[Book review] In search of the Phoenicians by Josephine Crawley Quinn

Abstract

There is not the least doubt that Josephine Crawley Quinn’s book is a masterpiece of scholarship at its very best, both in the way that it is written and with respect to the vast and precise documentation that is extremely wide-ranging. The scope of the precious references is as broad as could be, including classical authors, ancient near eastern scholarship, Mediterranean archaeology, numismatics, and modern and contemporary literature in the fields of anthropology and sociology. There is an excellent balance between the primary and secondary sources, and the comprehensive Bibliography vouches for this. The book is also very well produced with very few misprints, such as those on pp. 143 and 145 that readers can spot for themselves, and it is also very well illustrated (with only illustrations 8.5 and 8.6 that perhaps stand in need of further elucidation).