Citrium: A miraculous fruit. Investigating the uses of citrus fruit in the Western Mediterranean according to ancient Greek and Latin texts

The idea of combining social species, information, perturbations, and nonlinear responses related to dispersal originated naively a long time ago, in the Gulf of Roses in the western Mediterranean. As a kid, I used to spend holidays in a tiny village nearby the ruins of Empuries, a magical place where an ancient Greek colony was founded in 575 BC, later occupied by the Romans. I remember going to the beach where I would place my towel sheltered from the wind behind a large section of the ancient Greek dock built on huge stones. More than 2100 years later, one can still enjoy the mosaics, the temple columns, and the large walls protecting the Roman city from the outside. Once, while visiting this place with my parents, I asked them why that magnificent settlement was abandoned, vanished, and was buried by dust, but I did not get a convincing answer (even now, I would not be able to answer this question if asked by my own kids). Archaeologists believe that the collapse of Empuries was caused by a combination of factors, namely the appearance of other flourishing communities (Barcino and Tarraco, or Barcelona and Tarragona as they are known today) and a perturbed environmental regime, caused by an accumulation of sediments resulting from a nearby river, which disabled the use of the harbour. These factors likely contributed to dispersal, which ended up in the abandonment of the city. In any case, my wonderings about Empuries remained dormant for the next 40 years. But these questions slowly awakened when one of my fieldwork studies monitoring Audouin’s gulls at the Ebro Delta was unexpectedly affected by a perturbation that began in the mid-1990s. This breeding patch, which came to hold almost 75% of the total world population of this once endangered species, has collapsed in recent times, but strikingly it remained apparently resilient for many years (Figure P1). The Ebro Delta shared with Empuries the characteristic of being an exceptionally suitable habitat allowing a population to flourish, prior to eventual collapse. Empuries and the Ebro Delta represent all of the issues I have come to be interested in as a researcher: a social group thriving in a favourable patch, perturbations generating dispersal, and a nonlinear response leading to patch extinction (as a form of a new stable state). Some years ago a reading of Marten Scheffer’s book about critical transitions was also very inspiring. Understanding why Empuries and the Ebro Delta collapsed has intrigued my curiosity over the past several years, and has led me to take the leap in writing this book....

Download Full-text

The Citrus Route Revealed: From Southeast Asia into the Mediterranean

HortScience ◽

10.21273/hortsci11023-16 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 52 (6) ◽

pp. 814-822 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Dafna Langgut

Keyword(s):

Southeast Asia ◽

Citrus Fruit ◽

Pollen Grains ◽

Western Mediterranean ◽

First Century ◽

Early 19Th Century ◽

15Th Century ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Trade Route ◽

Botanical Remains

Today, citrus orchards are a major component of the Mediterranean landscape and one of the most important cultivated fruits in the region; however, citrus is not native to the Mediterranean Basin, but originated in Southeast Asia. Here, the route of the spread and diversification of citrus is traced through the use of reliable historical information (ancient texts, art, and artifacts such as wall paintings and coins) and archaeobotanical remains such as fossil pollen grains, charcoals, seeds, and other fruit remains. These botanical remains are evaluated for their reliability (in terms of identification, archaeological context, and dating) and possible interpretations. Citrus medica (citron) was the first citrus to spread west, apparently through Persia and the Southern Levant (remains were found in a Persian royal garden near Jerusalem dated to the fifth and fourth centuries BC) and then to the western Mediterranean (early Roman period, ≈third and second centuries BC). In the latter region, seeds and pollen remains of citron were found in gardens owned by the affluent in the Vesuvius area and Rome. The earliest lemon (C. limon) botanical remains were found in the Forum Romanum (Rome) and are dated to the late first century BC/early first century AD. It seems, therefore, that lemon was the second citrus species introduced to the Mediterranean. The contexts of the botanical remains, in relation to elite gardens, show that in antiquity, both citrus and lemon were products representing high social status. Sour orange (C. aurantium), lime (C. aurantifolia), and pummelo (C. maxima) did not reach the Mediterranean until the 10th century AD, after the Islamic conquest. Sweet orange (C. sinesis) was introduced during the second half of the 15th century AD, probably via the trade route established by the Genoese, and later (16th century AD) by the Portuguese. The mandarin (C. reticulata) reached the Mediterranean only in the early 19th century. While citron and lemon arrived in the Mediterranean as elite products, all other citrus fruit most probably spread for economic reasons.

Download Full-text

Archaeology and Material Culture of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians

Biblical Studies ◽

10.1093/obo/9780195393361-0268 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Gunnar Lehmann

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Bronze Age ◽

Iron Age ◽

Western Mediterranean ◽

Specific Pattern ◽

Political Organization ◽

Late Bronze Age ◽

Economic Activities ◽

Ancient Greek ◽

The Mediterranean

The Phoenicians are the population of ancient Lebanon during the 1st millennium bce. However, Phoenician settlement was also located on the coast of modern Syria and Israel. The Phoenicians were not immigrants and developed out of the local Bronze Age populations of the 2nd millennium bce. Some scholars do not distinguish the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 bce) city-states of Lebanon from those of the Phoenicians in the Iron Age of the 1st millennium bce. Rather than defining “Phoenicia” with ethnic features, the approach chosen here emphasizes aspects of the political economy. With the sociopolitical changes at the end of the Late Bronze Age, new communities emerged with a specific pattern of social and political organization and economic activities that increasingly included “private” entrepreneurial initiatives. With these developments, a new form of Levantine city-state emerged from previous Bronze Age formations. Another specific feature of the Phoenician phenomenon is the development of an alphabetic writing that had significant influence on ancient scripts of the 1st millennium bce, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, or ancient Greek writing. This bibliography focuses on the archaeology of the Phoenician homeland in the Levant during the Iron Age and the Persian period (c. 1150–330 bce). Scholars have repeatedly investigated the problem of defining the Phoenicians—if this is at all possible. The appellation “Phoenicians” originates in ancient Greek views and does not represent the self-definition of “Phoenicians” themselves, who preferred to identify themselves with their urban communities, such as “man of Tyre” or “woman of Arwad.” The unprecedented rise of the Phoenician economy after the 9th century bce had a significant impact on social and cultural changes in the Levant and the Mediterranean. Phoenician material culture appeared in all the neighboring economies of Phoenicia and led eventually to a colonization in the western Mediterranean. However one wants to define the Phoenicians, they were among the principal agents of an early globalization of the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East.

Download Full-text