Between Israel and Phoenicia: The Iron IIA–B Fortified Purple-dye Production Centre at Tel Shiqmona

Abstract

The history of Tel Shiqmona, on Israel’s Carmel coast, in the Iron Age has remained almost totally obscure since its excavation some 50 years ago. Recent analysis has revealed the site’s singularity—the only one around the Mediterranean that can be demonstrated to have produced the luxurious purple dye for half a millennium. This article is the first discussion of a central episode (three strata) in the site’s history. We argue that during the Late Iron IIA, the Kingdom of Israel, probably under the Omrides, replaced a small Phoenician village with a fortified casemate enclosure in order to control and institutionalise the production of the dye and other industries. These peaked under Jeroboam II, and subsequently the fort was ravaged during the period of unrest in Israel after this monarch’s reign. We discuss the historical and cultural picture emerging from a meticulous analysis of the stratigraphy and finds and address trade contacts and regional, historical and geopolitical contexts.

Keywords:

• Tel Shiqmona
• Casemate walls
• Kingdom of Israel
• Phoenician material culture
• Israelite material culture
• Purple dye
• Iron Age II

Acknowledgements

The Tel Shiqmona project is conducted with the significant help of our dedicated volunteers: Sandy Katz, Moshe Diengott and Edna Avrahami, the manager of the Tel Shiqmona laboratory at the University of Haifa, Sonia Pinsky, and the past and present staff of the National Maritime Museum in Haifa, especially Oren Cohen, Adi Shelach, Filip Vukosavović and Ron Hillel. We are deeply grateful to the Israel Antiquities Authority for granting us the publication rights for the Late Bronze and Iron Age levels of Elgavish’s excavations at Tel Shiqmona. Unconditional help and support was received from Israel Antiquities Authority staff, especially Gideon Avni, Avshalom Karasik, Zvi Greenhut, Debi Ben-Ami and Rebecca Cohen-Amin. Part of the pottery had been drawn by unknown artists in the 1960s and 1970s, and part of it was 3D-scanned in the Computational Archaeology Laboratory of the Israel Antiquities Authority by Argita Gyerman Levanon and in the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Ortal Harush and Tamara Mkheidze. We thank Sapir Haad for processing the figures and plans, Sveta Matskevich for her work on the map and Sonia Pinsky for producing the pottery plates. Some of the figures originate from the photo albums of the Elgavish excavation, taken by an unknown photographer. We are grateful to Shay Bar for allowing us to incorporate an unpublished plan. The purple-dye residues were analysed by Naama Sukenik, David Iluz, Alexander Verwak and Zohar Amar from the life sciences laboratories at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan. We thank Maria Eugenia Aubet and Mariano Torres Ortiz for discussing fortifications in the Phoenician West and Ilan Sharon for discussing the radiocarbon data of Ḥorvat Rosh Zayit. Petrographic analysis was recently conducted by Paula Waiman-Barak and is still mostly unpublished. Finally, we owe gratitude to two anonymous reviewers for their critiques and valuable suggestions.

The research and publication of Tel Shiqmona is part of a broader research program regarding southern Phoenicia, supported by an Israel Science Foundation grant awarded to Gunnar Lehmann and Ayelet Gilboa (Grant No. 596/18), conducted in cooperation with Paula Waiman-Barak, Harel Shochat and Revital Golding Meir. Research of Tel Shiqmona is funded by a Shelby White and Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publication grant awarded to the authors; by a collaborative initiative of the Haifa Municipality, the Rector’s Office and the Research Authority at the University of Haifa; by the Hecht Foundation in Haifa; and by the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. A Ph.D. Rotenstreich Scholarship was awarded to Golan Shalvi. We gratefully acknowledge this support.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Contributors

Golan Shalvi: The Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, and the Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1071-7825; corresponding author’s email: [email protected]

Ayelet Gilboa: The Zinman Institute of Archaeology and School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, University of Haifa; email: [email protected]

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2023.2190283

Notes

1 Elgavish was aware of the evidence for purple-dye production, but attributed it to his Stratum 10 (our Stratum 11) only.

2 In a pioneering interdisciplinary study, Joseph Breman (1999) showed categorically that the Tel Shiqmona maritime interface was unsuitable for mooring and that access to the site from the sea would have been possible only during especially calm conditions and by small boats (cf. Galili, Arenson and Rosen 2021: 172).

3 Conducted by Naama Sukenik (Israel Antiquities Authority), David Iluz, Zohar Amar and Alexander Varvak (all from Bar-Ilan University).

4 We did not find organics fit for radiometric dating.

5 We consider Ḥorvat Rosh Zayit to be an Israelite centre, as argued convincingly in Kleiman 2017; cf. Mazar 2022: 208; Shalvi and Gilboa 2022a: 275.

6 Whether this site can indeed be defined as ‘Phoenician’ remains to be determined.

7 With few examples from inland sites. Nava Panitz-Cohen has discussed similar jars from Tel Reḥov and other inland sites and has argued for a coastal origin by visually examining their fabric (2020: 198; Type SJ56a), which seems very plausible; to our minds, however, the definition of this jar type at Tel Reḥov is too broad.

8 The few Phoenician elongated jars attributed to YoqneꜤam Stratum XIII (Zarzecki-Peleg 2005a: Fig. I.73: 21–23) originated from a pit of uncertain stratigraphic affiliation (L.1725). As clarified by Zarzecki-Peleg (ibid.: 171), with regard to L.1725 and L.1732: ‘No floors were detected in either of these loci. Their attribution to Stratum XIII, based upon their resemblance to other pits of that stratum, is uncertain’.

9 At Tyre, the range is wider (Strata VIII–III).

10 Regarding holemouth jars, in addition to the comparanda in Supplementary Material 3, see Butcher et al. 2022.

11 At Megiddo Stratum VA–IVB, the northern ‘casemates’ are associated only with Palace 6000 and do not comprise a civic defence system. The Iron IIA casemate fortification at Gezer may prove earlier, as suggested in Ortiz and Wolff 2021, based on radiometric dating (see Fig. 2), but no conclusion can be drawn until the exact contexts/deposition of the (few) samples are published.

12 To our minds, the geopolitical affiliation of the casemate wall (and associated structures) at Tel ꜤEn Gev on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee is not sufficiently well established yet, nor can the dates offered be critically assessed, since hardly any ceramics have yet been published by the various expeditions to the site. For various suggestions, see Sergi and Kleiman 2018 and Hasegawa 2019, both with references. We also maintain that there are still insufficient data to date the Iron Age casemate enclosures at ꜤEn Hazeva and Tell el-Kheleifeh in the Arabah accurately (but cf. Finkelstein 2014, with references).

13 However, we do not accept that the complex dubbed ‘casemates’ at Beirut (Badre 1997: Fig. 40a–b) merits this definition (similarly, Sader 2019: 164). In addition, the (mostly reconstructed) Iron IIB casemate wall at Tell Arqa (Thalmann 1998: 132) is questionable. Further, we do not agree that there is sufficient evidence to place the beginning of the Kabri fortress in the Iron IIA (earlier than claimed by the excavators), as suggested in Arie 2020. Forty years ago, Kochavi (1984) was the first to suggest that the casemate fortresses of Upper Galilee were, in fact, strongholds in Tyre’s hinterland, a suggestion that has not been widely accepted; but for the close coastal, possibly Tyrian, connections of the fortress at Har Adir, see Pagelson, Katz and Goren 2022.

14 Other industrial ‘metallurgical fortresses’ were protected by solid, rather than casemate, walls, e.g., Khirbat en-Naḥas in lower Edom (southern Jordan; Levy et al. 2014).

15 We, of course, do not mean that ‘local workers’ were eating from coastal bowls in their own little corner while ‘Israelite overseers’ cooked their meals in pots of inland tradition. The factors underlying the (fluctuating) ceramic combinations at Tel Shiqmona are much more complex, and as a first step the production locales of the main ceramic types should be determined. Rather than accepting approaches such as Kleiman’s (2021: 4), who defines any consideration of ceramics for aspects of geopolitics and identity as a deplorable ‘pots and people’ attitude—throwing, in our opinion, the baby out with the bathwater—one should adopt a more nuanced approach.

16 Indeed, Arie hinted that several ‘hippo jars’ found at the site suggest an Israelite affiliation, though in conclusion he refers to it as a Phoenician fort (Arie 2020: 7, 9). Ongoing excavation at this site, led by Meir Edrey, may permit a reconsideration of these suggestions.

17 This phenomenon continues at Tel Shiqmona to the end of the Iron Age (Shalvi and Gilboa 2022b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Golan Shalvi

Golan Shalvi: The Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, and the Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Ayelet Gilboa

Ayelet Gilboa: The Zinman Institute of Archaeology and School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures, University of Haifa.