Reconstituting Social Landscapes of a Milesian City: Economical Strategies and Evolution of the Settlement Patterns on the Territory of Apollonia Pontica (15 min)

Presenters

Alexandre Baralis, Louvre Museum; and Teodora Bogdanova, Institute of Archaeology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Milesian cities in the Black Sea are commonly thought to be culturally and socially homogeneous due to their common origin, both in the early foundations and again at the beginning of the third century B.C.E. when treaties of friendship reestablished ties with their metropolis. Within this model, the newly founded cities were believed to respond above all to the needs of their motherland. Their economic trajectory was therefore presumed to react to the social pattern of their source community, while their immediate hinterland passively received Aegean trade goods.

In order to challenge this model, the Louvre Museum set up a comparative study on the Greek colonies of the western Black Sea. In Bulgaria, thanks to an active cooperation with the National Institute of Archaeology (Bulgarian Academy of sciences) and the Archaeological Museum of Sozopol, the study analyzes the territory of Apollonia Pontica, one of the main Greek settlements along the Thracian coast. This multiscalar study operates simultaneously on regional and local scales: LiDAR recording; photo-interpretation; field surveys; and excavations of several settlements within a multidisciplinary perspective.

Our data enlighten the surprising complexity of the economic strategies developed by the Greek settlers. Activities changed quickly, evolving generation to generation in a territory with shifting borders. The relationships with the hinterland, more complex than collaboration versus hostility, proved to be dynamic and dialectical. They had a structuring effect on the social pattern of the Thracian populations, as well as on the economic development of the colony. Within gradually structured and autonomous regional commercial networks, Apollonia became an active production center thanks to the early spread of workshops, revealed both by the new excavations and the archaeometric analyses. Apollonia questions the relations between the metropolis and its colonies, explaining the unexpected diversity of the Greek world in the Black Sea.