Mountains of Silver and Rivers of Gold: The Phoenicians in Iberia

By Ann Neville

The traditional picture of the Phoenicians in Iberia is that of wily traders drawn there by the irresistible lure of the fabulous mineral wealth of the El Dorado of the ancient world. However, a remarkable series of archaeological discoveries, starting in the 1960s, have transformed our understanding of the Phoenicians and allow us to glimpse a picture of life in the Far West that is far richer, and more complex, than the traditional mercantile hypothesis. Drawing on literary and archaeological sources, this books offers an in-depth analysis of the Phoenicians in Iberia: their settlements, material culture, contacts with the local people, and activities; agricultural and cultural, as well as commercial. It concludes that the Phoenician presence in Iberia gave rise to a truly western form of Phoenician culture, one that was enriched and drew from contacts with the local population, forming a characteristic identity, still visible on the arrival of the Romans in the Peninsula.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jan 24, 2007
• ISBN: 9781782974369

Ann Neville

Ann Neville has a M Ed, Dip Ed Management, Dip Ed Leadership, Grad Dip in Creative Writing, and Post Grad Dip Publishing. She is an accomplished facilitator and research writer in the education field and has studied all forms of violence including physical, verbal, exclusion, sexual harassment, racial abuse, deprivation of human rights and cyber bullying. She writes both fiction and non-fiction, and runs creative writing workshops for both children and adults. 

Book preview

e9781782974369_cover.jpg

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

STUDIES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

VOLUME 1

Mountains of Silver and Rivers of Gold

The Phoenicians in Iberia

Ann Neville

A mo thuismitheoiri

I have arrived from my foreign land. I have passed through countries and have heard

about your being, you of the primordial state of the two lands, you who have engendered what exists.

In you your two eyes shine. Your Word is the way of life that gives breath to all throats.

Now I am in the horizon, flooded by the happiness of the harija oases, and I speak to it like a friend.

In me there is a source of health, of life, beyond your shores.

Hieroglyphic inscription on an Egyptian alabaster urn from Tomb 1 of the cemetery of

Cerro de San Cristóbal, at Almuñécar (Granada)

UBC STUDIES IN THE ANCIENT WORLD: VOLUME 1

Series editor: R. J. A. Wilson

First published in 2007

by Oxbow Books, Oxford

for the Department of Classical, Near Eastern & Religious Studies,

University of British Columbia,

Vancouver V6T 1Z1

© Ann Neville 2007

9781782974369

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover photographs by courtesy of Professor H. G. Niemeyer, Hamburg

Front cover: Trayamar (Málaga), Tomb 1, c. 650 BC, during excavation

Back cover (right): Bronze statuette of a male divinity, from Cádiz; height 31 cm;

(below) The site of Toscanos (centre) as it appeared in 1961, looking south-east; the low-lying

ground in the centre and right of the photograph were covered by sea in antiquity

This book is available direct from

Oxbow Books, Oxford

www.oxbowbooks.com

and

The David Brown Book Company

PO Box 511, Oakville, CT 06779, USA

(Phone: [phone]; Fax: [phone])

This publication was grant-aided by the Publications Fund of the National University of

Ireland, Galway, and by a subvention from the University of British Columbia.

Designed by Charlotte Westbrook Wilson

Printed in Great Britain at

Short Run Press, Exeter

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Figures

Foreword

Preface

1 - Settlement topography

2 - Cemeteries

3 - Gadir (Cádiz)

4 - The Phoenician settlements and their hinterland

5 - Metals

6 - The sixth century: crisis or transition?

Appendix: Phoenician pottery–the Far Western sphere

Notes

Bibliography

Supplementary bibliography

Glossary of technical terms

Index

Table of Figures

Fig.1.1

Fig. 1.2

Fig. 1.3

Fig. 1.4

Fig. 1.5

Fig. 1.6

Fig. 1.7

Fig. 1.8

Fig. 1.9

Fig. 1.10

Fig. 1.11

Fig. 1.12

Fig. 1.13

Fig. 1.14

Fig. 1.15

Fig. 1.16

Fig. 1.17

Fig. 1.18

Fig. 1.19

Fig 1.20

Fig. 1.21

Fig. 1.22

Fig. 1.23

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5

Fig. 2.6

Fig. 2.7

Fig. 2.8

Fig. 2.9

Fig. 2.10

Fig. 2.11

Fig. 2.12

Fig. 2.13

Fig. 2.14

Fig 2.15

Fig. 2.16

Fig. 2.17

Fig. 2.18

Fig. 3.1

Fig 3.2

Fig 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Fig. 3.6

Fig 3.7

Fig 3.8

Fig. 3.9

Fig. 3.10

Fig 3.11

Fig 3.12

Fig 3.13

Fig 3.14

Fig 4.1

Fig 4.2

Fig 4.3

Fig. 4.4

Fig 4.5

Fig 4.6

Fig. 4.7

Fig. 4.8

Fig. 4.9

Fig 4.10

Fig 4.11

Fig. 4.12

Fig 4.13

Fig 4.14

Fig 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Fig. 5.6

Fig. 5.7

Fig. 5.8

Fig. 5.9

Fig. 5.10

Fig. 5.11

Fig. 5.12

Fig. 5.13

Fig. 5.14

Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

Fig. 7.4

Foreword

by R. J. A. Wilson

This book is the first volume of a new series, University of British Columbia Studies in the Ancient World, published by Oxbow Books for the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at UBC. The series aims to make available monographs on a variety of subjects within the remit of the research interests of the Department, but with an emphasis on archaeology in its broadest interpretation. Future volumes will deal with nineteenth-century excavations at Carthage (by Joann Freed, of Wilfred-Laurier University, Waterloo) and with Greek temple-building from an ancient architect’s perspective, the latter book containing selected papers written by the late Jos De Waele (University of Nijmegen). I am grateful for the collaboration of Oxbow Books, and in particular to David Brown for agreeing to accept the new series under the umbrella of Oxbow, a company which has done so much for archaeological publishing over the past two decades.

The present volume by Ann Neville, Mountains of Silver and Rivers of Gold, provides an important fresh synthesis of the extraordinary evidence for the Phoenician presence in southern Spain and Portugal. The Phoenicians have always been something of a Cinderella in English-language archaeological publishing. While there is an enormous bibliography on the Greek ‘colonization’ movement, very little has been written in English about the parallel and approximately contemporary settlements of the Phoenicians overseas, and especially their achievements in the far west of the Mediterranean. It is true that the doyenne of such studies, María Eugenia Aubet Semmler, published in 1987 a book later issued in English as Phoenicians in the West: politics, colonies and trade (Aubet 1993), now re-issued in a much expanded second edition; but this is a book (despite its title) which offers a very broad sweep of its subject over the eastern as well as the western Mediterranean, and only three out of the eleven chapters deal with Phoenician settlements in Iberia (Aubet 2001). Before the publication of the present book, Aubet’s account has remained the most detailed summary in English of the astonishing discoveries of Iberian-based archaeologists over recent decades, work which has remained largely unknown to those who have not read the original reports in Spanish and Portuguese. The discovery only in the late 1980s that the Phoenicians also settled on the Atlantic coast of Portugal (e.g. at Abul: Mayet and da Silva 2000), a very foreign environment to anyone used to the quieter shores of the Mediterranean, has revolutionized our understanding of Phoenician ambition, as is fully recounted in the pages that follow. The story is an exciting one, told here by Ann Neville in a lively and very readable account, rich in detail and searching in its analysis. It is an account which not only assesses in full measure the discoveries old and new in Iberia, but also sets them in their wider geographical, social and economic context: Ann Neville is fully aware of Phoenician, Egyptian and Greek interaction all over the Mediterranean during the period that interests her (principally the eighth to sixth centuries BC), and each relevant scrap of evidence has been duly scrutinized and utilized. In addition she has also covered the equally fascinating theme of cultural interaction between the Phoenician settlements on the coast and those of the indigenous Iberians in the interior.

Ann Neville has now left archaeology and it has not proved possible for her to take account of publications which have come out in the last few years. That there has been a delay between the submission of the manuscript and its appearance now is in no way due to the author; it has been more to do with her editor’s extensive commitments in administration, research and teaching, and his recent transatlantic move. The last item in her bibliography dates to 2005, and takes account of the latest exciting developments in the excavation of the El Carambolo sanctuary at Carmona (see p. 198 n.162); but research which was published in 2003 and 2004 has also not been systematically culled for this book. The rest of this Foreword is therefore intended to draw the reader’s attention to some recent publications which have a bearing on the themes of Ann Neville’s book.

It was precisely the absence, referred to above, of information in English on Phoenicians in the West that prompted publication in 2002 of The Phoenicians in Spain (Bierling 2002), a book which might seem at first sight to cover the same topic as the present work. Its subtitle, however (A collection of articles translated from Spanish), is significant: the book is not a synthesis of its subject at all, but usefully makes available for the first time in English certain key papers published between 1978 and 1997. Not surprisingly most are cited in their Spanish original versions in Neville’s bibliography below; but readers should be aware that the following items listed there are now available in English in Bierling’s book: Aubet Semmler 1977–78 and 1987; Niemeyer 1986b; Pellicer Catalán 1986b; Ruiz Mata 1986a and 1993a; and Schubart 1986; while González Prats et al.’s 1997 paper on La Fonteta (Bierling 2002, 113–25) covers exactly the same ground as Neville’s González Prats 1998.

Brief up-to-date summaries of Phoenician settlement in Iberia are presented by Arteaga 2004 and Schubart and Maaß-Lindemann 2004, contributions to the catalogue of an important exhibition on the Phoenicians held that year in Karlsruhe. Useful too is the monograph by Ana Maria Arruda (2002) summarizing the current state of our knowledge of the settlements on the Atlantic coast of Portugal, and their relations with the indigenous peoples of the interior. López Castro has stressed the privileged social status of the Western élite, and raised again Assyrian aggression as a possible motive for Phoenician migration (2006; cf. pp. 122 and 163 below). The important cemetery at Cerro de San Cristóbal at Almuñécar (also known as Laurita) has recently been published (Pellicer Catalán 2007), while the excavations at Toscanos and Cerro del Alarcón, often mentioned below, have now received monograph treatment from Hermanfrid Schubart and his collaborators (Schubart 2002). Two recent BAR monographs touch on topics discussed in Mountains of Silver: Domínguez Pérez (2006), in a book on Cádiz from the fifth to the third centuries BC, a period referred to only in passing by Neville, inevitably shares common ground in discussing problems of Gadir’s topography, while Hunt Ortiz’s technical and science-based study of metallurgy in south-west Spain from Chalcolithic times onwards includes a section (2003, 356–71) on the orientalizing period, where finds from sites treated below (Ch. 5) are further discussed and in part illustrated. A third BAR volume (Morgenroth 2004, with bibliography up to 1998) handles some of the same material as Neville but in a very different way and with a narrower focus: there is no treatment there, for example, of the key sites in Portugal, and there is a marked emphasis on small-finds typology. In addition to these monographs there has been the usual output of conference volumes: the annual proceedings of the Eivissa ‘archaeological days’ continue to have much of value (e.g. Escacena Carrasco 2004; Sala Sellés 2004 on Phoenicio-Iberian relations); a conference on funerary customs in honour of Dr Pellicer Catalán includes a statistical analysis of the Puig des Molins cemetery (Fernández Gómez-Pantoja and Costa Mas 2004); and the Atti of the V Congresso Internazionale di Studi Fenici e Punici, held in Marsala and Palermo in 2000, are also now in circulation (Spanò Giammellaro 2005), with further papers on Iberian topics.

None of this material detracts in any way from the substantial achievement of Mountains of Silver, nor with one exception do these fresh publications call for radical revision of the views put forward in the current book. For example, the excavation reports listed above present in full the evidence for conclusions which have been available for years in substantial preliminary reports, already fully absorbed into Neville’s discussion. The one exception concerns the chronology of the earliest Phoenician contacts with Iberia, and here the new radiocarbon revolution, with its ability to narrow dates to within a few decades rather than provide only a broad chronological framework as previously (Bayliss et al. 2007), is likely to have a profound effect on discussions of Mediterranean chronology in the first millennium BC, as Ann Neville herself predicts (p. 175 n.1). This is currently a hot topic: the jury is still out on the early results, and the pages of several academic journals have been buzzing with heated debate (Finkelstein 2003; Bruins, van der Plight and Mazar 2003b; Finkelstein and Piesetzky 2003). The implications of all this for the history of the earliest Phoenician contact with the Iberian peninsula have recently been presented in a searching paper by Brandheim (2006). The earliest Greek pottery found so far in the West, a Euboean skyphos and an Attic pyxis of Middle Geometric II type, has been traditionally dated to c. 770/60 BC (see p. 159 and pp. 204–5 n.3); but this dating has now been thrown wide open by radiocarbon-14 dates from Israel, especially from Tel Rehov, which point consistently to a ninth-century-BC chronology for the introduction of Middle Geometric, both I and II (Bruins, van der Plight and Mazar 2003a; Coldstream 2003; Coldstream and Mazar 2003). If that is right, the earliest Greek pottery in Carthage belongs to the last quarter of the ninth century, in line with the traditional foundation date of that city in 814 BC; the foundation of Pithekoussai must be pushed back to c. 800 BC rather than c. 750 as at present; and the earliest Phoenician contact with Huelva, on the basis of both new radiocarbon dates and the earliest Greek pottery there (if carried by Phoenicians, as seems likely), may go back to soon after 900 BC (González de Canales Cerisola et al. 2004, 2006; Nijboer and van der Plicht 2006). This is stirring stuff indeed, and the continuing debate looks set to dominate Mediterranean studies of the first millennium BC for some time to come.

But all this is to anticipate. A Foreword is meant to whet the appetite, not to serve up the hors d’oeuvre. It is time to turn the page and let Ann Neville lay before you the feast of evidence that makes up Mountains of Silver and Rivers of Gold. Enjoy!

R. J. A. Wilson

Note: references above, if not found in the main Bibliography, are cited in full in the Supplementary Bibliography on p. 231.

Preface

This book was in origin a doctoral thesis, submitted to the School of Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1998. However, such has been the pace of scholarship in the subject since that time that to prepare it for publication large areas have been rewritten, and I have changed my views on many key aspects of the topic. The book’s title, taken from Pliny (NH IV.115), who refers to the alluvial gold of the Tagus, and Strabo (III.2.11), who talks of a ‘silver mountain’ in south-east Spain, reflects the traditional view based on the ancient authors that the principal reason for the Phoenician interest in Iberia, and the focus of all their efforts, was to gain access to its mineral wealth. Such a view, while generally accepted, is considerably nuanced here.

As both a student and an academic, I am grateful for the help given to me by many people. Chief among those is Professor R. J. A. Wilson, now Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire and Head of the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, but who as Louis Claude Purser Associate Professor of Classical Archeology at Trinity was invaluable in the early stages of my work, and who has never failed to help and encourage me since. I am also grateful to him for accepting this book in the series University of British Columbia Studies in the Ancient World and for providing a subsidy towards the cost of its publication. He has also acted as my editor, contributed a Foreword, and seen the book through the press; in addition he has kindly compiled the index. Professor B. B. Shefton displayed both his great erudition in this subject, and unfailing enthusiasm and kindness to me as a student. To Professor Kathleen Coleman, formerly Professor of Latin at Trinity College, Dublin, and now at Harvard, I owe especial thanks for the great kindness she showed me and the interest she gave my work in an area so far removed from her own scholarly interests. I would also like to thank Professor Brian McGing of Trinity College, Dublin, for all his support and encouragement, and for most generously supporting my application for funding towards the cost of the artwork. In this respect I would like to thank the Centre for Mediterranean & Near Eastern Studies at Trinity College Dublin for their support. Professor Richard Harrison of the University of Bristol read my chapter on mining and metallurgy and provided many clarifications and helpful comments. Catherine Martin prepared the maps and site plans, and Michelle Comber was responsible for redrawing all the artefacts; their expertise and artistic skill have made a major contribution to the volume. I am also very grateful to Professor H. G. Niemeyer of Hamburg, who kindly loaned his historic colour photographs which grace the covers of this book.

I could never have written this book without my time in Spain, where a Spanish Government Scholarship allowed me to spend a year as a student of the Departamento de Historia Antigua at the University of Seville. While there, I benefitted from the expert knowledge and advice of Dr. Mari Cruz Marin Ceballos, for which I shall always be grateful. I am also delighted to have the chance at last to acknowledge fully, and to thank for all his help, Dr. Salvador Ordoñez Agulla, who took the trouble of sending to Galway copies of the most recondite articles on the archaeology of the lower Guadalquivir.

Finally, to my family and to Pangur for putting up with me for all this time, thank you.

Ann Neville

1

Settlement topography

Introduction

The Greek and Roman historical tradition is quite explicit in placing the start of Phoenician expansion in the far west in the late twelfth century BC, with the foundations of Gadir and Lixus, beyond the Straits of Gibraltar in Spain and Morocco respectively, as well as that of Utica in Tunisia. After over thirty years of intensive research and excavations in these areas, conventional archaeology is equally categorical in asserting that there is still no incontrovertible proof of any permanent Phoenician settlement in the Atlantic and the western Mediterranean basin much before the eighth century BC.¹

The archaeological record places the earliest Phoenician occupation in Iberia on the Andalusian coast, where a dense network of small settlements has been found along a coastal strip, covering the modern provinces of Cádiz, Málaga, Granada and Almería as far north as Alicante (Fig. 1.1).² This area shows continuous Phoenician occupation over 200 years, from the beginning of the eighth century until the mid-sixth century; some settlements continue under Carthaginian influence, and display a marked Punic character right down to the Roman period. From this central area of settlement, the Phoenicians expanded to occupy other parts of Iberia during the eighth and seventh centuries, reaching the coasts of Portugal, Alicante and the Balearic Islands, as well as Algeria, and Atlantic Morocco in North Africa.

Some of these sites were known and referred to by the classical authors, but the scale of Phoenician settlement in Iberia has only become clear with the start of sustained archaeological investigation from the 1960s onwards. We have a number of references to Cádiz among the ancient authors, as well as quite detailed accounts of its topography. This is undoubtedly due to its economic importance and peculiar location, on the Atlantic, on the edge of what was terra incognita for the Greeks and, for a long time, also for the Romans.³ The other Phoenician sites on the Mediterranean coastline, and the Atlantic, passed largely unremarked by classical historiography, as the most important conflicts in the region, namely the Second Punic War and the Roman civil wars, took place elsewhere. We have therefore to rely for our information on geographers such as Strabo, who dedicated Book III of his Geography to Iberia, and Avienus, who wrote a periplus of the Spanish coastline, as well as on the Elder Pliny. All preserve valuable information concerning the origin of these sites, and Strabo gives us the story of the foundation of Cádiz, as told by the inhabitants of that city. However, neither Strabo nor Pliny claim to be exhaustive in their description of the settlements and peoples of southern Spain, and in general mention only those Phoenician foundations which were still prosperous cities in their own day.⁴ Thus, while the evidence from the ancient texts provides us with some useful information, for a historical reconstruction of the Phoenician enclaves in Iberia our primary source is the archaeological data.⁵

The key Phoenician sites

Before discussing any of the settlements in detail, let us start with a brief survey of all the sites in Iberia which show signs of Phoenician occupation during the eighth century BC.⁶

Morro de Mezquitilla

The earliest known Phoenician site on the Mediterranean coast of Spain is that located at Morro de Mezquitilla, in the province of Málaga. It lies on a hill rising some 30 m above sea level, just to the east of the mouth of the Algarrobo river, and some 300 m away from the modern coastline (Fig. 1.2). Here six phases of Phoenician settlement have been identified, ranging from approximately 800 BC (Phase I) to the sixth century BC (Phases V–VI), making its foundation roughly contemporary with that of the Phoenician Castillo de Doña Blanca in Cádiz.⁷

Almuñécar

The next area to be settled by the Phoenicians was at Almuñécar, in the province of Granada, known to us from its coins of the Roman era as F(irmum) I(ulium) SEXS, or in its Neo-Punic issues as sks (Fig. 1.2).⁸ Strabo refers to a failed attempt by the Phoenicians to establish themselves at Sexs before they eventually settled at Gadir soon after the Trojan war (3. 5. 5). Although the existence of the Phoenician colony of Sex or Ex somewhere on the Andalusian coast between Málaga and Almería was well documented in the classical sources, its location was discovered only with the chance find of a cemetery situated on the slopes of the Cerro de San Cristóbal, a promontory 1 km to the north-west of Almuñécar castle, in the ancient centre of the town. This cemetery consisted of some twenty shaft graves, containing cremations in large alabaster urns of Egyptian origin. It was the first Phoenician necropolis to be discovered in Spain, and gave rise to renewed archaeological and historical interest in this area. The cemetery was dated by its excavator to the first half of the seventh century BC, based on the discovery of two Protocorinthian kotylai in tomb 19B,⁹ but this dating was subsequently modified, on the basis of the analysis of the forms of Phoenician pottery found in the tombs, to a time somewhere between the very late eighth and the late seventh centuries BC.¹⁰ Initial excavations in the ancient centre of the town revealed materials which dated back only as far as the sixth century; but more recently various areas of settlement in and around the ancient centre of Almuñécar have been located which can be firmly dated to the eighth century.¹¹ The earliest settlement levels were found at various points on the hill of Cerro de San Miguel, in the old centre of the town, among them at El Majuelo (underneath a Roman fish-sauce factory), where abundant Phoenician red slip ware was found. In accordance with the relative chronology devised by H. Schubart which establishes chronological progression according to the increase in width of the rims of Phoenician red slip plates, the El Majuelo plates, with their narrow rims, can be dated to the first half of the eighth century.¹² Phoenician red slip pottery dating to the early eighth century was also found in another part of the Cerro de San Miguel, at the Plaza Eras del Castillo. But what is especially interesting is that at both these locations Phoenician pottery was found alongside indigenous Late Bronze Age pottery, and in Eras del Castillo the indigenous pottery made up some 98% of the total. Thus it seems clear that the earliest Phoenicians who came to Almuñécar chose to live in an already established indigenous settlement; on the basis of the archaeological evidence, they soon became a dominant part of the population, giving a semitic name to the new mixed settlement.¹³ According to a geological research programme of the German Archaeological Institute, ancient Almuñécar was located directly on the ancient coastline, along the shores of an open maritime bay. This would make Sexi conform to the settlement pattern adopted by the Phoenicians in Iberia, who generally preferred sites directly adjacent to the ancient coastline. It originally took the form of a peninsula jutting out to sea between two bays, providing two sheltered harbours, and flanked on either side by the rivers Seco and Verde–as we will see, a characteristically Phoenician location.¹⁴

e9781782974369_i0002.jpg

Fig.1.1 Phoenician settlements in Iberia

Key: 1 Sa Caleta; 2 Ibiza; 3 Guardamar/El Estaño; 4 Villaricos/Baria; 5 Adra (Abdera); 6 Almuñécar (Sex); 7 Chorreras; 8 Morro de Mezquitilla; 9 Toscanos/Alarcón/Peñon; 10 Malaka; 11 Cerro del Villar; 12 Montilla; 13 Cerro del Prado; 14 Cádiz (Gadir); 15 Castillo de Doña Banca; 16 Tavira; 17 Cerro da Rocha Branca; 18 Abul; 19 Alcaçova; 20 Quinta de Almaraz ; 21 Santa Olaia

Chorreras

Datable to the middle of the eighth century BC is the settlement of Chorreras, situated on a rocky coastal promontory less than 1 km east of Morro de Mezquitilla (Fig. 1.2). This site is interesting for two reasons. Unlike many other Phoenician sites, it was not subsequently reoccupied after its abandonment by the Phoenicians; so excavations can reveal more of the ancient site-plan than is normally possible. Also it was occupied for a very limited period of time, with only one habitation level, dating from roughly 750 to 700 BC. This relatively short period of occupation, before the final, apparently peaceful, abandonment of the settlement, means that here we can observe the eighth-century habitation structures and artefacts unencumbered by the subsequent building which we find on other sites. For this reason Chorreras is one of the best examples available of the urban structure and material culture of an eighth-century Phoenician site in Spain.¹⁵

Casa de Montilla

Equally shortlived was the settlement at Casa de Montilla, near San Roque on the Mediterranean coast of the province of Cádiz (Fig. 1.2).¹⁶ Here an indigenous Late Bronze Age site was located at the mouth of the river Guadiaro which provided a direct link with the Guadalquivir valley via Ronda. In the second half of the eighth century this site came into close contact with the Phoenicians: Phoenician pottery, chiefly amphorae, has been found in large quantities at the settlement. Most of the Phoenician pottery comes from a zone 125 m away from the indigenous site; almost no local pottery was found, and the materials are wholly Phoenician in character. This area has been interpreted by the excavators as a small Phoenician colony, founded close to the indigenous site and occupied for some fifty years before being abandoned c. 700 BC.

e9781782974369_i0003.jpg

Fig. 1.2 Phoenician and indigenous settlements in Mediterranean Andalusia during the eighth to sixth centuries

Toscanos

Some 7 km west of Morro de Mezquitilla is the Phoenician settlement of Toscanos, on the bank of the Vélez river, near the coast (Fig. 1.2). The settlement on the summit of the hill of Toscanos was undoubtedly the central nucleus of Phoenician occupation around the former maritime bay which existed between Cerro del Mar, the hill on the other side of the Vélez river, and the hill of Toscanos. The ancient remains situated on these hills were once thought to be those of the Phocaean colony of Mainake mentioned in the ancient sources.¹⁷ The settlement at Toscanos is one of the best known Phoenician sites in Spain, having been excavated by the German Archaeological Institute from 1964 until the mid-1980s. These excavations revealed an occupation of the site dating from c. 730 BC to somewhere in the first half of the sixth century BC. The Phoenician settlement at Toscanos clearly had important mercantile and commercial functions, as the presence of harbour installations and an imposingly large central warehouse building reveal.¹⁸ In the seventh century the settlement expanded to include the nearby hills of Cerro del Peñón and Cerro del Alarcón (Fig. 1.3). Cerro del Peñón may have been originally the site of a cemetery, but by the seventh century it was also used for metallurgical activities, as we can see from the large quantities of slag and the presence of a smelting furnace, possibly that of a smith, on the slope above the settlement nucleus.¹⁹ The Cerro del Alarcón, to the north-west of Toscanos, seems to have had a defensive purpose, housing first a large rectangular building, which has been interpreted as a military outpost, and then a fortification wall. This defensive wall ran from Alarcón over the Peñón and undoubtedly served to protect and enclose the by now extensive site of Toscanos, which had expanded to the north to enclose the harbour bay at Manganeto and to the west to Cerro del Peñón.²⁰

Adra

Also dating to the second half of the eighth century is the site known to the classical historians as Abdera, located to the east of the modern city of Adra in the province of Almería (Fig. 1.2). Initial excavations at the site, on the edge of the former estuary of the Río Grande, revealed nothing earlier than the fifth century.²¹ Recent rescue excavations, however, identified four levels of occupation of the site, the earliest datable to the second half of the eighth century and the latest to the fourth century BC.²²

e9781782974369_i0004.jpg

Fig. 1.3 Map showing Toscanos, its outlying areas at Cerro del Alarcón and Cerro del Peñón, as well as the harbour at Manganeto: all were enclosed by the settlement’s fortification wall. Toscanos’ cemetery was located across the river at Cerro del Mar (top right).

La Fonteta

Far away from the cluster of settlements on the Costa del Sol, the Phoenicians around 750 BC founded a settlement at La Fonteta, in Guardamar, situated in the province of Alicante (Fig. 1.2). This is the most northerly Phoenician site so far identified on the coast of mainland Spain. It is located on the mouth of the river Segura, facing the island of Ibiza, where further Phoenician settlements are attested from the seventh century onwards (Fig. 1.1). La Fonteta provides us with a unique insight, not just into the urbanism of the Phoenician foundations in Iberia, but also into the economic and commercial strategies of the eastern settlers, and their contacts with the indigenous population. ²³ The settlement was occupied for approximately 200 years, from the mid-eighth century down to the mid-sixth century BC. The foundation level revealed very few materials, and the only signs of construction came from a series of holes, which may represent post-holes, either belonging to the earliest, timber houses on the site, or representing the remains of some kind of defensive structure, perhaps a palisade.²⁴ However, by the last decade of the eighth century, the site had at least one more substantial dwelling, a rectilinear structure, divided up into a number of rooms. The construction techniques used were still rather flimsy, in that the walls were made of mud, with no sign of the mudbricks or masonry socles which we find in eighth-century Phoenician houses in the settlements on the Costa del Sol. At La Fonteta, by contrast, the base of the walls was simply supported by some irregularly-shaped stones. However, despite the simplicity of its construction, this was a large and complex building, the full extent of which is still not known. During the seventh century La Fonteta acquired more solid buildings, and by the end of the century it was surrounded with a fortification wall. The economic activities attested at the site point to the importance of metallurgy, with signs of iron, copper and silver production, probably drawn from the rich mineral deposits in the hinterland of the settlement; metals were clearly obtained by means of trade with the nearby indigenous settlements (see further below, pp. 27–30).

El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño

One of the most interesting aspects of the Phoenician settlement of La Fonteta is the possibility that it had a small fortified outpost some 2 km away, situated at El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño, on the mouth of the river Segura. It overlooked what was at the start of the last millennium BC a vast lagoon which constituted the lower stretches of the Segura and Vinalopó rivers (Fig. 1.2). Its strategic position allowed it to control the traffic entering the river, which was the main artery of communication and an important link to the indigenous and Phoenician sites in the interior. The river also provided access to the mineral resources of south-east Spain, chiefly the silver mines at Linares (active during this period), where many orientalizing objects have been found.²⁵ Finally the settlement at El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño protected the best site for the Phoenician port, at the bay of La Rinconada which opens on to the river Segura.²⁶ The site at El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño was first occupied in the late eighth century BC. From the start it was surrounded by a fortification wall, which adopted a characteristically oriental form: it was based on a system of casemates, like the fortification of the Phoenician site at Castillo de Doña Blanca, near Cádiz.²⁷ A peculiar feature of the urbanism of El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño is the fact that even within the area intra muros there was a further division of the space: a large wall, more than 1 m in width, delimits a trapezoidal area which has been described as a form of acropolis within the settlement.²⁸ Within this carefully marked out zone there are signs of metallurgical activity, including the working of lead and the presence of at least one tuyère. The site may therefore have been used in the cupellation of silver, a mineral extractable locally from the veins of argentiferous galena of the Sierra de Orihuela and the Callosa del Segura. The excavators have suggested that this division of the internal space of the settlement points to the existence of a hierarchy at El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño, and one which controlled the production of metal resources.²⁹ The buildings at the site were in typical Phoenician style, that is, rectilinear in ground-plan, with stone socles, adobe walls and beaten-earth floors, and its pottery consisted of typically Phoenician materials, along with some hand-made ware (Fig. 1.4).

The settlement at El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño was to be short-lived: occupation lasted from the end of the eighth century to the mid- or late seventh century BC. It was abandoned without any evidence of violence or destruction, and the scarcity of ceramics and other finds at the site suggests that the inhabitants may simply have left taking most of their possessions with them. Excavations there are still on-going and in time will no doubt provide us with a greater understanding of the site and of Phoenician occupational and economic strategies in the lower Segura region. González Prats believes that El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño was an outpost founded by, and dependent on, the nearby site of La Fonteta. Its function was clearly to control and guard access to the river Segura and watch over what may have been the main harbour of the area, at La Rinconada.³⁰ This view raises questions about the abandonment of El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño. Although the abandonment of the site is as yet not precisely dated, González Prats choses to link it with the building of a fortification at La Fonteta. The wall at the latter site seems to have been constructed in great haste, built right on top of what had been a flourishing metal-producing workshop, and using among its building materials the grave-markers from the settlement’s necropolis. So why was this done? Was there some external threat which forced the inhabitants of La Fonteta to enclose their settlement within sturdy fortifications, abandoning the area extra muros, and consolidating all the Phoenician population of the region within the one heavily-defended site? Whatever the nature of this threat, it does not seem to have come from the indigenous population, as the nearby indigenous site of La Peña Negra (Fig. 1.2) had a thriving Phoenician community living and working in their settlement at this time: it was clearly in close contact with La Fonteta which it supplied with pottery (see Chapter Four, p. 118).³¹ Perhaps the events of the late seventh century BC at La Fonteta and El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño simply foreshadow the crisis which was to hit the Phoenician communities in Iberia in the sixth century BC.

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Fig. 1.4 El Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño, pottery: (i) red-slip plate; (ii) amphora; (iii)–(iv) polychrome ware

Cerro del Villar

The last securely dated eighth-century Phoenician site is situated at Cerro del Villar, some 4 km from the Phoenician town of Malaka, the modern Málaga (Fig. 1.2). What is now a low hillock about 6.30 m high, situated in the alluvial plain of the Guadalhorce river, was in Phoenician times a small island with a surface area of approximately 260 m by 200 m, located in the centre of an extensive marine inlet into which the Guadalhorce river drained.³² Excavated using a combination of archaeological, geological and paleoenvironmental techniques, the site at Cerro del Villar has yielded valuable data concerning the interaction of the Phoenician settlement with its environment. The importance of the Guadalhorce site was its geographical location, at the entrance to one of the largest and most important Mediterranean rivers of Andalusia: this waterway acted as a means of communications between Upper Andalusia and the mineral resources of Tartessos. Cerro del Villar had as its hinterland the Guadalhorce valley which provided optimum conditions for intensive irrigation agriculture. Our evidence shows that this is precisely what the Phoenicians at El Villar practised: the remains of various different types of cereals, as well as mills for grinding the corn, have been found at the site.³³ The island site of El Villar was intensively occupied from the eighth to the sixth centuries by a thriving and apparently prosperous settlement, which expanded to occupy the whole surface of the island, an area of almost 10 ha, making it and Castillo de Doña Blanca, near Cádiz, among the largest Phoenician settlements in Iberia.

Cerro del Villar had strong industrial functions. During the seventh century the processing of fish products as well as dyeing were carried out there; but, by the sixth century, one of the most important industrial activities seems to have been pottery production, for which the Phoenicians at El Villar had excellent raw materials in the clay deposits of the Guadalhorce valley.³⁴ While the choice of site might have been favourable from an economic perspective, it was not the most appropriate for human occupation. Geomorphological analysis of the area around El Villar has revealed the silting up of the former Guadalhorce estuary: as a result the island of El Villar disappeared around the beginning of the sixth century BC.³⁵ Low-lying areas of the Phoenician settlement were subject to periodic floods and eventually had to be abandoned, so that settlement concentrated only in the centre of the island. The island of El Villar was abandoned very suddenly around 580/570 BC. Significantly it is precisely at this time that the nearby Malaka first becomes an important port and trading settlement, and it was soon to become, with Gadir, the most important Phoenician city in Spain, under the hegemony of Carthage.³⁶

These initial eighth-century settlements show the Phoenicians establishing themselves on small islands or low promontories along the lower reaches of all the most important rivers on the Andalusian Mediterranean coast, at sites which lay in close proximity to the ancient coastline. These offered their settlers easy navigation along both maritime and fluvial trade routes, and access to the rich natural resources located in the hinterland of their settlements.

The oldest Phoencian settlements in Spain

For a closer examination of the urban structure and the nature of settlement in these earliest Phoenician sites, it is the places which are not named as Phoenician colonial centres in our literary sources–Toscanos, Morro de Mezquitilla and Chorreras–which have provided the richest eighth-century habitation levels, and where we can best appreciate the exact nature of the initial Phoenician settlement in these small coastal enclaves.

Morro de Mezquitilla in the eighth century BC Morro de Mezquitilla is the oldest Phoenician settlement on the Mediterranean coast of Andalusia, with Phoenician occupation starting at the site c. 800. The earliest settlement levels (which were labelled B1 by the excavators) consist of large rectangular dwellings, one of which has sixteen rooms (Fig. 1.5 (a)). The walls, which are preserved to a height of up to 1 m, are made from sun-dried brick and covered with a reddish-brown plaster on the outside. At intervals the walls have openings which would have provided access between rooms, and there were high thresholds with steps on either side. In two places hearths could be observed.

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Fig. 1.5 Morro de Mezquitilla, plan of the site in the eighth century (above) and the seventh century (below)

The rooms have rectangular ground-plans which are not always regular. They tend to be large, e.g. 4.20–4.80 m by 3 m, and are occasionally subdivided. In total, we can distinguish three separate construction complexes which belonged to the earliest phase of occupation at Morro de Mezquitilla. The largest of these is Building K which extends over 19 m in length and is some 11m wide; it is divided into at least sixteen rooms. Building K was not built in a single phase, as the obtuse and acute angles of its walls show. The walls are sometimes joined slightly irregularly, and some of the rooms are also irregular, as we can see from the plan.³⁷ (Fig. 1.5 (a)) The eastern portion of the building may be the oldest; the western part, which partially overlies a metallurgical workshop, could have been added later.

Between Building K and Building I, situated further south and only partially documented, there seems to have been a narrow street which runs through all the western part of the settlement area. This street is characterised by a green-coloured surface, its colour deriving from the organic material contained in its composition. Building H, immediately to the east of I, differs slightly in its orientation from buildings K and I and it is quite likely that Building H is slightly later than Building I.³⁸

Significant too for the economic role of the settlement is the discovery of the remains of metallurgical workshops: these are contemporary with the first buildings on the site, and indeed some of them at least are slightly earlier.³⁹ This area is located in the southwest of the archaeological zone occupied by the residential buildings. Here several furnaces were found, some of which show signs of having been renovated on several occasions. Near the furnaces, which show strong signs of burning, slag remains were found; there were also fragments of ventilation tubes, especially bellows nozzles, sometimes with metal remains still adhering to them. The nozzles found here prove that smelting was carried out in the settlement, and thus these workshops would have been for metallurgical purposes. In addition, fragments of large clay jars were found which had drops of melted metal still adhering to them. Analysis of the slag remains has proved that the metal being processed was iron.⁴⁰ Obviously the metallurgical activities attested here are not those of primary smelting, as in that case there would have been far greater signs of combustion on the furnaces, and a larger amount of slag would have been produced. It is more likely that we have here a workshop designed to re-smelt and process the metal–perhaps even a smithy. In any case, the fact that a metallurgical workshop was in operation during the initial occupation of the site provides us with important evidence as to the settlement’s economic activities.⁴¹

Despite its very early dating, the initial occupation of the Morro de Mezquitilla hill (Phase B1) shows well-planned buildings, with an urban structure characterised by large houses; these measured up to 15m long and were divided into up to sixteen rooms. As Aubet points out, both the uniform orientation of the earliest houses, as well as their lay-out along regularly-planned streets, point to a degree of urban planning worthy of a settlement of some rank. Some of the buildings at Morro de Mezquitilla, such as Building K, suggest the presence of a population with a relatively high standard of living.⁴² This is interesting given the building’s construction in the earliest phase of occupation at the site, and also the clear evidence for social stratification which Morro de Mezquitilla and the other colonial sites present during the seventh century.

Chorreras in the eighth century BC

The other eighth-century site, Chorreras, also presents evidence of a planned urban structure, with large isolated houses laid out on both sides of wide, fairly regular streets (Fig. 1.6). Unlike the urban development typical of the seventh-century settlements, where we see a more dense occupation of the urban site (when the spaces between adjoining buildings are often reduced to a minimum), in Chorreras there is a considerable feeling of space, with large open areas between the houses.⁴³ Here too, as in Morro de Mezquitilla, we have large buildings consisting of various, more or less rectangular, rooms. Deviations from the right angle, as we find in the wall linking rooms O and S, are clearly caused by the presence of a street, which runs through the excavated area in a WNW/ESE direction; it is up to 2.5 m wide. Again, like the buildings at Morro de Mezquitilla, those at Chorreras do not have a uniform orientation.⁴⁴ The ground-plan of some of the houses at the latter could be restored in their entirety, and they generally show large buildings with no evidence of the very modest single-room constructions which we find at Toscanos a century later.⁴⁵ In addition to their large size these houses are also solidly constructed. The walls have socles made from regular masonry, which consist of boulders, occasionally secured with clay, with large squared stones or ashlars placed at the corners or the entrances to the rooms.

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Fig.