Phoenician Agriculture and Rural Resources

Phoenician towns of the first millennium BCE stood on the eastern Mediterranean coast, in the region now including Lebanon and nearby parts of the Levant. Their harbours connected with the sea, but their households and workshops also relied on fields, orchards, pasture, and wooded slopes inland. Coastal plains were narrow in some places and broader in others; valleys and the lower slopes of the Lebanon range added other growing areas. Farming and maritime activity belonged to the same landscape.

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Coastal plains, slopes, and city land

The excavated settlement of Tell el-Burak lies about nine kilometres south of Sidon, on the southern coastal plain between Sidon and Tyre. It was occupied from the late eighth to the middle of the fourth century BCE. Archaeobotanical sampling across six excavation seasons traced plant remains through roughly four centuries and across different buildings. The researchers place the settlement within Sidon’s agricultural sphere, or possibly that of nearby Sarepta, and conclude that grapes and olives were probably grown close to the site and on the western slopes farther inland.

The site’s layout joined domestic work and crop processing: one excavated house had two storerooms and a courtyard, and a plastered channel in another house carried drainage between rooms. A large winepress stood on the settlement slope outside the houses, providing a place to process the grape harvest.

Fields, orchards, and pasture occupied land beyond the town’s built core. Grain crops were annual harvests; grapevines and olive trees were longer-term plantings that needed care over several years before bearing well. In his fifth-century BCE sarcophagus inscription, Sidonian king Eshmunazar II says that the Lord of Kings gave Dor, Joppa, and the rich grain lands of the Sharon plain to the Sidonians in recognition of his deeds. The inscription presents agricultural territory as part of the city’s royal relationship with the Persian king.

Cereals, pulses, and the work after harvest

Archaeobotanical research on Phoenician settlements records barley and several kinds of wheat, alongside pulses such as lentils, chickpeas, broad beans, peas, and vetch, a legume. Fruit remains include grapes, figs, and pomegranates. Each crop brought different work into the yearly cycle. Cereal stalks were cut and dried, then threshed to free kernels from the ears. Workers winnowed the loosened crop, using moving air to carry away lighter chaff, and sieved out smaller debris before storing clean grain. Grinding later turned stored kernels into flour or meal for food.

The order of these tasks mattered. Grain could be cleaned before storage, while some wheat varieties were kept in their husks and processed closer to the time of use. Excavated houses at Tell el-Burak included dedicated storerooms, although the finds do not identify every stored product. At La Fonteta, founded near the mouth of the Segura River in the late eighth century BCE, charred grains show cereals already processed for consumption. Barley was most frequent in the earliest excavated phases, with naked wheat and smaller quantities of pulses also present.

Water, grapes, and the winepress

The press shows how growers turned a seasonal harvest into a product that could be held after the grapes were gone. Workers trod grapes in a rectangular basin measuring about 3.2 by 3.5 metres. Juice, called must, flowed through a connecting channel into a sunken semicircular vat about 2.5 by 1.95 metres, where it could collect and begin fermenting. The difference in height along the settlement slope helped the liquid flow. The press may have been built as early as the late eighth century BCE and remained in use into the sixth century.

Its plaster lining was an agricultural technology as well as a building finish. Analysis identified lime plaster made from limestone and fragments of crushed pottery, called grog. The tough, water-resistant surface helped the basin and vat contain liquid through repeated harvests. Researchers found the press beside a settlement likely founded under Sidonian influence, and interpreted the nearby grape remains and transport jars as part of a larger wine-producing domain.

Olives were another orchard crop in the Sidon region. Seed and charcoal evidence led archaeobotanists to propose that olives grew near Tell el-Burak and farther up the inland slopes; the settlement may also have produced olive oil.

Herds, food, and farm work

Animal bones at Tell el-Burak show that sheep and goats, grouped by archaeologists as caprines, made up most of the inhabitants’ animal diet. Cattle were the next most frequent domestic animals. A high proportion of cattle and donkey bones occurs in the same phases as the site’s peak wine production. The study’s authors suggest that these larger animals helped plough fields and carry heavy loads, particularly during grape and olive harvests.

This mix connected food and farm labour. Sheep and goats supplied meat and could be kept on less food and water than cattle, an advantage where grazing and water had to be shared. Cattle and donkeys needed more provisions but could provide traction and haulage. The animal record at Tell el-Burak thus fits a settlement where vineyard work and other cultivation took place alongside households’ everyday food supply.

Fuel from local vegetation

Rural vegetation also supplied fuel. At La Fonteta, archaeobotanists identified burned remains of pine, mastic, rockrose, and esparto grass. These finds came from waste deposits associated with both domestic activity and metalworking. The authors identify several of the plants, including esparto rhizomes and pine and mastic remains, as likely fuel. Their presence shows how a local landscape could serve households and craft furnaces as well as fields and orchards.

Mago’s later Punic text

Centuries later, the Carthaginian writer Mago compiled an agricultural treatise in twenty-eight books, written in Punic, the language of Carthage. Pliny the Elder reports that after Rome captured Carthage in 146 BCE, the Senate gave the city’s libraries to allied North African kings but singled out Mago’s work for translation into Latin by people fluent in Punic. The order carried a Carthaginian farming text into Roman agricultural writing.