Authors:	Edrey, Meir
Title:	The Phoenicians in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age I-III, ca. 1200-332 BCE: Ethnicity and Identity in Light of the Material Culture
Online publication date:	6-Dec-2018
Year of first publication:	2018
Language:	english
Abstract:	The Phoenicians were a Semitic people that inhabited the coast of the southern Levant. They were known throughout the Ancient Near East as shrewd merchants, gifted artisans, and exceptional mariners who ventured the Mediterranean Sea and beyond the straights of Gibraltar long before the invention of the compass. And yet despite all their acknowledged traits, modern scholars still define this important ancient culture as a lost civilization, mainly due to the acute lack of prominent original Phoenician written sources. Although thousands of Phoenician and Punic inscriptions were found over the years, the vast majority consists of laconic formulas providing little information. Therefore, most of our conceptions on the Phoenicians are still derived from anachronistic exterior sources such as the Hebrew bible and various classical authors. Since the 19th century, archaeology has played a key role in the rediscovery of the Phoenician culture in the east and west. However, since most of the major Phoenician urban centers lie below their modern successors, excavations in Lebanon are often difficult. Furthermore, the fragile political situation in the region during the last half a century has greatly hindered archaeological exploration of the Phoenician homeland. For these reasons and more, the Phoenicians received little scholarly attention in comparison to other ancient Levantine people such as the Israelites, Philistines, or Aramaeans. Modern scholars often treat each Phoenician city-state as an individual entity, emphasizing their autonomous nature and their independent civic identity. Some even questioned whether we may refer to the Phoenicians as a people, as they seem to lack basic elements of an ethnic group. They were a people without a common name, as they often chose to identify themselves as members of their city-state rather than subscribing to a broader ethnic or national identity. They had no acknowledged state with fixed borders, and they lacked political unity. Furthermore, some scholars maintain that there was no substantial difference between the language, religion, or craftsmanship of the city-states that constituted Phoenicia, and that of the rest of the southern Levant during most of the Bronze and Iron Ages. This study aims to answer the question can a broad Phoenician ethnic identity be reconstructed from the material culture of the Phoenicians during the Iron Age despite their tendency for a strong regional civic identity? By implementing an interdisciplinary longue durée approach that takes into consideration historical, political, and socio-economic factors, as well as the acute effect of the land-and-seascape on this ancient society, and analyzing various aspects of their material culture as it was expressed through architecture, religion and cult, burial practices, and the maritime culture, certain unique cultural elements were recognized which may serve as ‘ethnic markers’. These unique markers, which were mainly exhibited in the Phoenicians’ religion and cult, and maritime culture, were identified throughout Phoenicia and its dependencies suggesting a pan-Phoenician cultural koiné. In light of these findings, core issues of the Phoenician culture in the east, such as their ethnogenesis and the constant tension between their civic and ethnic identities, were addressed and possible theories were offered. Although material culture should not be automatically equated with ethnicity, it is undeniable that in the course of the self-definition of any human group, certain aspects of material culture, alongside other cultural traits such as language, religion, or dress, are chosen or used to mark ethnicity and often reflect symbolism and ethnic behavior. Material culture constitutes an indirect reflection of society, as ideas, ideology, and systems of belief are often manifested in its people’s handiwork. The utilization of certain aspects of material culture was often implemented in order to distinguish a certain group from other groups, creating social boundaries that differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’, and thus facilitating the formation of a distinct identity. This study, which often times extends far beyond its chronological scope, demonstrates that despite the individual/autonomous tendencies of the Phoenicians for a strong regional/civic identity, rather than to a broader ethnic identity, certain unique cultural elements manifested in the material culture demonstrate a pan-Phoenician cultural koiné, which was recognized not only by others as distinctive ‘Phoenician’ or ‘Canaanite’, but also by the Phoenicians themselves. These cultural elements, expressed in the material culture, and their self-ascription and ascription by others, constitute a complex shared ethnic identity that we refer to today as ‘Phoenician’.
DDC:	930 Alte Geschichte 930 History of ancient world
Institution:	Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Department:	FB 07 Geschichts- u. Kulturwissensch.
Place:	Mainz
ROR:	https://ror.org/023b0x485
DOI:	http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-3847
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hebis:77-diss-1000024157
Version:	Original work
Publication type:	Dissertation
License:	In Copyright
Information on rights of use:	https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Extent:	XXIII, 497 Seiten
Appears in collections:	JGU-Publikationen