The Sea Peoples in Sicily, Sardinia and Etruria: A Reexamination of the Archaeological and Textual Evidence in Light of Recent Research

The Shardana, Shekelesh, and Teresh, some of the tribes of "Sea Peoples" known from their raids on Egypt during the reigns of Merneptah (1212-1202 BC) and Ramesses III (1182-1151 BC), have been associated with the Tyrhennian regions of Sardinia, Sicily, and Etruria. Originally, these connections were based primarily on etymological and philological reasoning, but there is now significant archaeological evidence of links between the western and eastern Mediterranean beginning with the Late Bronze Age. Ross Holloway discusses much of this material in his monograph Italy and the Aegean 3000-700 BC (19081), while Miriam Balmuth has expounded the evidence for Sardinia for more than a decade, most recently in a lecture at last year's ASOR meeting and in her edited volume Studies in Sardinian Archaeology III (1987).

In this paper I will show that not only is there significant archaeological evidence from the Late Bronze Age for eastern Mediterranean contact with several centers in the west, but that communication continued even after the period of destruction that is so evident in mainland Greece, Anatolia and the Levant. I suggest that some of the Tyrhennian regions do in fact owe their names to the Sea Peoples, but only in the context of Phoenician prospection, mercantilism and ultimately colonization which maintained this contact between east and west. I will also review several recent translations of Hittite, Ugaritic and Egyptian texts which shed new light on the travels of the Sea Peoples, and support my conclusion that just as the Peleset surely gave their name to Palestine, so did other groups give theirs to other lands.