The Southern Levantine Roots of the Phoenician

Mercantile Phenomenon

AYELET GILBOA

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 Leb-
anon 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 Car-
mel Coast.

Keywords: Phoenicia; Iron Age; Mediterranean exchanges; maritime trade; networks; Levant;
Carmel Coast; Tel Dor; Phoenician pottery; silver; Third Intermediate Period

tionist views of Phoenicians as a “people” with some sense

W
ho and what were the Phoenicians? Tradition-
ally they are seen as a people whose origins lie
along the northern Levantine coast, mainly in
Lebanon. They were renowned for their far-flung cross-
Mediterranean ventures, including the establishment of “co-
lonies” as far as the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa,
for their trade in metals (especially silver), their purple
production, their skilled craftsmanship and their role in
transferring various technologies and know-how to Eu-
rope, including the West Semitic alphabet, the production
of silver by cupellation, olive cultivation, and more (Aubet
2001; Mielke and Torres Ortiz 2012; and new comprehen-
sive overviews in Elayi 2018; Edrey 2019; López-Ruiz and
Doak 2019; and Sader 2019). However, rather deconstruc-
Ayelet Gilboa: Zinman Institute of Archaeology and School
of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, University of Haifa,
99 Aba Khoushy Ave, Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel;
agilboa@research.haifa.ac.il
of self-ascription has recently been promoted by various
scholars, such as Josephine Crawley Quinn (2018: 61, 65)
and Rebecca Martin (2017, an art-historical study). The lat-
ter went as far as suggesting that Phoenician consciousness
(and art) emerged only from about the 5th century B.C.E.
(pp. 96–97). Both scholars, however, dealt mainly with pe-
riods later than the Iron Age―the focus of this paper. Fur-
ther, Quinn was concerned mostly with the Phoenician
West and generally did not consider the timespan preceding
the 10th century B.C.E. (see p. 66).1
Within the framework of the big Phoenician question
this paper is very particular in scope. The “Phoenician
Process” I illustrate here is my view of the process through
which polities in south Lebanon became the most impor-
tant Levantine commercial hubs in the Mediterranean and
spearheaded one of the most complex mercantile phenomena
1
I totally agree with Martin (2017: 96) that the catastrophic out-
comes of the Babylonian conquest of the Levant would have rendered
identities before and after this event quite different.

Electronically Published February 23, 2022.

Bulletin of ASOR, volume 387, May 2022. © 2022 American Society of Overseas Research. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago
Press for ASOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/718892
32
in the early history of the region—the so-called Phoeni-
cian expansion to the West—following the Late Bronze
(LB) Age collapse and culminating in the second half
of the 9th century B.C.E. I focus on the Levantine begin-
nings of what one might call the Phoenician phenomenon
and mainly on questions of “what” rather than “who.” I do
not deal here with Phoenician civilization writ large, nor
with questions of ethnogenesis or identity, though I do com-
ment briefly on the latter toward the end of the paper. This is
a post-Braudelian narrative (cf. Concannon and Mazurek
2016). Environment certainly has a crucial part to play, but
its heuristic advantages are hampered if aspects of histoire
événementielle and human agency are not considered (cf.
Monroe 2018: especially p. 262).
Among the latest syntheses examining the Phoenicians,
Hélène Sader’s The History and Archaeology of Phoenicia
(2019) is especially relevant to the current paper since she
too concentrates on the Levant, for which her summary
is currently the most comprehensive and up to date, and
in her analysis, she also attempts to avoid cultural attributes
that are irrelevant for that region. But though Sader’s work
is inter alia innovative in that it makes allowance for the
“Phoenician” implications of developments in the South-
ern Levant, she does not, to my mind, follow this convic-
tion far enough.2 This is what this paper attempts to do―to
narrate an early Phoenician process that fully integrates the
Southern Levant.3
Chronological and Geographical Scopes
The first question to be asked is when a Phoenician be-
ginning might be sought. Two main views prevail in this
regard. One advocates a beginning in the 3rd millennium
B.C.E., with the foundation of the first coastal urban poli-
ties in the Levant (e.g., Harden 1971). Alternatively, most
scholars “launch” the Phoenicians in the 12th–11th centu-
ries, after the upheavals that terminated the Bronze Age
around the Mediterranean (e.g., Elayi 2018: 7). This is the
view adopted in this paper, since the lion’s share of the
phenomena and attributes I invoke in order to define
Phoenician-ness are not in place before the Iron Age; I
thus begin my investigation ca. 1150 B.C.E. As a lower limit
I set the second half of the 9th century, since I argue that
during that time the Southern Levant ceased to play any
significant role in the Phoenician process as defined below.
2
Similarly, Carol Bell (2016) acknowledges the importance of Dor
for Phoenician trade issues and devotes a generous part of this paper
to this site, but when she writes “Phoenicia” she still means Lebanon
only.
3
Written by an archaeologist who works and lives on the Carmel
Coast, I leave it to the readers to appreciate what measure of disposition
this has introduced into my interpretation.
GILBOA BASOR 387
The relative chronology employed in this paper is based
on stratigraphic and ceramic developments at several sites
in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, first and fore-
most at Tel Dor. The time span ca. 1150–830 B.C.E. has
been divided into seven sub-horizons named at Dor LBǀIr,
Ir1a early and late, Ir1aǀb, Ir1b, Ir1ǀ2, and Ir2a; the symbol ǀ
denoting transition. This schema was first suggested in
Gilboa and Sharon 2003, and a slightly amended version
with an updated radiometric chronology was recently pre-
sented in the frontispiece to Gilboa et al. 2018 (chart 1).
Though the precise dates of all these horizons are not es-
sential to this paper, the very ability to follow processes with
detailed chronological resolution is one of its underpin-
nings. Here I refer to this entire span as the early Iron Age.4
Regarding geographical extent, I deal mainly with the
coastal area stretching from the Sharon/Carmel Coast in
the south (today in central-northern Israel) to the Tyre–
Sidon region (today in southern Lebanon), along with their
hinterlands (Fig. 1). This definition does not stem from any
written records regarding Phoenicia/ns, since all of them
are much later than the period I examine (summaries, for
example, in Amadasi Guzzo 1995, Aubet 2001: 6–70, and
Sherratt 2010, as well as in the introductory chapters to
the aforementioned books) and therefore, as I argue below,
immaterial to this discussion. Rather, it was deduced empir-
ically and encompasses those sites and regions where I sug-
gest a “Phoenician process” may be defined.5
Generally, this paper contends that an examination of
the Phoenician phenomenon in the early Iron Age from a
broader Levantine perspective (i.e., not only Lebanon) that
is more specific (namely, that considers the roles of specific
polities) and with more nuanced chronological resolution
leads to new insights.
Phoenicians in the Levant: The Development
of Some Traditional Arguments
Regarding Phoenicians in the Levant, scholarship dis-
plays a rather schizophrenic view. On the one hand, it is
widely agreed to the point of almost being a cliché that the
application of the term Phoenicia/n to this region before
the Persian period is very problematic and rather meaning-
less. This is so due to several reasons.
1. As is well known, the term derives from Greek and
Latin sources, the earliest of them being Homer in the
4
In this paper, however, sometimes several horizons are telescoped
in order to avoid unnecessary details. My “early Iron Age” grosso modo
equals the period called Iron Age I by Francisco Núñez Calvo (e.g.,
2014) based on the Tyrian, mainly al-Bass sequence, and followed in
Sader 2019. Núñez Calvo, however, did not offer sub-divisions for this
long period.
5
For the same region as a unit for analysis regarding Late Bronze Age
maritime interactions, see recently Martín-García and Artzy 2018: 98.
2022 THE SOUTHERN LEVANTINE ROOTS OF THE PHOENICIAN MERCANTILE PHENOMENON 33

Fig. 1. Maps of the Levant and the East Mediterranean with main sites, regions and geographical features mentioned in the text. (Map by S. Matskevitch)

8th century B.C.E. and they refer to people operating away
from the Levant.
2. In the territory scholarship traditionally refers to as
Phoenicia, namely Lebanon, for the most part there was
no political unity, neither throughout the Iron Age nor
in later periods, other than possibly a short period when
Tyre and Sidon may have been united under one king (re-
cently, Bunnens 2019).6 As a rule, the cities of Lebanon
acted independently politically, militarily, economically
6
Jacob Katzenstein, however (1973: 224), argued for a much longer
unity for Tyre and Sidon―almost the entire 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E.
34 GILBOA
and in rivalry, and mostly worshipped different municipal
deities (Xella 2019), but very little information regarding
these issues antedate the later Iron Age, mainly through
Assyrian records.
3. Archaeological media and phenomena customarily
associated with Iron Age “Phoenicians” (often occupying
extensive parts of introductory books and exhibition cata-
logs on the Phoenicians) are mostly unknown in Lebanon
in the Iron Age and even in later periods (e.g., tophet sanc-
tuaries, elaborately carved ivories, metal bowls, jewelry,
traded silver; see detailed critique with references in Sader
2019: 175–80; cf. Feldman 2014). Other cultural traits usu-
ally identified as Phoenician either occur only after the early
Iron Age (e.g., cremations)7 or are hardly known, or not
well-enough defined prior to the 9th century B.C.E. (e.g.,
linguistic and epigraphic affinities, and glyptics),8 or are
equally known in other parts of the Levant, such as ashlar
construction (Sharon 1987, 2009) and purple dye produc-
tion, discussed below. Thus, a trait list approach proves
difficult (cf. Lyman and O’Brien 2003).
On the other hand, scholars across the board (myself
included) continue to employ this epithet for the Levant
in the Iron Age. In the past this has usually been done un-
critically, but more recently this problem is reflexively ad-
dressed in all discussions of the Phoenicians (Sommer 2010;
Martin 2017: 20–22; Monroe 2018; Lehmann 2019; and
Sader 2019: xii–xiii, 2–8 are just a few examples). Here too,
the usage of this term does not imply that I defend its rel-
evance for the Iron Age Levant (on the contrary). But, as
one reviewer of this paper put it, I am having my cake and
eating it too. I decided not to forgo “Phoenician,” since it
is necessary to underscore the link I suggest between pro-
cesses in the Southern Levant in the early Iron Age and, for
example, Tyrians settling in Gadir in the late 9th century B.C.E.
Dates for the earliest Phoenician settlement activity in
the west Mediterranean are slowly starting to converge to
ca. the last third of the 9th century B.C.E. in several sites in
north Africa (Docter et al. 2008), Iberia (Aubet 2008; Tor-
res Ortiz 2008; Pappa 2010; Gener Basallote et al. 2012;
Aubet-Semmler 2019), and possibly Sardinia (Rendeli 2014)
and Kition in Cyprus (Iacovou 2014b); see general discus-
sion in Gilboa 2013.9 It is evident that this activity was
7
With possible and currently unverified exceptions at Tyre al-Bass
(Sader 1019: 48).
8
For the branching off of the Phoenician scripts from “Proto-Canaanite”
in the early 9th century B.C.E., see Sass 2005: fig. 1 and references to previ-
ous studies. For more traditional and higher views, ca. 1000, e.g., Amadasi-
Guzzo 2019: 200; for late Iron Age glyptics, see, e.g., Avigad and Sass 1997
and Boschloos 2012, 2014. One would be hard put to define, for example,
what early Iron Age Phoenician glyptics look like.
9
Claims have been made that (generally unstratified) remains at
Huelva, at Plaza de las Monjas, and at 3 Concepción St. indicate Phoe-
nician presence in Iberia in the 10th century B.C.E. (González de Canales,
BASOR 387
spearheaded by Tyrians and Sidonians. This was once de-
duced mainly from Greek, Latin, and Old Testament texts,
most of them later than the Iron Age (see references above),
and numismatic data, but more recently has also been ar-
gued on archaeological grounds (e.g., Peckham 1998; Fletcher
2004; Mederos Martín and Ruiz Cabrero 2011). Particularly,
Francisco J. Núñez-Calvo (e.g., 2013) demonstrated that in
several sites the West-Phoenician pottery repertoire was de-
pendent on the Tyrian one.10
Regarding the centrality of Tyre in modern scholarship,
two particular Roman-era works should be highlighted here.
Plinius (Hist. Nat. 9.60) declared that the Tyrian purple was
the best available in Asia, and about a century later Julius
Pollux preserved the much-cited legend of how Herkules’
dog discovered the purple-snail on the beach at Tyre. These
texts established an everlasting bond between Levantine/
Phoenician purple-dye production—one of their most em-
blematic products—and specifically south Lebanon.
Consequently, some scholars indeed single out Tyre’s
specific role within the Phoenician mercantile and com-
mercial phenomenon (most explicitly in Aubet 2000, 2001;
Aubet-Semmler 2019; Álvarez Martí-Aguilar 2019), though
the undifferentiated “Phoenician” epithet is infinitely more
common.
Because of the primacy of Tyre (and, to a lesser extent,
Sidon) in scholarly perception regarding the Iron Age, the
next step was understandable: Phoenicia (sometimes the
Phoenician homeland/motherland) is usually equated with
Lebanon (most recently Elayi 2018), and oftentimes implic-
itly or explicitly with southern Lebanon, where Tyre and
Sidon (and other sites such as Sarepta and Tell Burak) are
situated. Most importantly for the concerns of this paper, the
Phoenicia5Lebanon equation was extended, uncritically, to
include the 300 years or so of the early Iron Age.
While evidence for south Lebanese mercantile ventures
is well attested in the later Iron Age (see more on this be-
low), archaeological evidence of any sort for early Iron Age
Phoenician activity has always been extremely scarce. The
almost exclusive evidence cited repeatedly is the presence
of the renowned Phoenician Bichrome containers in 11th–
9th B.C.E. Cyprus, generally assumed to be Tyrian, and thus
Serrano, and Llompart 2006; González de Canales et al. 2017), but these
dates are highly debatable and some scholars do not support a chronol-
ogy for Huelva that is higher than the 9th century B.C.E. (Gilboa 2013
with references; Aubet-Semmler 2019: 75). Recently it has also been sug-
gested that 14C determinations from a well in Utica, Tunisia, support a
Phoenician presence there in the 10th century B.C.E. (López Castro et al.
2020), but these data are very preliminary.
10
It should, however, be borne in mind that ceramics of the Tyre-
Sidon region, especially of the former site, are much better known than
any other coastal region immediately north or south of it, thus introduc-
ing some measure of bias (see detailed summaries of the data of the rel-
evant sites in Sader 2019).
2022 THE SOUTHERN LEVANTINE ROOTS OF THE PHOENICIAN MERCANTILE PHENOMENON
epitomizing early Tyrian commercial ventures—the first step
on the trail leading west—and, some would even say, evi-
dence of Phoenician colonization (references in Gilboa and
Goren 2015: 80: nn. 27–30).11 A consensus was born: after
the Late Bronze Age collapse, only Phoenician (i.e., Leba-
nese) sites survived the Sea People assault on the Levant.
Among the latter, the Philistines, Shardana, and Sikila dev-
astated and then settled down from the northern Negev to
about the Rosh Ha-Niqra/Ras an-Naqura Ridge (the so-
called “ladder of Tyre,” Fig. 1), corresponding today to
the Israel/Lebanon border (Stern 1990; Stager 1995; Bell
2016; Elayi 2018: 91). North of this region, life continued
as usual, as evidenced by the lack of destruction layers ter-
minating the LB at Tyre and Sarepta, apparently also at
Sidon (Doumet-Serhal 2021–2022), and the absence of “Sea
People ceramics” in Lebanon.
Yet another near-consensus contributed to this recon-
struction, namely that generally speaking Phoenicians in
Iron Age Lebanon equal, or are leftovers, so to speak, of
the Bronze Age Canaanites.12 According to this view, the
narrow Lebanese coast was the only region in the Levant
that was not invaded by either Sea People or by Arameans
or Israelites and thus continuity across the Late Bronze/
Iron Age could indeed prevail.
Furthermore, explicit geographically deterministic views
assert that since the Phoenicians were confined to this nar-
row coast, they were prevented from practicing meaning-
ful subsistence agriculture, and thus they were forced to
rely on trade for livelihood, and on producing added-value
luxuries (recently Edrey 2016: 44–66). When Josette Elayi
considers the homeland, she discusses the sea and moun-
tains and nothing in-between (2018: 14–15; for a different
attitude, see Sommer 2007: 102). This perspective of a “na-
tion of sailors and traders” was, of course, reinforced by
the way Phoenicians were portrayed by later, mostly west-
ern chroniclers, who encountered some of them overseas.
To sum up, according to prevailing views, of all early
Iron Age Levantine people and polities, Phoenicians in Leb-
anon are perceived as the immediate and prime economic
beneficiaries of the Bronze Age collapse. Only in Lebanon
was maritime and mercantile know-how preserved, imple-
mented over ever growing distances, which finally culmi-
nated (under debatable circumstances) in the Phoenicians’
pan-Mediterranean endeavors.
Lastly, one comment regarding the Sea People(s): the
aforementioned destructive D-Day scenario for the arrival
11
Following discoveries at Tel Dor (examined below) this is starting
to change, see, for example, Sader 2019: 268.
12
I ignore here, as do most scholars (e.g., Sader 2019: 4), dated con-
victions that the Phoenicians’ vigorous entrepreneurship was enabled
only by the contribution of western (Aegean) blood, not least because
there is no shred of evidence supporting it.
35
of the Sea People on the Southern Levantine coast, an an-
tithesis to the peaceful and entrepreneurial Phoenicians to
the north, has continuously been modified from various
aspects. Several scholars claimed, for example, that what
scholarship defines as the Sea People “imposition” (Stager
1995) was actually a prolonged phenomenon, much less
destructive than earlier imagined, involving smaller and
varied numbers of people, and that settlement and integra-
tion processes varied regionally (e.g., Gilboa 2005; Yasur-
Landau 2007; Maeir, Hitchcock, and Kolska Horwitz 2013;
cf. Knapp and Manning 2016 with references, especially
pp. 122–23, 135).13 Nowhere, however, was the Sea People
association with a site more puzzling and the dichotomy
between Sea People and Phoenicians more ambiguous than
at Tel Dor, which is the main point of departure for most of
the arguments in this paper and to which I turn next.
Modifying the Arguments―Tel Dor and the
Carmel Coast
A Short Introduction to the Site and its Early Iron Age
Excavations at Dor for the last four decades began to
muddy these consensual waters, or at least should have.
Since Dor is mentioned in Egyptian records as the town
of the Sikila, one of Egypt’s foes in Ramesses III’s Year 8
inscriptions, it has been consensually assigned to the Sea
People domain (Stern 1990, 2013; Dothan and Dothan
1992; Stager 1995). It quickly, however, became evident
that the finds in the ground did not meet expectations (for
which see, for example, Gilboa 2006–2007: 210). The most
immediate and obvious observation was that the site failed
to produce assemblages of Aegean/Cypriot-inspired table
wares to match those of Philistia. In fact, nothing like the
profound change typifying Philistia’s sites (“deep change”
as defined in Yasur-Landau 2011) is evident at Dor. On
the other hand, after fabric analysis, Dor turned out to be
not only a major consumer of the above-mentioned Phoe-
nician calling cards—the Bichrome containers—but also a
major producer, if not actually their main producer (see
mainly Gilboa 2005, Gilboa and Goren 2015, and Waiman-
Barak 2016), as well as one of the main polities involved
in their shipment overseas (below).
Dor’s early Iron Age sequence, material culture and its
interpretations have been presented on several occasions in
the past (in addition to the publications mentioned above,
also Sharon and Gilboa 2013, Gilboa, Waiman-Barak, and
Sharon 2015; for other views mainly Stern 1990, 2013) and
here I summarize succinctly the main relevant points.
13
In this context it should also be remembered that the Sea People
appellation is a 19th-century scholarly construct, introduced by French
Egyptologists Emmanuel de Rougé (1867) and Gaston Maspero (1897).
36
The site lies on Israel’s narrow (ca. 4 km) Carmel Coast
(Fig. 1), about midway between Philistia and Lebanon. Its
importance was dictated by its location. Dor’s prime re-
sources were a bay and a lagoon facing north and south—
a rare phenomenon along the Southern Levantine coast
of crucial importance for seaborne traffic, especially when
the sea was favorable and for mariners who knew their way
around. This is attested by the site’s anchorages, particu-
larly the southern lagoon, which has yielded many Bronze
and Iron Age anchors and bits of cargoes.14 Indeed, Dor
was a prime destination and a preferable stopover espe-
cially when sailing from the Egyptian Delta to the north.
Beyond the anchorages, this is also due to the prevailing
northwesterly winds in this part of the Mediterranean.
Perhaps even more cardinally, after leaving the Delta there
are no mountains close to the sea and landmarks are few
and low. The cliffs of the southern tip of the Carmel Ridge,
about 5 nautical miles south of Dor, are the first prominent
landmarks visible from the sea. Thus, navigating to Dor’s
anchorages was relatively easy. In addition, from Dor there
is a comfortable land crossing through the Nahal Meʿarot
stream and the Wadi Milk pass to the fertile Jezreel Valley
and thence further in any direction. Agriculture could be
practiced in the nearby Carmel intermontane valleys and
the very close Carmel Mountains would have supplied wood
and various other arboreal products, most importantly
various sorts of resin (for a summary of all these issues,
see Sharon and Gilboa 2013 and Gilboa 2015).
Long-term excavations of the tell15 have produced a very
detailed early Iron Age sequence in several excavation areas,
demonstrating that an apparently small Late Bronze Age
settlement was superseded in the late 12th or early 11th cen-
tury B.C.E. by a rapidly growing town. The detailed stratig-
raphy, accompanied by abundant artifactual assemblages,
allowed the division of the early Iron Age at the site and
in nearby regions (mainly north of it) into relatively short
chrono-typological horizons, as already mentioned, which
allows one to follow cultural trajectories with high resolu-
tion; this resolution, inter alia, bears on the way I sketch be-
low the “Phoenician Process.” From its inception the town
was densely built, fortified for most of the early Iron Age,
equipped with some of the most monumental architecture
known around the Mediterranean, including the use of the
14
Excavations by Avner Raban at the interface between the tell and
the southern lagoon have revealed a series of ashlar constructions inter-
preted by him as quays of the Late Bronze Age to early Iron Age and
dubbed the “Sea People harbor” (e.g., Raban 1993), but recent re-
excavation of these installations have cast doubt over their maritime func-
tion (Arkin Shalev, Gilboa, and Yasur-Landau 2019).
15
Initiated and directed first by the late Ephraim Stern (1980–2000),
between 2002–2014 by Ilan Sharon and the present author, and since
2016 in collaboration with Susan Rebecca Martin and Assaf Yasur-
Landau.
GILBOA BASOR 387
earliest Iron Age ashlars known in the Levant. On the
downside, however, most of the 12th century is hardly rep-
resented at Dor, probably accidentally, and therefore the
Late Bronze/Iron Age transition is poorly understood.
Households and Cottage Industries
The main domestic architectural type at Dor in this pe-
riod is the so-called “#-tag courtyard house” of Canaanite
pedigree (Gilboa, Sharon, and Zorn 2014). Its defining ar-
chitectural and functional attribute is the large number of
rooms and other spaces around a central courtyard hous-
ing diverse industries and storage. More than in any other
Iron Age house type in the Southern Levant these court-
yard houses indicate extensive economic activity at the
household level, and a certain degree of surplus and ex-
change. Beyond mundane activities such as flint-knapping
and large-scale breadmaking, and somewhat more exotic
business such as fish processing, two industries are espe-
cially notable. From Ir1b onward a purple dye industry
is attested at the site by purple stains on the inner surfaces
of jars and ceramic vats, as was also found in the same pe-
riod at Tell Keisan in the ʿAkko Plain, at ʿAkko itself, and
at Tell Abu Hawam in more loosely dated Iron Age con-
texts16 (references in Sader 2019: 299). Lastly, Dorites of
the early Iron Age also produced figurative ivories from el-
ephant tusks, as is evident from production debris (un-
published data;17 for one such object, see Stern 2000: 103:
fig. 52).
Exchanges, Mainly Maritime
From a pan-Mediterranean perspective, Dor’s early Iron
Age interconnections, mainly maritime ones, are currently
unique and developments in them can be followed step-
by-step.
The last Late Bronze Age strata (LB IIB), known only
from a few limited probes, produced a wealth of the stan-
dard Cypriot and Aegean wares of the era. Outstanding,
however, is a relatively large assemblage of Egyptian-
made vessels (not Egyptianizing),18 especially containers, an
16
The purple dye at Dor was analyzed by Naama Sukenik, David
Iluz, Zohar Amar, and Alexander Varvak. At Dor the industry continues
at least until the Hellenistic period, attested by a unique installation in a
public/industrial context (Nitschke, Martin, and Shalev 2011).
17
Ivory identified by Harel Shochat.
18
“Egyptianizing” vessels in the Southern Levant are a common
phenomenon in Late Bronze Age to 12th–century B.C.E. Egyptian ad-
ministrative centers, and appear almost confined to such sites. In shape
and technology, they mimic contemporary Egyptian pots, but they are
made in Canaan (Martin 2011). They comprise mainly table ware, industrial
vessels, and to a lesser extent, containers, thus they embody a totally dif-
ferent phenomenon than the one exemplified by the jars discussed here
2022 THE SOUTHERN LEVANTINE ROOTS OF THE PHOENICIAN MERCANTILE PHENOMENON
unusual occurrence in the 13th-century Levant, even when
compared to other coastal sites and those that served as Egyp-
tian administrative centers (Stidsing and Salmon 2011).
This may point to some special liaisons between Dor and
Egypt already at this stage, faithfully mirrored in the
Wenamun Tale of the 11th or 10th century B.C.E. (Gilboa
2015).19 Following this, for most of the 12th century, the
situation is unclear.
Starting in the earliest Iron Age levels (Ir1a early and
late and Ir1aǀb, ca. 1150–1050 B.C.E.), vivid traffic up and
down the Levantine coast is evident by the presence of
transport jars (with yet unidentified contents) as well as
small decorated flasks with precious liquids, arriving at
Dor mainly from the ʿAkko Plain and south Lebanon, and
(significantly less) Philistine containers that arrive from
the south (Gilboa, Cohen-Weinberger, and Goren 2006;
Waiman-Barak 2016: 94). Dor-made containers in this pe-
riod are known to have been sent also to inland sites such
as Megiddo (Waiman-Barak and Gilboa in press, nos. 14–
15), Tell Keisan (Waiman-Barak and Gilboa 2016: e.g.,
nos. 10, 15) and Tell Qasile (Yuval Goren, pers. comm.). The
transport jars are of a unique quasi-triangular shape, con-
tinuing in form and function the Late Bronze Age commer-
cial “Canaanite Jar” (Gilboa and Sharon 2003: fig. 4:1–5;
Martin 2016: fig. 2; Pedrazzi 2016: fig. 4 compared to fig. 3).
Extensive importation from Egypt and Sinai is evident
by fish remains from these regions (Raban-Gerstel et al.
2008; Bartosiewicz, Lisk, and Zohar 2018: table 281.1;
Sisma et al. 2018: supplementary table S2), and especially
by a unique assemblage of Egyptian-made jars. The quan-
tity of the latter is unparalleled at any site outside of Egypt
in this period, or any other sub-period in the Iron Age or
the Bronze Age, as already mentioned. A few Egyptian jars
in the same period at Ashkelon and possibly at ʿAkko cor-
roborate the likely assumption that all these jars were trans-
ported by sea. This phenomenon continues unchanged and
unparalleled for about three centuries into the Ir2a hori-
zon. Because of this exceptional export from Egypt to Dor
it is likely that some, perhaps most, of the early Iron Age
“Phoenician” containers found in Late Ramesside and Third
Intermediate Period Egypt―jars, jugs and small decorated
flasks, all of types that are common at Dor―may have in-
deed originated at this site (discussions with references in
Waiman-Barak, Gilboa, and Goren 2014 and Gilboa 2015).
Movement of goods between Dor and Cyprus in this pe-
riod is only very sporadically attested (but still more so
than in other east Mediterranean sites), exemplified by
that are actual imports from Egypt. For the most part, both groups also
do not overlap chronologically.
19
This document, however, also birthed the unfortunate construct
of the Sikila as pirates.
37
large, so-called “Wavy-Band” Pithoi arriving from the is-
land. However, close liaisons with the island are manifested
by the extensive local production of such pithoi (Gilboa
2001; Cohen-Weinberger and Wolff 2001; Waiman-Barak
2016), by the evident stylistic impact of Cypriot traditions
and stylistic syntax on the decoration of small commercial
ceramic containers (Gilboa 1999), on ivory production,
and by the import or local production of objects of Cypriot
pedigree, such as notched scapulae and bi-metallic knives
(Sharon and Gilboa 2013: 450: figs. 49–50). These phe-
nomena continue into later horizons of the early Iron Age.20
The arrival at Dor of agricultural produce from Philistia,
the Jezreel Valley, and the Carmel hinterland is attested
by the presence of jars from these regions (e.g., Waiman-
Barak 2016: 3, fig. 14).
The next significant change occurs during Ir1b (ca. 1050–
950 B.C.E.). Two new ceramic phenomena link Dor and
several polities in Cyprus. From Cyprus, Cypro-Geometric
(CG) table wares start arriving as a trickle, mainly from its
east coast, particularly Salamis. These turn into a veritable
deluge in the Ir1ǀ2 and early Ir2a horizons, now also pro-
duced at Kition, Amathus, and Palaepaphos, and seemingly
exemplifying a very specific selection on the part of the con-
sumers (Waiman-Barak, Georgiadou, and Gilboa 2021).
The quantities and variety of wares and shapes are, again,
unparalleled outside the island in the early Iron Age.
When considering the opposite movement of pottery
to Cyprus, Dor, as mentioned, was a leading producer of the
so-called Phoenician Bichrome ware and of other small
containers in the early Iron Age. Petrography demon-
strated that it was also a major exporter of these vessels (and
their contents) to the island, accounting for 50% of such
vessels sampled in Cyprus (while the other half was pro-
duced in south Lebanon; Gilboa and Goren 2015). This
should sever the automatic scholarly association of Bi-
chrome in Cyprus only with Lebanese or specifically Tyrian
activities.
A dramatic change in the scope of commercial spheres
occurs at Dor during the transitional Ir1ǀ2 horizon. For the
first time, contacts linking Dor westward beyond Cyprus
are manifest, firstly attested by a small amount of pottery
from the Aegean, namely Euboea and Naxos (Stern 2000:
pl. IX:4;21 Gilboa and Sharon 2003: fig. 11:19; and personal
communication by Irene Lemos). Most remarkable how-
ever, is Dor’s silver hoard from this horizon (Stern 2001;
Eshel et al. 2018, 2019). It is one of the largest such hoards
in the Near East, the earliest Iron Age hoard in the Levant
with high-quality silver, and it contains the earliest silver
in the Near East demonstrated to have originated beyond
the Aegean/Anatolian sphere―in the Iglesiente region in
20
Other than the pithoi, which dwindle rapidly after Ir1a late.
21
But there both were erroneously identified as Euboean.
38 GILBOA
southwest Sardinia.22 It also contains silver from the Bol-
kardag Mountains in south Anatolia.
Even more far-flung trade is attested eastward. Starting
in early Ir1a until the end of the early Iron Age, Dorites
were also connected to south/southeast Asia. They were en-
gaged in a secondary industry and export related to the
spice trade with the Far East. Cinnamon from as-yet un-
identified locales arrived at Dor through unknown routes;
it was mulled locally with unidentified liquids (most prob-
ably wine and oil), and the concoction was then distributed
further in small clay flasks to Philistia (attested by petrog-
raphy and organic residue analysis) and most probably to
other regions in the Levant, Egypt, Cyprus, and plaus-
ibly―from a certain point on―to more westerly destina-
tions. The modes of these liaisons to south Asia are unknown
(Namdar et al. 2013; Gilboa and Namdar 2015).
Overseas Cultural Impact
Beyond the general local/Canaanite character of Dor’s
material culture in the early Iron Age, especially promi-
nent is the ever-present and multifaceted association with
Cyprus, transcending the mere exchanges of commodities
described above. The extensive local production of Cypriot-
style pithoi has already been mentioned. In addition, the
decoration of several of Dor’s transport jars, and nearly
all commercial flasks and strainer jugs―including those
adorned in the Phoenician Bichrome mode―owe their
very syntax and most decorative motifs to Cypriot tradi-
tions. A close discourse between the producers of these
vessels and individuals producing very similar vessels in
Cyprus is attested by both general and more specific sim-
ilarities, for example in that vessels of similar shape and
function are adorned by the very same designs (Gilboa
1999; Gilboa and Goren 2015, especially p. 90, nn. 58–60).
Moreover, the specific selection of Cypriot pottery arriving
at Dor, originating in the few aforementioned coastal sites,
also shows that they were not just random paraphernalia
piggy-backed on ships sailing to the Levant, but that many
of them were consumed in their own right and that their
selection must have carried some specific cultural mean-
ing, most probably associated with their producers (Geor-
giadou 2018; Waiman Barak, Georgiadou, and Gilboa 2021;
cf. Nicholas Thomas’ [1991] “entangled objects”).
In addition to the omnipresent (and long-lasting) links
with the Cypriot polities, north Syrian, specifically Ugaritic
traditions are manifest on several locally produced ceram-
22
Wood et al. 2019 and 2020 suggested that some of the Dor silver
originated in Iberia and in Cyprus, but these suggestions are not sup-
ported by the analytical evidence; the methods in these two papers will
be addressed in a future publication.
BASOR 387
ics. They are mainly decorated ones associated with social
drinking, but also, for example, clay pot-bellows (Gilboa
2006–2007; Yahalom-Mack 2019: 67); and a clay cup shaped
as a lioness head (Stern 2000: 98, fig. 48). These are attested
mainly in the Ir1a early and late horizons and then rapidly
disappear. A similar phenomenon can be observed in nearby
sites in the western Jezreel Valley, such as Yoqneʿam and
Megiddo. As mentioned, no significant 12th-century occu-
pation was uncovered at Dor, and thus the chronological
gap between these features at Dor and the Syrian prototypes
I suggest hinders a clear interpretation of this phenomenon,
but I return to it shortly below.
Interim Summary
In summary, more than any site known in the Levant―as
a matter of fact, significantly more—early Iron Age Dor
(late 12th–mid-/late 9th century B.C.E.) and other sites along
the Carmel Coast boast those phenomena that scholars
usually have in mind when they think Phoenician. Several
of these were also associated with Phoenicians in ancient
sources: Canaanite continuity; renascent extensive trading
after the Bronze Age collapse, primarily by maritime routes
and including very far-away destinations; fish industry;
procurement of silver; and production of ivory and purple
dye industry. Whether this exceptional evidence, especially
vis-à-vis sites in south Lebanon, is only due to larger expo-
sures and more extensive research at Dor is a question the
Dor excavators have asked themselves many times. Recently,
indeed, Hélène Sader (2019: 276) concluded that lack of suf-
ficient evidence from sites in Lebanon may turn out to be
the decisive factor.23 However, this cannot be the sole cause.
For example, the outstanding number of Egyptian jars at
Dor for 300 years, when compared to any other Iron Age
site in the Levant― including well-excavated sites whose
ceramic assemblages have been or are being studied metic-
ulously (Tyre, Sarepta, Sidon)―cannot be accidental. This
is an important datum, which I consider below. Equally
important are the differences between the Carmel/Sharon
Coast and south Lebanon as portrayed in their share of
Levantine commercial containers shipped overseas, as also
discussed further in this paper.
23
Indeed, beyond the aforementioned south Lebanese containers
identified by petrography in Cyprus, petrography in Israel conducted
in recent years by Paula Waiman-Barak revealed ample evidence for early
Iron Age south-Lebanese jars and flasks at Tell Keisan, Tel Dor, Me-
giddo, Tel Rehov, Tell Qasile, and additional sites, even in periods that
are currently not well-attested in Lebanon. As one example, some of the
small flasks and Phoenician Bichrome jugs at the Philistine temple at
Tell Qasile (Strata XII–XI of the Ir1a horizon), surely containers for
some precious commodity, were produced in south Lebanon (e.g., Waiman-
Barak 2016: 180, fig. 131). More petrography projects in Lebanon itself
are bound to reveal similar information.
2022 THE SOUTHERN LEVANTINE ROOTS OF THE PHOENICIAN MERCANTILE PHENOMENON
We thus began to refer to the early Iron Age Dorites as
Phoenicians―replacing one all-encompassing epithet
(Sea People) with another. This was not meant to be used
as some ethnic tag, but more as a heuristic construct, or
declaration, to convey our understanding that in the early
Iron Age, as opposed to prevailing concepts, economic and
various cultural processes at Dor are almost diametrically
opposed to those in Philistia (the Sea People territory; see
more on this below) and very similar to coastal areas far-
ther north, namely the ʿAkko Plain/coast of Galilee and
coastal south Lebanon. But even in these areas, the extent
of similitude varies. The site that best parallels Dor is Tyre,
mainly in its pottery―the quantity and variety of Phoenician
Bichrome ware, quantity and variety of Cypriot pottery, the
production of Cypriot-style pithoi, and concomitantly in
the cultural phenomena indexed by these ceramics. All
these phenomena are hardly attested in other coastal re-
gions of the Levant and certainly not to this degree―not
in the regions south of the Sharon Plain (Philistia), and not
in Syria. In northern Lebanon, especially in Byblos and Ar-
wad, the situation is still vague (overview in Sader 2019), pos-
sibly for lack of data, but likely not based on this alone.24 On
present evidence therefore, I argue that in the early Iron Age,
“Phoenicia” extends from the environs of Dor to those of
Tyre/Sidon and I do not expect this conclusion to change
significantly in the future.
From Traits to Process: Sketching the Nascent
Phoenician Phenomenon
Based on the foregoing, instead of a quest for a ques-
tionable Phoenician cultural homogeneity, I attempt to
delineate an early Iron Age Phoenician process, focusing
on interregional exchanges and other manners of commu-
nication that are relatively easy to identify, and on com-
modities for which origins can be determined with relative
accuracy: pottery and metals.
This is an etic story. Possible emic aspects are only al-
luded to at the end and will be discussed more fully on an-
other occasion. My approach differs from other discussions
of early Phoenicians in their homeland in that its definitions
are not projected from a yet-to-happen Phoenician phe-
nomenon in the West. It presents a diachronic, historical-
archaeological, bottom-up approach. It is also not confined
to Lebanon only, at least not in the beginning, but rather
emphasizes the Carmel and Sharon Coasts, for reasons that
should be transparent by now. Generally speaking, this part
of the Levantine littoral has been neglected in studies of
Bronze and Iron Age cross-Mediterranean commerce in-
24
For example, none of the Phoenician containers sampled in Cy-
prus in Gilboa and Goren 2015 (N5ca. 50) originates in north Lebanon.
39
volving the Levant.25 When discussing Levantine engage-
ment with LB maritime trade, scholars almost invariably
think first about the Syrian coast, with Ugarit and its satel-
lites, and when considering the Iron Age, Lebanon imme-
diately comes to mind (Broodbank 2013: 391–96 and 445
respectively). Recent studies, however, have begun to call
attention to the centrality of the Carmel and Sharon Coasts
already in LB maritime commerce (Artzy 2005, 2006;
Monroe 2009: 15–19; Ben-Shlomo, Nodarou, and Rutter
2011: 347–48) and above I have cited the unusual number
of Egyptian jars at Dor in the 13th century. Another per-
spective has been provided by provenance analysis of LB
Canaanite jars overseas, mainly in Egypt, Cyprus, Kom-
mos on Crete, Tiryns in the Peloponnese, and on board
the Uluburun wreck. The most numerous transport jars
exported outside the Levant originate in the Southern Le-
vant, south of ʿAkko, mostly on the Carmel and Sharon
Coasts (another significant group, or rather, groups, come
from northernmost Lebanon―the Akkar Plain to north-
ern Syria, and the contribution of south Lebanon is minor;
see Gilboa, Waiman Barak, and Jones 2015: 90–91 with
references; Day et al. 2020).26
The reconstruction that follows brings to the fore polit-
ical, economic, and demographic circumstances postdat-
ing the late Late Bronze Age upheavals that are usually not
considered when questions regarding early Phoenicians
are being asked. The most important are: (1) Egypt’s with-
drawal from Canaan over the course of the 12th century B.C.E.
and its differential effects on sub-regions of the Levant; (2) the
near-total collapse of the Cypriot economic apparatus
around the Late Cypriot (LC) IIIA/B transition ca. 1120/
1100 B.C.E.;27 and (3) the very slow recovery of the Syrian
coast in the early Iron Age. As well, in order to avoid tele-
scoping chronologically and spatially distinct phenomena,
which has indeed plagued previous understandings of the
development of cross-Mediterranean interconnections, I ap-
ply a focused regional perspective and a detailed chronolog-
ical frame of reference.
In the late 2nd millennium, the Levant was character-
ized by small independent city-states emerging from the
LB collapse and from Egyptian domination, vying with
each other for regional and mercantile hegemony (Kille-
brew 2014; Lehmann 2021). In all the regions around the
Mediterranean, the disruptions and the stepping down of
25
Citing only two very recent publications (Elayi 2018 and Bunnens
2019), the early Iron Age of the Carmel does not exist and not even one
Dor publication is considered.
26
The results are skewed because more than a hundred Carmel
Coast-made jars were found on board the Uluburun ship (and sampled)
but disregarding them does not change the overall picture.
27
For the date, see, for example, Iacovou 2008; table 1 and Mountjoy
and Mommsen 2019: table 1. It is compatible with the Ir1a horizon in
Phoenicia, which is roughly equivalent with LC IIIB (see above).
40 GILBOA
commercial elites entailed major transformations of circuits
of trade, information transmission, and so forth, which either
drastically diminished in scope or altogether vanished. Sub-
sequently, interregional exchanges recovered very gradually
and asymmetrically, a topic to which I return below.
In Canaan’s coastal areas, the pace and trajectories of
recovery varied significantly. The crisis was most severe
along the Syrian coast, where urbanism and overseas trade
only revived in earnest in the 9th century B.C.E. (Liverani
1987; Bretschneider and Van Lerberghe 2008; Mazzoni
2014; Sader 2014, 2019: 15–16). The situation in northern
Lebanon is poorly known (Sader 2019: 36–38), but at least
from the Sidon/Sarepta region southward to the coast of
the Negev Desert, vibrant urban communities flourished,
some of them rooted in the LB landscape, and others es-
tablished anew.
Evidence for cross-Mediterranean Levantine trade over
the course of the 12th century (the LBǀIr horizon in Dor
terminology, roughly LC IIIA in Cyprus) is extremely
scant and very limited in geographic scope, exemplifying the
swan song of LB commercial spheres. The only somewhat-
enduring, but still very circumscribed, maritime phenome-
non attested is the export of some commodities in Cypriot-
made stirrup jars to central Canaanite sites, such as Tel Nami,
Beth Sheʾan, Megiddo, ʿAkko and possibly also northern
ones such as Byblos, Sarepta, and Tyre (D’Agata et al. 2005;
Artzy 2006: 52; Mommsen, D’Agata, and Yasur-Landau
2009; Sherratt and Mazar 2013), and a very small number
of Cypriot skyphoi to supplement their accelerating local
demand (and local production).
Notwithstanding this short-range trickle of ceramics,
export of copper from Cyprus seems to have ended. Not
even one item analyzed thus far from 12th-century con-
texts in the Levant has proven to have been produced from
Cypriot ores, and from this point and on, for many centu-
ries, mostly copper from the Arabah Valley, namely from
Timna and Faynan, is attested (Rothenberg 1990; Levy et al.
2008; Ben Yosef et al. 2012; Yahalom-Mack et al. 2014;
Vaelske and Bode 2018–2019).
Regarding the import of silver to the Levant: only two
12th-century hoards are known to date from this period,
from Megiddo (Stratum VIIA) and from the Egyptian cen-
ter at Beth Sheʾan (Stratum Lower VI). They exhibit a phe-
nomenon not encountered in earlier or later Levantine sil-
ver hoards. The silver was extensively devaluated with copper,
to the point that the isotopic signal is blurred and for the
time being the origin of the silver is obscure. Silver had ap-
parently become very scarce, implying that contacts with
traditional procurement venues (mainly the Aegean) have
been disrupted (Eshel et al. 2021).
In an east–west direction, some goods are sent to Cy-
prus from the Southern Levant packed in transport jars
and some flasks, as evidenced at Maa-Palaekastro Floor I,
BASOR 387
Kouklia-Eliomylia and the LC IIIA levels at Hala Sultan
Tekke (summarized in Gilboa, Waiman-Barak, and Jones
2014; cf. Bürge and Fischer 2018: fig. 3:24). They originate
in yet difficult-to-determine regions between the Jezreel Val-
ley and the Philistine littoral, that is, mainly on the Carmel
and Sharon Coasts.
Summing up, then, any notion for “continuity” in Levan-
tine liaisons across the Late Bronze/Iron Age transition
(recently, for example, Bell 2016: 97) is very difficult to accept.
As for shorter-range exchanges, it is unclear what hap-
pens with Egypt, since the only sites that have produced ev-
idence for Egyptian commodities in jars in slightly later pe-
riods yielded no data. At Dor, as mentioned, no occupation
of this period has yet been revealed, ʿAkko is yet unpub-
lished, and at Ashkelon even the small number of Egyptian
jar fragments in 12th-century contexts are mostly residual
(Daniel Master, pers. comm.).
In tandem, the withdrawal of the Egyptian imperial ap-
paratus from Canaan ca. 1150–1130 B.C.E. brought about
acute changes, which inter alia profoundly affected the modes
of commodity transfer between this enfeebled power and
the Levant. I underscore three points:
Firstly, as acknowledged by several scholars, the Egyp-
tian administrative, economic, etc. hold on the Southern
Levant was realized mostly through local Canaanite elites
(Higginbotham 2000; Gilboa 2006–2007; Gadot 2010: 62;
Koch 2019). These elites probably occupied most of the
so-called Egyptian residencies, while their offspring were of-
ten sent to Egypt to be enculturated and guarded. Some of
these individuals already bore Egyptian names, they con-
trolled a significant portion of the trade, including the silver
trade (Eshel et al. 2021), and more. The end of the Egyptian
domination must have wreaked havoc within the upper end
of Canaanite society. Local elites lost their authority, pres-
tige, legitimacy, and backing, which were all drawn from
Egypt, and Egyptian crown and temple lands and other as-
sets in Canaan were there for the taking. The crisis was most
acute in the regions closest to Egypt, the southern part of the
Southern Levant, the northern Negev and the Shephelah,
probably to the environs of the Yarkon River. Previously
Egyptian control in this area was most effective and
apparent, as attested by a dense concentration of Egyptian
centers of all sorts, such as Tell Jemmeh, Gaza, Tell Hesi,
Tell el-Farʿah South, Tel Sera, Lachish, Jaffa, and Apheq
(Fig. 1). Among other things, this meant that newcomers
to these regions managed to acquire rapidly significant so-
cial status and become part of the landed elite. These are
the groups that eventually came to be called Philistines.
As opposed to some suggestions (Bauer 1998; Sherratt
1998), thriving maritime trade is definitely not a typical
aspect of the earliest Philistines cities in the Iron Age, only
two of which―Gaza and Ashkelon―were in fact coastal
or nearly so (Fig. 1) and nowhere is this more apparent
2022 THE SOUTHERN LEVANTINE ROOTS OF THE PHOENICIAN MERCANTILE PHENOMENON
than at extensively excavated Ashkelon. As opposed to the
Bronze Age and the later Iron Age, when maritime com-
merce at the site was thriving (respectively, Stager 2001
and Master 2003), in the early Iron Age it was marginal.
I do not claim that no ship sailed to or from Ashkelon or
Gaza in the early Iron Age (cf. Master 2011; Master, Mount-
joy, and Mommsen 2015), but the contrast to the picture
north of Philistia could not be more dramatic, and this will
become even more apparent in the 11th century B.C.E., dis-
cussed further below.28
The second point that needs to be highlighted is Egypt’s
ever-continuing need for Mediterranean products, even in
the relatively frail late Ramesside epoch and later, during
the Third Intermediate Period―especially timber of vari-
ous sorts, spices, resin and resinous products, without
which life, ritual, and death could not be sustained (detailed
discussion in Gilboa 2015; cf. Marcus 2019: 151, 158, 160).
But now this had to be catered to by means other than tax-
ing, tribute, and booty.29 Some Levantine societies, mainly
coastal sites and their networks, seized the opportunity and
established new chains of supply, a topic I revisit later in
this paper.
Lastly, the retreat and weakness of the Egyptians also
meant that after ca. 1150 B.C.E. all the waystations, etc.
along the north Sinai road (the Ways of Horus)―the main
terrestrial artery between the Levant and Egypt (Oren
2006)―were abandoned and the road de facto ceased to
function for a long time (Eliezer Oren, pers. comm., based
on his survey). This meant that any commercial advantage
polities in the southernmost part of Canaan might have had
vis-à-vis Egypt due to their relative proximity (and vice versa)
was annulled, enhancing the importance of marine routes.
Very soon after Egypt’s withdrawal, another profound
change affected the eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus’s LB
demographic, urban, and economic matrix collapsed almost
entirely during the LC IIIA/IIIB transition (ca. 1100 B.C.E.),
after having suffered a previous disaster in the early 12th cen-
tury (Iacovou 1999, 2008; Knapp 2008: 286; Steel 2012: 813;
Knapp and Meyer 2020: 239). Other than Kition, Palae-
paphos, and Idalion, all sites were abandoned, never to be
settled again, and most of the island’s administrative appa-
ratus disappeared.
Ripple effects of the Cypriot collapse—however long
it might have been (cf. Iacovou 2014a: 798) were felt
throughout the Levant, whither at least part of the Cypriot
population must have fled seeking new fortunes―at times
28
Archaeological data from Gaza do not exist.
29
And therefore, I cannot accept Sader’s definition of “continuity”
in Egyptian/Levantine mercantile activity across the Late Bronze/Iron
Age transition (2019: 48). However, even during New Kingdom times,
the existence of an Egyptian entrepreneurial, non-institutionalized trade
must be considered (cf. Moreno García 2014: 249–52; in press), and cer-
tainly later.
41
perhaps only individuals, families, certain specific profes-
sionals, etc. The archaeological manifestations of these mi-
grant groups vary from one Levantine region to the next
and largely depend on the circumstances of their absorp-
tion into the local societies (Gilboa 2001, 2005; Maeir, Hitch-
cock, and Horwitz 2013). Approximately from the Yarkon
River southward, the Cypriot impact can be seen in the ap-
pearance of new Cypriot elements in the Philistine ceramic
repertoire and other aspects of material culture in the Philis-
tine Bichrome (or Philistine 2) phase (Yasur-Landau 2010:
301). Farther north, at Dor, as detailed above, from the Ir1a
horizons and increasingly later on, Cypriot impact on local
industries is conspicuous and manifold. The Dor team has
argued more than once that there is enough evidence to
suggest that following the late LC IIIA upheavals, Cypriots
reached Dor and rather rapidly became very influential (see
more on this below). Regrettably, this specific horizon could
not be isolated in any site in south Lebanon, so compari-
son is presently impossible.30 Regarding maritime traffic,
the most notable phenomenon in the eastern Mediterra-
nean during the late 12th to the first half of the 11th cen-
tury B.C.E. (Ir1a–Irǀb in Phoenicia 5 approximately LC IIIB
and early Cypro-Geometric [CG] I in Cyprus) is the afore-
mentioned commercial circuit that developed specifically
between Dor and yet undefined centers in Egypt (surely
Tanis was the main one). Merchant families and other en-
trepreneurs at this site, in easy sailing distance and direc-
tion from the Delta, could supply Egypt with almost all its
Mediterranean agricultural and arboreal necessities, ex-
cepting very tall trees. Most probably they also maintained
agents in Egypt (discussion and references in Gilboa 2015
and Waiman-Barak 2016: 12–18; for non-institutional fo-
reign trade agents in Egypt, including “common” people,
see Marcus 2019 and Moreno García in press).
I previously argued that this was a decentralized, self-
governing network, in line with the postulations of network
theory. On the Carmel Coast this was especially easy since
the mountains and their products were so close to the
sea, though agricultural produce would have partly been
brought from farther suppliers, such as Megiddo.31 Dor
thus seems to be one of the first sites, on current evidence
perhaps the first, from which entrepreneurial sailings were
launched to the south for the next three centuries (for a de-
tailed discussion, see Gilboa 2015). Simultaneously, other
30
At Tyre, the deposit designated Stratum XIV, following the last
LB occupation, is totally mixed, and at Sarepta this period is probably
subsumed in Strata F and early E, see Gilboa and Sharon 2003: table 21
accompanied by typological reasoning for these persuasions and see p. 38
for Tyre.
31
As an aside, to the annoyance of ethno-normative views, Megiddo
and other sites in the western Jezreel Valley were producing the quintes-
sential “Phoenician” Bichrome ware; references, for example, in Gilboa
and Goren 2015: 80, n. 26.
42
new intra-Levantine commercial spheres emerged, indexed
by extensive circulation of the triangular transport jars mainly
with agricultural commodities and by flasks with scented
essences, including cinnamon-mulled blends, not only to
Egypt, but to other neighboring regions such as Philistia.
Thus, agriculture and shipment of agricultural (and ar-
boreal) produce, mainly to Egypt, should be regarded not
only as an inseparable facet of the early Phoenician phe-
nomenon (e.g., Sader 2019: 141, 251, 263; Schmitt et al.
2019) but its raison d’être: “We should . . . leave aside a fre-
quent stereotype: that the Phoenicians were essentially a
people of sailors and traders. As has happened with the con-
temporary cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, Phoeni-
cian culture is deeply rooted in the land” (Gómez Bellard
2019: 453–54).
On the other hand, Levantine involvement in exchanges
with westerly locations seems to have reached its lowest
ebb in centuries. Even the stirrup-jar trickle has largely
ended and hardly anything arrived in the Levant from Cy-
prus. However, by no means is traffic between Cyprus and
Canaan completely unattested. The few Cypriot-made Wavy-
Band Pithoi at Dor indicate the arrival of ships, and Cyp-
riot stylistic impact, especially at Dor (discussed above)
indicates contacts with Cypriots, though perhaps not for
commercial ends.32 The movement of goods in the oppo-
site directions during this long period is today attested
mainly by 20 jars on the floor of the Ingot-god sanctuary
at Enkomi (floors III/II; Courtois 1971, fig. 96), but also,
for example, at Kition (Fourrier and Georgiadou 2021:
290–91, fig. 16a–c). By their shape they could have been
produced anywhere between south Lebanon and Dor and
they most probably represent one shipment. Nothing to
date indicates any contacts in this period beyond Cyprus
and among nearly 40 silver hoards known in the Levant
in the Bronze and Iron Ages, none can be assigned to this
time span (Eshel et al. 2021).
The Ir1b horizon (ca. 1050–950 B.C.E.; grosso modo the
mid-to late CG I in Cyprus) sees the intensification of previ-
ous commercial spheres and modes of communication—but
no changes whatsoever in their geographical scope—which
remain in the Egypt–Cyprus (especially Salamis)–Levant cir-
cuit. Now, however, and onward, south Lebanon starts to be
visible, currently mainly through Stratum XIII at Tyre, most
of Stratum E at Sarepta (Gilboa and Sharon 2003, table 21),
and in south Lebanese cemeteries. The most conspicuous
phenomena are the aforementioned new imports of CG I
ceramics, the intensification of the export of produce in jars
and flasks to Cyprus (and to other nearby regions as well)
32
A mentioned, new Cypriot stylistic impacts in this period are ev-
ident both in (southern) Philistia and in northern Syria (Janeway 2011),
but their manifestations are totally different, and they represent other
mode of contacts that are beyond the scope of this paper.
GILBOA BASOR 387
and the intensifying stylistic discourse between both shores,
especially evident on commercial ceramics and those serv-
ing social drinking, that is, the well-known Phoenician
Bichrome Style flasks/jugs and spouted jugs. All these phe-
nomena are manifest mainly at Dor and Tyre, and much
less so at Sidon (Doumet-Serhal 2021–2022). This is the
first horizon during which, as mentioned above, contain-
ers from Tyre (or Sidon or both) are clearly present in
Cyprus alongside and in equal numbers to those from Dor.
The only phenomenon that is unattested at Tyre, and will re-
main so until the end of the early Iron Age, are the Nile clay-
made jars, evidencing extensive traffic to Egypt.
Lastly, silver hoards reappear now in the archaeological
record the Levant―four hoards are known from Southern
Levantine sites, compared to none in the previous horizon.
One of them is from Tell Keisan north of the Carmel, in
an elite domestic context. Although alongside other indi-
cations these hoards attest to economic growth, the silver
(of unidentified sources) is still highly mixed with copper,
indicating lingering shortages (Eshel et al. 2021).
In turn, the Ir1ǀ2 and Ir2a horizons (respectively
ca. 950–900 B.C.E.; 900–815 B.C.E.; mainly CG II–III in Cy-
prus), evince a steady intensification in the interaction be-
tween Tyre and Dor and the neighboring island, now in-
volving further coastal polities in Cyprus (Kition, Amathus,
and Palaepaphos; Waiman-Barak, Georgiadou, and Gilboa
2021), some of which develop their own enterprises. A good
example is Amathus, exporting during Ir2a its Black-on-
Red containers (with unknown contents) to various Med-
iterranean destinations (Schreiber 2003), but above all to
clients in the ʿAkko Plain, western Jezreel Valley, and Car-
mel Coast. By far the largest assemblages are at Megiddo
(Kleiman et al. 2019), catered either through Dor or via Tell
Abu Hawam, and Shiqmona at the foot of the Carmel
(mostly yet unpublished; Shalvi 2020).
Now, moreover, the Mediterranean in general started
to open (Gilboa, Sharon, and Boaretto 2008: 146–58, “the
opening”; Kourou 2008: 320–55) and it was only then that
the Levant was reconnected to the Aegean and to regions
farther afield. The catalysts, as usual, are metals. As men-
tioned already, the Dor silver hoard (Ir1ǀ2) contains Sar-
dinian silver, the first silver in Near Eastern history demon-
strated to have arrived from west of the Aegean, and also
Anatolian silver. A silver hoard from ʿAkko (Ir1ǀ2 or Ir2a)
in a domestic context, reflects the same ore sources. Slightly
later, a hoard from ʿEn Hofez on the Carmel, in an Ir2a
courtyard house (9th century B.C.E.), is entirely composed
of Iberian silver, the earliest such silver attested in the Near
East and in fact anywhere outside the peninsula (Martin
Hernández 2018; Eshel at al. 2019).
Tyre, in turn, apparently became the main gateway
through which copper from Faynan was marketed to
the Aegean and probably to other westerly terminals and
2022 THE SOUTHERN LEVANTINE ROOTS OF THE PHOENICIAN MERCANTILE PHENOMENON
channeled yet-unknown goods accompanied by Eu-
boean pottery to the Levant (Mazar and Kourou 2019 with
references).33
Lastly, during Ir2a, purple-dye production is attested
at Tel Shiqmona (Karmon and Spanier 1988; Sukenik
et al. 2017) on an industrial scale (preliminarily, Shalvi
2020).34 Currently, and by far, then, direct and datable ar-
chaeological evidence for the production of purple dye in
the Iron Age is significantly better attested along the Car-
mel Coast and (less so) in the ʿAkko Plain than it is any-
where else.35
It thus becomes clear how with an ever globalizing
Mediterranean and Near East (Hodos 2009), the Sharon-
to-south Lebanon polities had an edge in interregional net-
working and information, institutions that fostered entre-
preneurship, maritime know-how, etc.
But in what Lewis Binford would have called an histor-
ical accident (1965: 204), at a certain point in the second
half of the 9th century, Dor and apparently most of the
Sharon and Carmel Coasts were annexed to the Kingdom
of Israel, which dramatically and almost instantly cut most
of the town’s commercial and social liaisons (Gilboa, Sharon,
and Bloch-Smith 2015). This is one of the few times I find
myself agreeing with Binford, since what happened to Dor
distracts us from the more general socio-economic process.
Maritime activities and traditions that prevailed at Dor
for centuries were severed, which to my mind also indi-
cates that a significant part of the population, perhaps
most of it, left the site. At the end of the day, Dor’s demise
as a maritime engine paved the way for the emergent pri-
macy of south Lebanese polities, apparently especially Tyre,
in cross-Mediterranean and other trade ventures. Beyond
the process observable at the tell itself, this is well docu-
mented by the fact that from the late 9th through the
8th centuries B.C.E.36 Carmel- and Sharon-made transport
jars vanish from the Mediterranean stage and are replaced
by those produced in south Lebanon, which become then
absolutely dominant (Ballard et al. 2002; Gilboa, Waiman-
Barak, and Jones 2015, especially pp. 93–95). With the main
33
In Cyprus, meanwhile, Tomb 523 at Amathus (CG IB/II, Ir1ǀ2)
produced the renown Atlantic obelos and “tipo Huelva” fibula. For a
discussion of the date of this tomb and references, see Gilboa, Sharon,
and Boaretto 2008: n. 31.
34
The Shiqmona stratigraphic sequence and dye industry are currently
under study by Golan Shalvi, Naʿama Sukenik, and Julie Mendelsohn, and
results are preliminary. As opposed to other sites, the dye production there
is clearly housed in a specialized facility.
35
On the Carmel Coast, and specifically in the environs of Haifa, the
industry continued into Byzantine times and most probably much later.
Particularly interesting allusions to it are in the Babylonian Talmud
(Shabbat 26a: “from the ladders of Tyre to Haifa”) and in the first years
of the 1900s (von Mülinen 1908: 312–13, on a trip from Haifa to the ru-
ins of Dor).
36
After the 8th century there are no data.
43
competitor having disappeared, and when the time was
ripe, Tyre became the main patron of the thrust westward.
Summary: Early Iron Age Phoenicia
and “Phoenician-ness”
The early Iron Age Phoenician process can be defined
as the process by which part of the Levantine coast grad-
ually recovered and adjusted to post-Late Bronze Age reality,
especially to the new commercial opportunities that mate-
rialized when Egypt lost its exploitative grip over Canaan.
This process happened in the coastal and mountainous
zone stretching from Dor (possibly from the Sharon) to
Tyre (and possibly Sidon). For reasons presented in this
paper, I contend that the process began in the Carmel/
Sharon sphere, especially at Dor. This should come as no
surprise since, as mentioned above, already in the Late
Bronze Age, the Carmel/Sharon region, even more than
the Syrian coast (from the Akkar Plain northward) is the
best represented among Levantine containers found in
wrecks and overseas (including Egypt), while containers
from south Lebanon are few. From the very beginning
Dor also maintained especially close contact and discourse
with polities on the east coast of Cyprus, and some influx
of Cypriot population to Dor following the LC IIIA col-
lapse contributed much to the cooperation between both
shores and to the Mediterranean and maritime knowledge
and skills fostered in the city. Most probably, descendants
of Ugarit’s merchant families were another important com-
ponent in the population (see above, and reasoning in Gil-
boa 2006–2007: 213–14). Dor was quickly joined in this re-
covery by polities in south Lebanon, in a process that is
difficult to follow before Ir1b because chrono-stratigraphic
sequences at sites such as Tyre and Sarepta are not yet
detailed enough.37 From Ir1b on, cultural and economic
processes at Tyre and Dor seem very similar, with the ex-
ception of the manner and intensity of contact with Egypt.
Incrementally, both ports increased the pace and geo-
graphic scope of their maritime endeavors, but Dor was
abruptly eliminated from the Mediterranean commercial
arena by the curtailing of its maritime enterprises by the
Kingdom of Israel, either under Ahab, or possibly some-
what later in the 9th century under the Nimshides, perhaps
Jehu (Gilboa, Sharon, and Bloch-Smith 2015; Naʾaman
2016; Shochat 2018). Only from this moment is it histor-
ically viable to reduce Phoenicia to (almost) Lebanon alone,
though the Galilee and ʿAkko Plain may have been annexed
then by the kingdom of Tyre (Lemaire 1991; Lehmann
2001), an issue which is beyond my scope here.
37
A detailed report on the excavations at the early Iron Age temple
at Sidon (Doumet-Serhal 2021–2022) was published when this paper
was in the final editorial stages and was not consulted in depth.
44
In the north, Phoenicia of the early Iron Age does not
extend northward beyond south Lebanon.38 The inclusion
of northern Lebanese sites (hardly known archaeologically),
not to mention Syrian sites, is erroneous for the early Iron
Age. It considers political, cultural, and economic attributes
that are irrelevant for the beginning of the process and in
fact obscure it. The Phoenician networks are dynamic, inter
alia ever changing in their geographic scope. Thus, attempts
to portray Phoenicia from the Iron Age (or earlier) down to
Achaemenid times (and later) in one or two maps is bound
to be entirely ahistorical.
Future Prospects: Identity
Can we also speak of a “Phoenician” identity in the early
Iron Age in the Dor-to-Tyre region under consideration
here? Though, as stated, this is not my topic here, a few sug-
gestions may be offered as research avenues for the future.
For centuries, exchanges within this range (including their
hinterlands) and with certain polities in Cyprus were ex-
tensive, direct, and they occurred over relatively short dis-
tances. People on both shores must have known each other.
I assert that this generated social cohesion and affected
people’s self-ascription. This is borne out, for example, by
the stylistic discourses manifest in several media mentioned
above, and in what I believe may be specific messages con-
veyed by the outstanding symbols on Bichrome containers
shipped almost exclusively to Cyprus from Dor and from
south Lebanon (not discussed in this paper, e.g., Bikai
1987: pls. IV–VI). Therefore, though in the beginning of
the paper I mentioned the growing scholarly skepticism
regarding the existence of a Phoenician emic sense of unity
in later periods, the situation in early Iron Age Phoenicia
may have been different. It is quite easy to envision how
the conjunction of some of the phenomena just men-
tioned―in contradistinction to all surrounding societies―
propagated a shared ethos, ontologies, perhaps a shared psy-
chological unity, despite the political disunity and economic
38
The data from Beirut (pottery, see, e.g., Jamieson 2011) does not
allow yet for a meaningful interpretation of its early Iron Age.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is dedicated to Mina Weinstein-Evron, my friend
and colleague at the University of Haifa, who induced me to write
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and 596/18 (analyses of Cypriot and Phoenician pottery in Cyprus
and the Levant; awarded respectively to Shlomo Shoval, Gunnar
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