6533b831fe1ef96bd12982da

RESEARCH PRODUCT

The first colonization of Ibiza and Formentera (Balearic Islands, Spain): Some more islands out of the stream?

subject

description

Abstract The Balearic Islands, off the east coast of Spain, have provided a focus of interest in investigations of the earliest colonization of the Mediterranean islands, because of the relatively late date of their oldest sites. Mallorca was visited in the fifth millennium BC and inhabited by the third, and Menorca was colonized during the closing centuries of the third millennium; this therefore makes Ibiza and Formentera special cases of isolation, since they were evidently not occupied until about 2000 BC and moreover were essentially deserted between roughly the thirteenth and seventh centuries BC. The paper presents all the currently available data relevant to this question, particularly the results of excavations and surveys conducted in recent years, with the aim of placing this apparently special case in a wider context and presenting some explanatory hypotheses about the isolation of both islands.