Send Gift Baskets to Huelva, Spain

Until the 1980s and 1990s, the mainstream view was that Huelva was primarily an autochthonous Tartessian settlement (even the same Tartessos mentioned in Greek sources). Still, some later pictures tended to emphasize a multiethnic enclave mixing natives with peoples mainly of Phoenician and later Greek descent. As a result of the (unsystematic) discovery of Phoenician archaeological materials in Méndez Nez-Las Monjas, the Phoenician presence chronology was reevaluated. Despite the tentative identification of Huelva with Tartessos not being discarded, the evidence suggests Huelva-Onoba was a very early Phoenician colony that developed in parallel with a sure “dismantling” of the idea that Tartessos was a mostly autochthonous archaeological culture. Tarshish was also identified as the biblical city.

In terms of local Phoenician presence, the first contacts have been dated back to 1015 and 975 BCE. However, remains such as those found in the Méndez Núñez-Las Monjas go so far as to likely prove a Phoenician settlement of the 9th century BCE, especially to resemble a founding date of a Tyrian settlement from the reign of Ithobaal I between 875 and 850, although the Méndez Núñez-Las Monjas’ items have also been brought forward to consider a 10th-century BCE chronology in the era of Hiram I (c. 975–950). Eteocypriots, Cypriot Phoenicians, and Sardinian Phoenicians may have joined the continental Phoenicians at the outpost.

Silver, copper, purple dye, salted fish, and other Phoenician exports were made possible by its function as a Phoenician outpost and a transit point between the Northern Atlantic, Southern Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. The Assyrian subjugation of the Levant resulted in economic crisis and social unrest resulting in a significant increase in population starting in the mid-8th century BCE.