Phoenicians and Greeks in the Iberian peninsula between the 9th and the 8th centuries BC.

The commercial agreement between the Phoenicians and Euboeans started in the Aegean and the Near East from the 11th century onwards. It was consolidated in the central Mediterranean as early as the 9th century as confirmed by the recent investigations at Utica and by the study of the oldest Greek pottery found in Sardinia. Regarding the Iberian peninsula, the discoveries made in the historic centre of Huelva, the ancient Onoba, have forced a revision of the times and means of the Greek and Phoenician presence in the Atlantic, extending the first contacts with the local population to the 9th century BC. The chronology of the end of the 9th - early 8th centuries BC have been confirmed by the foundation of Gadir, in the Bay of Cadiz, and the coastal settlement of La Rebanadilla, near Malaga, where ships from the eastern Mediterranean restocked before the difficult crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar. In these contexts indigenous and Phoenician materials predominate, flanked in lesser numbers, by Greek, Cypriot Sardinian and sometimes Tyrrhenian Italian pottery. Investigations have shown both the strategic role that Sardinia played in the connections between the eastern Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula and the active participation they played in the commercial traffic organised by Tyre and directed towards the rich metal deposits of the Huelva region. Although gravitating within the orbit of the powerful Phoenician city, trade with Spain was characterised by the varied nature of the imported materials from the main production centres of the Levantine coast, from Greece, Cyprus and other areas of the central Mediterranean.