A second general consideration is that agriculture also means cattle raising, for both farming and animals are deeply intertwined. And of course we must not forget the backdrop for both: land. For it is the landscape that Phoenicians would change and adapt to their needs, slashing, cleaning, seeding, and irrigating. This Mediterranean landscape, in turn, is not unique or uniform, even if Braudel (1990: 279–80) thought so, and for some time now studies have tended to assess the enormous differences existing within the Mediterranean region at a micro-regional level (Horden and Purcell 2000: 15–25).
For this research on Phoenician agriculture, we should also leave aside a frequent stereotype: that the Phoenicians were essentially a people of sailors and traders. As has happened with the contemporary cultures of the eastern Mediterranean, Phoenician culture is deeply rooted in the land. It exploited intensively the small territory of its coastal strips, and it should be remembered that already in Canaanite times there existed quite an important wine production that was widely exported (Zamora 2000). Precisely, a lack of arable land has been proposed as one of the main reasons for the Phoenician diaspora and colonization (Aubet 2001: 75–76).
The following survey of the Phoenician and Punic rural world has been divided into three parts: its chronological evolution, its production, and its social aspects.
Times and Places
Looking only at the central and western Mediterranean, we know that the arrival of the first Phoenician colonists took place at least in the middle of the ninth century bce, as this is when the most ancient settlements are documented (see chapter 6, this volume). At first we detect mostly a coastal presence, although for the south of the Iberian Peninsula, an early penetration of the hinterland has been proposed that resulted in a real rural colonization of the Guadalquivir River valley (Wagner and Alvar 1989). In any case, these settlements grew quickly in size and in importance in the two following centuries because of their strategic position along sailing routes (Carthage, Mozia, Sulcis), as well as for their role as economic intermediaries and distributors of goods (Cádiz, Lixus, Ibiza). This development also meant the creation and control of their own territory, even if it was a small one. And control over these territories was achieved thanks to dealings with local people or, perhaps sometimes, in spite of them (Wagner 2005).
In these expanded territories, new techniques were applied and new species of animals were introduced, such as the donkey and the chicken. Traditional cultivation was improved so that grape vines and olive trees developed quickly, possibly from existing wild species. But new and better specimens were probably brought as well, as shown by the plants discovered in the Greek vessel of Sant Vicenç (sixth century bce) or by the Punic shipwreck of El Sec (fourth century bce), both found on the coast of Majorca (Nieto and Santos 2009). In any case, we should not be mistaken: it is true that these agricultural resources were quite important. As María Eugenia Aubet put it, the “real wealth of the Málaga and Granada coastline is rooted in the agriculture practised on its river plains, very fertile lands suited for both dry and irrigated cropping” (Aubet 2001: 316). But many surveys have shown that these small centers controlled only a very limited territory, as in the case of Nora in the south of Sardinia, where Phoenician material is found only a few kilometers around the settlement (Botto et al. 2003: 167–70). From a global perspective, the situation shows that the different local populations played a major role, particularly during the first decades of Phoenician settlement. In many cases, where peaceful coexistence among populations seems to have been the rule, we can assume there were marriages or similar unions, and a process of acculturation on both sides (or “hybridization”) that involved adopting rural habits and foods (for some paradigmatic cases in the Iberian Peninsula and Sardinia, see Delgado and Ferrer 2012; Vives Ferrándiz Sanchis 2008; Hayne 2016).
What is certain is that when the “sixth century crisis” occurred, Phoenician agriculture was transformed into production of cash crops, although it retained some other possibilities as well. This crisis had different causes and manifestations depending on the area, from the arrival of Carthaginian troops to Sicily and Sardinia (and possibly to Ibiza) to the exhaustion of the rich silver mines of Andalusia that obliged the coastal cities to change the entire production system. At a general level, we may say that it meant the beginning of important changes in the material culture, as well as its economic structure. Most scholars use the term “Punic” to define this period, running from the middle of the sixth to the end of the second centuries bce (Gómez Bellard 2014).
The main change regarding agriculture in the Punic period involved a systematic and methodical settlement of rural spaces. Where it has been thoroughly studied, this settlement was perfectly organized. Settlers looked for the best lands and built farms and villages according to their production strategies. This phenomenon took place particularly from the fifth century bce onward, with little chronological variation, and it occurred from the plains of Cádiz to the hills of Tunisia, as well as across the islands. Once again, cash crops, wine, and oil were the products, with production levels rising steadily to accommodate more exports. It should be remembered, however, that cereals were also important and their cultivation probably occupied wide areas of land. This development was fostered by different factors, one of which certainly was technological innovation, as well as improvements in agricultural techniques and cattle breeding.
The widespread use of iron was also quite decisive. This metal was produced with ever-increasing quality, yielding better instruments for agricultural work. Among these tools was the plow, particularly important now, for it was being used generally with oxen and horses so that the land could be plowed faster and deeper (Iborra et al. 2003: 48–49). A final and decisive factor was a population increase, the result of improvements in food production. This increase in turn also meant migration, whose movements of people mentioned by literary sources can also be traced to improvements in material culture. The most important of these migrants were the “Lybian-Phoenician” groups—that is, groups from North Africa that were sent (perhaps forced) to Sardinia, Sicily, and the Iberian Peninsula (López Pardo and Suárez Padilla 2002).
Agricultural Production
It is well known that cereals—fundamental for human subsistence—have been a major agricultural product, from the Neolithic period, through antiquity, up to the present day. Wheat, barley, oats, and millet were turned into bread, cakes, or gruel, and they formed the basis of the ancient diet. So it was the case in the Punic world, too (Campanella 2008; Vendrell Betí 2015). It then comes as no surprise that the cereals are always amply represented in the carpological remains recovered in excavations: cereals constitute 65 percent of the remains found in Carthage, 70 percent at Cerro del Villar (Málaga), and 90 percent in Lixus, Morocco, with some variation according to date (a good summary in Pardo Barrionuevo 2015: 173–74). The data should be discussed in more detail, for numbers themselves are not indicative of the differences that could be found in field production. For instance, in most Mediterranean sites, barley (Hordeum vulgare) predominates, while at Atlantic sites like Castillo de Doña Blanca or Lixus, common wheat (Triticum aestivum) prevails. And the reason for this is quite simple: peasants knew their lands well, and whenever they could, they planted wheat because it offered a bigger yield and more use of its by-products (Iborra et al. 2003: 42–46).
The culture of cereals, moreover, does not need much investment, either in labor or in time. The Roman agronomist Columella, born in Cádiz, indicated that for the production of cereals, it was enough to have the equivalent of forty-two man-days per hectare and per year (hereafter, md/ha/y) (Col. 2.12.17). Moreover, cereal crops grow quickly and they produce a harvest beginning at least in their first year.
The main innovation introduced by Phoenician agriculture was that of intensive arboriculture. Regular exploitation of wild fruits was already common among native communities, but fruit trees were now planted and grown on a wide scale, particularly olive tre
es and grape vines, and also pomegranate (not by chance called malum punicum, or “Phoenician apple”), fig trees, and in the Late Punic period, almond trees. Obviously, the domestication of olive trees and grape vines changed the economy of many Mediterranean areas, and forevermore shaped culinary habits. Both crops are quite different from cereals, though. First, it takes a number of years before either bear fruit—five years for grape vines and around twenty years for olive trees (Amouretti 1992: 83; Foxhall 2007: 76–77), hence they are long-term investments. But there is also a difference in the labor needed—up to four times that of cereals: 147/md/ha/y for grape cultivation and 125 md/ha/y for olives (Gallant 1991: 75–76). This meant that a different and more complex agricultural organization had to be established, in which the local population would play an important role.
Other cultivated products were part of the daily diet, and were not negligible—mainly pulses (legumes) and vegetables. Among the pulses, chickpeas, shell beans, lentils, and peas are most commonly found in excavations. Fresh vegetables are much more difficult to find in the archaeological record because of their perishable composition, but some are known, even if only because they have been mentioned in the ancient sources: garlic, onions, leeks, artichokes, chard, lettuces, cucumber, cabbage, turnips, and so on (Spanò Giammelaro 1996: 87, 94; Vendrell Betí 2015: 115–16). These fresh vegetables were cultivated most likely thanks to ample irrigation. We know that irrigation was practiced, as it is mentioned in a well-known description of Carthage’s countryside by Diodorus Siculus on the occasion of Agathocles’s expedition in 310 bce: “The intervening country through which it was necessary for them to march was divided into gardens and plantations of every kind, since many streams of water were led in small channels and irrigated every part” (Diod. Sic. BH 20.8.3, translated by R. M. Geer).
Systematic surveys done in Ibiza point to the existence of small vegetable gardens, and probably of orchards too, in the northeast of the island, an area of farms that were established alongside a modest stream that ran through the valley of Sant Vicent (Gómez Bellard 2008: 73). In the same way, there was a permanent system of irrigation at the Terralbese area (center-west Sardinia), created thanks to the existence of a high water table and permanent stone wells that had been dug (Van Dommelen and Gómez Bellard 2014: 264).
Cattle raising should not be overlooked, as it played a basic role in rural life. Livestock supplied meat, of course, and draught animals were used for agricultural labor and transportation. But livestock also generated by-products, that is, “secondary products” that contributed to food, clothing, and manure, to mention just a few uses. Lastly, cattle had trading value. The possession of cattle in large numbers, therefore, was a sign of wealth; hence cattle could also function as a prestige good. Similar socio-economic values must have been attached to the possession of horses as well. In any case, when the Phoenicians arrived in the west, most of the Bronze Age local societies already had a more or less complex model for cattle management, which allowed the newcomers to rely on these peoples for the primary production of animals, at least at the beginning, as faunal data show. But new waves of Phoenicians soon took charge of the operations, as they controlled more and more territory.
By now, many sites have produced good faunal studies, which allow us to understand the operations involving Phoenician-Punic livestock. For instance, there was a predominance of ovicaprids, particularly sheep, followed by bovines, although the latter usually represented a larger proportion for meat production. In both groups, though, we can appreciate significant innovations. For example, at the Phoenician site of La Fonteta (southeast of the Iberian Peninsula), sheep were bigger than in the indigenous villages nearby, but the bovines there were smaller. In Sardinia, the bovines were much larger than the local Nuragic ones (Iborra 2004: 328; Carenti and Wilkens 2007: 183). That kind of data on livestock cannot be generalized; for instance, at the Atlantic sites of Castillo de Doña Blanca (Cádiz area) and Lixus (Morocco), the bovines were clearly more abundant during all periods, probably because of a steady and plentiful supply of good pasture and marshes. Herd management varied considerably, too, especially regarding the age at slaughter, which depended on the species and the place.
Besides the early introduction of new species, it was particularly the chicken (Gallus domesticus) that would play an important role in food supply, providing meat and eggs. Additionally, a rapid spread of pig raising (Sus domesticus) brought great changes. In fact, contrary to a traditional idea backed by scholars who follow the Classical writers (often very late ones), faunal studies have shown that Phoenicians not only did eat pork but also they did it in sizable quantities, at least in the west. In all strata at Lixus, pig remains constitute the second largest group represented, much ahead of the ovicaprids. Pigs were easy to manage at a low cost in a domestic economy: they provide secure meat reserves, are easy to feed (they are omnivorous), they offer a means for recycling human-generated garbage, and they are a prolific species that grows quickly (Campanella and Zamora 2010: 52).
Horses (Equus equus) and, after their introduction, donkeys (Equus asinus) appear in most of the archaeological records. They were mainly used as draught animals, but they were also eaten. In the Late Punic period, horses also played an important role in most armies.
In well-studied contexts, there are not many other important species, but dogs (Canis familiaris) should be mentioned. Their consumption is amply attested, although probably not as a regular practice; the data from Lixus, Ibiza, and Sardinia, for instance, puts to rest an old controversy (Pardo Barrionuevo 2015: 46). In any case, dogs were used mainly as guardians for sheep herds and as companions for hunters.
It should be noted that wild species played a very minor role as food supply, although there is regular documentation for red deer (Cervus elaphus) and boar (Sus scrofa). They were, however, mainly hunted for their antlers and tusks.
Finally, some mention must be made of activities that took place parallel to farming, which were of importance for the domestic economy. The first is the systematic gathering of nonedible plants, used mainly to produce practical elements such as ropes and sacks. In the west, the case of esparto grass has been very well studied, but other vegetables were also used, such as cane and rushes for basketry. The other notable activity is apiculture (beekeeping), which played an important role all around the Mediterranean as a supplier of the almost only sweetener that existed—honey—and of course also of wax. Honey was also used to preserve fruit, meat, and other foods. That is why the presence of beehives near farms was probably common, although only those made of pottery remain in the archaeological record (Bonet and Mata 1997).
Rural Communities
To understand ancient agriculture, it is necessary to know how production was organized and on what kind of social structure it was based. In the Phoenician period, the most important cities in the east were surrounded by production centers of different sizes. In the west, the first settlements were also productive, although often were supplied by local populations. But progressively the situation became more complex, and since the fifth–fourth centuries bce, different levels of organization could be defined (Van Dommelen and Gómez Bellard 2008: 206–12).
Farms were the basic production unit found in all areas. Their layout was simple, usually around a wide central courtyard. Building walls were made of mudbricks over a stone base, and roofs were flat. The roofs were used as an upper terrace, usable space for domestic tasks and even for sleeping on hot summer nights. Only in Sicily and in some places of Sardinia has the use of tiles been attested, owing to Greek influence. Usually the working areas can be detected, like wineries and olive presses. Stone instruments for grinding cereals are also common finds.
Some farms were larger, constructed in a more monumental fashion and lavishly decorated, with stuccoes, columns (Timpone Rasta in Sicily and Gammarth in Tunisia), and even mosaics (Mozia). For these, the Greek term for “farm” or “country house,” epaulis, has been proposed as more ap
propriate than the Latin villa, which better fits a later period and carries quite different economic and cultural connotations (Cambi 2003: 138–42).
Another settlement category is the village. In fact, the term has been used in surveys to define wide areas of finds that denoted the presence of some houses. Actually, none has been dug extensively, although the excavation of the one at S’Urachi in Sardinia began in 2013.
Finally, there are large settlements that we can consider agricultural centers. These settlements played a central role in agrarian production and especially in the redistribution of goods in specific areas. In many cases, the preexisting old factories like Ibiza or Monte Sirai played that role, but quite often new centers were established, like Kerkouan on the Tunisian coast.
Those are, then, the four known categories that characterize the agricultural landscape of the Phoenician world, even though they are not all found in all areas. In fact, only farms and agricultural centers are known everywhere; for instance, at Ibiza, these two are the only types of settlements attested. There are, in turn, multiple variations from place to place; in the Terralbese (Sardinia), for example, there is a succession of farms, but a little farther inland, only villages are found.
The scarcity of written sources becomes painfully obvious when it comes to discussing the means of agricultural production and land property itself, both of which also involve the important question of the status of the people who lived in the area—that is, the peasants.
It is quite a common idea that the division between private and public property cannot be studied through material culture. Nevertheless, advances in field archaeology allow us to begin approaching this matter, even if the results are not yet satisfactory. For instance, systematic and regular occupation of lands that took place in the fifth–fourth centuries bce probably indicates that these properties were given by a central authority, which in the case of Ibiza was established as the only town on the island. There, properties varied a lot in size, from 10 hectares of irrigated fields in the east to 120 hectares of olive groves in the west. This only meant that the work required to exploit them also varied, not that we necessarily see a difference in wealth. Even if we accept this theoretical distribution, it is still impossible to know if these pieces of land, whatever their size, were in public or private hands (Gómez Bellard 2008: 72–73).
The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean Page 66