Excepting agriculture, most aspects of the Phoenician rural economy have not received sustained attention. Phoenician animal husbandry is fairly well understood in its broad strokes thanks to faunal assemblages in site reports, which reveal the familiar southern Levantine focus on sheep and goats for wool, milk, and meat, with secondary livestock including swine and bovines (used for their draft power in addition to meat). Despite a lack of critical studies examining regional variations or social aspects of husbandry across the Phoenician diaspora, the raw data are helpful in discerning the movement of Eastern populations. In southwestern Spain, for example, the Phoenician focus on ovicaprids contrasts sharply with the central place of bovines in indigenous husbandry (Torres Ortiz 2002: 101–102). As with husbandry, faunal evidence of hunting is often described in site reports, but there has been little research comparing Phoenician hunting patterns with those of other Levantine or western Mediterranean peoples, or the possible sociopolitical status of hunting, which held such a prominent place in elite Mesopotamian and Classical cultures (Anderson 1985). Phoenician forestry also continues to be underexplored despite the fact that Lebanese forests and the Cedrus libani constituted one of the mainstays of the Bronze Age Canaanite political economy, of which Phoenicians were the heirs. Brigitte (Treumann 2009) has made a particularly strong argument for the importance of forests in the Phoenician West, which would have provided pitch and resin in addition to the wood critical for shipbuilding, construction, pyrotechnic activities, and production of marketable commodities like furniture.
Of the maritime resources exploited by the Phoenicians, historical sources emphasize the purple dye extracted from aquatic mollusks, most often Murex trunculus and Murex brandaris (McGovern and Michel 1985; Jensen 1963). Although the details of Phoenician purple production have not been examined as closely archaeologically, the industry’s prevalence in Roman times provides valuable comparative evidence (Valenzuela Oliver 2015; cf. Veropoulidou 2012). Salt production was another major coastal product, and though direct archaeological evidence is scarce, we can assume the ubiquity of coastal salt-pans near Phoenician settlements, based on salt’s importance in producing better-known products such as purple dye (Plin. HN IX: 62), salted fish (e.g., at Punic Gadir/Cádiz; Sáez Romero 2014), and, later, garum (Curtis 1983). Fishing is widely attested through faunal remains at site reports, which show consumption of diverse fish and mollusks, as well as aquatic fowl (e.g., Roselló and Morales 1994). Former western Phoenician settlements were renowned for their salted fish in Punic and Roman times (e.g., Aristotle, Of Marvelous Things Heard, 136), for which there is ample archaeological evidence (Trakadas 2005).
Finally, under the broad rubric of craftsmanship are included the production of frit, ceramics, and glass inlays; carving of diverse materials including ivory, wood, stone and precious stones; and casting of copper, silver, and gold vessels (Markoe 2000: 143–69; Moorey 1994). Evidence for these activities includes the final products, tools, and production debris. Excluding pottery, the best-studied Phoenician crafted objects are the ivory carvings from Mesopotamia and the Levant (Gansell et al. 2014; Barag 1983; Winter 1976). Phoenician carving of ivory and other materials is attested in the ninth century bce at Huelva (González de Canales et al. 2004), and glyptic art is a common deposit in Phoenician and Punic cemeteries in Carthage, Sardinia, and Ibiza (Boardman 2003). Production of frit, pottery, and metal objects required pyrotechnological control including sustainable fuel sources (Kaufman and Scott 2015), construction and maintenance of refractory structures like bicameral kilns (García Fernández and García Vargas 2012), and knowledge required for the thermal manipulation of various raw materials. The most distinctive pyrotechnic instruments introduced to the west by Phoenicians include kilns, clay spacers used to position pottery vessels during firing (Gutiérrez López et al. 2013), and tuyères (Tylecote 1981; Niemeyer 2001). (For Phoenician and “Orientalizing” ivories, bronzes, jewelry and other arts, see chapters 23 and 24, this volume.)
Conclusions
Metallurgy is often perceived to be paradigmatic to the Phoenician experience. In this chapter we have attempted to synthesize the various archaeological, archaeometric, historical, and epigraphic sources available. While emerging as early pioneers of ferrous metallurgy in the Levant, Phoenicians introduced novel techniques in extractive metallurgy to indigenous groups in the western and central Mediterranean. They incorporated the labor and technology of these populations into their own commercial and technological network, while developing new processing methods when confronted with foreign ore mineralizations. The Phoenicians established colonial harbors and ports of call that also served as centers for metal smelting, smithing, warehousing, and trade. Transmission of both expertise and commodities to local populations benefited both indigenous and Phoenician groups, allowing the latter to establish a lasting foothold in the western regions. In turn, access to western metals (especially silver and gold) allowed the Phoenician cities of the Levant to keep their political autonomy for several centuries under the shadow of the neo-Assyrian empire. Following the collapse of this arrangement, the Carthaginians continued to exploit the old Phoenician metal routes in Sardinia and the Iberian Peninsula, even as the myriad Levantine technologies disseminated by Phoenicians became deeply ingrained in the life-ways and economies of the Mediterranean world.
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