María Eugenia Aubet Semmler

María Eugenia Aubet Semmler (30 April 1943 – 18 February 2024) was a Spanish archaeologist and historian. A professor of prehistory and founding director of the Archaeology Laboratory at Pompeu Fabra University, she was considered a pioneer of Phoenician and Punic archeology in Europe.

Biography María Eugenia Aubet Semmler was born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1943. She attended the University of Barcelona, graduating with a bachelor's in ancient history in 1969 and a doctorate in history in 1970. The Catalan government also supported her work on Mediterranean prehistory and archeology. Other significant projects included her 1991 research on Tartessian cultural exchange and mechanisms of social transformation during the Atlantic Bronze Age and the Orientalizing period; her work as co-director of research on the Phoenicians in the Nerja area, also in 1991; explorations of colonial commerce in the Mediterranean in the 8th–6th centuries BCE, which she conducted in 1991–1993 and 1994–1997; and various excavations and studies on Phoenician–Punic cultural contact and colonialism, from 2000 to 2008.

She also worked on various projects to coordinate research around the Mediterranean. From 1994 to 1997, she directed the European Union's Med-Campus "Odysseus" research exchange program, focusing on Phoenician archaeology, which connected experts in Barcelona, Beirut, Cyprus, Tübingen, Cagliari, and Malta.

Selected works

Tiro y las colonias fenicias de occidente (1987) Los fenicios en Málaga (1998) La colonización fenicia de Occidente: estado de la investigación en los inicios del siglo XXI (2002) Comercio y colonialismo en el Próximo Oriente Antiguo: los antecedentes coloniales de III y II milenios a.C. (2007) Tiro y las colonias fenicias de Occidente (2009) La necrópolis fenicia de Al-Bass. Informe preliminar de la campaña de excavaciones de 2008–2009 (2015)