Search

The creation of the urban, Classical World that during the Roman Empire finally covered for centuries the whole Mediterranean and beyond emerges as a coastal phenomenon in a period of transformation after the 12th century BC collapse in its Eastern half, representing the Late Bronze Age palatial system with its embassy trading for long-distance overseas exchange. During the Iron Age, it is accompanied by nucleation and eventually the rise of city-states in specific coastal regions of the Mediterranean. It comes with technological transmission starting with the structural use of iron in Italy and on the Iberian Peninsula from the 10th century BC onwards. Subsequently other metallurgical know-how, concepts of monumental architecture, the alphabet, metrological units and novel ceramic production techniques were introduced till around 700/600 BC. Definitely not all of these innovations became anchored everywhere, creating an elusive set of correlations steered somewhat by the rate of entanglement and centralization feasible. It surfaces along the coast with local, mostly land-locked groups and initially seafaring Phoenicians forming elite networks for exchange and stimulating local surplus production. It is the concept of the ‘swallow merchant/artisan’ that seems to prevail, circulating between home and host communities resulting in imported objects and a relatively limited output of the commodities produced during their stay abroad. Shared incentives were crucial, though the scale of involvement fluctuated considerably per territory. During the 9th century BC the rate of exchange intensified leading to ‘settled swallows’ in some regions of the Western Mediterranean and the foundation of Carthage. From ca. 800 BC onwards, Greek-speaking groups moved autonomously westwards.

The way we see relations between ‘Greeks’ and ‘Barbarians’ in the 1st millennium BC Mediterranean has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Under the influence of post-colonial theory, the narrative has shifted from colonial conquest to multiple histories of diverse encounters. This thesis examines the case of ancient Thrace: an under-explored region, which offers a unique perspective on Greek-Non-Greek relations. Geography endows Thrace with a long-lived history of interactions with Greece and very different possibilities for connectivity, compared to the Mediterranean. The aim of this thesis is to explore what forms interactions between communities in Thrace and Greece took in different geographical settings, and how they changed over the 1st millennium BC. I trace how indigenous people adopted and used imported objects and technologies in different social contexts in Thrace. This enquiry sheds light on the indigenous perspective, which has been often left off the pages of history. The evidence is synthesised and discussed in three core chapters. Chapter II takes a regional-wide and long-term perspective. I review the settlement dynamics, burial and religious practices across Thrace through the Iron Age, and I examine the place of imports in each of these spheres. Chapters III and IV focus on two contact-zone cities: Apollonia on the Black Sea, and Adzhiiska Vodenitsa on River Hebros, near modern Vetren. At Apollonia – a classic example of a coastal Greek colony, we can follow how a community of diverse origins constructed a unified community identity as a Pontic Ionian city. Apollonia’s trade and diplomatic relations with neighbouring communities started from its establishment and unfolded prosperously. Vetren is also considered a colony – a Thasian emporion – but after re-assessing the epigraphic, historical, and archaeological evidence, I argue that this identification is unconvincing. The site is better understood as a market town with a mixed population, under Thracian authority. Vetren therefore invites us to rethink the rise of indigenous urbanism, and particularly the role of imports in the constitution of early towns and urban economies. The two case studies and the regional review recuperate some of the diverse interactions between Thrace and Greece, including technological transfer, trade, migration, and elite contacts, among others. They offer a perspective on how aspects of Thracian society changed through cultural contact, on indigenous terms: by embracing and adapting some elements (coinage, wheel-made pottery), and showing limited interest in others (e.g. writing). In the processes of cultural contact and social change, people manipulated the boundaries of identity and alterity in more complex and historically meaningful ways than the binary classification of Greek and Thracian allows: by creating idiosyncratic local identities such as the Pontic Ionians at Apollonia; or by living an urban lifestyle, which had more in common with urban centres of the Aegean, than other Thracian settlements, as at Vetren.

This chapter presents a study of pithoi – large Etruscan ceramic vessels for the storage and processing of agricultural produce in Italy in the first millennium BC. A new regional typology is presented along with their distribution in Etruria. The economic life cycle of pithoi is then analysed from their production to their multiple uses and agency to their disposal. Once these have been assessed, the broader economic impact of the adoption of pithoi in the Etruscan economy and society is reconstructed leading to the conclusions that they contributed to economic development and increased social inequality between the seventh and the fifth centuries BC. Pithoi are then considered as providing evidence for economic growth in the context of the urban development of Etruria.