Phoenician Work, Exchange, Clothing and Feasting

Phoenician communities along the Levantine coast, from modern Lebanon south toward Israel and Palestine, and at settlements around the Mediterranean depended on farming, workshops and exchange. Crop remains, tools, coins, garments and burial goods show how people processed food and raw materials, made cloth and metal objects, and gathered for elite feasts and funerary observances.

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Farming and household processing

At Motya, a Phoenician settlement on a small island off western Sicily, a refuse pit in Area D dates from the first half of the eighth century to the middle of the sixth century BCE. Its plant remains include wheat, barley, pulses, grapes, olives, figs and pomegranates. Weeds, cereal chaff and grains preserve stages of crop handling. The excavators interpret the assemblage as evidence that stored grain was cleaned after harvest. Winnowing separated lighter chaff from heavier grain; the cereal-sized weed darnel was probably picked out by hand. Early processing waste could also be used as animal fodder.

At Castro Marim, on the Guadiana estuary in Portugal’s Algarve, a study of seventh- to fifth-century BCE farming identifies barley as the most abundant cultivated cereal. Soil nitrogen signatures indicate manuring, while animal remains and other evidence connect herding with products such as wool and dairy. The two sites show different parts of rural work: household crop preparation at Motya and the links among cultivation, manure and animal products at Castro Marim.

Workshops and making cloth

Near Guardamar del Segura in southeastern Spain, the circular seventh-century BCE workshop at Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño contained a small furnace, a single-opening air nozzle, a stone mortar and a quartzite hammer. An embedded amphora, a large storage jar, held water. Lead drops, a lead cake and galena, a lead sulfide ore, led the excavators to identify the room as a place for silver cupellation. In this refining stage, heating oxidized lead and separated it from silver. The excavators suggest that ore crushing may also have happened in the room, while initial smelting needed a larger furnace elsewhere. The benches and work surface organized a focused refining sequence; the researchers describe the building and its artisans as prestigious within the settlement.

Textile production also required successive operations. Fibres were prepared and spun into yarn, woven, then finished or dyed. At Motya, loom weights held the vertical threads of a warp-weighted loom under tension as the weaver passed cross-threads through them. Two triangular tablets from a seventh-century BCE tomb and bone spacers may relate to tablet weaving, which produced narrow decorative bands. Tools and installations occur in residential, craft and cultic settings.

Shellfish-based purple dye added a costly step to cloth production. Collecting shellfish and processing them into dye required substantial raw material and specialized handling, as the account of shellfish purple production explains.

Clothing and public appearance

Fifth- and fourth-century BCE coins from Sidon, a port city in modern Lebanon, depict a chariot driver in a tunic. Jessica L. Nitschke, who studies the images, notes that the tunic, a long upper-body garment, varies across issues: it can be belted or pleated, and its wide sleeves usually end near the elbow.

A mid-fourth-century BCE inscription on the sarcophagus of Batnoam at Byblos, also on the Lebanese coast, describes the garment and headpiece she wore, and a gold mouthpiece. The text says these adornments were customary for earlier queens. Spindle whorls, loom weights and needles attest textile work, while jewellery, mirrors and combs were used in personal appearance.

Exchange and local coinage

In Geography 3.5.11, the Roman-period geographer Strabo describes Atlantic exchange involving sea traders. He reports that people from the Atlantic islands called the Cassiterides, north of the port of the Artabri, traded tin, lead and animal skins for pottery, salt and bronze vessels. Strabo adds that Phoenician merchants from Gades, modern Cádiz in southern Spain, formerly carried this Atlantic trade and kept its route secret. His account identifies exchange partners and the goods changing hands.

At Kition, a Phoenician kingdom on southeastern Cyprus, uninscribed coins have been attributed to the city on stylistic grounds. Archaeologist Maria Iacovou reports that the earliest known inscribed issues bearing King Baalmilk I’s name date from after the Ionian revolt of 499/8 BCE. The coins carry Phoenician legends but follow the local Cypriot weight standard. Kings issued shekels, coin denominations based on a unit of weight, and smaller fractions, including thirds, twelfths, twenty-fourths and forty-eighths of a shekel. The history of local Phoenician coinage explains the wider development of these issues.

Elite feasting

A.J. Nijboer describes the Levantine marzeah as an upper-class male institution, sometimes supported by royal patrons. Its members gathered in banquet rooms, often reclining on couches while eating meat, drinking wine and listening to music; texts also connect the institution with deities and funerary observances. At Achziv, on the northern coast of modern Israel, the first phase of Phoenician family tomb 1 dates to the tenth century BCE, probably about 950–900. Its bowls, krater (mixing bowl), jugs and pouring vessels have been interpreted by Nijboer as equipment for eating and drinking during a banquet within the burial ritual.