To date, Rome's intervention to the West from the mid-2nd century BC has not really been looked at with any sense of overview. Instead, there has been an unconnected series of micro-regional studies looking at particular areas, from the River Ebro in Spain round to Italy on the land front, and from the Balearic Islands to Corsica, Sardinia and even Sicily as regards the seaborne aspect. In contrast, this volume pushes the historical and archaeological debates about Rome
size=2>'s expansion beyond these traditional geographical boundaries and the discipline-based previous research.

The entire north-western Mediterranean is treated as a micro-region and is addressed using various interdisciplinary approaches. The result is to provide an innovative and comprehensive overview of the north-western Mediterranean in a period of historical crossroads, aided particularly by focusing on the connectivity and integration within this region as two interrelated issues. While Republican Rome enforced itself as an expansive power towards the West, all sorts of polities, military operations and individuals also played a significant role in creating interconnectivity and integration of the north-western Mediterranean into a new hybrid reality. In order to uncover such processes of hybridisation, contributors to this volume were encouraged to focus on the historical, archaeological and numismatic material from several areas within the region, and to incorporate aspects of interdisciplinary methodologies in order to address the region's military, political, social and economic interconnections with Italy, Rome and each other within the overall period.

Toni Ñaco del Hoyo is an ICREA Research Professor in Ancient History (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies) currently based at Universitat de Girona. He is a Roman Republican historian interested in warfare in Iberia and the Hellenistic east, crisis management, taxation, international relations and war-peace studies. Jordi Principal is Curator of the Classical Collection at the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona). His research interests are pottery studies and the archaeology of the Roman Republican army, including directing fieldwork and excavation projects, such as those at El Camp de les Lloses and relating to the Battle of Emporion. Mike Dobson is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. His research area is the history and archaeology of the Roman Republican army and the Roman military installations of that period in Spain, with particular focus on the campaigns against Numantia.