Patterns of Imports in Iron Age Italy

This study centres upon a database of some 50,000 examples of imported material in the Italian peninsula, Sardinia, and Sicily dating from approximately 800 to 500 BC, which has been constructed in order to study the beginnings of trade with this region. Fletcher's conclusions tackle a few sacred cows - that metals were the items which lured people westward to trade, and that primacy in this early trade fell to the Phoenicians.