Phoenician Red Slip Ware in Ibiza. An overview

The presence of the Red Slip Ware is usually considered as a clue of an early settlement in the Western Mediterranean of peoples coming from the Levant, as this pottery spread over the central and western Mediterranean from the early stages of the Phoenician colonization. The presence of Red Slip Ware in Ibiza followed a little different trajectory: because of the strong similarities of the local RS repertoire to that of South Iberia, it has been proposed that the Phoenicians settled in Ibiza and founded the colony of Sa Caleta (650 BC) didn9t come from Levant, but from the centers of the southern coasts of Spain. These centers had at that time, a flourishing economy: the constitution of another trade port in the Balearic Islands would have followed the expansion of the trade routes of the Phoenician centres in Andalusia. The abandonment of the settlement of Sa Caleta in the first quarter of the 6th century and the establishment of the port-city and the necropolis in the bay of Ibiza (600 BC) talks about another stage of the history of the Phoenicians in Ibiza, evidenced by the appearance of locally produced Red Slip vessels.