Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Thoughts on the eschatia and the "Small World" of Colonial Sinope (15 min)

Presenters

Owen Doonan, California State University Northridge

Abstract

The dynamic of astu (urban center) and chora (agricultural space) has long been understood as the foundation of the polis economy. Recently, archaeologists have begun investigating the importance of the eschatia or marginal countryside as a third fundamental component of the polis landscape. Most studies investigating the eschatia focus on case studies in mainland Greece, but this concept should also be applicable in the analysis of poleis in colonial spaces. This paper looks at the origins and development of the eschatia on the Sinop promontory and considers its potential role in the development of colonial-indigenous relations.

During the Iron Age the Sinop promontory was, until recently, thought to have been relatively uninhabited. Results from the Sinop Kale excavations have permitted the dating of previously undatable handmade wares to the first half of the first millennium (Early–Middle Iron Age). A lively settlement pattern has now replaced the previous model of an empty space, with important implications for colonial-indigenous relationships.

Finds from Sinop Kale excavations confirm the likely foundation of the city in the late seventh century B.C.E. The colonists established an archaic curtain wall and the road out of the city was lined by fine marble tomb monuments (Archaic–Hellenistic) to a distance of at least four kilometers, a pattern somewhat similar to the famous sacred roads leading to the countryside in Athens and Miletus. In the fourth century B.C.E. a lavish tomb was erected along this way about four kilometers from the city adorned with a monumental sculpture group of two lions attacking a stag. The increasing monumentality of the road coincided with a dramatic increase of imported Sinope and other wares in local settlements implying the transformation of the eschatia in the small world of Sinope.