnamed 'Libyo-Phoenician' cities that minted coins with bilingual Latin and Neopunic legends, its necropolises reveal rituals and forms of organisation far removed from Phoenician-Punic traditions. Nor can they be satisfactorily related to what is known of Iberian, Turdetanian or Libyco-Berber funerary customs, but they have close similarities with certain cemeteries in the Baeturia Turdula and, further north, in the Vetton area. This observation leads us to explore the hypothesis of a close relationship of Bailo and other 'Libyo-Phoenician' cities with the Celtic Meseta and more particularly with the Lusitanian-Vetton sphere, on the basis of written sources, numismatics, epigraphy and archaeology. We suggest that the 'Libyo-Phoenician' mints are not the result of a Punic foundation programme involving the transfer of African population but, on the contrary, the consequence of the installation of Lusitanian and Vetton groups in Baeturia and the Straits area, channelled and controlled by the Barcids in the second half of the 3rd century as part of their mercenary recruitment policy. The revitalisation of this network of cities from the mid-second century onwards took place through the prism of a Punic self-representation, although the data now available tell us of another reality, hybrid and complex, in which the Lusitanian or Celtic component occupies a hitherto unsuspected place.