Ancient Tyre and its harbours: 5000 years of human-environment interactions Nick Marriner a, * , Christophe Morhange a , Nicolas Carayon b a CEREGE CNRS UMR 6635, Universite ´ Aix-Marseille, Europo ˆle de l’Arbois, BP 80, 13545 Aix-en-Provence cedex 04, France b CNRS UMR 7044, Etude des civilisations de l’antiquite ´, Universite ´ de Strasbourg II, MISHA, 5, alle ´e du ge ´ne ´ral Rouvillois, CS 50008, 67083 Strasbourg Cedex, France Received 4 June 2007; received in revised form 20 September 2007; accepted 21 September 2007 Abstract The exact location and evolution of Tyre’s ancient harbour areas have been matters of scholarly conjecture since the 16th century. Here, we use geoscience techniques to precisely relocate the ancient northern harbour, the city’s principal transport hub during antiquity, and reconstruct its geomorphological evolution (Marriner, N., Morhange, C., Boudagher-Fadel, M., Bourcier, M., Carbonel, P., 2005. Geoarchaeology of Tyre’s ancient northern harbour, Phoenicia. Journal of Archaeological Science 32, 1302e1327.). While a natural anchorage is inferred during the Bronze Age, we expound the increasing weight of anthropogenic forcings from the Iron Age onwards, culminating in a technological apogee during the Byzantine period (Hohlfelder, R.L., 1997. Building harbours in the early Byzantine era: the persistence of Roman technology. By- zantinische Forschungen Internationale Zeitschrift fu ¨r Byzantinistik 24, 367e389.). Using coastal stratigraphy and underwater archaeological data (El Amouri, M., El Helou, M., Marquet, M., Noureddine, I., Seco Alvarez, M., 2005. Mission d’expertise arche ´ologique du port sud de Tyr, sud Liban: re ´sultats preliminaries. Bulletin d’Arche ´ologie et d’Architecture Libanaises, Hors-Se ´rie 2, 91e110; Frost, H., Recent observa- tions on the submerged harbour works at Tyre. Bulletin du Muse ´e de Beyrouth 24, 103e111; Noureddine, I., Helou, M., 2005. Underwater archaeological survey in the northern harbour at Tyre. Bulletin d’Arche ´ologie et d’Architecture Libanaises, Hors-Se ´rie 2, 111e128) we dem- onstrate that Poidebard’s (1939. Un grand port disparu, Tyr. Recherches ae ´riennes et sous-marines, 1934e1936, Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, Paris) Egyptian harbour is in reality a drowned quarter of the ancient city. Informed hypotheses are proposed for a possible second anchorage at Tyre, and it is demonstrated that presently drowned portions of the sandstone ridge served as outer harbours during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Stratigraphic data in the vicinity of Tell Mashuk, Chawakir and Rachidiye are also presented and discussed. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Tyre; Mediterranean; Ancient harbour; Coastal geomorphology; Geoscience; Geoarchaeology; Holocene 1. Introduction Tyre was founded during the third millennium BC on an easily defendable offshore island (Bikai, 1979; Katzenstein, 1997; Marriner et al., 2007). This sea bastion was particularly attractive to early societies as it possessed a number of natural low-energy basins that could be exploited as anchorage havens, with little or no need for human artificialisation (Marriner and Morhange, 2005, 2006a,b; Marriner et al., 2005). In spite of its former maritime glory, however, the evo- lution of this important Phoenician cityestate has remained largely enigmatic. Erroneously, much of the present literature continues to cite the pioneering 1930s work of Poidebard (1939). Although Frost (1971) questioned some of her prede- cessor’s interpretations, notably regarding Tyre’s southern har- bour, many of these have failed to filter down to the wider archaeological literature (Briquel-Chatonnet and Gubel, 1999; Holst and Harb, 2006; Katzenstein, 1997; Markoe, 2002; Moscati, 1997; Strong, 2002). In the southern Levant, * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ33 4 4297 1584; fax: þ33 4 4297 1549. E-mail addresses: nick.marriner@wanadoo.fr (N. Marriner), morhange@ cerege.fr (C. Morhange), nicocara@hotmail.com (N. Carayon). 0305-4403/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2007.09.003 Journal of Archaeological Science 35 (2008) 1281e1310 http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas