Phoenician Identity in Context: Material Cultural Koiné in the Iron Age Levant (original) (raw)
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Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies Volume 11/2-3: 366–372, 2023
The past five years have witnessed a plethora of publications devoted to the Phoenicians and their impact on the Mediterranean world. Three recently published books are critiqued in this review. Two monographs, authored by Hélène Sader and Meir Edrey, examine the history, archaeology, and identity of the Iron Age inhabitants of Phoenicia. These publications are especially significant as they fill a void in Phoenician studies—a field that in the past tended to focus on Phoenician influence outside the Levantine homeland. The third book, by Carolina López-Ruiz, explores the impact of the Phoenicians on cultural exchange and the spreading of their “orientalizing kit” westward, which transformed much of the Iron Age Mediterranean world during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.
This research deals with the economic and commercial Phoenician networks during the early Iron Age in the southern Levant. Optical Mineralogy (petrography) analysis was conducted on a large scale on three categories of early Iron Age ceramic vessels. The first category includes transport and storage vessels, mainly pithoi, jars, and small lentoid flasks; the second category comprises Phoenician decorated ware, namely Phoenician Monochrome and Phoenician Bichrome; and the third category are open vessels of various types selected as a control group in order to better understand local fabrics and technological aspects of productions in the different sites. Lastly a unique assemblage of Egyptian imports from Tel Dor offer an addition view of relation of Egypt and Phoenicia during this period. Vessels for analysis were collected from both Phoenician and non-Phoenician sites: the Phoenician sites include Tel Achziv, Tell Keisan and Tel Dor. Non-Phoenician sites include Tel Dan, Tel Rehov, Tel Megiddo ‛En-Haggit, Tell Qasile and Nahal Patish in the Negev; altogether, about 450 vessels. In general, three main petro-fabric groups were identified that represent ceramic production centers on the Phoenician coast: petro-fabric group A is produced in sites along the coast between Haifa and Achziv; petro-fabric group B originated on the southern Lebanese coast between Tyre and Sidon; and petro-fabric group C represents the Carmel Coast. Three main commercial circles of Phoenician involvement in trade were identified in the early Iron Age. The first one is the inner Phoenician circulation of ceramics between Phoenician sites along the sea routes of the Levantine coast. Movement of Phoenicians transport vessels of various types were identified up and down the coast: this includes mainly carinated jars and Phoenician decorated wares. The second commercial circle is characterized by overland trade between the Phoenician coastal centers and sites that fall within their immediate hinterland. Vessels made in Phoenicia, especially small lentoid flasks and Phoenician decorated ware found deep inland and southwards in the land of Philistia. The Phoenician Carmel Coast shows a particular connection with the Jezreel Valley and the southern Lebanese coast shows ties to Rehov and Dan. The realization of this close connection is solidified in the local production of Phoenician Bichrome ware in the Jezreel Valley and Dan in the northern Hula Valley. In reciprocity, transport vessels, mainly oval jars of inland production travel to the Phoenician coast. In addition to that, jars of various types (but not carinated) were found to travel from Philistia and the Sharon Coast to Phoenician sites especially during the 10th century BCE; this is the first time this phenomenon is identified. The third commercial circle is the traffic that existed between the Phoenician coastal cities and their old political master, now turned large consumer, Egypt. In the void left by retreating Egypt at the end of the 12th century, the Phoenician marinners step-in, building and negotiating a large multi-leveled commercial network, with themselves in the center. These networks in the so-called Dark Age of the 11th to early 9th centuries BCE mark the beginning of the Phoenician's market economy.
The Southern Levantine Roots of the Phoenician Mercantile Phenomenon
BASOR, 2022
I propose here a new way to look at the process through which, following the Bronze Age collapse and culminating in the second half of the 9th century B.C.E., polities in south Lebanon became the most important Levantine commercial hubs in the Mediterranean and the main patrons of the so-called Phoenician expansion. My approach differs from others dealing with the Phoenician question in that its definitions are not projected from a yet-to-happen "Phoenician" phenomenon in the West. It is an archaeological bottom-up diachronic approach and considers the entire Levantine coast and not Lebanon only, which is traditionally considered the Phoenician homeland. I argue that what may be termed the earliest Phoenician mercantile maritime ventures, in the early Iron Age, were launched mainly from the Carmel Coast and were directed mainly toward Egypt. Gradually this phenomenon expanded geographically, a process that can be followed closely. It was stimulated and conditioned mainly by the effects of Egypt's withdrawal from Canaan, by the Late Cypriot IIIA collapse, by the slow recovery of the Syrian coast in the early Iron Age, and by environmental factors. The paper synthesizes several decades of research on Mediterranean issues, mainly in connection to Tel Dor on Israel's Carmel Coast.
Lehmann, G. 2021, The Emergence of Early Phoenicia. Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 1: 272-324.
The transition from the Iron Age I to the Iron Age IIA during the 10th century BCE was a period of profound political and socioeconomic transformations in the Levant. One of these developments was the emergence of early Phoenicia. In its course, Phoenicia emanated as an interface of international exchange connecting Mediterranean and continental economies of the Levant (for the latest synthesis examining Phoenicians see Sader 2019). This had a profound impact on the societies of the Southern Levant in general and ancient Israel in particular. Phoenician influence was not just marginal for the history of ancient Israel but developed into an integral component of Israelite economic and political history.
FLASHY SHINING PEOPLE: THE ILLUSTRIOUS PHOENICIANS AND THEIR LUSTROUS TEXTILE PRODUCTION
Elena Soriga, 2022
Though to a limited extent, the Near Eastern textual records as well as the Greco-Roman sources testify the great importance of textiles and fabrics in the Phoenician and Punic economies and societies, production, trade and religion. Despite to that, in the study of these civilisations and their relationship with the world of the fibres, the scholars have focused their interest mostly on the purple dye. 1 The fame of the ancient shellfish dyestuff on the one hand and the more abundance of direct evidences − provided by the increasing progresses reached by the archaeology, the malacology and the ancient textiles studies in the last four decades − on the other, may help to explain this gap. Unfortunately, the huge mass of information supplied by the economic and administrative texts from the cuneiform and Linear B archives, useful to understand the complexity and value of the Eastern Mediterranean textile technology during the Bronze Age is not equally available for the Phoenicians who inhabited the Levant since the early Iron Age. For instance, the epigraphic data from the tablets of Ebla, Mari, Amarna or Ugarit, extracted from various sources (mainly economic, literary and epistolary texts) provided a wide textile terminology able to shed light on the range of raw materials and tools, the typology of the finished products, the specialisation of the craftsmen involved, the worth of the commodities, the use and the value of some specific textile items and colours. The present paper aims to expand the knowledge on the Phoenician textile production from the production and trade of the sea-purple to other textile raw materials and commodities, by releasing it from some commonplaces and from that has been ironically defined la serie di brevetti fenici "the set of the Phoenician patents", a collection of primacies traditionally accorded to the Phoenicians. 2 A better contextualisation of the historical source from the Graeco-Roman and Near Eastern world dealing with textiles connoted as "Phoenician" might indeed be able to enlarge the range of textile products to connect to this civilisation. Particularly, this contribution will be addressed to analyse the attestation of bright dyestuffs traditionally considered as qualities of purple and their use in the manufacturing of multicoloured shining textiles. That could also provide a new interpretation of the etymological link between the exonym "Phoenician" and the textile business carried out by this Levantine people.
Canaanite Roots, Proto Phoenicia, and Early Phoenicia: ca. 1300-1000 BCE_by Ann E. Killebrew_2019
The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean Edited by Brian R. Doak and Carolina López-Ruiz, 2019
The origins and ethnogenesis of a cultural entity, people, and territory referred to as "Phoenician" in later biblical and Classical sources and modern scholarship remain a topic of debate. This chapter examines the textual and archaeological sources relevant to the northern and central Levantine littoral during the Proto- (Late Bronze) and Early (Iron I) Phoenician periods (ca. fourteenth-eleventh centuries BCE). What emerges out of the ruins of the Late Bronze Age is a resilient Early Iron Age coastal culture centered on the commercial interactions of maritime city-states, which survived the demise of the Hittite and Egyptian empires, as well as the collapse of international trade at around 1200 BCE. Autochthonous Canaanite traditions dominate Iron I Phoenician cultural assemblages, but intrusive Aegean-style "Sea Peoples" and Cypriot influences are also present. Together they reflect the dynamic interplay of maritime cultural and commercial exchanges characteristic of the northern and central Levantine littoral during the final centuries of the second millennium BCE.