Sidon's Ancient Harbours
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ARCHAEOLOGY & H ISTORY IN THE SIDON’S ANCIENT HARBOURS LEBANON ISSUE TWENTY FOUR : N WINTER 2006, P P. 138-149. NICK MARRINER SEA CASTLE CHRISTOPHE MORHANGE 139 H W E OUTER HARBOUR Wind rose 1-15 r >15 ate S knots kw knots rea Acknowledgements Abstract Excavations led by the British Museum have been underway at B IV Inner II Sidon since 1998. In tandem with these archaeological surveys, 15 cores mole We thank the Directorate General of have been drilled in and around Sidon’s ancient port areas, with three INNER Antiquities (F. Hussei- main objectives: HARBOUR ni), CEDRE (F60/L58), (1) to elucidate the evolution of the city’s maritime façade and investigate UNESCO World Heri- IX tage (CPM 700.893.1) its coastal palaeogeography; VI V I and the Lebanese (2) to compare and contrast these data with Sidon’s sister harbours, XV British Friends of the Beirut, Byblos and Tyre; and III VII National Museum for technical and financial (3) to investigate human coastal impacts, and more specifically the prob - support. N. Marriner lem of accelerated coastal sedimentation. Our geoarchaeological Aeolianite XII ridge benefitted from a datasets elucidate a complex history of coastal change and human occu - Leverhulme Study pation. Investigation of the coastal archives has detailed six phases in Abroad Studentship. XIV BRITISH MUSEUM Sidon’s maritime history, between the Bronze Age and Medieval periods. EXCAVATION Introduction XIII The great antiquity of the Sidon-Dakerman area is attested by archaeological X material dating back to the Neolithic (Saidah, 1979 ; Doumet-Serhal, 2003) CASTLE (fig. 1). During the Iron Age, Sidon evolved into one of Phoenicia’s key DOMINANT city-states reaching its apogee between the sixth and fifth centuries BC, at LONGSHORE CURRENT which time it superseded Tyre as Phoenicia’s principal naval hub. While CRIQUE archaeological discovery at Sidon has a long and productive history RONDE beginning in the nineteenth century, the ancient city had never been sys - OPEN SOUTHERN tematically explored. It was only in 1998 that a team of archaeologists XI HARBOUR 0 100 200 m under the auspices of the British Museum and the DGA began large-scale SANDSTONE excavations of the ancient tell, elucidating a quasi-continuous stratigraphy I RIDGE from the Early Bronze Age onwards (Curtis, 2000; Doumet-Serhal, 2003). CORE 20˚ 25˚ 30˚ 35˚ 0˚N In tandem with the terrestrial excavations, 15 cores were drilled in and 4 around Sidon’s port areas, with three main objectives: (1) to expound the coastal palaeogeography (Espic et al ., 2002; Morhange et al ., 2003a; VIII ˚N Marriner et al ., 2006); (2) to compare and contrast these data with Sidon’s 35 Phoenician sister harbours (Marriner and Morhange, 2006; Marriner et al ., 2006); and (3) to investigate the problem of accelerated coastal sedimen - Cyprus Sidon Eastern Mediterranean Sea Tyre tation. Silting up of the harbours played a significant role in the human 30˚N exploitation of the ancient anchorages (Morhange et al ., 2003b; Raban N e l i 1985 and 1987a). Recent research has shown that ancient societies strived N permanently with the silting problem, and indeed in areas of high sedi - CHALCOLITHIC SITE 0 200 km ment supply it was a constant endeavour to maintain a viable draught OF DAKERMAN depth (Marriner and Morhange, 2006). 1. Sidon’s ancient harbour areas and location of cores. Geomorphological context 3. Above: Sidon and Zire during the Detailed descriptions of the litho- and biostratigraphical datasets, in addi - 1940s (from [31]). Sidon’s coastal plain runs from the Litani river in the south, northwards Below: Sidon and Zire tion to the methods employed, are given in Marriner et al . (2006). Here, towards the Awali river (fig. 2). This low-lying topography, up to 2 in 2005. Note the we briefly summarise the key findings from our recent research km wide in places, comprises a rectilinear coastline and a series of 140 extensive modernisa - looking to better understand coastal dynamics and shoreline evolu - 141 tion of the coastal front faults has oriented the talwegs NW-SE (Dubertret, in both the northern A E S 1955 and 1975; Sanlaville, 1977). The most impor - harbour and southern N A E d bay. In the foreground, N e 80 tant watercourse in the Sidon vicinity is the mA h 0R s R0 r Sidon’s outer harbour B e i r u t 1 e E m t T m I a 0 Awali, which tran 3 0 D w lies in the shadow 2 E 6 3 i M n a m zone of Zire island. t sits ~130 x 10 m of sediment per year. m i 0 m 40 0 L 1 5 The promontory of A w a l i A Sidon separates two w a l i Sidon’s coastal physiography makes it an ideal S i d o n coves, the northern L i t a n i 40 location for the establishment of three natural harbour and Poide- T y r e N 0 50 km bard’s Crique Ronde, 80 anchorage havens. Two pocket beaches lie lee - Poidebard & Lauffray, 120 ward of a Quaternary sandstone ridge, partially 1951). N drowned by the Holocene marine transgression Z i r e (Morhange et al ., 2006; fig. 3). To the south of the W E ancient city this ridge has been breached by the 4 9 2 6 sea to form a small embayment named the Crique 1 5 r 3 u o 7 rb 15 a 12 H Ronde by Poidebard and Lauffray (1951). Whether 14 Wind rose 1-15 13 S i d o n S knots >15 knots 10 or not it was ever artificially protected by harbour - 8 11 m works has never been unequivocally demonstrat - 0 0 m 1 0 5 m ed, a question we elucidate later in this paper. 0 m 3 120 0 2 80 m 0 m 1 m 5 0 North-west of the promontory lies a second bay, protected from the open sea by a prominent sandstone ridge. 580 m in length, this coastal tion in the northern harbour and ridge shields a shallow basin still used to this day. southern cove. a S t y 40 i y a h 80 120 a n 160 d This northern harbour was the centre of Sidon’s c i r t activity in antiquity. Poidebard and Lauffray (1951) Results e m y identified the vestiges of a closed ancient port The northern harbour h t a comprising: b The coastal stratigraphy from N o 120 160 N (1) a reinforced sandstone ridge; and the northern harbour is com - 0 1000 m (2) an inner mole, perpendicular to the ridge, and Core site posed of five facies. separating two basins. 2. Sidon’s coastal bathymetry. 1 Pocket beach ( ca. 3500-1500 A third harbour area, the offshore island of Zire, is a unique feature of the cal. BC) Sidonian coastal façade (fig. 3). First described by Renan, it was not until The marine flooding of the cove is Poidebard and Lauffray (1951) took charge that a preliminary plan of the dated ~6000 BP. A basal unit com - island was drawn up. A double seawall shelters a series of quarries and prising subtidal sands is analogous to a medium/low energy pocket harbour quays on its leeward side. Underwater surveys by Frost (1973) beach, sheltered by the sandstone ridge. uncovered a collapsed jetty and numerous scattered masonary blocks on the sea bottom. She concluded that the island had not only served as a 2 Artificial Bronze Age cove ( ca. 1500-1000 cal. BC) quarry and harbour but also supported a number of constructions. A fall in energy dynamics is translated by a rise in the silts fraction. This Carayon (2003) has recently undertaken new research on the island, and facies corresponds to the Middle to Late Bronze Age proto-harbour describes six quarry zones. We recently dated an uplifted marine notch (Frost, 1995, Raban, 1995), with possible reinforcement of the sandstone (+50 cm) on these quarry faces, pertaining to a short-lived sea-level oscil - ridge improving the quality of the anchorage. Small boats would have lation around 2200 years BP (Morhange et al ., 2006). These data are in con - been hauled onto the beach face, with larger vessels being anchored in trast with Tyre, where submergence of ~3 m is recorded since late antiquity the embayment. (El Amouri et al ., 2005; Marriner et al ., 2005). Calibrated radiocarbon years 3 Closed Phoenician to Roman har - 2 Bronze Age pocket beach bours (ca. 1000 cal. BC-300 cal. AD) The molluscan fauna is diverse, with tests from a range of ecological con - 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 0 Between the Phoenician to Roman texts including subtidal sands, the upper muddy-sand assemblage in periods, a net change is sheltered areas, the upper clean-sand assemblage, the silty or observed in sedimentary condi - 142 muddy-sand assemblage and the lagoonal assemblage. Marine 143 tions with a marked shift to silts and lagoonal ostracod taxa persist into this unit and are accompanied by a 200 200 fine sands, concomitant with a low gradual rise in coastal taxa. Sporadic tests of marine species indicate con - energy environment. A rise in lagoonal tinued communication with the open sea. molluscs and ostracods is in compli - ance with anthropogenic sheltering of At no point during antiquity do our sedimentological and palaeoecological the environment by harbourworks. data show evidence for artificial harbourworks in the southern cove. 400 400 O N Persistent age-depth anomalies pro - During the Bronze Age this embayment would have served as a fair I D S vide strong chronostratigraphic evi - weather harbour for the inhabitants of Sidon and Dakerman.