An interesting debate has developed over the last fifteen years on the historical value of Greek colonization in the West, which today tends to be defined as "pretended". We have once again gone through the stages of the debate, which sees on the one hand revisionists, decidedly reluctant to acknowledge the historicity of colonization, and on the other, specialists who defend tradition, while recognizing the need to update the debate according to better-defined historiographical categories. From the critique of nominalism, which is based on the conventional and anachronistic definition of colonization (so there is in fact no Greek colonization, but an apoikismòs), we moved on to the far more serious problem of the relationship between archaeology and history. We started from the conclusions of the 50th Colloquium of Studies on Magna Graecia (Taranto 2010), and from recent positions, such as that of Michel Gras in 2012, which gives a historiographical approach to mobility, migrations and the founding of Greek settlements. J. Hall expressed another point of view in his essay on Foundation Stories (2008). Irrespective of his views on the colonial phenomenon in general, which are up for review, it seems to me that Hall is right when he asserts that archaeology is the only contemporary source of the event or events behind the ktisma. Consequently, the archaeological exegete has a central role to play in the investigation of this phenomenon, and it is necessary to arrive at clear formulations that go beyond pure empiricism. In this way, archaeology can be protected from the accusation, recently made, that it is subservient to literary sources. It is important that the study of the material dimension of problems progresses iuxta propria principia, without contamination or Combinatorics effects.
We have therefore taken a purely archaeological approach to the problem, without taking into account the relationship with the sources, with the foundation stories and with all the details that tradition has given us. These data must be subjected to critical evaluation, not accepted without discussion.
