The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

by Carolina Lopez-Ruiz

  However, for now, the current scarcity of materials which can be reliably dated between the latter part of the eighth century and the initial decades of the seventh century bce on Ibiza, comprising just a small number of fragments of amphorae outside of the context of the factory at Sa Caleta, only allow us to say that Phoenicians frequented the island, leaving the nature and frequency of this presence open to future investigation (Costa and Fernández 2006: 30–33).

  Current information indicates that the permanent Phoenician settlement on the island of Ibiza took place in the mid-seventh century bce. Archaeological evidence does not contradict the writings of Diodorus Siculus (5.16.2–3) who, following the information given by Timaeus of Tauromenion, situates the foundation of the city of Ibiza (Eivissa) one hundred and sixty years after that of Carthage (814/13 bce)—that is, in 654–653 bce. However, it must be said that Timaeus probably confused terms and mixed data from the founding period with that of his own era, and as a result spoke of Ibiza as a “colony” of Carthage (Costa 1994: 95–96).

  On the other hand, the settlement on the island was facilitated by the absence of major indigenous communities such as those on Majorca and Minorca. The small groups of local people at the end of the Bronze Age were to be absorbed or eliminated by the Phoenician newcomers within a relatively short period time (Costa and Fernández 2006: 84–86).

  A permanent settlement on the island was not an isolated incident but, rather, part of a larger-scale Phoenician development along the peninsular Mediterranean façade, aiming at opening up new areas for exchange and for the acquisition of raw materials and products (on the Phoenicians in Iberia, see chapter 38, this volume). Ibiza was to play the main role in channeling Phoenician trade with the Iron Age communities on the coasts of Catalonia and Narbonensis Gaul (Ramon Torres 1996).

  The site at Sa Caleta, some 9.5 km from the city of Ibiza, is located on a small peninsula marked by low cliffs and separated from the mainland by a small creek. The archaeological data indicate that Sa Caleta was a specialized settlement dedicated to the collection and transformation of local and exogenous raw materials. The settlement comprises generally rectangular buildings; the constructions evolved to include rooms of a wide variety, adapted in accordance with the needs of the inhabitants. The part of the settlement that survives—much of it having been largely destroyed by the action of the sea—measures some 30,000 m2, so it is estimated that originally it would have spanned some 4 hectares. There is now an abundance of material deriving from the site, including large quantities of Phoenician ceramics for domestic use, of a variety of origins and purposes, in addition to western and central Mediterranean amphorae, most of them dating back to the second half of the seventh century– early sixth century bce. Besides materials related to domestic activities and subsistence, considerable metalworking activity has been documented, consisting mainly of silver-bearing galena and, to a lesser extent, iron. The metalworking activity indeed affects all of the spaces, since ovens and workshops have been discovered even in domestic areas (Ramon Torres 2007). It is important to stress, however, that a cemetery related to this site has not been discovered so far, which in our opinion underlines its nature as a secondary settlement.

  The main settlement on the island is located in the city of Ibiza and is centered on what is the best port on the island (map 37.2). The principal nucleus occupied the Puig de Vila, the hill which overlooks the bay and where the old quarter of the city is today. Remains from the initial establishment were discovered during the 2010 excavations on the castle’s subsoil. Beneath the castle’s courtyard, a fragment of the Phoenician city was unearthed with remains that preserved walls more than a meter in height, revealing material and constructive phases from the end of the seventh century bce, analogous to the settlement at Sa Caleta. However, there is a marked difference between the two sites: compared to the scattered development organized around squares and narrow streets at Sa Caleta, the rectangular constructions along both sides of a rectilinear street in Ibiza demonstrate a genuinely urban layout (Ramon Torres and Esquembre 2017).

  Map 37.2 Aerial view of the city of Ibiza and its surroundings: (1) city; (2) necropolis; (3) port; (4) potter’s quarter; (5) sanctuary of Illa Plana; (6) possible sanctuary of Puig d’en Valls; (7) agricultural plain.

  Source: Aerial view from Google Earth; author’s elaboration from satellite image.

  A more recent excavation resulted from extensions built to the Ibiza Contemporary Art Museum at the San Juan bulwark, which belongs to the renaissance fortifications. This excavation revealed various structures belonging to the urban layout of the ancient city. The initial chronology of the occupation in this zone has been established as the first half of the sixth century bce, although a major part of the buildings appears to belong to the fifth–fourth centuries bce, coinciding with the high point of the Punic-era city (Ramon Torres 2014: 208–10). The remains may belong to a part of a district located above the Punic-era city’s port. The discovery of a small, archaic cemetery with irregular shaped graves in Santa María Street, halfway up the Puig de Vila hill and dated to the sixth century bce, should also be noted (Gurrea and Ramon Torres 2000).

  The main necropolis in Ibiza was located at Puig des Molins, which was the cemetery for the city of Ibiza from then and up to the end of antiquity. The necropolis extended along the whole of the northern side of the small chalky hill standing 47 m above sea level and 500 m to the west of the settlement. This first burial ground occupies an area of some 10,000 m2 of the north to northwest sector of the site. In this zone, where the terrain forms a slight slope, there are a substantial number of tombs covering a chronological period between the end of the seventh century and the fifth century bce. Here, however, compared to the sector on Santa María Street, there are two fundamental concerns: the first is the exclusive use of the cremation of bodies and a considerable variation in the tomb shapes that can be divided into two separate groups, which in turn vary considerably. The first and oldest group consists of burials in cavities hewn in the terrain, either in the soil or in the rock. The types in this group would last a long time and existed side by side with the second ones. The second group consists of pit graves with a more complex ritual; these are carved into the rock or excavated in the earth, with a wide variety of types with regard to size, orientation, and morphology. The use of these two groups of graves started in the last years of the seventh century and continued until the fifth century bce (Fernández and Costa 2005).

  In this necropolis, there are few grave goods. On occasions, there are elements buried that are related to the death rites, such as oil ampoules, red-varnished oil lamps, hand-made ceramics, jewelry or adornments belonging to the deceased, and Egyptian scarabs (which frequently appear to have been affected by fire). Anthropological study has proved that children between the ages of five and twelve, along with adults over the age of thirty, are absent from the cemetery—segregations which are as yet unexplained.

  Aspects of the religious culture of this initial Phoenician settlement are still scantily documented. However, an epigraphic find dated from the seventh century bce refers to the dedication of a “gate,” which a person called Eshmunab(i) made as a votive offering to the god Eshmoun-Melqart (Amadasi and Xella 2005: 49). Although found out of context, this inscription suggests the existence of a potential temple or chapel for the veneration of this composite divinity formed by the union of the two principal gods from the two main Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon (Costa and Fernández 2012).

  During the sixth century bce, profound political and economic changes would take place in the Phoenician Mediterranean. In the east, Tyre was conquered, after a long siege, by Nebuchadnezzar (573 bce). Meanwhile, western establishments would undergo a profound internal reform, from the beginning of the century, coinciding with the irruption of Greek trade in Tartessos, as well as the depletion of the main Andalusian mining deposits. This, in fact, led to a restructuring of the colonial model and to a new territorial pattern.


  These changes resulted in the abandonment of several Andalusian sites and the corresponding population redistribution, which was now concentrated in what could be legitimately described as urban centers. On Ibiza, Sa Caleta was also abandoned around 600–575 bce. The island’s population then concentrated in the Ibiza Bay enclave, as did all economic activity, both trade and farming, through the cultivation of the fertile lands around the city (besides the exploitation of maritime resources). It was around this time also that Phoenician–Ibizan production of ceramics began. This is indicated by the manufacture of amphorae for transportation and storage, as well as table crockery and domestic potteries. There is also evidence of a change in the origin of the foreign pottery arriving on the island. Since the early sixth century bce, as the ceramic products from the western Phoenician area disappeared, objects and ceramics from the Etruscan and Greek area began to arrive, and those from the Phoenician central Mediterranean region (Carthage, Sicily, and Sardinia) increased. Taking these facts into consideration, I have proposed that, in addition to increasing its own production and increasing commercial exchanges, Ibiza began to change its frame of influence and relationships with the central Mediterranean Phoenician enclaves. This redirection was undoubtedly to the benefit of the island, which became a center for the redistribution of the respective products to Iberia. In this way, Ibiza joined the international Phoenician trade networks, the epicenter of which was increasingly displaced from the straits toward the central Mediterranean. This was, in our opinion, the precedent for Ibiza’s entry into the sphere of Carthage (Costa 1994; Costa and Fernández 2006).

  Punic Colonization

  From the last quarter of the sixth century bce onward, the presence of Punic elements marked a second formative period, with a series of changes archaeologically documented in a unique manner in the Puig des Molins necropolis. On the one hand, inhumation burials first appear while the cremation of bodies started to decline. The inhumation ritual brought with it the introduction of a new type of tomb, known as a hypogeum, consisting of a rectangular shaft and a quadrangular chamber carved into the rock. The appearance of these large graves, in addition to the sizable investment of energy in the respective construction, along with an increase in the quantity and quality of grave goods, reflects not only a change in traditions but also a new social and economic situation in the settlement. Furthermore, it is reasonable to see in these initial hypogea the arrival of new small groups from Carthage itself or other centers in its area of influence (Costa 1994).

  If we look at the historical context, we can see that this initial Punic presence on Ibiza is more or less contemporary with the expedition by Malco to Sicily and Sardinia and the Battle of Alalia; in other words, when Carthage began to intervene politically and militarily in the western Mediterranean, resulting in the first treaty with Rome signed in 509 bce, according to Polybius (3.22.1–13 and 3.23.1–6) (for early Carthage, see chapter 11, this volume). All these events appear to be evidence of the entry of Ibiza/’YBŠM into Carthage’s sphere of influence at a time when the North African capital had imposed its political and economic control over the Phoenician central and western Mediterranean centers by means of increasingly unequal pacts. It should be considered that at the end of the sixth century bce, the territory of Carthage did not exceed that of Cape Bon. Therefore, it would not be illogical for Carthage to send groups of people to other Phoenician centers which were now under its control so as to relieve demographic pressure, as is reflected in some paragraphs of Aristotle’s Politics (Costa 1994; about the constitution of Carthage, see Barceló 2009).

  At that time, the original Phoenician settlement on the Bay of Ibiza also experienced a noteworthy growth. It consolidated its urban structure, which was to be maintained throughout antiquity, the population on the northern slopes of Puig de Vila dominating the great bay with its port and its facilities. The necropolis on the lower part of Puig des Molins was located some 500 m to the west of the city. And, finally, a district of potters whose activities are archaeologically documented from the early fifth century bce was located at the foot of the necropolis and near to the harbor. Archaeological data also appear to confirm the initial use of the Illa Plana sanctuary at the end of the sixth century bce, at its location on the island in the center of Ibiza Bay—although it is possible that the site may have been sacred from an earlier point in time, using ex votos of clear Punic character. There seems to have been another site of worship at Puig d’en Valls to the north of the bay, although it appears to have been only for a short period of time and it is still largely undocumented.

  From the archaeological record, we can suggest that the increasingly mass-produced ceramics at that time correspond to forms that faithfully copied the Punic prototypes from the central Mediterranean. The local production of amphorae also increased. But now it showed the production of two lines, one that morphologically followed the Phoenician tradition and another that copied the shape of some Greek amphorae, thus initiating a long tradition of copying foreign containers.

  Development: The Mid-Punic Era

  Starting from the second half of the fifth century and the first half of the fourth century bce, we find all the elements to suggest that the process of formation of a historically individualized Punic-Ibizan society was complete: the main traits are demographic growth, urban development, the occupation of the whole territory of the island, and the development of its own infrastructure (which allowed a certain surplus production for trade abroad) (Costa 1994, 1998; Costa and Fernández 2006).

  During this period, the urban necropolis reached an extension of some 5 hectares. This notable increase in size, as well as the number of burials, does not appear to be explained by the natural growth of the existing population but, rather, by the arrival of groups of people over a relatively brief period of time. Analysis of the excavated hypogea, which are the best known type of burial in the Roman Ferrer digs between 1921 and 1929, demonstrates that a maximum of 10–12 percent of chambers in the whole of the necropolis are dated between 525 and 450 bce, while the remaining 88–90 percent date to 450–350 bce (Fernández 1992). As a result, it has been estimated that the population group buried in these hypogea up to the year 450 bce composed some 600 individuals, while between 450 and 350 bce, it reached 3,500–3,600 individuals (Costa 1994: 110). The sharp increase in the population, indicated by the burials in hypogea, is also evident in the occupation of the remainder of the territory of the island (Costa 1994, 1998; Costa et al. 2005).

  This demographic growth made an increase in production vital, which itself changed the economic model for the island. Ibiza now became a producer and exporter of its own products while simultaneously serving as a major destination point for materials from various and distant places, both for internal consumption and for redistribution from the island to the mainland (Ramon Torres 1991; Costa 1998).

  Even though the economic resources on the island were not particularly abundant—with the exception of salt—they were still highly varied. As a result, we can assume that the bulk of production would be of agricultural products from the fertile plains around the city, from animal husbandry, fishing, the exploitation of the salt pans, and the sandstone quarries, as well as the pine and juniper forests for timber for use in construction and shipbuilding. In order to meet this increase in population, therefore, as well as to promote the already productive areas, it became necessary to obtain additional resources, which led to occupation of the rest of the island.

  It was from the second half of the fifth century bce that we have documented the establishment of a good number of settlements, true units of habitat and production, which, throughout the fourth century bce, would come to occupy the whole of the island’s rural territory (Tarradell and Font 1975; Costa 1994, 1998; Costa et al. 2005). Although detailed features of the habitat and production structure of the greater part of these rural units remain unknown, their existence is well documented by means of a small necropolis, containing hypogea an
d pit graves, located in the immediate surroundings of the settlement and similar to the urban necropolis. These small-scale rural establishments were responsible for exploiting the resources of the island, mainly agricultural and husbandry. Besides producing enough to supply the population of the island, these establishments allowed for the production of a surplus, as is evidenced by the expansion of Ibizan exports, mainly amphorae, during the fifth and fourth centuries bce on the peninsular Iberian coast (Ramon Torres 1991).

  The pattern of population distribution of the island, virtually unchanged until relatively recent times, was thus configured at this time. Ibiza’s settlement is dominated by a single urban center, the city where commercial and artisanal activities are concentrated along with the government, the administration, and without doubt, the main centers of official worship. The remainder of the population was scattered over the island in a good number of rural settlements dedicated to agricultural production and also to the exploitation of sea resources for those near the coast (Costa et al. 2005).

  A striking aspect of the control exercised by the city over the countryside is the concentration of artisanal production in the urban zone, be it the manufacture of domestic and storage crockery or of metal tools and glass. The city port was the sole means of channeling imports and exports. As a result, the rural population needed to look to the city for supplies of those products, which it was otherwise unable to produce, in exchange for its agricultural production. This exchange permitted a subtle but effective form of control over the distribution routes for products without any need to have recourse to more coercive methods.

  During the first half of the fourth century bce, the town of Ibiza had become a major urban center in the western Mediterranean, with a population of between 5,000 and 6,000 people, according to calculations based on the number of burials at Puig des Molins. The size of the rural population is more difficult to calculate, but it would not be excessive to estimate it at around 3,000. We lack the information necessary to know how the administration was organized and what the city and the rest of the island’s governing bodies were. It is within reason to suppose that the island was governed by a Senate responsible for legislative tasks, whose members were drawn from the most prominent families on the island, such as landowners, ship owners, and traders. Drawing from what we know from Carthage and assuming a similar model, there would also be a Popular Assembly formed by the citizens with full rights (artisans, sailors, small traders, etc.), and finally of course there would be the shophtim (judges) chosen by the Popular Assembly, who were responsible for dispensing justice (Costa and Fernández 2006: 129–33).