Tyre and the first Phoenician diaspora in the Mediterranean

Francisco J. Núñez examines the chronology and character of the earliest Phoenician presence across the Mediterranean, arguing that the movement began as commercial enterprise in search of silver, copper and tin rather than colonization. Reviewing classical sources and unstratified finds used to place this expansion in the twelfth or tenth centuries BC, he contends that the earliest stratified contexts date instead to the middle and second half of the ninth century BC.

The first contextualised site he presents is Kition in Cyprus, setting aside earlier material from Palaepaphos in the west of the island. At the temple of Astarte at Kition, which tradition connects with Elissa's stop on her voyage from Tyre to found Carthage, the levels below the first floor yielded neck-ridge jugs, storage jars with concentric decoration, plates and a cup. Núñez dates this assemblage to the middle and second half of the ninth century BC, matching strata IX to VI at Tyre and period II at the Al-Bass cemetery.

Tracing the same horizon across Kommos in Crete, Utica, Sant'Imbenia in Sardinia, La Rebanadilla in Málaga and Huelva, Núñez repeatedly uses Cypriot ceramics to anchor the sequence. At Sant'Imbenia he notes a skyphos type found in contemporary Cypriot and Levantine contexts, while at Tyre the relevant strata fall after the appearance of Cypriot Black-on-Red ware. In the ninth-century tombs of Al-Bass, Cypriot imports dated to the Cypro-Archaic period (Cypro-Archaic I) appear alongside Euboean Sub-Protogeometric pottery. Data from Tyre and Al-Bass show Cypriot and Greek imports peaking during Al-Bass II even in non-elite pit burials, while ninth-century metal tributes paid to Assyria drew on copper and silver trade from Anatolia, Cyprus and the western Mediterranean.