The Late-Punic Amphorae as Reflections/ Actants: an Example of Contribution of the Symmetrical Archaeology to the Analysis of Artifacts?

The development of the Symmetrical Archaeology has recently offered new insight regarding the study of artifacts, not only in archaeology but also in others fields of the social sciences. However, although this theoretical perspective has provided a relevant framework for (re)connecting “humans and things”, some question have been raised regarding the modalities of such relations. This contribution aims to offer some answers to these issues, by analyzing the production and diffusion of the Late-Punic amphorae – a group of specific ancient containers from the Late Republican era (2nd c. – 1st c. BC) –from an interdisciplinary perspective. The confrontation of these empirical data with a wide conceptual framework leads us to propose a more detailed definition with respect to how and why humans and artifacts are interconnected, as it outlines the interest of the symmetric approach in performing a more common archaeological interpretation.