The ethnic identity of the Philistines and their relationship to Greece, Cyprus, Anatolia, and the Sea Peoples continues to be a very lively and interesting area of scholarly debate. This contribution reviews recent work on general categories of cultural interaction with regard to the east Mediterranean including colonisation, migration, and cultural diffusion. The relationship between these categories of interaction and the formation of cultural identity such as creolization, hybridity, assimilation, and acculturation is also considered. An argument in favor of transculturalism, multivocality, and long-term approaches to the formation of cultural identity is then proposed.