Local Responses to Colonization in the Iron Age Meditarranean

Tamar Hodos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415378369
• eBook ISBN: 9781134182800
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

From North Syria to Sicily and North Africa, this is the first study to bring together such a breadth of data, and compares responses to colonization in the Iron-Age Mediterranean.

1
INTRODUCTION

The Iron Age remains one of the most dynamic periods of Mediterranean history. Individuals travelled further than ever before, with various peoples settling along foreign shores throughout the Sea, not just the central or eastern regions as during the Bronze Age. Greeks and Phoenicians, in particular, established themselves on all coasts, from North Syria and Cilicia to France and Spain, from North Africa to the coasts of the Adriatic. This is the age of the dissemination of the alphabet from Phoenicians to Greeks, and the subsequent development of alphabetic scripts based upon the Phoenico-Greek model by populations throughout the Mediterranean. This is also the period that generated the so-called Orientalizing Movement, in which other aspects of Near Eastern cultures, particularly material goods and religious ideas, inspired and motivated the Greeks and others in their own products and practices. The volume and variety of items traded throughout the Mediterranean, via long distance and more localized routes, expanded to unprecedented levels.

This book explores one major aspect within this vibrant setting: the responses by local populations to the permanent establishment of nearby foreign communities. Virtually every element of this statement demands explanation, justification and parameter-setting, although an even greater question that deserves an answer first is why. The Iron Age Mediterranean as a place during a particular time falls between spheres of scholarship, particularly those traditionally defined as Classical Archaeology and Near Eastern Archaeology. Study of the Greeks, as one significant culture active throughout the Mediterranean, represents a major component of the former, while study of the Phoenicians, as another significant, active culture across the Mediterranean, is usually addressed by scholars in the latter (but not exclusively). Both disciplines, however, have a reputation for working in isolation from other archaeological fields and are perceived to have been slow to adopt innovations in scholarship, particularly the integration of archaeological theory. While this is not the forum for a debate about the merits or deficiencies of the application of theoretical models to a body of data, developments in theoretical interpretations do provide an impetus for reflection upon previous views. Inspired by postcolonial perspectives in particular, this volume aims to reinterpret data from across the Mediterranean as a means of shedding new light on ancient interactions.

To do so, it will be necessary to reassess patterns in and distributions of material evidence and social practices, and interpretations surrounding them, as a means of exploring the impact that the Iron Age colonial movements had on various populations. This book is not about the development of colonial identities, however, but rather will examine material culture associated with and from the perspective of those populations already settled in the areas where foreign colonies were then established, with explicit interest in comparing and contrasting the influences of colonies on such populations. The foreign communities in question are those settlements that are commonly identified as Greek and Phoenician colonies. The nearby aspect mentioned above reflects a dual meaning: as a geographical territory in which both Greeks and Phoenicians established settlements, and as the notion that the Greeks and Phoenicians were competing for the attention of a particular population or populations. It is especially with this point that the scope of the present study becomes bounded to three areas: the north-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, in particular North Syria; the island of Sicily; and ancient North Africa. In all three regions, Greeks and Phoenicians settled and were therefore forced to interact with the same existing populations as well as one another. Although colonies were founded elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the prospect of competing influence over a territory and its population(s) exists nowhere else than in these three regions, and this is the defining feature of such a comparative study. Phoenicians did not found colonies in the Black Sea, although the Greeks did so abundantly. On the island of Sardinia, only the Phoenicians established colonies, and the dynamics of their activities, especially interactions with the Etruscans, Greeks and Sardinians, remain a separate and distinctive sphere of analysis (van Dommelen 1998); while a regional study of Sicily, Sardinia and Italy would be illuminating, this would be situated amid very different cultural, economic and political circumstances and thus would address diverse questions and issues. Similarly, the nature of foreign settlement on Cyprus is distinct. Greek migrations to Cyprus occurred at the end of the second millennium BC, while the Phoenician settlements of the first millennium were ruled from Tyre. As such, Cyprus represents a unique situation worthy of its own study. The far west Mediterranean is excluded for temporal reasons, since by the time the Greeks established their own settlements in France and Spain, the Punic phase of Phoenician history can be considered to have begun. The Phoenician homeland had been incorporated comprehensively into the Neo-Assyrian empire by the end of the seventh century, and Tyre itself was finally destroyed by the Neo-Babylonians in the middle of the sixth century, eliminating any practical political motherland. Thus Phoenician overseas settlements turned to Carthage as their cultural focal point, giving rise to the Punic era. The development and role of Carthage as a political power player on the Mediterranean stage, in archaeological as well as historical terms, are significantly beyond the scope, and even aim, of the present study. Therefore focus within the Iron Age in this study lies between the eighth and sixth centuries BC, which encapsulates the main thrust of overseas foundations prior to the Punic period of Mediterranean history.

Much within even this brief explanation requires further discussion at the theoretical level and with regard to background scholarship. The Iron Age as a period needs temporal definition, since its dates are geographically contextual. The identification of foreign settlements as colonies, trading sites or other has been contentious in recent literature, and the utilization of the term ‘colony’ in this study must be situated. Previous methods for reinterpreting the archaeological evidence for early Iron Age cultural contact and colonial influences also need to be presented to contextualize the present study and its conclusions. The rest of this chapter therefore explains these points, and others, as a means of providing the necessary frameworks for the subsequent examinations of the case-study regions.

When is the Iron Age?

To Near Eastern and Greek archaeologists, the Iron Age begins during the twelfth century BC, after the migration of the Sea Peoples and the general collapse of the Mycenaean palace system. In Sicily, however, the Iron Age is perceived as beginning only during the ninth century BC, when longstanding Bronze Age chiefdoms gave way to more egalitarian communities, and with associated material developments. The presence of iron, itself, is not always a necessary factor for the beginning of an Iron Age anywhere in the Mediterranean; in Sicily, for instance, iron was in use by the end of the second millennium BC. Along coastal North Africa, an Iron Age may be considered to commence with the foundation of Carthage, historically dated to the twelfth century yet archaeologically supported only from the eighth century; for the interior, however, traditional scholarship considered all periods prior to Roman contact, which dates to the fourth century, as merely Prehistoric.

One of the defining features of the Iron Age as broadly applied to the Mediterranean is the perception of renewed cultural links after the widespread destructions and subsequent community withdrawals from regular long-distance communication during the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC. This period used to be described as the Dark Age of Mediterranean history, but research increasingly demonstrates that this period was not so dark, nor so isolated, although it remains seemingly so in comparison to what was before and what came after. It is particularly evidence for trade, in its most general sense, that characterizes the beginning of a new impetus in the Mediterranean in the early first millennium, initially conducted by individuals working in an independent rather than state capacity. This in turn gave rise to broader, more regular trading activities, and ultimately the movement of peoples through the establishment of overseas settlements, often viewed as to capitalize upon commercial opportunities.

The end of the Iron Age is rarely defined, as the period segues into the Archaic phase of Classical civilization, which coincides with the advent of the Punic era of Mediterranean history, the full development of the city-state in the Greek world, and the very beginning of Rome’s Republican period. Often literary references to major historical events, however the events in question might be portrayed, have prompted scholars to define new phases with regard to these events. Thus in the Near East, Iron Age terminology is replaced in the sixth century BC with Persian periodization (Lehmann 1998: 1 and 30 for the use of such ethno-political tags), while in North Africa, it is Roman occupation at the end of the first century BC that heralds this change, despite continuity in the material culture on which the previous periodizations had been based. By contrast, in Sicily, the Iron Age as a chronological term ceases to have relevance after the fifth century, for by the end of this time the local pottery forms on which the periodization had been based were no longer broadly produced; this change in terminology has been materially-led.

Early exchanges

Our evidence for international contact comes from foreign objects found across the Mediterranean, items that arrived in various places only because someone brought them there and offered them to an individual. In particular, these are Near Eastern and Greek goods. The nature of these earlier Iron Age exchanges is difficult to view as widespread and regular trade. Rather, Greek and Near Eastern finds are sporadic in the other’s contexts largely until the eighth century. Many have therefore viewed these nascent links as evidence of gift exchange between elites, rather than regular contact through established mercantile networks (recently: Crielaard 1998; Coldstream 2000; Lemos 2001, 2005). Such gifts often may be interpreted as representations of the obligations men assume in relation to one another as the symbols of friendship, solidarity, peace, indebtedness and obligation, and reflect an understanding of social context, custom, classification and hierarchy.¹ Some scholars have emphasized the reciprocal nature of gift-exchange and its ability to socialize aggressive behaviour, while others lend primacy to the motivation to retain possessions in the context of a non-destructive mechanism of social competition.² The gifts in question tend to be lasting works of craftsmanship that circulated, such as bronze and silver vessels, items of jewellery, or even classes of ceramics. Thus, the high prestige value of the Near Eastern objects and their Greek contexts – deliberately disposed in burials – articulate to some the status relationship, political obligation and social ranking aspects of gift exchange (Finley 1979; Coldstream 1983, 2000; Morris 1986; Crielaard 1998; Lemos 2001, 2005). Jones rightly points out, however, that the different interpretations regarding gift exchange rest on assumptions; there are no characteristics of the goods themselves or their contexts that could be used to reject or accept any hypothesis regarding gift exchange, since the motivations are unobservable (Jones 2000: 63). Nevertheless, gift exchange remains a valuable hypothesis to explain the seeming discrepancies between the metal vessels and faience jewellery offered by Near Easterners – objects we view as of high value – and the pottery vessels circulated by the Greeks, which we do not consider to be of similarly high value given the more ubiquitous nature of such clay goods. The somewhat occasional nature of these finds, with regard to type of object, context and date, still strongly imply an exchange between individuals – likely to be elite – and must reflect some sort of cross-cultural understanding for the pattern to be repeated during the tenth and ninth centuries in particular.³

By the end of the eighth century BC, there is a clear increase in the volume of Near Eastern and Greek goods in foreign contexts, with a wider variety of types, particularly pottery forms, including those that carried organic products (oil, wine, foodstuffs). Such items appear with sufficient regularity in urban, domestic contexts (as opposed to funerary or religious ones) that these exchanges are more easily marked as evidence of broader trading activities. Such activity developed as merchant enterprise rather than state-controlled exchange (Sherratt and Sherratt 1993), and various trade routes emerged as individuals forged links between specific regions and settlements. During the tenth and ninth centuries, Cyprus to Crete emerged as one route, and Rhodes to the Aegean as another. Links extended subsequently to the Near Eastern mainland, uniting Phoenicia into the Cyprus–Crete route; expanded to the western Mediterranean; and integrated North Syria more directly with the Aegean. These particular routes are implied by the quantities and origins of eastern goods found in various contexts and locales throughout the Mediterranean (such as at various coastal sanctuaries). By the eighth century, such goods appear regularly, suggesting steady trade, and during the seventh century, Egypt and North Africa entered into the Mediterranean network.

Early studies of the ancient economy viewed much of this exchange specifically as trade in prestige goods, since the economy itself revolved primarily around subsistence practices, and the main basis of wealth was found in agriculture and land ownership. As a result, inter-regional trade was small in scale and expensive, with only luxury goods, used for high-status competition and ostentatious display in state, community and individual contexts, being transported. Thus, in this model, advocated initially by Hasebroek and Finley, the traders and craftsmen were of more lowly status than their elite, gift-exchanging predecessors (Hasebroek 1933; Finley 1973; for discussions of the development of interpretations of the ancient economy, see Hopkins 1983; Cartledge 1983, 1998; Davies 1998; Andreau 2002; Reed 2003). The impetus to colonize has often been viewed as a direct result of the need to broaden mercantile and hence financial opportunities within such an economic sphere for these less upwardly mobile traders,⁴ at least for the Greeks. There is little evidence regarding the social status of their Phoenician counterparts from a Phoenician perspective, since such records do not exist. This relationship between trade and colonization, therefore, requires further discussion here, especially with regard to models that address issues of production and distribution.

Discussions surrounding the ancient economy that rely upon archaeology have often been posited in terms of the discourse of World-Systems Theory – such as Sherratt and Sherratt 1993, expressly for the Mediterranean – which suggests a model to understand the relationships between various societal divisions of labour, from the acquisition of raw materials to the markets. Developed by Wallerstein as a means of studying the rise of capitalism, it incorporated the raw materials, labour and markets into the industrial process that began in the sixteenth century AD in Europe, culminating in the imperial forms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries across the world. This truly global approach was the fundamental distinction between Wallerstein’s model and those proposed by Marx and his followers, who focused on Europe exclusively. A world-system may be defined as a unit with a single division of labour and multiple cultural systems. In other words, it is an inter-societal system marked by a self-contained division of labour. It depends upon the identification of a core with advanced production and distribution, and a periphery that provides the raw materials, as well as a semi-periphery, which both exploits and is exploited (Wallerstein 1974; Hall 2000; for core-periphery theory explicitly, see Rowlands et al. 1987; Champion 1989; Rowlands 1998a). The model has been explicitly linked to the study of colonial movements, since colonial foundations are often regarded as a result of the expansion of trade (see, for instance, Dyson 1985).

Yet the applicability of this model to non-capitalist societies has been widely challenged on the grounds that there is little evidence for trade that supports systemic regional relations of dependency in such societies. The model dictates that the same set of economic forces be applied, which may not necessarily be appropriate. With particular regard to the Iron Age Mediterranean, dependency or exploitation may not have been a characteristic of the economies of the ancient world. It has been argued that Greece could not have served as a core, for instance, since there was no concept of a state, but rather in the Greek world a variety of state models were utilized, and there is no indication of the kind of cooperation necessary between them for the successful functioning of a stable economic core. Furthermore, social meanings behind the acquisition of certain objects and reinterpretations in other cultures are neglected in the model (with specific regard to the Mediterranean: Arafat and Morgan 1994; Woolf 1990; for general applications and criticisms, see Peregrine 1996; Dietler 1999; Gosden 2004; various essays in Kardulias 1999; Denemark et al. 2000). These criticisms also set it up in direct contrast with the Finley view of the ancient economy, which denies any kind of systemic regional relationship, since in the Finley model trade was only in luxury products, and thus there can be no notion of exploitation through production for trade.

The dialogue has developed in both spheres recently. From the view of the ancient historian, one new model presents an almost three-dimensional image of ancient exchanges. It discusses flows, rather than exchanges, in three stages of complexity. The first stage is between cells from the smallest individual household to those between a city agora and ‘out of region’. The second stage incorporates a wider range of transactions not apparent in the size-related increments of the previous stage, such as those involving private employment or cultic entities. The third stage addresses state-related flows, such as state wages and taxation (Davies 1998). The strength of such a model is that it allows for the mapping of all the economic flows within a society, describing structures and networks within a single model. It does not, however, shed light on the motivations of individuals, for instance, nor necessarily will it map relationships between two regions.

From the archaeological perspective, a recent development has been to view the core and periphery (and semi-periphery) not as opposite, exclusive spaces (Rowlands 1998a: 225), but rather to explore them as spheres for interaction, viewed by some as the ‘middle ground’ (White 1991; Malkin 2002, 2004; Gosden 2004). The middle ground, which acts as core and periphery, in both geographic and social contexts, serves as a means of interpreting the physical, material and social interactions of cultures, interactions in which everyone had agency and mutual need. It emphasizes mutual accommodation and requires an inability of both sides to gain their ends through force, which is why new conventions for cooperation must develop (White 1991: 52). As a process, therefore, it unites value systems to create a working relationship between them, often resulting in new sets of meanings and interactions over time. One might see a middle ground in North Syria, for instance, a region where Phoenicians and Greeks lived and interacted with the local cultures and one another, creating new meanings in material usages and cultural ideologies. One of the most obvious results deriving from this particular middle ground was what we discuss as the orientalization of Hellenic culture, which in reality was the Greek reinterpretation of selective eastern practices and traditions from the fostering of cross-cultural interactions. Dominance and exploitation are not features of this particular model and, indeed, this is borne out in the evidence from North Syria, as will become apparent in the next chapter. Middle grounds may be also found in Sicily and North Africa.

The various paradigms for examinin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. North Syria
• 3. Sicily
• 4. North Africa
• 5. Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index