Ancient West & East: Volume 4, No. 2 9004141774, 9789004141773

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ANCIENT WEST & EAST VOLUME 4, NO. 2

Academic Periodical

ANCIENT WEST & EAST Monograph Supplement: COLLOQUIA PONTICA editor-in-chief

GOCHA R. TSETSKHLADZE (AUSTRALIA) editors

A. Avram (Romania/France) – Sir John Boardman (UK) O. Bopearachchi (France) – J. Bouzek (Czech Rep.) – A. ÇilingiroÅlu (Turkey) – B. d’Agostino (Italy) – F. De Angelis (Canada) – A. Domínguez (Spain) – O. Doonan (USA) – M. Fischer (Israel) – J.Hargrave (UK) J. Hind (UK) – M. Kazanski (France) – A.Podossinov (Russia) D. Ridgway (UK) – N. Theodossiev (Bulgaria) – A.Wilson (UK) advisory board P. Alexandrescu (Romania) – S. Atasoy (Turkey) – L. Ballesteros Pastor (Spain) A.D.H. Bivar (UK) – S. Burstein (USA) – J. Carter (USA) – B. Cunliffe (UK) J. de Boer (The Netherlands) – P. Dupont (France) – J. Fossey (Canada) I. Gagoshidze (Georgia) – E. Haerinck (Belgium) – V. Karageorghis (Cyprus) M. Kerschner (Austria/Germany) – A. Kuhrt (UK) – I. Malkin (Israel) – F. Millar (UK) J.-P. Morel (France) – R. Olmos (Spain) – A. Rathje (Denmark) – A. Sagona (Australia) A. Snodgrass (UK) – S. Solovyov (Russia) – D. Stronach (USA) – M.A. Tiverios (Greece) M. Vassileva (Bulgaria) – A. Wasowicz (Poland) All correspondence should be addressed to: Gocha R. Tsetskhladze Centre for Classics and Archaeology The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia Tel: +61 3 83445565 Fax: +61 3 83444161 E-Mail: [email protected]

ANCIENT WEST & EAST VOLUME 4, NO. 2

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN 1570–1921 ISBN 90 04 14177 4 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Articles A.J. Nijboer, The Iron Age in the Mediterranean: A Chronological Mess or ‘Trade before the Flag’, Part II ............................................ J. Boardman, Al Mina: Notes and Queries ............................................ H.G. Niemeyer, There is No Way Out of the Al Mina Debate ........ N.T. de Grummond, Roman Favor and Etruscan Thuf(ltha): A Note on Propertius 4. 2. 34 ............................................................ J. Bouzek, Local Schools of Thracian Toreutics of the 4th Century BC in a Broader Context .................................................................... A. Furasiev, The Chronology of Cultural Transformations in the Basins of the Upper Dnieper and Western Dvina in the 1st–5th Centuries AD ........................................................................................ Discussion L.G. Mitchell, Ethnic Identity and the Community of the Hellenes: A Review ( J.M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture) ............ C. Tuplin, Helleniceties: Marginal Notes to a Book and a Review .... R. Osborne, The Good of Ethnicity ...................................................... A. Snodgrass, Sanctuary, Shared Cult and Hellenicity. An Archaeological Angle ...................................................................... G. Shepherd, Hellenicity: More Views from the Margins .................... A.J. Domínguez, Hellenic Identity and Greek Colonisation .................. J. Boardman, Ethnicity-Shmicity? ............................................................ Reviews New Publications on the Near East (G.R. Tsetskhladze) .............................. Recent Publications on the Roman Provinces ( J. Wilkes) ................................ A.Y. Alekseev, Khronografiya Evropeiskoi Skifii VII–IV vekov do n.e. ( J.G.F. Hind) .......................................................................................... A. Bammer, Die Rückkehr des Klassischen in die Levante (M. Fischer) ........ J.D. Baumbach, The Significance of Votive Offerings ( J. Boardman) ............ O. Belli and E. Konyar, Early Iron Age Fortresses and Necropolises in East Anatolia (C. Burney) ........................................................................ M. Bennett and A.J. Paul (eds.), Magna Graecia (D. Ridgway) .............. A.B. Bosworth, The Legacy of Alexander (S. Burstein) ................................ K. Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East (T. Kaizer) .......................... J.J. Collins and G.E. Sterling (eds.), Hellenism in the Land of Israel (M. Fischer) ............................................................................................ C. Gosden, Archaeology and Colonialism ( J. Hargrave) ..............................

255 278 292 296 318

388

409 421 430 432 437 446 458

461 465 473 475 477 478 480 481 482 484 487

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CONTENTS

W. Jongman and M. Kleijwegt (eds.), After the Past (N. Morley) .......... S.A. Kingsley, A Sixth-Century AD Shipwreck off the Carmel Coast, Israel (T. Gamblin) .......................................................................................... M. Lilimbaki-Akamati, To hiero tes Meteras ton Theon kai tes Aphrodites sten Pella (K. Kathariou) ........................................................................ A.M. Maeir, S. Dar and Z. Safrai (eds.), The Rural Landscape of Ancient Israel (O. Tal) .............................................................................. A. Nunn and R. Schulz (eds.), Skarabäen außerhalb Ägyptiens ( J. Boardman) ........................................................................................ P.J. Parr (ed.), Excavations at Arjoune, Syria (P.M.M.G. Akkermans) ........ A.V. Podossinov, Vostochnaya Evropa v rimskoi kartograficheskoi traditsii ( J.G.F. Hind) .......................................................................................... J. Pollini, Gallo-Roman Bronzes and the Process of Romanization (M. Treister) .......................................................................................... B.B. Powell, Writing and the Origin of Greek Literature (R. Osborne) ........ K. Rhomiopoulou and G. Touratsoglou, Mieza. Nekrotapheio ysteroarchaikon-proimon hellenistikon chronon (K. Kathariou) ...................... C. Sagona, The Archaeology of Punic Malta (A. Termini) .......................... A.T. Smith and K.S. Rubinson (eds.), Archaeology in the Borderlands (C. Burney) ............................................................................................ J.G. Szilágyi, Ancient Art (D. Ridgway) .................................................... G.N. Volnaya, Prikladnoe iskusstvo naseleniya Priterech’ya serediny I tys. do n.e. (S.L. Dudarev) ............................................................................ C.K. Williams II and N. Bookidis (eds.), Corinth ( J. Salmon) .............. K. Aslihan Yener, The Domestication of Metals (P. Dolukhanov) ..............

488 490 491 494 495 496 497 499 500 501 503 506 508 509 511 512

New Publications Bulgarian Archaeology (N. Theodossiev) ................................................ 515 Books Received .............................................................................................. 525 In the Next Volume ........................................................................................ 529

THE IRON AGE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: A CHRONOLOGICAL MESS OR ‘TRADE BEFORE THE FLAG’, PART II1 ALBERT J. NIJBOER Abstract The paper discusses the commotion regarding the absolute chronology of the 10th to 8th centuries BC in the Mediterranean. The debate on absolute dates during the Iron Age has become confused by the various independent positions taken by scholars from diverse Mediterranean regions. This state of affairs is the main topic addressed. Aspects discussed are the conventional absolute chronology; Carthage and the adjusted absolute chronology for the Phoenician settlements in southern Spain; the dispute on the absolute chronology of the Iron Age in Italy; the low and high chronology debate on the Iron Age in Palestine; radiocarbon and dendrochronological research at Gordion; the revised absolute chronology of Central Europe and ‘Trade before the Flag’, Part II. In the last section some modification is suggested to the absolute chronology of the Greek Geometric fine wares, resulting in a longer trading phase in the Mediterranean before the establishment of Greek settlements in southern Italy during the late 8th century BC.

The paper examines the absolute chronology from the 10th to the 8th century BC in several regions of the Mediterranean. It will not investigate the various local, relative chronologies because these are considered correct thanks to their stratigraphic anchoring. It deals mainly with the relationship between relative and absolute chronology, one which has become increasingly unclear in the past decade on account of dendrochronological and radiocarbon research. It will also propose for the centuries discussed a hypothesis concerning the course of events in the Mediterranean.

1 The title of this paper is a tribute to Prof. H.G. Niemeyer who published an interesting proposal in 1990 under the title ‘The Phoenicians in the Mediterranean: a non-Greek model for expansion and settlement in Antiquity’. He distinguished between the Phoenician and Greek trading patterns based on differences in settlement characteristics. Thus he addresses one of the main questions regarding the reconstruction of the Greek colonisation of southern Italy. This question concerns the control of a hinterland, which distinguishes a trading settlement from an agrarian colony. In 1993 he published a revised version of this article under the title ‘Trade before the Flag? On the Principles of Phoenician Expansion in the Mediterranean’ (see also Niemeyer 2004). The title of the present paper refers to his ideas and includes ‘Trade before the Flag’ in acknowledgment of them. It remains fundamental to establish how and when the Greek communities settling in southern Italy acquired a hinterland. An option is that the early Greek sites in southern Italy started originally as some sort of trading settlement. I would like to make it clear that in my opinion 700 BC in the Mediterranean remains at present 700 BC (Nijboer 2005). The absolute chronology of the 7th century BC can hardly be altered.

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At present archaeologists use for this period the following chronologies, which will be discussed further below: the conventional, the adjusted, the low and the high absolute chronology. The debate on absolute dates during the Iron Age has become confused on account of the independent positions taken by scholars from various parts of the Mediterranean. It is no longer possible to explain the present situation to a first year archaeology student because he or she understands perfectly well that 800 BC in Spain is also 800 BC in the Levant, just as AD 2000 in Rome is AD 2000 in New York. The poor state of affairs regarding the absolute chronology of the Iron Age in the Mediterranean is the main subject addressed in this paper. The Conventional Absolute Chronology The conventional absolute chronology of the Iron Age for the whole Mediterranean is based on the stylistic development of the Greek Geometric pottery in combination with a partial interpretation of ancient literature, concentrating on the dates given by Thucydides for the Greek colonisation of Sicily. Nevertheless, the literary data are relative as well since we are dealing essentially with a proto-historical period. The value of the literary data for absolute chronology depends largely on the interpretation of the historical event itself, in our case the Greek colonisation of Sicily, and how this event is seen in the archaeological record. Since the 1930s the Late Geometric (LG) and Early Protocorinthian (EPC) pottery in Italy has been associated with the foundation of some Greek colonies on Sicily as documented by Thucydides or Eusebius.2 This association led to Table 1, which constitutes

2 Payne 1931; Dunbabin 1948; Coldstream 1968. The present paper is the result of interdisciplinary research combining efforts from the arts as well as from the sciences. This indicates that comments on the radiocarbon method or dendrochronology should be made by a scientist versed in these techniques. I myself am usually critical of scientific techniques applied randomly in archaeology. However the radiocarbon and dendrochronological methods cannot be considered in this way. They are commonly accepted, though in theory both might suffer occasional error. I sincerely hope that this article will not lead to a Pavlovian reaction by classical archaeologists, as has been the case with much research in archaeometry such as the famous debate on the Thera eruption, its relation to the chronology of the pharaoh list (cf. Kitchen 1996) and the final years of Minoan civilisation (Hardy and Renfrew 1990; Manning 1996). I am fully aware that the problems discussed in this article are another minefield, but if Mediterranean archaeologists do not want to take the commonly accepted scientific dating techniques seriously, they should refrain in future from using them. I hope that the hypothesis put forward in this paper will lead to their increasing use, as advocated by Gilboa and Sharon (2003); and that a revised chronology for the Geometric ceramic sequence can somehow assist in the reconstruction of ancient Greece from the 10th to the 8th century BC. The suggested revision may also create new avenues for research and interpretation. The Greece of ca. 800 BC may have been more advanced than conventional absolute chronology would allow. For example, on linguistic grounds C.J. Ruijgh argues that Homer lived and worked

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Table 1. Late Geometric (LG) and Early Protocorinthian (EPC) ceramics and the foundation dates of some Greek colonies on Sicily as documented by Thucydides or Eusebius (after Coldstream 1968, 323, where details and references are given). Colony

Date BC Thuc. Eus.

Earliest Corinthian pottery Settlement Sanctuary

Naxos

734

LG skyphos

Syracuse

733

Leontini

729

Megara Hyblaea

728

Zancle

After 734

Mylae (Chersonesus) Taras Gela

741/ 736 736/ 734

Before 717 717

LG-EPC. Thapsos style: several skyphoi 3 fragments LG Thapsos style Many fragments of of LG ceramics: Thapsos style

Some LG + EPC EPC ceramics aryballoi

LG kotyle fragments

706 688

690

Cemetery

Some EPC ceramics

EPC aryballoi/ kotyle EPC aryballos Some EPC and MPC ceramics

the basis of the conventional absolute chronology, from which it is deduced that the LG/EPC transition has to be dated around 720 BC.3 However, on face value, one can conclude that the most consistent group of LG/EPC ceramics in Table 1 derives from Syracuse, as can also be seen in some of the showcases of its Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi and that EPC ceramics were already available around 735 BC.4 From Table 1 the previous period is reconstructed on the assumption that stylistic changes in Geometric ceramics do occur more or less regularly after two generations (50 years). Thus the ceramic sequence for Attica in the conventional absolute chronology is that the Early Geometric (EG) ceramics were produced from 900 to 850 BC, the Middle Geometric I (MG I) from 850 to 800 BC, the Middle Geometric II (MG II) from 800 to 760 BC and the Late Geometric from

during the late 9th century BC and that Greek adoption of the Phoenician alphabet should be assigned to the 10th century BC (Ruijgh 1996). 3 Coldstream 1968, 327; 2003a, 435. 4 Cf. Pelagatti 1982, 125–40; Albanese Procelli 2003.

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760 to 700 BC.5 Coldstream is the figurehead of this reconstruction, though he himself is perfectly aware that Greek Geometric ceramics form a sound relative sequence but are ‘lacking any evidence for absolute dates’.6 Nevertheless, Greek Geometric ceramics did become the marker of the absolute chronology for the whole Mediterranean in the past century. Thanks mainly to Coldstream’s research, it cannot be denied that Greek Geometric pottery in its stylistic development provides the most detailed sequence when compared to the more traditional ceramic products in other regions of the Mediterranean. However the stylistic strength of the sequence becomes a weakness when applied without restraint. Since it has become the only chronological marker for the Mediterranean in conventional absolute chronology, it has affected the absolute chronology of other Mediterranean regions by narrowing down the chronological ranges of the local ceramic styles. This is due to insufficient chronological reference points, making triangulation impossible (triangulation is an attempt to resolve a phenomenon or measurement by using several (three or more) independent methods, in our case historical data, radiocarbon determinations and dendrochronological information). The world was created in the evening of 22nd October 4004 BC if one accepts the Bible as a reliable reference point.7 This date for the ‘first motion of time’ becomes unacceptable if one admits scientific data not mentioned in the Bible. By using only one reference point, in our case the dates given by Thucydides and some ‘Greek’ sherds with a generally poor context on Sicily, one creates a sameness of events which might actually deviate. An example from a recent excavation can illustrate this notion of narrowing down the chronological ranges of local artefacts. One could take many other examples especially from Italy, for instance the absolute chronology of one of the earliest tombe principesche of Italy, the one at Vivaro di Rocca di Papa in Latium Vetus that contains no Greek ceramics at all though some artefacts with a Levantine correlation;8 but the earliest layers from Carthage so far excavated

5

Coldstream 2003a, 435. Coldstream 2003b. 7 Ussher 1658, iv: ‘from thence I gathered the creation of the world did fall out upon the 710 year of the Julian Period, by placing its beginning in autumn: but for as much as the first day of the world began with the evening of the first day of the week. I have observed that the Sunday, which in the year 710 aforesaid came nearest the Autumnal Aequinox, by astronomical tables (notwithstanding the stay of the sun in the dayes of Joshua, and the going back of it in the dayes of Ezekiah) happened upon the 23 day of the Julian October: from thence concluded that from the evening preceding that first day of the Julian year, both the first day of the creation and the first motion of time are to be deduced.’ 710 of the Julian Period is 4004 BC (cf. Steel 2000, 216–21). 8 Arietti and Martellotta 1998. 6

THE IRON AGE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

259

provide a particular good case because they contain ceramics from various regions of the Mediterranean. Docter and Niemeyer wrote that four of the contexts from the earliest layers of Carthage they excavated contained: 1 Euboean sherd, 2 Corinthian fragments, 2 Attic fragments, 1 fragment of Greek plain ware, 8 Nuraghic sherds, 7 sherds from south/south-west Spain, 3 fragments of plain ware from the Levant, 61 sherds from local ceramics and 19 fragments of Red Slip Ware not assigned to a specific region.9 The early layers from Carthage are dated with the conventional absolute chronology using Table 2. Thus Greek LG sherds date local ceramic sequences, which again also date in absolute years comparable local ceramics that are found in contexts which do not contain any evidence for Greek Geometric fine wares, for example three of the four contexts from early Carthage listed above. This practice narrows down the absolute chronology of the non-Greek ceramics, which are considered to be more traditional in style than the Greek Geometric fine wares. In the past decades the process of narrowing down the chronological ranges of local stylistic developments took place in the whole Mediterranean on account of the stylistic strength of the Greek Geometric sequence. It has led to a cluttering of events during the second half of the 8th century BC. There was no debate on the absolute chronology as long as all archaeologists in the Mediterranean used the conventional version. However, in the past decade groups of archaeologists have by region adjusted the absolute chronology of the 10th to 8th centuries BC almost independently, resulting in an untenable situation which will be addressed below. Carthage and the Raised Absolute Chronology for the Phoenician Settlements in Southern Spain For Spain, Aubet and her team have raised the absolute chronology of the establishment of Phoenician settlements on its southern coast by about 50 to

9 Docter et al. 2005; the radiocarbon dates from these four contexts will be discussed below. I would like to thank Prof. Docter for his continuing support. I am pleased that we will be working together on more radiocarbon datings from Carthage based on his present excavation there.

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Table 2. Greek fine wares from the earliest settlement layers at Carthage so far excavated (for full details and references see Docter et al. 2005). Greek fine wares

Stratigraphy Phase I

ca. 760–740

1 Euboean LG skyphos

ca. 750–715

Layer IIa

ca. 740–725

1 1 1 1 2

ca. ca. ca. ca. ?

Layer IIb

ca. 725–700

5 sherds of Euboean LG skyphoi 1 Pithecusan juglet

Euboean LG skyphos Cycladic (?) LG open vessel Pithecusan Aetos 666 kotyle Pithecusan LG flat bowl or plate Greek open vessels

750–715 750–715 750–715 750–715

ca. 750–715 ?

100 years into the 9th century BC on account of an interpretation of the available radiocarbon dates.10 In the first edition of her book she adhered reluctantly to the conventional absolute chronology, remarking that It is equally necessary to bear in mind that we are ignorant of the initial scope of the main colonies in the west. The evidence shows that the vast majority were founded throughout the eighth century BC, and that some of them, like the installations along the coastline of Malaga and Granada, brought in substantial contingents of oriental population from the start.11

However, in the second edition of her book, after a discussion of about 60 radiocarbon dates, she states that For a start, it should be possible to place the beginnings of Phoenician colonization in the Malaga-Algorrobo region as early as the 9th century BC and at the beginning of the 8th century BC in the Vélez-Toscanos region.12

Though the radiocarbon dates discussed are not of high quality, it is unlikely that they are all affected by the old-wood effect or other shortcomings.13 Their interpretation might require slight adjustments once high quality radiocarbon analyses become available for early contexts of Phoenician settlements in Spain, but the tendency of a higher absolute chronology into the 9th century BC is evident from the radiocarbon dates listed by her. Moreover Aubet’s reconstruction of the Phoenician advance towards the western Mediterranean dur-

10

Aubet 2001, 372–81; Castro Martinez 1994, 143–46. Aubet 1993, 281, 167–84, 314–16. 12 Aubet 2001, 381. Prof. Aubet wrote to me (24 January 2005) that she maintains her viewpoint regarding the beginning of Phoenician colonisation into the western Mediterranean during the second half of the 9th century BC. 13 Nijboer 2005, 534–35. 11

THE IRON AGE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

261

ing the 9th century BC is confirmed by the high quality radiocarbon results from Carthage of the four contexts introduced above (Fig. 1).14 Docter and Niemeyer concluded that the early contexts from Carthage dated by the radiocarbon method are secondary, containing ceramics from different ages, on account of the Greek ceramics present.15 Otherwise the absolute chronology of the Late Geometric fine wares had to be raised. However, it needs to be pointed out that several bones were used for each radiocarbon analysis since the Groningen laboratory received a few animal bones per context. Therefore the conventional radiocarbon method could be used as expressed in the code (GrN), which can provide a more precise result but requires substantial samples (up to 400 g of bone was used as sample per context). If the ceramics from these contexts are secondary, the bones in these layers could be of different age. The radiocarbon method provides us with a mean age of the bones used as sample. Consequently the radiocarbon results represent an average date for each of the four contexts examined. These results suggest that the earliest contexts of Phoenician Carthage so far excavated date to the late 9th century BC. Since the ceramics are considered to be secondary by the excavators, it is legitimate to calculate the mean value of the four radiocarbon results. This calculation indicates that livestock was slaughtered in Phoenician Carthage with a 95% probability in the period 835–800 BC, being the average absolute date for more than 1 kg of animal bones (mainly cattle) used as a sample for the four radiocarbon determinations.16 A date of 835–800 BC for the earliest layers of Carthage so far excavated coincides with the traditional foundation date of Carthage (814/813 BC) but not with the conventional absolute chronology of the Greek LG ceramics present in one of these four contexts. The Adjusted Absolute Chronology of the Iron Age in Italy For Italy, several pre- and proto-historians have in the past decade raised the absolute chronology of specific Iron Age phases up to 80/70 years on account of the revised chronology of Central Europe discussed below.17 This 14 The long-standing problem of the absolute chronology of the Phoenician advance towards the West is described lucidly by Sagona (1986, 10–12). Coldstream however wrote recently: ‘Carthage, a colony of Tyre, was the chief Phoenician outpost in North Africa, and probably the most ancient—although Timaeus’ date of 814 BC is likely to prove too early by a couple of generations’ (2003a, 240). Thus he ignores Thucydides himself who wrote that the Phoenicians were already occupying parts of Sicily before the arrival of the Greeks (see below). Therefore I consider the conventional absolute chronology to be based on a partial reading of ancient literary sources. 15 Docter et al. 2005. 16 Docter et al. 2005. 17 Peroni 1994; Giardino 1995; Bietti Sestieri 1996; 1997a; Pacciarelli 1996. For the present situation, see Pacciarelli 2005; Peroni and Vanzetti 2005.

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Atmospheric data from Stuiver et al. (1998); OxCal v3.9 Bronk Ramsey (2003); cub r.4 sd: 12 prob usp[chron]

GrN-26093 2640±50BP GrN-26090 2650±30BP GrN-26094 2660±30BP GrN-26091 2710±30BP 500CalBC

1000CalBC

1500CalBC Sample Ka93–

Lab. nr. GrN

14

C age (BP)

error

1s 2s

181

26090

2650

30

1s 825–800 2s 890–880, 835–795 9th century BC with 95% probability

183

26091

2710

30

1s 895–825 2s 905–805 9th century BC with 99% probability

220

26093

2640

50

1s 890–885 2s 905–760, 680–670, 610–595 9th century BC with 95% probability

499

26094

2660

30

1s 825–805 2s 895–875, 835–795 9th century BC with 90% probability

cal BC

Years rounded to the nearest 5. Fig. 1. Four radiocarbon results and their Oxcal calibration of contexts pertaining to the earliest settlement phases of Phoenician Carthage.

revision is partially backed by radiocarbon research of Iron Age contexts from Italy.18 However, Etruscan specialists and others maintain the conventional absolute chronology.19 For Italy this results in an absolute chronology for the 10th to 8th centuries BC that deviates according to the group involved. In the worst scenario there are actually two dates for one event. The present chronological confusion relates also to the absolute chronology of the Orientalising period and is well illustrated by one of the major exhibitions on the Etruscans in recent years.20 In the exhibition catalogue Gras dates the spectacular Tomba Bernardini to the late 8th century BC.21 Ampolo, however, dates the same tomb in the same catalogue to the second quarter of the 7th century BC.22 18 19 20 21 22

Nijboer et al. 1999/2000; Nijboer 2005, 529–30. Cf. Delpino 2003. Principi Etruschi 2000. Gras 2000, 19. Ampolo 2000, 31.

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I would like to point out here that the Tomba Bernardini was excavated in Palestrina and cannot be referred to as an Etruscan princely tomb since Palestrina is located in Latium Vetus. It is therefore a Latial princely tomb. The chronological debate in Italy cannot be isolated from the social-economic developments as recorded by archaeological data. Villanovan Italy had become a ‘land of opportunities’ during the Iron Age on account of its considerable economic growth and on account of its location in the centre of the Mediterranean, which became vital for increasing overseas trade between the eastern and western Mediterranean. Its progress was assisted by what seems like free movement of goods, people and ideas.23 In archaeology these opportunities are amongst others documented by the massive ‘Italic’ demand for distinguishing materials and artefacts from everywhere, including amber from the Baltic, goods from Central Europe, ivory and other luxuries from the Levant, and Late Geometric and Protocorinthian ceramics and their contents from Greece.24 By the 9th century BC Italy had become too crowded and too sophisticated to allow for a swift, passive colonisation process during the late 8th century BC as expressed in the conventional absolute chronology: – crowded on account of the thousands of Villanovan tombs excavated at centres such as Bologna, Tarquinia, Veii and Pontecagnano, and the hundreds of tombs near other settlements almost all over the peninsula, – sophisticated on account of the story told by these tombs, a story of increasing social differentiation during the Iron Age.25 Moreover, it should be fully acknowledged that the vast majority of these tombs are lacking overseas imports, Levantine or Greek. The recent excavations at Poggiomarino, about 30 km east of Naples and about one day’s trek to Cumae, once again document that the Phoenicians and Greeks, arriving in Italy during the 9th and 8th centuries BC, did find substantial indigenous settlements at their doorsteps.26 23

Cf. Bietti Sestieri 1997a; Nijboer 1998, 56–67. Cf. von Merhart and Kossack 1969; Batovic 1976; Peroni 1976; Yntema 1985, 76–85; Matthäus 2000; Gatti 2005. It will be evident that receipt of these artefacts from the eastern Mediterranean and from Europe north of the Alps indicates that Villanovan commodities had found their way to these regions as well (cf. Bietti Sestieri 2003; Kilian, 1977; Hermann 1983, 284–90; Jones 2000, 165–67). 25 Cf. Pacciarelli 2000. 26 On Poggiomarino, see Albore Livadie et al. 2005; for a close reading of tomb 104 Artiaco at Cumae and its implications, see Guzzo 2000. The ambiguous character of this tomb, which contains local and imported ‘symbols of power’, is mirrored in the stratigraphy of the Cumae settlement. Excavation at the acropolis in 1910 revealed layers down to the lowest were mixed with impasto and Greek ceramics (Gabrici 1913, 756–63): ‘La grande prevalenza di ceramica d’impasto in tutte le stratificazioni incontrate, prova che l’elemento indigeno costituiva il substrato della popolazione dell’acropoli, allorché il commercio calcidese del secolo ottavo introduceva cola i vasi di argilla figulina dipinta’ (763). 24

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The Low and High Chronology Debate for the Iron Age in Palestine In publications on the Iron Age in the Levant, Finkelstein has suggested lowering the chronology of the Early Iron II period in Palestine to the 9th century BC27 while his colleague Mazar contests this wholesale lowering of Iron Age chronology.28 The debate on the ‘Low Chronology’ coincides with the content of a book called Centuries of Darkness.29 The title refers to the centuries from 1200 to 800 BC, which have been labelled ‘centuries of darkness’, but which are essentially a problem of Greek history. Archaeological research clearly indicates a break but also traces of continuity.30 For example, overseas contact between the Aegean/Greece and the Levant never completely ceased during the 12th and 11th centuries BC and they definitely increased from the 10th century BC onwards.31 Owing to the commanding position of the conventional absolute chronology of Greek fine ceramics, these ‘centuries of darkness’ have been exported to other regions of the Mediterranean, while a site like Poggiomarino clearly indicates continuity on a local level.32 In the past decade various options were put forward to close the gap between the Mycenaeans and Homer. In their intriguing book, which reads unfortunately like a pamphlet, James and his colleagues proposed lowering the chronology of the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean. According to them the Late Bronze Age does not end around 1200 BC but around 950 BC.33 Their argument is based mainly on a reinterpretation of the ancient literary sources in combination with the mostly unclear and scarce archaeological record for this period. Regrettably their research did not add new chronological reference points through radiocarbon or preferably dendrochronological research. The book demonstrates perfectly how flexible the interpretation of both the ancient literary sources and the archaeological record can be in relation to an absolute chronology of a period that is essentially proto-historical. Nevertheless, their conclusion of lowering the absolute chronology of the Late Bronze Age corresponds with what Finkelstein wrote: ‘The prime advantage of the Low Chronology is that it closes the “Dark Age” of the Iron II sequence, the elusive 9th century BC.’34 The debate on a high

27

Finkelstein 1996. Mazar 1997; 2004. 29 James et al. 1991. 30 Cf. Snodgrass 2002. 31 Cf. Coldstream 1998; Dirlmeier-Kilian 2000. 32 Kuniholm recently reported a tentative tree-ring sequence for oak from Poggiomarino from about 1200 BC to about 650 BC (personal communication; Albore Livadie et al. 2005; http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/2002news). 33 James et al. 1991, 317–20. 34 Finkelstein 1996, 184. 28

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and low absolute chronology of the Iron Age in the southern Levant continues to the present, even after the publication of the high quality radiocarbon dates from Tel Rehov.35 The low chronology as proposed by James has hardly any followers in the western Mediterranean.36 If one considers the revised high chronology of Central Europe presented below, the problem of these ‘centuries of darkness’ is not solved by lowering 1200 BC but rather by allowing for a higher absolute chronology of the Iron Age. Moreover, Finkelstein’s elusive Early Iron Age in the Levant might be less puzzling by accepting a high chronology of the coastal Levantine cities and early Carthage as suggested in this paper. Radiocarbon and Dendrochronological Research at Gordion The last Mediterranean region to be discussed here is Anatolia and the dendrochronological and radiocarbon research at Gordion. Recent analysis of high precision radiocarbon dates of the Anatolian dendrochronological sequence from the late 3rd millennium to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC have raised its absolute chronology by 22 years (+ 4 or – 7 years) compared to the absolute chronology previously advocated.37 This result touches on the construction date of the Great Tumulus MM at Gordion.38 The trees used for building the funerary chamber were felled around 740 BC thus raising the absolute chronology for the construction of this chamber by 20 years. Cauldrons in Tumulus MM are similar to cauldrons found in tombe principesche in Italy assigned to the early or middle Orientalising period.39 This indicates that the absolute chronology of the Orientalising period in Italy might have

35 Coldstream and Mazar 2003; Bruins, van der Plicht and Mazar 2003; Finkelstein and Piasetzky 2003; Bruins and van der Plicht 2003; Coldstream 2003b. For a more balanced view, see Gilboa and Sharon 2003, Mazar 2004. The radiocarbon dates of Tel Rehov stratum IV (containing two sherds of an Attic early Middle Geometric (MG) skyphos) coincide more or less with the conventional absolute chronology for the MG pottery as proposed by Coldstream (850 BC). However, a slightly earlier beginning of the MG sequence cannot be excluded on account of the radiocarbon results. The Attic early Middle Geometric sherds derive from level IV from which cereal grains were taken as sample for the radiocarbon analysis. The weighted average date of these radiocarbon determinations is 2755 ± 25, which gives the following ranges when calibrated with OxCal v3.5: 980 to 950 BC (6% probability); 940 to 820 BC (90% probability). For stratigraphical reasons and from the radiocarbon sequence obtained from various levels of the stratigraphy, stratum IV of Tel Rehov is dated from 880 to 840 BC. Moreover the biography of the Attic early Middle Geometric (MG) skyphos from Tel Rehov is unknown and could therefore be slightly older than the radiocarbon dates obtained. 36 Cf. Niemeyer 1999, 155. 37 Manning et al. 2001. 38 Young 1981, 79–190. 39 Cf. Strøm, 1971, 131–34.

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to be raised slightly as well. In addition, the radiocarbon analysis of five seed samples each from a different vessel found in situ on the floor of Terrace Building 2A at Gordion resulted in a date in the late 9th century BC. These dates and others at Gordion are clearly in conflict with the conventional absolute chronology.40 This implies that the Iron Age in the region lengthens while 720 BC can be raised to 740 BC. Kuniholm wrote: This fits in well with what the Germans have at Bögazköy (four Iron Age levels instead of two). It also ties in with the New Assyrian chronology at Ayanis, East of Lake Van. The Iron Age gets longer and longer.41

The Revised Absolute Chronology of Central Europe The absolute chronology of Central Europe is relevant for this paper because of the position of Italy. Southern Italy is securely related to Mediterranean chronology42 while northern Italy is attached to the chronology of Central Europe.43 As such it is stuck between the conventional absolute chronology of the Aegean and the adjusted absolute chronology of Central Europe (Table 3). One would prefer to use dendrochronology for reference points such as the research on Wehringen tumulus 8 in southern Germany marking the transition from Hallstatt B3 to Hallstatt C and raising it by about 80 years.44 Unfortunately, dendrochronological research is scarce in the Mediterranean and the research known hardly relates to closed and significant archaeological contexts.45 There are two options to preserve the correlation of the Italian early Orientalising period with Hallstatt C: a. raising the absolute chronology of Late Geometric pottery or b. raising the absolute chronology of the Orientalising period in Italy. This will be discussed briefly below.46 Table 3 presents the absolute chronology of the Aegean, Italy and Central Europe in combination with the method by which it was obtained. Fig. 2 illustrates the implications caused by the adjusted absolute chronology from

40

DeVries et al. 2003. Personal communication, 27 January 2004. The radiocarbon dates from Gordion were criticised by Muscarella (2003) and by Keenan (2004). I doubt whether an archaeologist can assess the validity of the arguments made by Keenan (see n. 2 above). The radiocarbon dates obtained at Gordion and elsewhere in the Mediterranean are backed by dendrodates from Central Europe, which indicate that there are serious problems with the absolute chronology of the 9th and 8th centuries BC. 42 Cf. Morris 1996. 43 Cf. Pacciarelli 1996; De Marinis 1999. 44 Hennig 1995; Friedrich and Hennig 1996; Pare 1998; 1999. 45 For Italy, see Martinelli 2005. 46 See also Nijboer 2005, 542–49. 41

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Table 3. Absolute chronology of the Aegean, Italy and Central Europe in combination with the method whereby it was obtained.

1200

Aegean/Greek chronology based on stylistic sequences in combination with data from ancient literature

Adjusted Villanovan/Etruscan Chronology

Latial Chronology

based on stylistic sequences and hardly on scientific dating techniques Tarquinia Veio

based till 750 BC on 14C data

LH IIIC

Bronzo Finale I

Central European Chronology based on dendrochronological data 1200

Hallstatt A1 1200

1100 Bronzo Finale II

Submycenean

Hallstatt A2

1 1200

Conventional historical chronology

1000

Bronzo Finale III Protogeometric

900

Early Geometric 800

Middle Geometric

IA I B1 I B2

Villanovan

II

Late Villanovan

Proto Protoattic corinthian

650

Transitional

Early Orientalizing

III B

Middle Orientalizing

III B

IV

Late Orientalizing

500

Black Figure Corinthian

Archaic Period

950–925 II A 900 IIB 850–825

950– 925

Hallstatt (B2+) B3

IV

850– 870 800– 780

III

III A

600 550

I

II 750–725 III A

Late Geometric 700

Hallstatt B1

750 IV A 630–620 IV B 580

Hallstatt C

Chronology based on the scientific dating technique

1100

625

Hallstatt D

Archaic Period 500

Black/Red Figure

Central Europe when compared to the conventional absolute chronology of the Aegean/Greece. One can deduce from this figure that there are basically no problems between both absolute chronologies (the conventional absolute chronology to the left and the absolute chronology based on the scientific dating techniques to the right) from 1200 BC to 1000 BC although they are based on different methods. Triangulation indicates that the absolute chronology for the period 1200 to 1000 BC is more or less correct. The results of both methods diverge somewhat from 900 BC onwards, reaching the greatest discrepancy during the 8th century BC. I also would like to stress that 700 BC in the Mediterranean remains at present 700 BC.47 The absolute chronology of the 7th century BC can in my opinion hardly be altered in Greece, Italy or other Mediterranean regions. ‘Trade before the Flag’, Part II The various positions taken at present in the Mediterranean regarding the absolute chronology of the Iron Age evolved in spite of the conventional absolute chronology of the Greek Geometric sequence. Various unrelated groups of scholars analysing data from Spain, Italy, Carthage and Anatolia 47

Nijboer 2005, 531–32.

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Aegean/Greek chronology based on stylist sequences in combination with data from ancient literature 1200 1100 1000

Central European Chronology based on dendrochronological data

1200 1125 1025 950/925

900 850/870 800

800/780

700 600 500

625 500

Fig. 2. The implications caused by the adjusted absolute chronology from Central Europe when compared to the conventional absolute chronology of the Aegean/Greece. One can deduce from this figure that there are essentially no problems between both absolute chronologies (the conventional absolute chronology to the left and the absolute chronology based on the scientific dating techniques to the right) from 1200 BC to 1000 BC although they are based on different methods. Triangulation indicates that the absolute chronology for the period 1200 to 1000 BC is more or less correct. The results of both methods diverge somewhat from 900 BC onwards, reaching their greatest discrepancy during the 8th century BC. It has to be stressed that 700 BC in the Mediterranean remains at present 700 BC (Nijboer 2005).

did obtain comparable results using mainly the radiocarbon method, indicating that the absolute chronology of the Iron Age in the Mediterranean needs to be lengthened, especially for the 9th and 8th centuries BC. The radiocarbon results from these Mediterranean regions coincide with the dendrochronological data from Central Europe. On account of these matching results, which are clearly reproducible, I suggest raising the absolute chronology of the Geometric sequence, which is a sound relative classification but ‘lacking any evidence for absolute dates’:48

48

Coldstream 2003b.

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– the Early Geometric (EG) sequence might be raised from 900 BC to 950/925 BC and continues into the 9th century BC; – the Middle Geometric (MG) sequence might be raised from 850 BC to the early 9th century BC and continues into the late 9th century BC; – The Late Geometric (LG) sequence can be raised from 770 BC to 825/800 BC continuing into the late 8th century BC; – The Early Protocorinthian (EPC) sequence starts around 750/740 BC instead of 725 BC and continues into the early 7th century BC; – The absolute chronology of the remaining Corinthian sequence during the 7th century BC can at present remain as it is.49 On purpose, a transitional period is included between the various subdivisions of the geometric sequence because several workshops were involved in the manufacture of these ceramics (Fig. 3). Stylistic changes do not occur regularly every two generations but do occur gradually, even in a planned economy, which the Iron Age in the Mediterranean definitely was not.50 950/925 BC EG ceramics 875 BC 900/875 BC MG ceramics 825/800 BC 825/800 BC LG sequence 750/700 BC 750/740 BC EPC ceramics 700/675 BC Fig. 3. Proposed revision of the absolute chronology of the Geometric sequence.

If this proposal for a revision cannot be confirmed by future radiocarbon or preferably dendrochronological research, it will result in a further dissociation between the Levantine/Phoenician and Greek advance towards the western Mediterranean. In my opinion this dissociation is limited in time during the 9th century BC on account of Pithekoussai, the few MG sherds so far found in Italy and the difficulty of dissociating the Levantine from the Greek advance to the West.51 Lately the number of MG sherds was increased by a 49 The revision proposed should be based on new radiocarbon or preferably dendrochronological research. See Nijboer 2005, 534–35 for a list of requirements for the radiocarbon method. On account of the Hallstatt plateau in the calibration curve this method is not useful for the period 800/750–400 BC. In particular, a revision of the chronology of the EPC ceramics would require untreated dendrochronological samples, preferably a tree trunk tomb with EPC ceramics. I can offer a colleague wiggle-matching if he can provide me with such a context/sample. The tree trunk tombs excavated on the Forum Romanum would in theory provide good samples though the wood is pre-treated and distorted. 50 In addition I would like to argue for some flexibility regarding absolute chronology in archaeology. We hardly know the biography of the artefacts we excavate in closed contexts and thus each date given should come with a range. 51 On MG ceramics in Italy cf. Theodorescu 1982; see also Coldstream 2003a, 221–45; Kourou 2005. In January 2005 Prof. Docter kindly informed me of a very recent publication on an excavation at Huelva in south-west Spain dating to the 9th century BC containing MG ceramics as well as other goods from all over the Mediterranean. This publication documents

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Euboean pendent semicircle skyphos found at Sant’Imbenia on Sardinia in a Nuraghic village containing substantial amounts of Phoenician pottery as well as local ceramics.52 The contexts in which these overseas ceramics were found make it likely that the few Greek ceramics arrived at Sant’Imbenia on board a Phoenician merchant ship.53 The account of Levantine and Greek trade during the 9th century BC is subject to the interpretation of previous trading relations between the eastern and western parts of the Mediterranean. Contacts between Sardinia and the eastern Mediterranean were never lost during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.54 A continuation of occasional trade with mainland Italy and the eastern Mediterranean seems to be confirmed by such finds as those from the gateway community at Frattesina di Fratta Polesine dating to the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age, including numerous ivory fragments, glazed ceramics and some ostrich eggs, as well as by the Early Iron Age Levantine imports at Torre Galli.55 Nevertheless the evidence appears at the moment too sketchy for a reliable reconstruction of Levantine trade with mainland Italy and the western Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age onwards. As mentioned above, the conventional absolute chronology is based on a partial interpretation of the ancient literature concentrating on the dates given by Thucydides for the Greek colonisation of Sicily and some ‘Greek’ sherds with generally a poor context. Whatever Thucydides may have meant with the foundation dates of the Greek colonies, he definitely did not refer to the arrival of some Greek pottery in southern Italy. The question should, however, be how colonisation and the Greek ethnos are stored in our archaeological record. It takes more than Greek ceramics to define one’s ethnicity.56

a settlement layer at Huelva containing many local and Levantine ceramics as well as some MG, Nuraghic and even two Villanovan sherds. In addition it records various crafts—the processing of copper, iron, silver, ivory, ostrich eggs and (possibly) the manufacture of Tyrian purple from murex trunculus and murex brandaris. The Phoenician script was introduced at Huelva during the 9th century BC, as was quantified exchange, marked by the recovery of some shekel units (González de Canales Cerisola 2004). Thus contexts at Sant’Imbenia in Sardinia and Huelva in south-west Spain did contain MG ceramics in a Phoenician/indigenous setting, which makes the ethnic origin of the merchants who transferred the MG ceramics into Italy questionable. 52 Bafico et al. 1995; Oggiano 2000. 53 The content of the few merchant ships excavated indicates that their cargo is of mixed origin (cf. Nijboer 1998, 48–51, 316–17). Thus it is difficult to establish the ethnicity of the merchants trading in overseas goods that arrived in Italy or elsewhere during the Iron Age unless there is a clear pattern in the distribution of Levantine or Greek goods. Fletcher (2004) discusses the relation between Phoenicians and Greeks based on the distribution of thousands of Egyptian and Egyptianising artefacts recovered in the Mediterranean. 54 Matthäus 2000; Bietti Sestieri 2003; Niemeyer 1999. 55 Bietti Sestieri 1981; 1997a; 1997b; Pacciarelli 1999. 56 Cf. Hall 1997.

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The Greek colonisation process in southern Italy has been reconstructed as swift on account of finds of some Late Geometric or Early Protocorinthian sherds. An example: three sherds in Late Geometric Thapsos style (two fragments of kraters and one fragment of a skyphos) came to represent the foundation of the colony Leontini in 729 BC.57 This reconstruction incorporates the notion of a veni, vidi, vici process of colonisation, which is historically an extremely rare phenomenon and usually only possible after establishing some sort of dominance on overseas shores. The assumption that the early Greek pottery in Italy is more or less contemporaneous with the foundation dates has considerable implications.58 It makes a pre-colonial trading phase negligible.59 Another question remains whether a handful of Greek sherds in between numerous flourishing Iron Age settlements in southern Italy can be equated with a late 8th-century BC colonisation process. Nonetheless, Thucydides appears to be an accurate chronographer.60 The radiocarbon dates from Carthage confirm this reputation because Thucydides wrote that the Phoenicians were already occupying coastal promontories and islets before the arrival of Greek communities (Thuc. 6. 2. 6). The foundation of Carthage in the late 9th century BC supports Thucydides’ reading of the Phoenician presence on Sicily before the arrival of Greek communities. In my opinion the archaeological evidence for colonies, meaning the establishment of substantial Greek settlements and the control over a hinterland, effectively the establishment of Greek poleis during the 8th century BC, is extremely limited in Italy. The evidence is restricted to some necropoleis61 and the settlement sites Pithekoussai and Incoronata di Metaponto, which have both been classified as emporia.62 Pithekoussai is definitely a more advanced gateway community than Incoronata

57

Coldstream 1968, 323. Cf. Coldstream 1968, 322–27; Bartoloni 1989, 98–102. 59 See now Coldstream 2003a, 221–45, discussing early Greek ceramics in Villanovan tombs as evidence for the arrival of first generation ‘Greek’ merchants, spreading ‘their civilization to Italy and Sicily’. This view is limited because it negates the culture already present in Iron Age Italy as well as the Levantine luxuries found in contemporaneous Villanovan tombs (Nijboer 2005). Moreover it should be noted that ceramics do not constitute items of wealth. For Italy it needs to be stressed that the Greek Geometric pottery recovered derives mainly from indigenous tombs and that it cannot be considered a status marker (for a discussion of the LG pottery from Veii and Pontecagnano, see Kourou 2005; Boitani 2005; Rizzo 2005). Late Geometric pottery is found in high status tombs but also in low status tombs such as the Veian tombs at the Quattro Fontanili necropolis GG14–15 (Notizie degli Scavi 1965, 117) and FF19B (Notizie degli Scavi 1963, 185–86). Therefore the Greek Late Geometric pottery in Villanovan Italy cannot be defined as a highly valued commodity per se though it was definitely distinctive in comparison to the Italian impasto tradition. 60 Coldstream 1968, 327. 61 Shepherd 1995. See also the concise reading of the Greek ceramics on Sicily in Albanese Procelli 2003. 62 Ridgway 2000a; 2000b; Incoronata 1991; 1992; 1995; 1997; 2000; 2003; Lambrugo 2005. 58

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di Metaponto, which gives the impression of a 7th-century BC small village with a lot of ‘Greek’ pottery. Arguments for considering Pithekoussai a gateway community are its population of mixed ethnic origin (Euboeans, Levantines, local ‘Italian’ groups and probably other ‘Greek’ communities besides Euboeans)63 and the workshop that was excavated.64 This complies with data from other gateway communities. Ports of trade, comptoirs, factories, emporia, etc. can be considered as a stage leading to a colonisation process but are not colonies per se due to an insufficiently controlled hinterland. One can also notice that so far hardly any architectural remains of 8th-and 7th-century BC ‘Greek’ settlements in southern Italy have been discovered.65 This situation is striking when compared with the contemporaneous, almost monumental Phoenician settlements in Spain and Portugal.66 The revision proposed concerning the absolute chronology of the Geometric ceramic sequence does not alter the Thucydidean dates for the early Greek settlements on Sicily and elsewhere. A higher absolute chronology for the Iron Age in the Mediterranean only alters the account of the pre-colonial trading phase by lengthening it, thus providing the early colonisation phase, either Levantine or Greek, with more substance. It is probable that ships from various Greek communities embarked with the intention to settle in Italy during the late 8th century BC after being convinced by the stories told of the opportunities available on the peninsula. However, the acquisition of a hinterland for these early Greek settlements is, in my opinion, a more complex process of longer duration that took place during the 7th century BC, continuing into the 6th century BC when the Greek colonies were fully established in southern Italy.*

63 Ridgway 2000a. Arguments to consider Pithekoussai an apoikia can be found in D’Agostino and Ridgway 1994. The claim rests heavily on the reading of the recovered Greek pottery on the island. One can however wonder what pottery local farmers would acquire on an island that contained workshops producing Greek ceramics so efficiently. 64 Nijboer 1998. 65 Cf. D’Andria and Mannino 1996; Yntema 2000. 66 Cf. Aubet 2001, 212–346; Niemeyer 1990, especially on Toscanos. See also the 7th-century BC comptoir at D’Abul, 50 km south-east of Lisbon (Mayet and Tavares da Silva 2000; van der Werff 2003, 230–32). * The text of this article was written in December 2004–January 2005. Since then we have been able to date three bone samples from the oldest Phoenician/indigenous level found at Huelva (for an article in English on this deposit, see González de Canales Cerisola et al. 2006). The oldest of the radiocarbon dates from Huelva relating to this considerable level covers in full the reign of Hiram I of Tyre (Nijboer and van der Plicht 2006). According to Aubet (2001, 56), he reigned from 969 to 936 BC. I do not want to stretch the interpretation of the radiocarbon dates from Huelva. Therefore I argue that these dates indicate that the Phoenicians travelled the whole of the Mediterranean and beyond from the first half of the 9th century BC onwards, if not before (Nijboer and van der Plicht 2006). In relation to the radiocarbon dates from Carthage presented above, the following picture emerges:

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Groningen Institute of Archaeology University of Groningen Poststraat 6 9712 ER Groningen The Netherlands [email protected] Acknowledgments For useful debates and for providing radiocarbon samples with a sound archaeological context, my thanks go especially to Dr Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, Dr Anna de Santis, Prof. Hans Georg Niemeyer, Prof. Roald Docter, Dr Flavia Trucco, Prof. M.E. Aubet, Prof. I. Kuniholm and Prof. Ir. Hans van der Plicht. BIBLIOGRAPHY Albanese Procelli, R.M. 2003: Sicani, Siculi, Elimi. Forme dei Identità, Modi di Contatto e Processi di Trasformazione (Milan). Albore Livadie, C., Bartoli, C., Boenzi, G., Cicirelli, C. and Guzzo, P.G. 2005: ‘The Poggiomarino river settlement in the Longola area’. In Attema et al. 2005, 699–705. Ampolo, C. 2000: ‘Il mondo omerico e cultura Orientalizzante mediterranea’. In Dore, A., Marchesi, M. and Minarini, L. (eds.), Principi Etruschi, tra Mediterraneo ed Europa (Venice), 27–36. Arietti, F. and Martellotta, B. 1998: La tomba principesca del Vivaro di Rocca di Papa (Città di Castello). Attema, P., Nijboer, A.J. and Zifferero, A. (eds.) 2005: Papers in Italian Archaeology VI (Oxford). Aubet, M.E. 1993: The Phoenicians and the West (Cambridge). ——. 2001: The Phoenicians and the West, 2nd ed. (Cambridge). Bafico, S., D’Oriano, R. and Lo Schiavo, F. 1995: ‘Il Villaggio nuragico di S. Imbenia ad Alghero (SS), Nota Preliminare’. In Fantar, M.H. and Ghakia, M. (eds.), Actes du IIIe Congrès International des Études Phéniciennes et Puniques vol. 1 (Tunis), 87–98. Bartoloni, G. 1989: La Cultura Villanoviana (Rome). Bartoloni, G. and Delpino, F. (eds.) 2005: Oriente e Occidente. Metodi e discipline a confronto. Riflessiona sulla cronologia dell’età del ferro in Italia (Pisa). Batovic, S. 1976: ‘La relazioni culturali tra le sponde adriatiche nell’età del ferro’. In Jadranska Obala u Protohistoriji (Zagreb), 11–93. Bietti Sestieri, A.M. 1981: ‘Produzione e scambio nell’Italia protostorica: alcune ipotesi sul ruolo dell’industria metallurgica nell’Etruria mineraria alla fine dell’età del Bronzo’. In L’Etruria mineraria. Atti del XII Convegno di Studi Etruschi e Italici (Florence), 223–63. – The Phoenicians travelled the whole Mediterranean, from Tyre to Tartessos, from the first half of the 9th century BC on, if not before. – Carthage was founded during the late 9th century BC. The characteristics of this foundation still need to be defined. Were I an ancient historian, I would use the date 814 BC, but such chronological exactitude cannot be expected of an archaeologist. – One can maintain the foundation dates as implied by Thucydides for the Greek settlements in southern Italy. The characteristics of these foundations still need to be defined. – How all this affects the absolute chronology of the Greek Geometric ceramic sequence requires further research.

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——. 2006: ‘The pre-colonial Phoenician Emporium at Huelva ca. 900–770 BC’. BABesch 81, 25–40. Gras, M. 2000: ‘Il Mediterraneo in età Orientalizzante: merci, approdi, circolazione’. In Dore, A., Marchesi, M. and Minarini, L. (eds.), Principi Etruschi, tra Mediterraneo ed Europa (Venice), 15–26. Guzzo, P.G. 2000: ‘La tomba 104 Artiaco di Cuma o sia dell’ ambiguità del segno’. In Berlingò, I. (ed.), Damarato. Studi di Antichità Classica offerti a Paola Pelagatti (Milan), 135–47. Hall, J. 1997: Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge). Hardy, D.A. and Renfrew, A.C. (eds.) 1990: Thera and the Aegean World III. Volume 3: Chronology. (London). Hennig, H. 1995: ‘Zur Frage der Datierung des Grabhügels 8 ‘Hexembergh’ von Wehringen, Lkr. Augsburg, Bayerisch-Schwaben’. In Schmid-Sikimic, B. and Della Casa, P. (eds.), Trans Europam: Beitrage zur Bronze- und Eisenzeit zwischen Atlantik und Altai (Bonn), 129–45. Hermann, H.V. 1983: ‘AltItalisches und Etruskisches in Olympia’. Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene LXI, n. s. XLV, 271–94. Incoronata 1991: Ricerche archeologiche all‘Incoronata di Metaponto, 1. Le fosse di scarico del saggio P. Materiali e problematiche (Milan). ——. 1992: Ricerche archeologiche all‘Incoronata di Metaponto, 2. Dal villaggio indigeno all‘ emporio greco. Le strutture e i materiali del saggio T (Milan). ——. 1995: Ricerche archeologiche all‘Incoronata di Metaponto, 3. L‘oikos greco del saggio S. Lo scavo e i reperti (Milan). ——. 1997: Ricerche archeologiche all‘Incoronata di Metaponto, 5. L‘oikos greco del saggio H. Lo scavo e i reperti (Milan). ——. 2000: Ricerche archeologiche all‘Incoronata di Metaponto, 4. L‘oikos greco del grande perirrhanterion nel contesto del saggio G (Milan). ——. 2003: Ricerche archeologiche all‘Incoronata di Metaponto, 6. L‘oikos greco del saggio E. Lo scavo e i reperti (Milan). James, P. (and collaborators) 1991: Centuries of Darkness (London). Jones, D.W. 2000: External Relations of Early Iron Age Crete, 1100–600 BC (Philadelphia). Keenan, D.J. 2004: ‘Radiocarbon dates from Iron Age Gordion are confounded’. AWE 3.1, 100–03. Kilian, K. 1977: ‘Zwei Italische Kammhelme aus Griechenland’. BCH Supplément IV, 429–42. Kitchen, K.A. 1996: ‘The Historical Chronology of Ancient Egypt. A Current Assessment’. In Randsborg, K. (ed.), Absolute Chronology. Archaeological Europe 2500–500 BC (Copenhagen), 1–13. Kourou, N. 2005: ‘Early Iron Age Greek imports in Italy’. In Bartoloni and Delpino 2005, 497–515. Lambrugo, C. 2005: ‘Un nuovo paradigma interpretativo per L’Incoronata di Metaponto: Analisi della cultura abitativa ed interpretazione di taluni indicatori archeologici’. In Attema et al. 2005, 773–81. Manning, S. 1996: ‘Dating the Aegean Bronze Age: without, with and beyond, radiocarbon’. In Randsborg, K. (ed.), Absolute Chronology. Archaeological Europe 2500–500 BC (Copenhagen), 15–37. Manning, S.W., Kromer, B., Kuniholm, P.I. and Newton, M.W. 2001: ‘Anatolian Tree Rings and a New Chronology for the East Mediterranean Bronze-Iron Ages’. Science vol. 294, 21 December 2001, 2532–35. Martinelli, N., 2005: ‘Dendrocronologia e Archeologia: Situazione e prospettive della ricerca in Italia’. In Attema et al. 2005, 437–48. Matthäus, H. 2000: ‘Die Rolle Zyperns und Sardiniens im Mittelmeerischen Interaktionsproceß während des späten zweiten und frühen ersten Jahrtausends v. Chr.’. In Prayon, F. and Röllig, W. (eds.), Der Orient und Etrurien (Pisa/Rome), 41–75. Mayet, F. and Tavares da Silva, C. 2000. Le Site Phénicien d’Abul (Portugal), Comptoir et Sanctuaire (Paris). Mazar, A. 1997: ‘Iron Age Chronology: A reply to I. Finkelstein’. Levant XXIX, 157–67. ——. 2004: ‘Greek and Levantine Iron Age Chronology: A rejoinder’. Israel Exploration Journal 54.1, 24–36. von Merhart, G. and Kossack, G. 1969: Hallstatt und Italien: gesammelte Aufsätze zur Frühen Eisenzeit in Italien und Mitteleuropa (Mainz).

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Morris, I. 1996: ‘The Absolute Chronology of the Greek Colonies in Sicily’. In Randsborg, K. (ed.), Absolute Chronology. Archaeological Europe, 2500–500 BC (Copenhagen), 51–59. Muscarella, O.W. 2003: ‘The date of the destruction of the Early Phrigian Period at Gordion’. AWE 2.2, 225–52. Niemeyer, H.G. 1990: ‘The Phoenicians in the Mediterrranean: a non-Greek model for expansion and settlement in Antiquity’. In Descoeudres, J-P. (ed.), Greek Colonists and Native Populations (Oxford), 469–89. ——. 1993: ‘Trade before the Flag? On the Principles of Phoenician Expansion in the Mediterranean’. In Biran, A. and Aviram, J. (eds.), Biblical Archaeology Today 1990 ( Jerusalem), 335–44. ——. 1999: ‘Die frühe phönizische Expansion im Mittelmeer’. Saeculum 50.II, 153–75. ——. 2004: ‘Phoenician or Greek: Is There a Reasonable Way Out of the Al Mina Debate?’. AWE 3.1, 38–50. Nijboer, A.J. 1998: From Household Production to Workshops. Archaeological Evidence for economic Transformation, pre-monetary Exchange and Urbanisation in central Italy from 800 to 400 BC (Groningen). ——. 2005: ‘La cronologia assoluta dell’età del Ferro nel Mediterraneo, dibattito sui metodi e sui risultati’. In Bartoloni and Delpino 2005, 527–56. Nijboer, A.J. and van der Plicht, J. 2006: ‘An interpretation of the radiocarbon determinations of the oldest indigenous-Phoenician stratum thus far, excavated at Huelva, Tartessos (southwest Spain)’. BABesch 81, 41–46. Nijboer, A.J., van der Plicht, J., Bietti Sestieri, A.M., de Santis, A. 1999/2000: ‘A high chronology for the early Iron Age in Central Italy’. Palaeohistoria 41/42, 163–76. Oggiano, I. 2000: ‘La ceramica fenicia di Sant’Imbenia (Alghero-SS)’. In Bartoloni, P. and Campanella, L. (eds.), La ceramica Fenicia di Sardegna: Dati, problematiche, confronti (Rome), 235–58. Pacciarelli, M. 1996: ‘Nota sulla cronologia assoluta della prima età del ferro in Italia’. OCNUS 4, 185–89. ——. 1999: Torre Galli: La necropoli della prima età del Ferro (Scavi P. Orsi 1922–1923) (Soveria Mannelli). ——. 2000: Dal Villagio alla Città (Florence). ——. 2005: ‘14C e correlazione con le dendrodate nord alpine: Elementi per una cronologia assoluta del Bronzo finale 3 e del primo Ferro dell’Italia peninsulare’. In Bartoloni and Delpino 2005, 81–90. Pare, C. 1998: ‘Beiträge zum Übergang von der Bronze- zur Eisenzeit in Mitteleuropa. Teil I: Grundzüge der Chronologie im Östlichen Mitteleuropa (11.–8. Jahrhundert v.Chr.)’. JRGZM 45, 293–433. ——. 1999: ‘Beiträge zum Übergang von der Bronze- zur Eisenzeit in Mitteleuropa. Teil II: Grundzüge der Chronologie im Westlichen Mitteleuropa (11.–8. Jahrhundert v.Chr.)’. JRGZM 46, 175–315. Payne, H. 1931: Necrocorinthia (Oxford). Pelagatti, P. 1982: ‘I più antichi materiali di importazione a Siracusa, a Naxos e in altri siti della Sicilia Orientale’. In Theodorescu 1982, 113–80. Peroni, R. 1976: ‘La “koiné” adriatica e il suo processo di formazione’. In Jadranska Obala u Protohistoriji (Zagreb), 95–115. ——. 1994: Introduzione alla protostoria Italiana (Rome). Peroni, R. and Vanzetti, A. 2005: ‘Intorno alla cronologia della prima età del Ferro italiana, da H. Müller-Karpe a Chr. Pare’. In Bartoloni and Delpino 2005, 53–80. Principi Etruschi 2000: Principi Etruschi, tra Mediterraneo ed Europa (Exhibition Catalogue) (Venice). Ridgway, D. 2000a: ‘The first Western Greeks revisited’. In Ridgway, D., Serra Ridgway, F.R., Pearce, M., Herring, E., Whitehouse, R.D. and Wilkins, J.B. (eds.), Ancient Italy and its Mediterranean Setting (London), 179–91. ——. 2000b: ‘Seals, Scarabs and People in Pithekoussai I’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R., Prag, A.J.N.W. and Snodgrass, A.M. (eds.), Periplous. Papers on Classical Art and Archaeology Presented to Sir John Boardman (London), 235–43. Rizzo, M.A. 2005: ‘Ceramica geometrica greca e di tipo Greco da Cerveteri (dalla necropolis del Laghetto e dall’abitato)’. In Bartoloni and Delpino 2005, 333–78. Ruijgh, C.J. 1996: Waar en wanneer Homerus leefde (Amsterdam).

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Sagona, A.G. 1986: ‘William Culican: portrait of a scholar’. In Culican, W., Opera Selecta. From Tyre to Tartessos (Gothenburg), 7–18. Shepherd, G. 1995: ‘The Pride of Most Colonials: Burial and Religion in the Sicilian Colonies’. Acta Hyperborea 6, 51–82. Snodgrass, A. 2002: ‘The Rejection of Mycenean Culture and the Oriental Connection’. In Braun-Holzinger, E.A. and Matthäus, H. (eds.), Die Nahöstlichen Kulturen und Griechenland an der Wende vom 2. zum 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr. (Paderborn), 1–9. Steel, D. 2000: Marking Time. The epic Quest to invent the perfect Calendar (New York). Strøm, I. 1971: Problems Concerning the Origin and early Development of the Etruscan Orientalising Style, 2 vols. (Odense). Theodorescu, D. (ed.) 1982: La Céramique Grecque ou de Tradition Grecque au VIIIe Siècle en Italie centrale et méridionale (Naples). Ussher, J. 1658: The Annals of the World (Revised and updated by L. Pierce and M. Pierce, Green Forest, Arkansas 2003). van der Werff, J.H. 2003: Review of Mayet and Tavares de Silva 2000. BABesch 78, 230–32. Yntema, D.G. 1985: The Matt-Painted Pottery of Southern Italy (Utrecht). ——. 2000: ‘Mental landscapes of colonization: The ancient written sources and the archaeology of early colonial-Greek southeastern Italy’. BABesch 75, 1–49. Young, R.S. 1981: Three Great Early Tumuli. (Philadelphia).

AL MINA: NOTES AND QUERIES JOHN BOARDMAN Abstract Some revisions are offered to the data of the Al Mina excavation in the light of mistakes revealed in the original plans, with some effect on the interpretation of finds. Any Phoenician role at the site is discounted, in the absence of any material evidence for it, and outdated pro-Phoenician prejudices are briefly discussed in the light of more recent research into Phoenician history, the sources of ‘Orientalising’ in Greece and identity of sources for pottery and other objects.

The spate of comment on Al Mina has long ago exceeded the length of the original publication of the site and excited important research in various fields: pottery identity and use, architectural manners, theories on ports of trade and/or mercenary settlements. But it has also been no little bedevilled by prejudices for or against Greeks, Phoenicians, Cypriots and Syrians, and ideologies can appear more influential than evidence, even today. The following notes have been prompted by various recent publications, and only in part do they repeat what I wrote in this journal,1 since new issues have been raised of varying degrees of validity. I hope to show that my ‘prejudice’ in favour of a Greek foundation at the site and major occupation there from before the mid-8th century to the early 7th century BC, is based on the evidence of the excavation and relevant comparanda. Gradually, the evidence is being better refined and understood, and there can be less justification for expression of opinion that does not take account of all that is now available. Scales and Directions Marie-Henriette Gates (excavator of Tell Kinet) had pointed out to me that in Woolley’s publication in the JHS in 19382 the loose plans, allegedly reproduced at 1:100, are in fact at 1:300, the reduction of the original plans to one-third being done without changing the scale caption. Jean-Paul Descoeudres has now made the same point.3 Woolley hiself said that he had excavated 7000 m2. He clearly started with a 10-metre grid, labelled by letters and numbers, and this was the basis for his architect’s plans. From the plans it is easy to see that trench sides were 1 2 3

Boardman 2002b. Woolley 1938. Descoeudres 2002.

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not determined by the grid and that from the beginning the whole area of the grid was not dug, and that the excavated area decreased gradually, then dramatically for the lowest levels. There is, however, another problem. The published plans indicate a north point, beside the misleading scale. Reference to the small map in Woolley 1938, 6, fig. 2 (here Fig. 1), where the area dug (Level 4) is marked on an old map of the area, is confusing in that its north pointer is completely wrong (and did not appear on the original, as Hatice Pamir kindly tells me). Woolley’s north on his trench plans is thus really rather closer to north-west. The shape of the alleged ‘area excavated’ in his fig. 2 and the placing of three major walls within it correspond with those of the major Level 4, and it is easier now to correlate the two. His grid thus started its numbering and lettering at the north-west of the area to be dug. This agrees with Woolley’s explanation of the gradual expansion of the town to the south (mainly south-east), while the north and east were eroded by changes in the river bed, precluding further excavation of the earliest levels. Woolley’s descriptions of buildings agree with his published plans, and his general remarks on the site are roughly directionally correct (his pp. 3–4). I think we can now follow the excavation, as follows: For Level 2, the surface, only some 3300 m2 were worth recording for their walls, the edges north-west and south-east presumably eroded away. Thereafter the progress is clearer: Level 3 Level 4 Levels 5/6 (7th century) Levels 7–10 (8th century)

6200 m2 6000 m2 5200 m2 (less dug at the east) less than 2400 m2 (less dug at the west and northwest where there was no doubt a throwing platform and ramp)

Of Levels 7–10 it seems that a maximum of 600 m2 were dug of Levels 9/10, which Woolley came to regard as a single level though including much rebuilding and realignment of walls. This was all at the south-west, the southeast being left at Levels 7/8, as drawn. I show this area of the lowest levels, as on his plan, in Fig. 2; and what appear to be the only Level 9/10 walls plotted at the south in Fig. 3. Density of Finds In 1990 I attempted a rough comparison of density of Greek pottery found with the non-Greek per square metre at various relevant Eastern sites.4 Except

4

Boardman 1990, 175.

Fig. 1. Map of the Al Mina area from Woolley 1938, 6, fig. 2, with the wrong north-pointer.

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Fig. 2. Woolley’s plan (1938) of the southern part of the excavation, for Levels 7–10.

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Fig. 3. Levels 9 (open) and 10 (black) from Fig. 2.

at Tyre there was no certainty that all pottery was recorded, generally it was just the ‘diagnostic’, but by working from proportions some picture of the relevant proportions seemed possible. In the light of the falsely labelled plans for Al Mina my figures for that site have to be adjusted, as Descoeudres saw. He objected to my inclusion of 270 ‘Euboeo-Levantine’ fragments as being not Greek; but we do not know this, any more than we know where they were made, but we can be sure that it was not far away (possibly Cyprus) and we can be sure from their shapes that they were for Greeks.5 The amended table still gives Al Mina a notable proportion for the early levels: TABLE

Tarsus Al Mina Ras el Basit Tell Sukas Tyre

Area excavated in m2

Greek pottery items

660 2300 900 425 150

70 1500 25? 14 31

Greek items per m2 0.1 0.7 0.03? 0.03 0.21

Greek as % of all 2? 49 trashni rajoni na Trakija i Illirija (Urbanisierung in den inneren Gebieten Thrakiens und Illyriens), 6.–4. Jh. v. Chr (Sofia). Popovich, L. 1957: Katalog nalaza iz nekropole kod Trebenishta (Belgrade). Rousseva, M. 2000: Trakijska kultova architektura—Thracian Cult Architecture ( Jambol). Sevinç, N. 1996: ‘A new sarcophagus of Polyxena from the salvage excavations at Gümü{çay’. Studia Troica 6, 251–64. Sevinç, N., Rose, C.B., Strahan, D. and Tekkök-Bieken, B. 1998: ‘The Dedetepe Tumulus’. Studia Troica 8, 305–27.

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Shefton, B. 1986: ‘The Auge bowl’. In Fol, Nikolov and Hoddinott 1986, 82–90. Simon, E., 1960: ‘Der Goldschatz von Panagjuri“te, eine Schöpfung der Alexanderzeit’. AntKunst 3, 3–29. Stronk, J.P. 1995: The Ten Thousand in Thrace (Amsterdam). Svoboda, B. and Con‘ev, D. 1956: Neue Denkmäler antiker Toreutik (Prague). Taneva, V. 1997: ‘Seuthes III Coins from Pistiros’. In Bouzek et al. 1997, 115–16. ——. 2000: ‘Les monnaies de Pistiros’. In Domaradzki, M. (ed.), Pistiros et Thasos, Structures économiques dans la péninsule balkanique aux VII e–II e siècles avant J.-C. (Opole), 47–53. ——. 2002: ‘Coins of Macedonian Rulers found in Pistiros’. In Bouzek et al. 2002, 255–69. Thompson, D.B. 1963: Troy, The Terracotta Figurines of the Hellenistic Period (Princeton). Tonkova, M. 1994: ‘Vestige d’ateliers d’orfèvrerie thraces, Ve–IIIe ss. av. J.-C.’. Helis III.1, 175–214. Tsetskhladze, G.R. 1998: ‘Who built the Scythian and Thracian royal and elite tombs?’. OJA 17, 55–92. Tsifake, D. 1998: Hé Thráké stén attiké eikonografia tou 5ou aióna p.Chr. Prosegniseis stes scheseis Athénas kai Thrakés (Komotini). Vasileva, D. 1980: ‘L’unité de mesure de longeur dans les contructions thraces’. Thracia 5, 265–300. Velkov, I. 1967: ‘Trakiiski rabi v dreniya Greciya’. VDI 4, 70–80. Velkov, V. 1982: ‘Kabile, mestopolozhenije, prouchivanje, izbori’. In Kabile I, 1–17. Venedikov, I. 1961: Der Goldschatz von Panjagjurischte (Sofia). ——. 1969: ‘L’Iran préachemenide et la Thrace’. Izvestija na Bulgarski Archeologicheski Institut 31, 5–43. ——. 1974: ‘L’origine des tombeaux à cupole en Thrace’. Bulgarski Istoricheski Vestnik 2, 58–75. ——. 1975: Sokrovishteto ot Vratsa (Sofia). ——. 1977: ‘Les situles de bronze en Thrace’. Thracia 4, 59–103. ——. 1996: Trakijsko s>krovishte ot Letnitsa (Sofia). Venedikov, I. and Gerasimov, T. 1975: Trakijsko izkustvo—Thracian Art (Sofia). Vokotopoulou, J. et al. 1985: Sindos, Katalagos tés ekthesis (Thessaloniki). Youroukova, J. 1974: Coins of Ancient Thracians (Oxford). ——. 1992: Moneti sokrovishta ot B>lgarskite zemi I: Monetite na trakijskite plemena i vladiteli (Sofia). Zhivkova, I. 1973: The Thracian Tombs at Kazanlak (Sofia).

THE CHRONOLOGY OF CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE BASINS OF UPPER DNIEPER AND WESTERN DVINA IN THE 1ST–5TH CENTURIES AD A. FURASIEV Abstract The present article discusses the relative and absolute chronologies of the archaeological sites of the 1st–5th centuries AD in the Western Dvina and Upper Dnieper river basins. Based on the typology of the finds and on the series of C14 dates, the author singles out three periods in the development of the cultures of the region in question. Their approximate chronological frames are AD 50–250, 250–380 and 380–460. Each period is represented by sites of one or two archaeological cultures (i.e. types of site). One of them, the aboriginal Dnieper-Dvina culture, was in existence during the first and second periods. The second type of site in all three periods was a result of migrations by the population of Belorussian Podnieprove and Podesene. These (after AD 50 the Middle Tushemla culture, after AD 250 the Early Zaozere culture, after AD 380 the Late Zaozere culture) were caused by periods of instability on the northern Black Sea coast and on the Middle Dnieper following the invasions of the Sarmatians, the Goths and the Huns.

In a recently published work on almost the same subject as the present article, one of the leading contemporary Russian experts on the Eastern European Iron Age noted that ‘the chronology of “forest” cultures of Eastern Europe is yet poorly worked.’1 This is, in fact, true. The periodisation and chronology of the archaeological sites of the forest zone have been worked out only to a very small extent, so that they can be compared with neither the chronology of the Central European antiquities of the Roman period nor the antiquities of the neighbouring southern part of Eastern Europe. This fact, obviously, makes it difficult to reconstruct historical processes in the regions to the north of the Middle Podnieprove and the Lower Povolzhe. It is why some fairly small steps forward in that direction are of interest to the Slavists and archaeologists studying the culture of the population of the Eastern European forest zone. Having studied the settlements and necropoleis, I was able to construct a relative and absolute chronology for the sites of the Upper Dnieper and Western Dvina (the Smolensk region and the southern part of the Pskov region in Russia; the Vitebsk region in Belorussia). This scheme is based mainly on

1

Oblomskii, Petrauskas and Terpilovskii 1999, 77.

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the typology of ceramic assemblages from the settlements, as well as on other artefacts discovered and recently received C14 data. The majority of finds used in this research come from excavations by Russian and Belorussian archaeologists in the 1960–1980s, as well as from partially published excavations in the Pskov region conducted by me from 1993 to 1998. As a result of the analysis of all available data concerning sites of the 1st–5th centuries AD in the region, three main periods in the development of the culture of the ancient population were determined, with one or two types of archaeological monument characteristic of each period. Period 1: Second Half of the 1st–Mid-3rd Century AD (ca. 50–250 AD) In this period, life in the main part of the region continues in the settlements of the Dnieper-Dvina culture, which emerged there already in the 8th century BC. However, in the 1st–2nd centuries AD, this culture begins to show some signs of a crisis: most settlements in the eastern area of the region (on the left bank of the Upper Dnieper and in the Dnieper-Dvina and DvinaLovat interfluves) cease to exist. Soon, settlements of the new Middle Tushemla culture appear in their place. In terms of stratigraphy, cultural layers with material of the Dnieper-Dvina and Middle Tushemla cultures are almost always separated in settlements (Polibino, Tushemla, Starosele), apart from the single securely registered case of the Mikhailovskoe settlement, where ceramics of both cultures were mixed in the house complexes.2 Typological analysis of the pottery from the Middle Tushemla settlements, the contents of their ceramic assemblages and the peculiarities of their ornamentation lead us to the conclusion that, in terms of its origin, the Middle Tushemla culture was genetically connected with the traditions of the ChecherskKisteni-type settlements of the Zarubintsy culture,3 which were located in the basin of the River Sozh and in the area where the rivers Sozh and Berezina flow into Dnieper. Sites of the Chechersk-Kisteni type were identified for the first time by A.M. Oblomskii.4 They were in existence from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD.5 The characteristic feature of their pottery is a combination of the typical Zarubintsy shapes of vessels and the ornamentation of their mouth rims, i.e. incisions and finger-pinched decoration, with a tradition of covering the surface of the vessels with hatch patterns that is absolutely uncharacteristic of the Zarubintsy culture.6 Morphological, technological and 2 3 4 5 6

Stankevich 1960, 205–12. Furasiev 2000, 206–07; Lopatin 1991, 52–53. Oblomskii and Terpilovskii 1991, 96–102. Drobushevskii 1994, 84–85. Oblomskii, Petrauskas and Terpilovskii 1999, 74, 76.

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ornamental peculiarities of the pottery from the Middle Tushemla settlements of the Chechersk-Kisteni type are identical to each other; these sites were located in areas bordering each other (Fig. 3).7 Datable Finds The settlements of the Middle Tushemla culture located on the right bank of the West Dvina (Polibino, Mikhailovskoe, Starosele), discussed by B.S. Korotkevich, were conventionally dated by him to the 2nd–3rd centuries AD.8 This date is based on rarely found burnished tableware and on broadly dated analogies to some other objects. More precisely dated objects were found at the settlements of the Upper Podnieprove in Smolensk region. An eye-fibula of Prussian type (Fig. 1.6), found at the settlement Tserkovishe,9 is similar to fibulae of type 3 (in R. Jamka’s classification), which were broadly in use from the 1st century BC until the end of the 2nd or beginning of the 3rd century AD.10 A one-piece bent fibula of the ‘Upper Dnieper’ variant (classification of A.K. Ambroz) (Fig. 1.5), coming from the middle stratum of the eponymous Tushemla settlement,11 was dated to the 2nd century AD.12 However, the earliest examples of similar fibulae (variant F in Y.V. Kukharenko’s classification) were found at the sites of the final stage of the classical Zarubinets culture, so that their appearance should be dated to the 1st century AD.13 In the opinion of M.B. Shchukin, the penetration of the ‘Upper-Dnieper’-type fibula into the north, into the forest zone of Eastern Europe, took place in the second half of the 1st century AD.14 Bronze fibulae of the Middle La Tène scheme, discovered at the settlements Gorodok and Devichya Gora,15 come from a mixed cultural layer and should be associated not with the Middle Tushemla, but rather with the earlier, Dnieper-Dvina period of the existence of these settlements.16 However, the fibula discovered at Devichya Gora (a crude imitation of the Middle La Tène-type fibula), according to Kukharenko, can also be dated instead to the 1st century AD, but it is not clear to what period in the history of the settlement it belongs (Fig. 1.7). 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Furasiev 2000, 207, fig. 1. Korotkevich 1989, 12–13, fig. 1. Shmidt 1992, tabl. 45.8. Jamka 1964, 65–67. Shmidt 1992, tabl. 45.7. Ambroz 1966, 68. Oblomskii and Terpilovskii 1991, 23–24. Shchukin 1989, 338. Shmidt 1992, tabl. 45.5–6. Shchukin 1989, 337.

Fig. 1. Scale of periodisation and the dated objects from the site. 1 – after Shadyro 1985; 2 – after Medvedev 1995; 3–7 – after Shmidt 1992; 8, 10, 11, 13 and 14 – after Shmidt 1994; 9 – after Lyauko 1993; 12, 15–18 – after Shmidt 1970).

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Taking this data into account, the most plausible date-range for sites of the Middle Tushemla culture is from the second half of the 1st through the 2nd century AD. According to B.S. Korotkevich, it is possible that some settlements remained in existence into the 3rd century AD, but no later: by the mid-3rd century (i.e. the beginning Period 2) none was around. Settlements of the second period emerge in other places, and so far there is not a single known case of ceramics of the Middle Tushemla type and of the later period found together. Apparently, in the first half of the 3rd century AD the population decreased in the area of the Middle Tushemla culture (the eastern part of the region), and perhaps disappeared altogether. In any case, no settlements of the Middle Tushemla culture dated to the 3rd century AD are known in the area, as well as no settlements with Dnieper-Dvina materials, which obviously would be dated to a later period than the Middle Tushemla culture. This fact could be established, for example, on the basis of the stratigraphy of the material from the settlements. At present, it can be securely stated that in some cases a Dnieper-Dvina population remained in the area of the Middle Tushemla culture, contemporary to that culture (for example, the Mikhailovskoe settlement), but there is no later Dnieper-Dvina material whatsoever. This phenomenon has not yet been explained. Settlements of the Dnieper-Dvina culture continued to exist in only the western part of the region. Despite the fact that the ceramics are typologically completely identical (which indicates that they were related), there is a considerable difference in the dating of sites of the Chechersk-Kisteni (2nd century BC–1st century AD) and the Middle Tushemla culture (second half of the 1st–2nd century AD). The possible overlap is no greater than 50 years within the second half of the 1st century AD. Most likely, the development of sites of the Middle Tushemla culture in the Upper Podnieprove and in the basin of the West Dvina points rather towards a direct migration to this area of the population from the south, and not towards a long-term mutual influence between the cultures, as was previously thought.18 If the two groups existed in two different periods, they could not have possibly influenced one another in terms of their traditions.19 The downfall of the Zarubinets culture and of Chechersk-Kisteni-type sites in the second half of the 1st century AD resulted in the migration of part of the population from Podnieprove and Posozhe to the north, i.e. to the Smolensk

17 18 19

Korotkevich 1989, 12–13. Korotkevich 1992, 65–67; Shmidt 1992, 134–38. Furasiev 2000, 207.

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Podnieprove and Podvine.20 The formation of the Middle Tushemla culture can be viewed in the context of the formation process of antiquities of the post-Zarubinets Rakhny-Potchep cultural horizon. However, the Middle Tushemla culture ceramic complex preserved some idiosyncrasies. According to Shchukin, sites of the Middle Tushemla culture have only a few features of the Rakhny-Potchep horizon.21 In my opinion, it would be reasonable to include these sites in the group of the Rakhny-Potchep horizon, since they have the same characteristics. They emerged on the ground of some classical Zarubinets sites, which is reflected in their ceramic complex. The Middle Tushemla monuments yielded all kinds of integrating objects characteristic of the Rakhny-Potchep horizon: eye-fibulae, fibulae of the ‘Upper Dnieper’ type, burnished ware; and the time of their existence fully corresponds to that of the antiquities of the Rakhny-Potchep horizon. Period 2: Second Half of the 3rd–End of the 4th Century AD (ca. AD 250–380) The crisis of the Dnieper-Dvina culture slowly reached its final stage: by the end of this period, practically all known settlements were empty, not only in the eastern but also in the western part of the region. So far, no objects of the 4th–5th centuries AD have been found at the settlements of the DnieperDvina culture,22 and the latest finds among the more precisely dated ones, marking the final stage of the culture, belong to the 2nd–3rd centuries AD. Two spearheads of the same type were found in the settlements of Burakovo and Stoyaki.23 They are around 30 cm in length, with a narrow willow-shaped main head, rhomboid in cross-section, and with a long shaft-hole (Fig. 1.1). Such weapons are well known from the Przevor necropoleis in Poland. According to the classification of P. Kachanovskii, they belong to type 24, dated to the periods B2–C1, i.e. middle of the 2nd–end of the 3rd century AD.24 At the Lemnitsa settlement, a blue ball-shaped glass bead with transverse white stripes was found (Fig. 1.2).25 In Central Europe, such beads have been discovered in the complexes from periods B2/C1–C2, therefore the find in question can be dated to the end of the 2nd–beginning of the 4th century AD.26

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Shchukin 1989, 337; Shchukin 1990, 19. Shchukin 1990, 19. Shmidt 1992, 120; Shadyro 1985, 112–113. Kaczanowski 1995, 22–23, tabl. 12. Shadyro 1985, fig. 37.1. Medvedev 1995, 165, fig. 1.4. Stawiarska 1987, 129; Tempelmann-M[czy…ska 1985, 55–56, tabl. 8, 300, 301.

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A one-piece ‘warrior’ fibula with a solid receiver and a bent back (Fig. 1.3) of the later type (in Ambroz’s classification),27 found at the Samsontsy settlement, can be dated to the second half of the 1st–2nd century AD.28 A bronze finger-ring with two spiral bezels (Fig. 1.4), found in Novye Bateki,29 has analogies in Prussia, in burial complexes where objects from the circle of barbarian enamel ware (Viska) were also found.30 According to K. Godlowski, in that region objects from this circle come only from periods B2/C1–C1a.31 At the beginning of Period 2, unfortified settlements appear in the region for the first time: sites of the Early Zaozere type, which demonstrate the emergence of absolutely new cultural traditions, clearly not associated with local ones. In terms of architecture, they are represented by rather small squareshaped semi-dugouts of a crib-like construction, with hearths; in terms of ceramic production, by vessels of various shapes, including burnished bowls and clay discs. Some vessels are ornamented by means of comb decorations. Some early material was found at the sites of Zaozere, Shugailovo, Ermoshino, Froly and Gorodok. All these new traditions have close analogies at sites of the contemporary Kiev culture of the Middle and Belorussian Podnieprove, as to the morphology of individual types of hand-made pottery, the structure of the ceramic assemblages of the settlements, the ornamentation of some vessels by means of comb decoration, and the main instruments, which are all very different from their counterparts in the Dnieper-Dvina culture. All the features mentioned allow one to view the sites in question as an independent type.32 A clear connection of the cultural traditions of monuments of the Zaozere type with the Kiev culture was recently accepted by the leading Kiev culture specialists in both Russia and the Ukraine.33 There seems to be no connection between the culture of the Dnieper-Dvina and Middle Tushemla settlements, on the one hand, and the material from the open settlements of the Zaozere type, on the other. Apparently, we are dealing here with an influx of newcomers from the south. This period can be associated with the expansion of the Kiev culture population to the north and east, which took place in the second half of the 3rd century AD. The idiosyncrasies of the morphology and ornamentation of the hand-made pottery enabled scholars to determine that the most important role in the set27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Shmidt 1992, tabl. 45.1. Ambroz 1966, 24. Shmidt 1992, tabl. 14.10. Spitsyn 1903, 166–68, fig. 178. Godlowski 1970, pls. 10–11. Lopatin 1991, 52. Oblomskii 1996, fig. 1; Terpilovskii 1991, 36–37.

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tling of Podvine was played by the carriers of the traditions associated with the sites of the Abidna Upper Dnieper variant of the Kiev culture, located in south-eastern Belorussia.34 However, during Period 2, settlements of the Zaozere type and the last settlements of the Dnieper-Dvina culture in the West Dvina basin still co-existed. A part of the Dnieper-Dvina aboriginal population joined the groups of people of the Zaozere type and kept their own traditions for a short period.35 The latest traces of them are represented by rarely found sherds of the characteristic jar-type vessels with thin walls at some sites of the Zaozere type (Froly, Ermoshino). These finds so far present the only proof of the fact that remnants of the Dnieper-Dvina population were still in existence in the 4th century AD, when almost all of the Dnieper-Dvina settlements were apparently abandoned. Datable Finds The main datable finds from site of the Early Zaozere type come from the excavations of E.A. Shmidt in the Smolensk region.36 A fragment of a cuffshaped bracelet, made out of plaques, with high relief cross-ribs (Fig. 1.8) was found at the eponymous settlement of Zaozere. Such bracelets are most characteristic of West Baltic antiquities of the beginning of the Late Roman period. In the forest zone of Eastern Europe, they are often found in the same complexes as enamels, dated mostly to the end of the 2nd–3rd century AD. In particular, they were found in the deposits at Moshchino, Mezhigore (middle– second half of the 3rd century AD)37 and Shishino-5 (first half of the 3rd century AD).38 A Chernyakhov bent tied-up fibula of the series B2 (Fig. 1.10) comes from the Shugailovo settlement; according to the classification of E.L. Gorokhovskii, it can be dated to the end of the 3rd–4th century AD.39 At the same settlement a fragment of a bronze torque with a spoon-shaped end was discovered (Fig. 1.11). Such torques were in particularly wide use in Lithuania in the 3rd–4th centuries AD.40 A disc-shaped spiral bead made out of green glass (Fig. 1.9) comes from the Gorodok settlement in Belorussia.41 In Central Europe such beads are

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Lopatin 2000, 18–19. Lopatin 1997, 174–75. Shmidt 1994, 113, fig. 1. Gorokhovskii and Oblomskii 1986, 15–17; Gorokhovksii 1982a, 135–36. Oblomskii 1991, 181. Gorokhovskii 1988, 12. Gorokhovskii 1982a, 135; Shmidt 1994, 108. Lyauko 1993, 163.

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often found in complexes of periods B2–C1b, i.e. approximately from the mid-2nd to the 3rd century AD.42 Apparently, the latest finds of such types of beads in Eastern Europe come from the sites of the Chernyakhov and Kiev cultures from the first half of the 4th century AD.43 C14 Chronology There is a series of C14 calibrated dates, obtained by the laboratory of the Institute of the History of Material Culture in St Petersburg.44 The Froly settlement, the lower stratum (excavated by the author): Le-5372 1740±40 BP, calibrated date AD 234–406; Le-5374 1770±40 BP, calibrated date AD 200–390; Le-5375 1750±30 BP, calibrated date AD 240–384; Le5376 1670±30 BP, calibrated date AD 262–284, 330–436. The Ermoshino settlement, excavated by the author together with N.V. Lopatin: the first date—Le-4955 1680±50 BP, calibrated date AD 264–424; the second date—Le-4948 1340±180 BP, calibrated date AD 270–1040. All this enables us to date the early sites of the Zaoreze type, as well as the entire Period 2, to the second half of the 3rd–4th century AD. Period 3: End of the 4th–First Half of the 5th Century AD (ca. 380–460 AD). Late Zaozere-Type Sites The area of location of these sites expanded to its maximum during the first half of the 5th century AD, and included the upper regions of the Velikaya, Lovat, West Dvina, Dnieper and Sozh rivers, as well as the entire northern and eastern parts of Belorussia (Fig. 5). Some of the open settlements which were in existence at that time had already been founded in the preceding period (Froly, Gorodok, Zaozere); another group came into existence for the first time in the period under discussion (Uzmen, Svinukhi, Kamennaya Lava). However, even at settlements which had been in existence since the earlier period, the ceramic assemblages of Period 2 differ somewhat from those of Period 3. In this last period, the variety of vessel-shapes reaches its peak, the composition of admixtures in the clay of the ceramics changes (fire clay and crushed ore appear for the first time), and a new style of ornamentation is used, i.e. applied decoration. Sometimes material of Periods 2 and 3 is separated stratigraphically and planigraphically (Froly, Zaozere). For Period 3, settlements larger than before, sometimes up to 3 ha, are characteristic.

42

Tempelmann-M[czy…ska 1985, 45–47, tabl. 8, taf. 3.193–94. Terpilovskii 1984, tabl. 13, 15; Bazhan, Gei 1992, figs. 4.VI, 11.II. 44 All the analyses for the settlement Froly was financed by the Soros Foundation, grant no. 804/1997. 43

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Some settlements were first founded in the third period (Demidovka, Burakovo, Zagovalino, Kazinovo), as well as some burial monuments—individual burials on the territory of settlements (Zaozere, Shugailovo);45 and two pit-burial complexes at Uzmen46 and Froly (excavated by the author). The burial customs of these necropoleis, in general, are characteristic of many cultures of the Roman period in Eastern Europe: remains of cremation on the side were placed into pits, mixed with charcoal, burnt ceramic sherds and other objects, and animal bones. However, there were some idiosyncrasies, characteristic only of the burials of the Kiev culture of Belorussian Podnieprove and Podesene: layered filling of the pits, organic contents, the large size of some of the pits (approximately 1 m in diameter). The appearance of all the innovations mentioned above suggests another influx of population from the south. Along with the representatives of the Kiev culture from Belorussian Podnieprove (for whom the admixture of crushed ore in ceramics was characteristic), the people from the Dvina basin were most likely taking part in that process, judging by the typical features of the ceramic assemblages from a series of sites, such as Uzmen and Demidovka.47 Their characteristic feature is a high percentage of vessels of bi-conical and carinated shapes (Uzmen—17%; Demidovka—around 30%), sometimes with a roller at the place of carination—this detail appears for the first time in the late monuments of the Kiev culture of the Desna variant (Ulyanovka) in the second half of the 4th century AD.48 The expansion of the territory of the Zaozere-type sites in Period 3, as well as the increase in the number of the settlements and their size, attests that this migratory wave was far larger than the previous one. Datable Finds A round iron buckle with a trunk-shaped tongue and a miniature blue tubular glass bead with a diameter of 3 mm were found at the Froly settlement. Such beads were in use on the northern Black Sea littoral and in Central Europe during the 1st–3rd centuries AD, and in the 4th century AD their production ceases;49 so that only individual pieces can still be found in complexes of period D.50 The buckle with a trunk-shaped tongue and with a frame thickened at the front (comparable with the find from Demidovka— Fig. 1.12) is one of the types which spread around broadly during the time 45 46 47 48 49 50

Shmidt 1997, 345. Minasyan 1979. Furasiev 1997, 34–35; Lopatin 2000, 20. Terpilovskii 1984, 76. Alekseeva 1978, 67, fig. 15; Stawiarska 1987, 30. Tempelmann-M[czy…ska 1985, 39, tabl. 8, taf. 3.145, 147.

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of the Great Migration in the second half of the 4th–5th century AD; more often, however, such buckles were made not from iron but from non-ferrous metals.51 In Central Europe they were a characteristic feature of belts from stage D of the Late Roman period.52 An iron three-bladed arrowhead, found at the settlement Uzmen, belongs to type 3a, in the classification of I.P. Zasetskaya, and dates to the Hun period (the end of the 4th–5th century AD). In complexes of the 6th–7th centuries AD such arrowheads are no longer found.53 At the same settlement a heavy bronze bracelet was discovered, with thickened end-parts square-shaped in cross-section. It has analogies in a number of sites of the Late Kiev culture period of the second half of the 4th–first half of the 5th century AD,54 as well as in Central European complexes of the first half of the 5th century AD.55 A Chernyakhov tied-up fibula from Zaozere (Fig. 1.14) belongs to series B3, in Gorokhov skii’s classification, and dates to the second third of the 4th–first half of the 5th century AD.56 Another fibula from Zaozere (Fig. 1.13), a tied-up bent one with little cone-shaped decorations at the ends of the crossbar, dates to the end of the 3rd–beginning of the 5th century AD.57 A whole series of diagnostic artefacts coming from the Demidovka settlement, excavated by E.A. Shmidt,58 enabled scholars to date the appearance of site not to the 5th century AD, as had been thought before, but to the second half of the 4th century AD.59 One such object is a lunar pendant with an enamel (a later variant of the type) (Fig. 1.17), dated to the 4th century AD.60 Another interesting find is a wheel-made grey burnished drinking cup (Fig. 1.16) of Chernyakhov origin, as was first noted by M. Kazanski.61 So far it is the only instance of finding a piece of Chernyakhov wheel-made pottery in the forest zone of Eastern Europe; it obviously dates to the Chernyakhov period, i.e. the second half of the 3rd–beginning of the 5th century AD. A laurel-shaped spear-head with a carinated main body and a short bushing (Fig. 1.18) can be dated to the 4th century AD, based on Lithuanian analogies.62 In the Przewor necropoleis such arrowheads from a slightly ear-

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Zasetskaya 1994, 93, fig. 19b, 36. Tejral 1997, abb. 9, 17. Zasetskaya 1994, 37–39, fig. 4. Terpilovskii 1984, 30, tabl. 10.1. Werner 1956, taf. 4, 6. Gorokhovskii 1988, 12. Gorokhovskii 1988, 12. Shmidt 1970, fig. 3–4. Furasiev 1997, 34–35. Gorokhovskii 1982b, 131. Kazanski 1992, 94, fig. 3.15. Kazakevicius 1988, 42–45.

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lier period have also been found (from periods C1–C2, i.e. not later than the mid-4th century AD; type 19 in Kaczanowski’s classification).63 In addition, more than ten three-bladed arrowheads from the Hun period were found in Demidovka; some of them are analogous to the object from Uzmen, the others (Fig. 1.15) belong to type 1A in Zasetskaya’s classification.64 It is interesting that some of the arrows have forged three-sided points, most likely armour-piercing. Along with the arrows, a deposit was discovered in the burnt layer at the settlement under discussion—a silver belt-set of the socalled ‘Kapulovski’ type (Kazanski’s classification). It included a round buckle and a few dozen rectangular appliqués (Fig. 1.12). The belt can be dated to the end of the 4th–first half of the 5th century AD, based on analogies.65 At the Lemnitsa settlement in Belorussia, a West European iron B-shaped rifled buckle was found,66 dated to the second or third quarters of the 5th century AD, periods D2–D3.67 C14 Chronology (Fig. 2) C14 data for Period 3 were also obtained from Froly, where the habitation levels of Periods 2 and 3 are separated stratigraphically: Le-5371 1560±40 BP, calibrated date AD 426–598; and Le-5373 1590±50 BP, calibrated date AD 394–600. The data for burial number 20 from the burial complex at Froly is Le-5429 1820±100 BP, calibrated date 10 BC–AD 430. (When dating this complex, it has to be taken into consideration that it partially overlaps with the settlement, where some objects, mentioned above, from the period not earlier than the 3rd–4th centuries AD were found. The complex, therefore, can be dated to the end of the 4th–first half of the 5th century AD.) Taking into account all available data concerning the chronology of the objects, as well as the C14 data, Period 3 can be dated to the end of the 4th–middle of the 5th century AD, which, in general, corresponds to stage D of the Late Roman period. As a result of the expansion of sites of Late Zaozere type, a particular type of antiquity was formed in the basins of the West Dvina and Upper Dnieper by the end of the 4th–beginning of the 5th century AD, immediately preceding the emergence there of the Long Barrows culture in the second half

63 64 65 66 67

Kaczanowski 1995, 25, tabls. 14, 20. Zasetskaya 1994, 37–39, fig. 4. Kazanski 1993a, 122–23. Medvedev 1995, fig. 1.3. Bazhan and Kargopoltsev 1989, 29–33.

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Fig. 2. Radiocarbon dating of Zaozere Type.

of the 5th century AD, to the north of Dvina, and the Tushemla-Bantserovshchina culture to the south of it. Both of these are genetically connected to the sites of Zaozere type, and, consequently, related to each other. The major difference between them is the shape of burial constructions: mounds in the former case, pit-burials in the latter.68 Such is the overview of the major cultural transformations in the region. Clearly, the major cause of the transformation during the 1st–5th centuries AD was not internal evolution but external migration, coming usually from the Middle Podnieprove, Podesene and south-eastern Belorussia, i.e. from the border areas between the forest and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe. Therefore, the causes of the cultural changes in the Upper Dnieper area can only be understood in the context of the main stages of population development in the southern part of Eastern Europe, especially in the context of the critical moments in that process. As happens, such moments were common for the entire region of the Dnieper basin, from the Black Sea coast to the distant areas of the northern forest zone. The beginning of penetration of Southern cultural traditions into the region of the Upper Dnieper in the second half of the 1st century AD is undoubtedly connected with the downfall of the Zarubinets culture of the Middle

68

Lopatin and Furasiev 1994, 139–40.

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Podnieprove, caused by the invasion of the Sarmatian tribes into the Black Sea coastal steppes.69 This event was followed by a series of migrations of the remains of the Zarubinets culture population in all directions and by the formation of various groups of the Rakhny-Pochep horizon,70 one of which was the Middle Tushemla culture, genetically connected to the peripheral Zarubinets group of sites of Chechersk-Kisteni type (Fig. 3). The bearers of these traditions, arriving at their new areas of habitation, most likely lived somewhat separate from the local population, which at the time decreased significantly. Soon, not later that the beginning of the 3rd century AD, the Middle Tushemla population ceased to exist, for unknown reasons, leaving behind no traces in the sites of later times. The second wave of migration to the Dvina area of population groups coming from the south falls in the middle-second half of the 3rd century, and is connected with the period of wide expansion of the Kiev culture from the Middle Podnieprove to the north and east, as mentioned above. It is possible that one of the main causes of such expansion was the migration of the Goths into the northern Black Sea coastal area, and their conflict with the Sarmatian tribes in the steppe zone and with the bearers of the Kiev culture (Slavic Veneti) in the forest-steppe zone of Podesene and on the left bank of the Dnieper. According to the latest studies, the penetration of the Goths into the territories earlier occupied by the Kiev culture took place very quickly, during the early stage of the formation of the Chernyakhov culture in period C1b.71 At almost the same time, at the beginning of the 4th century AD, the area of the Kiev culture reached its maximum extent. The population of the Upper Dnieper variant of the Kiev culture (in south-eastern Belorussia) was also involved in the migration process: they were actively taking part in the settling of the Desna basin, which can be seen in the material from the settlements Mena-5 and Verkhnestrizhenskoe-3.72 Our results enable us to argue that the tribes of the Kiev culture of Belorussian Podnieprove at that very time reached the basin of Western Dvina, where, as a result, sites of Early Zaozere type appeared (Fig. 4). Period 3 corresponds with that of the Late Zaozere-type sites. Their appearance indicates the next, third, wave of the migration of population from south to north, since the series of new cultural traditions had no predecessors in the early sites of Zaozere type. Most of these new traditions have analogies from the contemporary Kiev culture settlements in Podesene, whence, it appears, the first migratory impulse came. 69 70 71 72

Shchukin 1990, 16. Shchukin 1989, 302–13. Oblomskii 1999, 29. Oblomskii 1996b, 29.

Fig. 3. Situation in the 1st–2nd centuries AD (Period 1). 1 – the Chechersk-Kisteni Type (after Oblomskii, Petrauskas and Terpilovskii 1999); 2 – the Middle Tushemla culture.

Fig. 4. Situation in the 3rd–4th centuries AD (Period 2). 1 – the Upper Dnieper variant of Kiev culture; 2 – the Desna variant of Kiev culture (after Oblomskii, Petrauskas and Terpilovskii 1999); 3 – the Early Zaozere Type.

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The cause probably lay in the chain of historical events at the end of the 4th century AD, well-known from the work of Jordanes: military campaigns of the Gothic king Ermanaric against the northern tribes, the invasion of the Huns in AD 375 into the Black Sea coastal steppe zone and the collapse of the Gothic rule, the wars of the Goths of Vinitharius against the Antes. Apparently, these events caused migrations of the population to more distant and peaceful regions, including Belorussian Podnieprove, which led to overpopulation of the area and to the migration of a part of the population even further north, to already known and partially settled territories in the basin of Western Dvina and at the mouth of Dnieper (Fig. 5). It is, however, possible that the invasion of the Huns also had a positive aspect in the process of the settling of the Slavic Veneti, having freed them from their political dependence upon the Goths. This stimulated the colonisation movement of the Slavs, not only to the south, as Kazanski argues,73 but also to the north. It is also possible that the elements of the Desna ceramic tradition in Podvine attest not to the direct migration of its carriers from the Desna area but also to their passage through the territory of the Kiev tribes in Belorussian Podnieprove, where individual complexes and whole monuments of the 4th–5th centuries AD were discovered, most likely left behind by related population groups who had migrated there from Podesene. Thus, according to A.M. Oblomskii, some Desna elements are present in the material from the settlements of Taimanovo (later stage) in Belorussia and Gudok in Posozhe.74 At the same time, the population from the Desna basin migrated to the south and east.75 Coming through Belorussian Podnieprove, this migration impulse carried along with it a part of the local population. As a result, new sites, both with Desna (Uzmen) and Upper Dnieper (Froly) ceramic traditions, appeared simultaneously in the West Dvina basin. However, these traditions did not mix with one another even on this new territory.76 The end of Period 3 coincided with the appearance of completely new burial customs in the northern part of the region, i.e. burials in so-called long barrows. The development of settlements of the Late Zaozere type continued, however the population acquired a new type of burial construction, apparently, along with new social-political conditions. In the areas to the south of the West Dvina, unaffected by these processes, the old pit-burial tradition was preserved, and further development of the major Zaozere-type traditions was underway, thereafter called the Tushemla-Bantserovshchina culture.77

73 74 75 76 77

Kazanski 1993b, 14–15. Oblomskii 1999b, 29. Oblomskii 1999a, 68. Lopatin 2000, 18–20. Lopatin and Furasiev 1994.

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Fig. 5. Situation at the end of the 4th–5th century AD (Period 3). 1 – the Upper Dnieper variant of Kiev culture; 2 – the Desna variant of Kiev culture (after Oblomskii, Petrauskas and Terpilovskii 1999); 3 – the Late Zaozere Type.

The time and causes of the emergence of the Long Barrows culture, which included the northern part of the area where Zaozere-type sites were located as well as considerable regions of north-western Russia, are discussed and argued in detail in recent works by Kazanski.78 A whole series of objects of Central European and Danubian origin from the long-barrow burials enabled scholars to connect the emergence of these monuments with the invasion of multi-ethnic armoured troops from Central Europe through Lithuania and the Upper Podnieprove, and further north to the region of the long barrows, and further east to the region of the Ryazan-Oka burial complexes. These events resulted, among other things, in the collapse of some settlements of Late Zaozere type, where large burnt layers and numerous foreign pieces of

78

Kazanski 2000.

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armour were found.79 According to Kazanski, this could have happened after the events of AD 453–455 on the Danube.80 This date had already been proposed by J. Werner,81 and it is accepted now by the majority of Russian archaeologists. This version, concerning the migration to the north, to Lithuania, of the remains of the defeated armies of Attila’s sons, along with their Germanic, Baltic and Slavic allies, has latterly been supported and argued by increasing numbers of scholars from Lithuania and Russia.82 Another date which has been proposed for the emergence of the Long Barrows culture, namely the end of the 4th century AD, as well as the suggested connection of this event with the death of Ermanaric and the collapse of his rule,83 has not yet been convincingly argued. Thus, the main stages of the ethno-cultural development of the population of the Podvine and the Upper Dnieper correspond to the pan-European historical rhythm in the first half and middle of the 1st millennium AD, despite the seemingly peripheral location of the territory under discussion to the European political centres. Nearly every important event, resulting in the destabilisation of the historical and cultural situation in the areas of the Middle and Lower Podnieprove, the northern Black Sea littoral and, slightly later, the Middle Danube, echoed in the forest zone of Eastern Europe, stimulating the migration of population groups from the southern regions to the north.84 Department of Eastern European Archaeology The State Hermitage Museum Dvortsovaya nab. 34 St Petersburg 190000 Russia [email protected]

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Furasiev 1996, 4–6. Kazanski 2000, 441–42. 81 Werner 1981, 700. 82 Lukhtan 1997, 16–17; Kazakevicius 1992, 98–100; Oblomskii, Petrauskas and Terpilovskii 1999, 83, map 4. 83 Bazhan and Kargopoltsev 1993, 118. 84 Translated from Russian by V. Kozlovskaya. 80

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Abbreviations GAZ Gistarychna-Arkhealagichny Zbornik, Minsk PAV Peterburgskii Arkheologicheskii Vestnik Alekseeva, E.M. 1978: Antichnye busy Severnogo Prichernomor’ya (Moscow). Ambroz, A.K. 1966: Fibuly yuga evropeiskoi chasti SSSR (Moscow). Bazhan, I.A. and Gei, O.A. 1992: ‘Otnositel’naya khronologiya mogil’nikov chernyakhovskoi kul’tury’. In Problemy khronologii epokhi latena i rimskogo vremeni (St Petersburg), 122–57. Bazhan, I.A. and Kargopoltsev, S.U. 1989: ‘B-obraznye riflenye pryazhki kak khronologicheskii indicator sinkhronizatsii’. KSIA 198, 28–35. ——. 1993: ‘K voprosu ob evolutsii trekhrogikh pel’tovidnykh lunnits v Evrope (III–VI veka)’. PAV 7, 113–22. Drobushevskii, A.I. 1994: ‘Pamyatniki Nizhnego Posozhya na rubezhe nashei ery’. In Arkhealogiya i starazhitnaya gistoriya Magileushchiny i sumezhnykh teritorii (Mogilev), 80–89. Furasiev, A.G. 1996: ‘O vremeni i obstoyatel’stvakh gibeli gorodishcha Demidovka v verkhov’yakh Dnepra’. In Ladoga i severnaya Evropa (St Petersburg), 4–6. ——. 1997: ‘Demidovka i Uzmen’. GAZ 11, 33–38. ——. 2000: ‘Srednetushemlinskie pamyatniki Podvinya’. Stratum plus 4 (Kishinev), 201–08. Godlowski, K. 1970: The Chronology of the Late Roman and Early Migration Period in Central Europe (Cracow). Gorokhovksii, E.L. 1982a: ‘O gruppe fibul s vyemchatoi emal’yu iz Srednego Podneprovya’. In Novye pamyatniki drevnei i srednevekovoi khudozhestvennoi kul’tury (Kiev), 115–51. ——. 1982b: ‘Khronologiya ukrashenii s vyemchatoi emal’yu Srednego Podneprovya’. Materialy po khronologii arkheologicheskikh pamyatnikov Ukrainy (Kiev), 125–39. ——. 1988: Khronologiya yuvelirnykh izdelii pervoi poloviny pervogo tysyacheletiya nashey ery lesostepnogo Podneprovya i Yuzhnogo Pobuzhya (Avtoreferat dissertatsii) (Kiev). Gorokhovksii, E.L. and Oblomskii, A.M. 1986: ‘O date Moshchinskogo i Mezhigorskogo kladov’. Problemy drevneishei istorii Verkhnego Poochya (Kaluga), 15–17. Jamka, R. 1964: ‘Fibule typu oczkowatego w Europie srodkowej ze szcsegolnym uwzgledniem ziem polskich’. Materialy starozytne 10, 7–104. Kaczanowski, P. 1995: Klasyfíkacja grotow broni drzewcowej kultury przeworskiej z okresu rzymskiego (Cracow). Kazakevicius, V. 1988: Oruzhie baltskikh plemen II–VIII vekov na territorii Litvy (Vilnius). ——. 1992: ‘The Great Migration Period and the Balts according to the Archaeological Data from Lithuania’. In Straume, E. and Skar, E. (eds.), Peregrinatio Gothica III (Oslo), 91–102. Kazanski, M. 1992: ‘Les arctoi gentes et “l’empire” d’Hermanaric. Commentaire archéologique d’une source écrite’. Germania 70.1, 75–121. ——. 1993a: ‘Les objets orientaux de l’époque des Grandes Migrations découverts dans le couloir rhodanien’. Antiquités Nationales 25, 119–27. ——. 1993b: ‘Les relations entre les Slaves et les Goths du 3e au 5e siècle. L’apport de l’archéologie’. Revue des études Slaves 65.1, 7–20. ——. 2000: ‘La zone forestière de la Russie et l’Europe Centrale à la fin de l’époque des Grandes Migrations’. In Maczynska, M. and Grabarczyk, T. (eds.), Die spätrömische Kaiserzeit und die frühe Völkerwanderungszeit in Mittel- und Osteuropa („ódû), 406–59. Korotkevich, B.S. 1989: ‘Verkhnee Podvine v rannem zheleznom veke”’ In Pamyatniki zheleznogo veka i srednevekov’ya na Verkhnei Volge i Verkhnem Podvine (Kalinin), 9–14. ——. 1992: ‘Pamyatniki tipa srednego sloya gorodishcha Tushemla i dnepro-dvinskaya kul’tura’. In Nasel’nitstva Belarusi i sumezhnykh teritorii u pokhu zhaleza (Minsk), 65–67. Lopatin, N.V. 1991: ‘Yuzhnye traditsii v keramike Smolenskogo Podneprovya i severnoi Belorusii v pervoi polovine pervogo tysyacheletiya’. In Arkheologiya i istoriya yugo-vostoka Rusi (Kursk), 50–53. ——. 1997: ‘Dnepro-dvinskaya kul’tura kak komponent kul’tury dlinnykh kurganov’. In Etnogenez i etnokul’turnye kontakty slavyan: Trudy VI Mezhdunarodnogo kongressa slavyanskoi arkheologii 3 (Moscow), 166–76.

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——. 2000: Kul’turnye traditsii naseleniya Verkhnego Podneprovya i Podvinya v 3–5 vekakh nashi ery (Avtoreferat dissertatsii) (Moscow). Lopatin, N.V. and Furasiev, A.G. 1994: ‘O roli pamyatnikov III–V vekov v formirovanii kul’tur Pskovskikh dlinnykh kurganov i Tushemli-Bantserovshiny’. PAV 9, 136–42. Lukhtan, A. 1997: ‘Voyna V veka v Litve’. GAZ 11, 15–20. Lyauko, V.M. 1993: ‘Garadotskae selishcha’. In Entsyklapediya. Arkhealogiya i numizmatika Belarusi (Minsk), 163. Medvedev, A.M. 1995: ‘K voprosu o severnoi granitse pozdnezarubinetskoi i kievskoi kul’tur v Verkhnem Podneprove’. GAZ 7, 162–71. Minasyan, R.S. 1979: ‘Poselenie i mogil’nik na beregu ozera Uzmen’. TGE 20, 169–85. Oblomskii, A.M. 1991: Etnicheskie protsessy na vodorazdele Dnepra i Dona v I–V vekakh (Moscow). ——. 1996a: ‘Srednee Poseime v pozdnerimskoe vremya. Formirovanie yuzhnoi granitsy kolochinskoi kul’tury’. RosA 1, 51–70. ——. 1996b: ‘O kharaktere migratsii naseleniya Tsentralnoy i Yuzhnoi Belarusi v lesostep’ v rimskoe vremya’. GAZ 10, 26–32. ——. 1999: ‘O vremeni poyavleniya chernyakhovskogo naseleniya na territorii Dneprovskogo levoberezh’ya’. In Sto let chernyakhovskoi kul’ture (Kiev), 26–38. Oblomskii, A.M., Petrauskas, O.V. and Terpilovskii, R.V. 1999: ‘Environmental Reasons of Migrations of the South-Eastern Europe Population in the 1st–5th Centuries AD’. Archaeologia Polona 37, 71–86. Oblomskii, A.M. and Terpilovskii, R.V. 1991: Srednee Podneprove i Dneprovskoe levoberezh’e v pervye veka nashei ery (Moscow). Shadyro, V.I. 1985: Rannii zheleznyi vek Severnoi Belorussii (Minsk). Shchukin, M.B. 1989: Rome and the Barbarians in Central and Eastern Europe 1st Century BC–1st Century AD (Oxford). ——. 1990: ‘The Balto-Slavic Forest Direction in the Archaeological Study of the Ethnogenesis of the Slavs’. Wiadomosci Archeologiczne 51.1, 3–30. Shmidt, E.A. 1970: ‘O kul’ture gorodishch-ubezhishch levoberezhnoi Smolenshchiny’. MIA 176, 63–69. ——. 1992: Plemena verkhov’ev Dnepra do obrazovaniya drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (Moscow). ——. 1994: ‘Problemy khronologii tushemlinskoi kul’tury v verkhov’yakh Dnepra’. In Arkhealogiya i starazhitnaya gistoriya Magileushchiny i sumezhnykh teritorii (Mogilev), 104–13. ——. 1997: ‘Plemena verkhov’ev Dnepra v IV–VII vekakh’. In Etnogenez i etnokul’tunye kontakty slavyan: Trudy VI Mezhdunarodnogo kongressa slavyanskoi arkheologii 3 (Moscow), 344–51. Spitsyn, A.A. 1903: ‘Predmety s vyemchatoi emal’yu’. Zapiski Otdela Russkoi i Slavyanskoi arkheologii Russkogo Arkheologicheskogo Obshchestva 5.1 (St Petersburg), 149–92. Stankevich, Y.V. 1960: ‘K istorii naseleniya Verkhnego Podvinya v pervom i nachale vtorogo tysyacheletiya nashei ery’. MIA 76, 7–323. Stawiarska, T. 1987: Katalog paciorkow szklanych z obszaru Polski polnocnej w okresie wplywow rzymskich (Wroclaw). Tejral, J. 1997: ‘Neue Aspekte der frühenvölkerwanderungszeitlichen Chronologie im Mittel Donauraum’. In Tejral, J., Friesinger, H. and Kazanski, M. (eds.), Neue Beiträge zur Erforschung der spätantike im Mittleren Donauraum (Brno), 321–92. Tempelmann-M[czy…ska, M. 1985: Die Perlen der römischen Kaiserzeit und der frühen Phase der Völkerwanderungszeit im mitteleuropäischen Barbaricum (Mainz). Terpilovskii, R.V. 1984: Rannie slavyane Podesenya III–V vekov (Kiev). ——. 1991: ‘Kievskaya kul’tura i blizkie ei pamyatniki rimskogo vremeni’. In Gomelshchina: arkheologiya, istoriya, pamyatniki (Gomel), 36–38. Werner, J. 1956: Beiträge zur Archäologie des Attila-Reiches (Munich). ——. 1981: ‘Bemerkungen zum nordwestlichen Siedlungsgebiet der Slawen im 4–6. Jahrhundert’. Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte 1, 695–701. Zasetskaya, I.P. 1994: Kul’tura kochevnikov yuzhnorusskikh stepei v gunnskuyu epokhu (konets IV–V vek) (St Petersburg).

ETHNIC IDENTITY AND THE COMMUNITY OF THE HELLENES: A REVIEW LYNETTE G. MITCHELL Abstract This review of Jonathan Hall’s monograph considers his limited definition of ethnicity, and suggests that Hellenic identity in Greece in the Archaic period was defined though cult as well as kinship. It also questions Hall’s assertion that Hellenic identity was formed through the political manipulations of the Thessalians, and argues that the processes that crystallised Hellenic identity involved the joint forces of aggregation and definition through difference. On this analysis, the value of Hall’s limited definition of ethnicity as a means of analysing Hellenic identity in the Archaic and Classical periods is doubted. J.M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, The Chicago University Press, Chicago 2002, XX+312 pp., 5 maps, 6 figs. Cased. ISBN 0–226–31329–8 ‘Identity’ (including ‘ethnic identity’ and ‘ethnicity’) is currently a hot topic in our discipline and the number of books and articles dealing with issues surrounding both the nature of Greek and Roman identity and the means of defining it has increased exponentially in the last 15 years or so. To this vast and complex area of study, Jonathan Hall has made significant and often ground-breaking contributions with the publication in 1997 of Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge) and then in 2002 of Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture. In many ways, Hellenicity represents a companion volume to the earlier monograph since it repeats the definition of ethnicity laid out in Ethnic Identity, expands and develops the model of aggregation as a means for understanding Greek ethnicity, and sets out a fresh line of enquiry by comparing ethnic identity with cultural identity which, Hall argues, replaced ethnic identity in the Classical period as the means of defining Hellenicity. Yet it is with Hall’s definition of ethnicity that the controversy must start, and here two related issues are at stake: the first is whether Hall’s limited definition of ethnicity is appropriate in the ancient Greek context; the second relates to the development of Greek identity and the role (or lack of it) that the non-Greek world played in that development. ‘Ethnicity’ as an empirical phenomenon has long resisted consistent definition,1 and doubts have been raised about its value as an analytical tool.2 For Hall the basis of ethnicity is fictive kinship (a basic tenet of both monographs), which he argues differentiates ethnicity from other forms of social organisation. In Hellenicity, Hall defends this definition against those who argue for more broadly based definitions of ethnicity by insisting that if ethnicity is to be useful in analytical comparisons it must have universal criteria. Pointing to the importance of putative claims of kinship among the assertions of ethnic identity he argues that although ‘physical traits, language, religion or cultural orientations, either singly or in combination may appear to constitute

1 2

For examples of different approaches, see Hutchinson and Smith 1996. Just 1989, 76.

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the most important markers of differentiation . . . they lack the universality which criteria such as consubstantiality and fictive kinship possess in defining ethnicity’ (p. 12).3 In the realisation that there was a self-conscious sense of a Hellenic community in the Archaic period, Hall has made an important advance from those who have imagined that the Hellenic community was only articulated as a result of the Persian Wars. However, the first question that must be asked is whether in the Archaic period Hellenic identity (that is, the self-conscious realisation of the Hellenic community)4 was based primarily on putative claims of kinship as Hall claims. Hall’s evidence that this was the case is what he has termed the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’, which he disinters from two fragments of the mid 6th-century Catalogue of Women. According to Hall, these fragments set out the relationship between the Hellenic ‘subethnicities’, Dorians, Aeolians, Achaeans and Ionians, through their mythical progenitors and ‘signal the participation of all four groups within a broader Hellenic identity’ (p. 27). Hall claims that, despite the existence of alternative genealogies (which Hall concedes), ‘we can at least be fairly confident of [the “Hellenic Genealogy’s”] dominance in the construction of Hellenic identity during the Archaic period’ and that ‘[f ]ar from representing one author’s view of the world, the “Hellenic Genealogy” reflects the charter myths through which in the Archaic period, Aiolians, Akhaians and Ionians began to subscribe to a broader Hellenic identity’ (p. 28).5 But the vision of the Hellenic community as an ethnic group presented by the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ is limited. Even if (as Hall claims) Dorus was in origin an ethnonymn for the ‘Dorian’ Spartans as Ion was for an ethnic group which crystallised in Asia Minor (and there is some reason to doubt this),6 there are a number of important omissions from the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ as a charter myth for the Hellenes in the 6th century. The Inachidae of Argos, for example, are only attached to the main Hellenic stemma in the Catalogue of Women through the marriage of the daughter of Phoroneus to Dorus ([Hes.] F 10b West) so are not part of the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ as such. Even more pointedly, the Arcadians and Locrians only have tenuous links with the stemmata of the Catalogue, although both appear not only in the Homeric ‘Catalogue of Ships’, but also win victories at the Olympic games (a fact Hall has to explain away since he want the games to be exclusive in the 6th century),7 and it is simply too easy to say (as Hall does) that the exclusions are those who later came to be thought of as Greeks but were not considered so in the Archaic period.

3

Cf. Eriksen 1993, 12–15. It is axiomatic that we can only speak of Hellenic identity, that is the realisation of the imagined and ‘symbolic community’, from the moment when this collective identity is selfconsciously asserted by the Hellenes (cf. Konstan 2001, 30). 5 In Ethnic identity (43–44) Hall suggests that the creation of the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ may not predate the writing down of the Catalogue by many decades. 6 Hall argues that the ‘filial succession Deukalion-Hellen-Aiolos constitutes the oldest element of the “Hellenic Genealogy”’ and that the ethnonymn of the Hellenes was a deliberate and political creation on the part of the Thessalians (161–62). West (1985, 52–60), more simply and probably more plausibly, thinks that the stemma including Deucalion and his sons and grandsons represents the local and tribal configuration of northern Greece, so that Dorus is the ethnonymn of the Dorians of Doris, just as Xouthus, Ion and Aeolus may also be ethnonymns for groups that may have also originated in Euboea and the facing coast of Thessaly. 7 Arcadians: West 1985, 154–55. Locrus is the leader of the Lelegians—the men who arose from the stones thrown by Deucalion: fr. 234 West (see also West 1985, 52, 58). 4

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Further, the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ (and the Catalogue of Women) was only one among a number of strategies for defining identity in the Archaic period, and the centrality of universal genealogies to Hellenic identity was undermined by other discourses of identity. Although Hall downplays the significance of myths of autochthony, for example (‘claims to autochthony among the historical populations of Greek cities are the exception rather than the rule’: p. 31), there were a number of claims to identity current in the 6th century arising out of a relationship to the land—if not to the ‘earth’ specifically, then to the natural environment—which make a strong statement about local identity.8 The tradition that the Arcadians were descended from the autochthòn Pelasgus dates from the 6th century ([Hes.] ffr. 160, 161 Merkelbach/West; Asius fr. 8 Davies), and the Pelasgians, though not described as autochthones, seem to have been regarded at least by the 5th century as original and indigenous inhabitants of Greece (Hdt. 1. 56. 2; Th. 1. 3. 1–2; Ephorus FGrHist 70 F 113). In Homer the Athenians are already said to descend from the ‘earth-born’ Erechtheus/Erechthonius (Il. 2. 547–548: ‘the fruitful land bore him’), a narrative of identity that was probably bolstered by the Athenians reputed descent from the Pelasgians (Hdt. 1. 56. 2) and was the basis of their 5th-century claims of autochthony. Though not claiming to be autochthones in precisely the same way, the Aeginetans claimed descent from the Myrmidons who were ants changed into men ([Hes.] fr. 205 Merkelbach/West); and the Thebans were descended from the Sparti, who were created from the dragon’s teeth (for example, Stesichorus fr. 195 Page; Pindar Pyth. 9. 82–83, Isthm. 1. 30, 7. 10, Hymns 1. 2), and Hellanicus says that therefore they were ‘earth-born’ ( gegenes) (Hellanicus FGrHist 4 F 51).9 Myths of autochthony in the Archaic period (whatever their significance later on) were a means of asserting a local identity at the cost of a Hellenic identity, and the number of them current in the Archaic period is testament to the countervailing pressure between local and universal identities that in the Archaic and Classical periods progressively were to threaten the stability and coherence of the Hellenic community. Kinship as a criterion for defining Hellenic identity was put under pressure by forces working to undermine a unitary and overarching identity. Nevertheless, there was a clear sense of the Hellenic community by the end of the 6th century. In discussing the emergence of the modern nation-state, Benedict Anderson has said that communities are ‘imagined’ ‘. . . because even the members of the smallest communities will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion’.10 Hall’s dependence on fictive kinship as the sole criterion for ethnic definition springs in part from his acceptance of Connor’s description of the nation (1994), which asserts that the metaphor of kinship is the strongest bond that can hold the imagined community together (pp. 16–17, 228). This assumption underpins both Hall’s correlation of ethnic identity and Hellenic identity in the Archaic period and his postulated shift from ethnic identity and cultural identity as the basis for Hellenicity in the Classical period. However, kinship was not the only means of articulating Hellenic identity in the Archaic period or of defining the ascriptive boundaries.11

8

Haubold 2000, 163–66. See also Vian 1963, 26–27, 106–07. 10 Anderson 1991, 6. 11 Many theorists of ethnicity agree that kinship (fictive or otherwise) is a fundamental criterion, but not necessarily the only criterion, for defining ethnicity: see, for example, Smith 9

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There was another complementary (and probably interdependent) way in which the community of the Hellenes was imagined and realised, and that was through cult.12 Hall points to the significance of the Olympic Games as the centre from which Hellenic identity was promulgated, but sees the significance of the Games in purely kinship terms through the exclusion of non-Hellenes—Hall (p. 154) assumes that Olympia was the only festival in the stephanitic circuit which was exclusive, though this is an argument from silence and probabilities might indicate otherwise—a condition which Hall argues dates to the late 6th century. Indeed, as an indicator of a moment at which the Hellenic community was articulated,13 the date at which the exclusion clause at Olympia was introduced is important, though Hall’s evidence for a 6th-century date is not conclusive. However, the importance of the Olympic Games for Hellenic identity may not have resided originally in their ability to define Hellenic identity through participation (though it may have done this also), but in the creation of the conditions in which Hellenic identity could be realised through shared celebration of cult. More obviously a moment of a self-conscious articulation of Hellenic identity is the foundation of the stephanitic festival circuit. The formal circuit was established in the early 6th century, when Corinth deliberately founded Panhellenic games in 582/1 in imitation of those at Olympia; Delphi followed suit soon afterwards, and within ten years there was also a Panhellenic festival at Nemea.14 The explicit institutionalisation of the games (which were inherently cult events)15 as Panhellenic more clearly marks a moment when the symbolic community of the Hellenes was explicitly realised. There is also other evidence which points towards shared cult as important in the definition of the ascriptive boundaries of Hellenic identity.16 The Homeric Hymn to Apollo marks out participation in the cult of Apollo in geographical as well as cultic terms: Apollo is given specifically Panhellenic significance by his transfer from Delos to Olympus (179–185); the catalogues define a Panhellenic space for the cult enclosing a region stretching from Olympus in the north, the Peloponnese in the south and the Greek cities of Asia Minor in the east;17 and Apollo declares that he wishes to establish a sanctuary at which ‘all those who live in both the rich Peloponnese and Europe and the washed-about islands’ will participate (247–253, 287–293). In addition, the 6th-century foundation of the Hellenium at Naucratis (Hdt. 2. 178), at which appear dedications ‘to the gods of the Hellenes’, is an early statement of Hellenic identity.18 We will return to the Hellenium in a moment. 1986, 21–31; Eriksen 1993, 12, 34–35. Compare (for example) Just 1989, who argues that the basis of modern Greek ethnicity is a metaphorical notion of ‘common blood’, though later in his review of Ethnic identity ( Just 1998) he doubts whether ethnicity is an appropriate discourse for ancient Greece. 12 In Ethnic identity Hall rejected Greek religion as a means of defining Hellenic identity because of its lack of coherence. However, as Parker (1998) points out, it is not shared religion which is at stake, but shared cult. 13 On the ‘moments’ of the realisation of the Hellenes, see Mitchell forthcoming. 14 On the stephanitic festival circuit, see Morgan 1993, 33–37. 15 Sourvinou-Inwood 1990, 300; Price 1999, 39. 16 On the importance of the polis in Panhellenic cult, see Sourvinou-Inwood 1990. 17 On the relationship between the three catalogues in the poem, see Clay 1989, 57–58; on the ‘Panhellenic’ nature (at least in its weaker sense) of the Homeric Hymns, see Clay 1989, esp. 8–11; Foley 1994, 175–78; García 2002, 28–29. 18 Hall does refer to the Hellenium and the dedications (p. 130), but only as evidence that the name ‘Hellenes’ was being used in the 6th century.

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However, can we say that cult marked the boundaries of Hellenic identity without kinship—in other words, was Hellenic identity fundamentally a religious identity? The answer is no, at least not in the modern sense, although religious ideology was central to community life and ideology, and community life was inextricably linked to religious ritual and cult.19 Rather, it seems more likely that cult and kinship were mutually supportive and self-reinforcing. One belonged to the community of the Hellenes because one participated in shared cult, and it was in this spirit that an altar, ‘common to Hellas’, for Zeus Eleutherius was set up at Plataea after the Persian Wars ([Simonides] XV Page). The community of those who shared cult probably also presupposed shared kinship and so came to be delimited by kinship.20 The close relationship between cult, community and kinship may go some way to explaining how the games at Olympia were transformed from a local event in the western Peloponnese to one with wider significance. Participation in the shared cultic activity of the games came to define those who ‘belonged’, who then also expressed this belonging in terms of kinship. Hall’s insistence on the importance of kinship (fictive or otherwise) has blinded him to the importance of cult in creating, maintaining and sustaining Hellenic identity in the Archaic period. Rather than being an innovation of the 5th century (where he puts it together with language and ‘culture’: pp. 189–94), participation in common cult was from the outset an important element in the realisation of the Hellenic community. Cult did not just create an atmosphere in which Hellenic identity could be formed (though it did this also), but it also provided an early articulation of Hellenic identity. As we shall see, that the definition of the Hellenic community is more broadly based than Hall will allow, has significant ramifications for how, where and when Hellenic identity was articulated. For questions still remain (and this is the second major sequence of issues) concerning the reasons why the community of the Hellenes came to be defined, why it was that cult and fictive kinship came to form boundaries of belonging, and why they formed them in the way that they did. Hall argues that the community of the Hellenes, formed aggregatively as a composition of a number of local ethnic identities, was defined through the deliberate creation and manipulation of the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ by the Thessalians (pp. 154–71). Nevertheless, most anthropological theory assumes that ethnic identities can only form under the pressure of contact with other groups. Eriksen, for example, says that ‘ethnicity’ is primarily relational: For ethnicity to come about, the groups must have a minimum of contact with each other, and they must entertain ideas of each other as being culturally different from ourselves. If these conditions are not fulfilled, there is no ethnicity, for ethnicity is essentially an aspect of a relationship, not a property of a group.21

Although Hall argues that the ethnicities of the Ionians and Aeolians arose in Asia Minor through their contact with each other, he rejects the possibility that Hellenic

19

Sourvinou-Inwood 1990. Compare the Lysistrata of 411, in which Lysistrata reproaches the Greeks for destroying each other although they ‘besprinkle altars with the same holy water like kinsmen at Olympia, Pylae, and Pytho (Ar. Lysis. 1128–34)’. This suggests that the boundaries of belonging are marked by cult, which is like kinship (but is not kinship). On the other hand, Isocrates in the 4th century says that the festivals should remind the Greeks of their kinship (4. 43; cf. 5. 126). 21 1993, 11–12; cf. Barth 1969, 13–14. 20

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identity could form in the same way through contact with an ‘ethnically different’ group. To support his argument, Hall claims that the ‘colonisation movement’ (a term which Hall admits is problematic but retains for the sake of convention) was not an important element in the realisation of Hellenic identity, since he states (p. 91) that, if it were, the Greeks would have to have seen non-Greeks as a ‘mirror’ ‘in which Greek settlers might contemplate their own specificity’, that such an awareness of difference (with a resultant awareness of similarity) would have to be disseminated quickly through the Mediterranean ‘to construct a singular Hellenic consciousness’, and that ‘the watershed for this process was the eighth century’. We will return to the question of timing shortly, but first we need to deal with the issue of difference. Hall analyses Greek contacts with non-Greeks in ‘colonial’ contexts, concentrating on Sicily and southern Italy and suggests that originally there was not necessarily perceived to be much difference culturally between the newcomers and the indigenous peoples (pp. 91–97). However, while Hall is right to reject a ‘simplistic core-periphery model’ (p. 121), the experience in Sicily was not necessarily the experience elsewhere. In the East the Greeks came into contact with mature cultures with developed cultural traditions. Contact with the outside world through Cyprus was reinvigorated in the 10th century (if indeed it had ever been broken), and by the 8th century the Greeks had developed substantial contacts with the East, whether through trading connections with the Phoenicians, travel to and settlement in Egypt and the Levantine littoral, or contact with Phoenician settlers in Cyprus, Pithekoussai and the Greek mainland.22 In Egypt, the Greeks thought of themselves as outsiders. Greeks and Carians from Asia Minor had probably been involved in Egypt as mercenaries since the 7th century, had started settling in Egypt perhaps as early as the late 7th century but certainly by the early 6th century,23 and in the Archaic period Egypt was forming in the Greek imagination as ancient, exotic, and Other.24 Although Hall points to a degree of assimilation of the Greek mercenary communities in Egypt (p. 119), these Greeks were also aware of differences in language between themselves and the Egyptians. Significantly, in an inscription dating to the early 6th century, Greek mercenaries describe themselves as alloglossoi, those of a different language (Meiggs and Lewis 1988, 7(4) a; cf. Hdt. 2. 154. 4). That the Greeks were generally considered to be—and felt themselves to be—outsiders in Egypt seems to be confirmed by Amasis’ regularisation of Naucratis as a Greek settlement in Egypt (Hdt. 2. 178).25 Elsewhere, the negotiation of difference was more complex. As Hall concedes, the poets of Asia Minor found in Lydia, on the one hand, wealth and exotica which they

22 For Phoenician craftsmen in Greece, see Coldstream 1982; S.P. Morris 1992, 124–49; Boardman 1999, 56–62. For a more cautious assessment of the evidence, see Hoffman 1997. Greeks and Phoenicians at Pithekoussai: Ridgway 1992, 111–18; Coldstream 1993, 95. Greeks working with Phoenicians: Ridgway 1990; 1992, 20–30; 1994; Boardman 1990; Aubet 1993, 314–16. Greeks travelling and trading in the Mediterranean: Boardman 1990. For scepticism about the level of Greek involvement at Al Mina and elsewhere, see Graham 1986; 1990, 53; Negbi 1992; Snodgrass 1994; Papadopoulos 1997. 23 Austin 1970, 15–34; Braun 1982, 36. 24 See Hartog 2001, 41–77. 25 For the Greeks at Naucratis, see Austin 1970, 22–33; Braun 1982, 37–43; Boardman 1999, 117–32.

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aspired to, and, on the other, despicable luxury.26 The Greeks of Asia Minor found in the Lydians ‘difference’, even if not Absolute Otherness—a difference founded not only on lifestyle but also in the late 7th century sharpened by military dominance (Mimnermus fr. 14 Westrev.; Hdt. 1. 14–19. 1) and in the 6th century by conquest (Hdt. 1. 26–28). Sometimes the ‘edges’ that marked difference could only be found as they were articulated. Homi Bhabha, in the context of the development of the pluralistic nationspace, talks about the intervals of contestation at the edges of identity, where the internally developed sense of the self is in a constant and shifting dialogue with externally induced sense of difference.27 From a very early date, the communities of the Aegean desired Eastern orientalia (evidenced by finds at Lefkandi, Athens and Crete for example),28 and items and practices derived from the East became significant for marking out and differentiating elite practices within communities. The significance of this ‘Orientalising’ was not that the Greeks borrowed, but that they adapted, Eastern artistic and literary idiom and transformed it so that through their engagement with another culture, they created their own cultural expressions—they created difference.29 Yet although language and culture may have been a ways of finding difference, it does not mean—as Hall sets out—that they were also means of defining Hellenic identity. However, they did create a context in which the Hellenic identity could develop.30 Hall says (p. 121): ‘Greeks settlers cannot have failed to be aware of linguistic, cultural and perhaps even ethnic differences between themselves and the populations with whom they came into contact, but there is no evidence that they conceived of this difference in Hellenic (as opposed to civic, regional or sub-Hellenic) terms until well into the Classical period.’ But that is to overlook the Hellenium at Naucratis. The Hellenium was founded probably in the early 6th century for the gods of the Hellenes,31 and Herodotus says Amasis gave the Greeks this land so that they could have somewhere in Egypt to erect their own altars and temples (Hdt. 2. 178). While it is true that the foundation of the sanctuary was achieved by a small group of Greek states (and there is no indication that the Hellenium was necessarily a sanctuary for all Greeks), those Greeks involved in founding the Hellenium did recognise the existence of the Hellenic community and its gods, and expressed this recognition in terms of cult. It is also surely significant that this articulation of Hellenicity occurred in Egypt, a place where the Hellenes had identified themselves as not belonging, both in terms of language and in terms of cult (so that they felt the need for their own altars and temples). On this basis it is hard not to see the Hellenium as an identification and expression of the Hellenic community in the face of difference. 26

See Kurke 1992; 1999, esp. 20, 185; I. Morris 2000, 178–85. Bhabha 1990, 297–302. 28 Coldstream 1977, 55–65, 109–39; 1982; Boardman 1990; Ridgway 1992, 22–23; Popham 1994; S.P. Morris 1992, esp. 150–72; Osborne 1996, 40–51; Snodgrass 2000, 330–35. 29 For the Eastern derivation of Greek literature and artistic idiom in the Archaic period, see esp. Burkert 1992; West 1966; 1997. For adaptation of Eastern idiom, see Boardman 1967, 73–108; 1998, 83–117; Osborne 1998, 43–51; Mitchell forthcoming. 30 There are some indications in Homer that there was a sense of a single Hellenic language, but as Hall claims language is not used explicitly as a means of defining Hellenic identity as was to be the case in Herodotus and Thucydides. 31 Austin 1970, 22–24; Möller 2000, 106. Note also, however, Bowden 1996. 27

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Herodotus also tells us that the Hellenium was built by the Ionians of Chios, Teos, Phocaea and Clazomenae, the Dorians of Rhodes, Cnidos, Harlicarnassus and Phaselis, and the Aeolians of Mytilene. As Hall himself has argued, the different subethnic identities of the Aeolian and Ionian communities of Asia Minor seem to have crystallised through contact with each other, and ‘Ionian-ness’ itself may have first been articulated in Asia Minor (pp. 67–73). It is also likely (as Hall points out) that the myths explaining the mainland origins of the communities of Asia Minor originated in Asia Minor. It is striking then that it is the communities of Asia Minor, whom we know felt the pressure of difference from their Eastern neighbours both at home in Asia Minor and in Egypt, who founded the Hellenium at Naucratis. This is not to say that it was the communities of Asia Minor who first articulated the community of the Hellenes, but that the founding of the Hellenium was an important moment of articulation of the Hellenic community. At this point we need to return to Hall’s insistence that if the ‘colonisation’ movement had an impact on the defining of Hellenic identity that we should see this in the 8th century. As Hall rightly notes, the Greek communities had been in contact with the non-Greek world long before the 8th century (pp. 91–97). But the process of finding and articulating difference through these early contacts must have been slow and tentative. As Hall argues, the Odyssey, a story which explores difference, is more concerned with the relationship between gods, monsters and men, than Greeks and non-Greeks as is sometimes claimed.32 Nevertheless, the Odyssey is a travel-story that probably reflects the finding of difference in the Greeks’ own early travels in the Mediterranean (though not necessarily as early as the 10th century),33 and was important for developing what Hartog has called a ‘repertoire of Otherness’.34 Indeed we should not expect an ‘instantaneous’ awareness of Hellenic identity in the 8th century, a single ‘moment’ when the Hellenic community was realised. What we see instead is a complex process. On the one hand, there was the rebuilding of contacts after the probable ‘systems collapse’ of the 12th and 11th centuries when populations declined and communities became impoverished and isolated, and a gradual but growing sense of shared culture through the development and dissemination of artistic koinai and poetic traditions, and the religious, cultural and civic value systems they represented and espoused. Together with the growing influence of cult centres, this cultural community created the conditions in which a Hellenic identity could be realised. At the same time, these pre-Hellenes were also coming into contact with those who had different cultural practices and values, whether in new ‘colonial’ situations or within their own communities. And while the sense of the community of the Hellenes was developing aggregatively, at the same time a growing sense of difference from those who did not share the same language and cultural practices was hardening. Out of an interaction between these two forces, one emphasising sameness and the other difference, Hellenic identity crystallised and Hellenic identity was realised. A question remains regarding the mechanism(s) that allowed these forces (an internal and centrifugal force and an external pressure generated by an awareness of difference) to interact and crystallise into the self-conscious realisation of the Hellenic 32 Gods, beasts, men: Vidal-Naquet 1981; Hartog 2001, 15–36. ‘Greeks and non-Greeks’ in the Odyssey (most recently) Dougherty 2001. 33 Malkin 1998. 34 Hartog 2001, 21–36.

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community. There were a number of agencies by which stories could be shared around the Aegean, and contexts in which artistic ideas could be transmitted. Travelling bards (for example) is one and sanctuaries with more than local significance is another. In particular, the Olympic games (and other festivals with trans-regional influence) provided a forum for those from different parts of the Greek world to meet and exchange ideas, and to negotiate and refine their sense of sameness and belonging through shared participation as well as their sense of difference both with each other and with those who were deemed not to belong. If the Olympic victor lists can be trusted (and Hall with some reservations argues that they can) then in 688 BC Onomastus of Smyrna was an Olympic victor.35 While we do not have another Olympic victor from Asia Minor until 588 BC (Pythagoras of Samos), the presence of a victor from Asia Minor must reflect the range of influence exerted by the games and the sanctuary. In fact, since the earliest foundation story we have linking the Greeks of Asia Minor to the mainland also originated in Smyrna in the 7th century (Mimnermus fr. 9 Westrev.), we may be seeing here the beginnings of a sense of Hellenicity as the Smyrnaeans linked themselves to the mainland communities both through kinship and through cult. The process that resulted in the crystallisation of Hellenic identity must necessarily have been slow as ideas developing in one place interacted with ideas developing at others, so that it is not surprising that the first articulations of the Hellenic community occurred in the 6th century through the institutionalisation of the festival circuit, the foundation of the Hellenium at Naucratis, and the creation of genealogies which tried to systematise on the basis of kinship the relationships between those who were now recognised themselves as belonging to a community of Hellenes. It is also not surprising that these expressions of Hellenicity occurred in more than one place, through different agencies and for a range of motives. The Hellenic community was an agglomeration, as Hall has so importantly set out, of subethnicities which themselves comprised local civic communities each with their own local loyalties and local pressures. The result was that the need to express the community of the Hellenes changed according to context. The cities of Asia Minor founded the Hellenium at Naucratis out of the need to express similarity with other Greeks in a context of difference. The Corinthians, on the other hand, probably established the explicitly Panhellenic games at Isthmia 582/21 in a quest for wealth and influence among the ‘Hellenic’ states; the Catalogue of Women was probably compiled at Athens— a centre which seemed to feel a sense of the Panhellenic community (and its potential) in the mid-6th century with the launching the Panathenaea in about 566/65 BC as a Panhellenic event.36 In fact it was the tension between local identities and the larger identity that remained a key feature of Hellenic identity. Hall goes some way to recognising this. Not only does he give Thessaly primacy as the arbiter of Hellencity in the Archaic period, but also he claims that in the Classical period the drive for the change in emphasis came from Athens. The Athenians, according to Hall, not only ‘invented a completely new mechanism for defining Hellenic identity’ in the development of the barbarian antitype, but also in the 4th century were the centre for a new understanding of Hellenicity which privileged Athens and Athenian culture, and which 35

See Moretti 1975. Fornara 1983, 26. Catalogue composed at Athens: West 1985, 168–71. Panathenaea as Panhellenic festival: Price 1999, 39. 36

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influenced and directed Hellenistic thinking on Hellenic identity. However, for Hall the ethnic foundations of the new oppositional model, which ‘could have permitted a more inclusive basis of enrolment’, ‘imploded and retreated before more cultural criteria’ (p. 227). The result was that an overarching, trans-regional, Hellenic consciousness competed not only with the self-interested Panhellenism of Athens, but also with the weaker claims of cultural ties which could not sustain the ‘national’ community (p. 228). But this is to overestimate the place of Athens on the Greek stage in the 4th century (the Athenians may have declared themselves the centre of Hellenicity but there is little evidence that anyone else in the Greek world at that time took any notice of them), and underestimate the importance of kinship as the Greek world expanded, and kinship relations between the Greeks of the mainland and ‘Greek’ cities in Alexander’s newly conquered territories were discovered.37 Ultimately, Hellenic identity was always weak. Only 31 states joined the resistance to the Persian invaders (Meiggs and Lewis 1988, 27); many others either did not take part, or actively fought on the Persian side (Hdt. 6. 48. 2–6. 49. 1; 7. 130–132, 172–174, 205. 2–3, 233; 9. 67). By the 5th century war between the Greek states was endemic, and the Persian king, by now the archetypal ‘barbarian’, was invited in to help ‘kin’ against ‘kin’. If we want to find the weakness in Hellenic identity, we need look no further than its aggregative basis—and it is in his illumination of this phenomenon that Hall has made such a valuable contribution—and the competition between the multiple identities that went together to make up the Hellenic community. To sum up: Hall is an impressive scholar who shows a remarkable command not only of a wide range of ancient sources, but also of a number of methodologies. In this book, Hall provides a number of insights into matters of substance as well as detail. However, in contrasting ethnic identity with cultural identity Hall has set up something of a straw man, and here we return to Hall’s definition of ethnic identity. If ethnic identity is defined only on the basis of fictive kinship, then it is too limited a tool for understanding Hellenic identity. Department of Classics and Ancient History University of Exeter Queen’s Building Exeter EX4 4QH UK [email protected] BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, B. 1991: Imagined Communities, revised ed. (London). Aubet, M.E. 1993: The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade (Cambridge). Austin, M.M. 1970: Greece and Egypt in the Archaic Age (Cambridge). Barth, F. 1969: ‘Introduction’. In Barth, F. (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference (Boston). Bhabha, H.K. 1990: ‘DissemiNation: time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation’. In Bhabha, H.K. (ed.), Nation and Narration (London), 291–322. 37

See Curty 1995.

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Boardman, J. 1967: Pre-Classical: from Crete to Ancient Greece (Harmondsworth). ——. 1990: ‘Al Mina and history’. OJA 9, 169–90. ——. 1998: Early Greek Vase Painting (London). ——. 1999: The Greeks Overseas, 4th ed. (London). Bowden, H. 1996: ‘The Greek settlement and sanctuaries at Naukratis’. In Hansen, M.H. and Raaflaub, K. (eds.), More Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis (Stuttgart), 17–37. Braun, T.F.R.G. 1982: ‘The Greeks in Egypt’. CAH III, part 3, 2nd ed., 32–56. Burkert, W. 1992: The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Cambridge, Mass). Clay, J.S. 1989: The Politics of Olympus. Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton). Coldstream, J.N. 1977: Geometric Greece (London). ——. 1982: ‘Greeks and Phoenicians in the Aegean’. In Niemeyer, H.G. (ed.), Phönizier im Westen (Mainz), 261–72. ——. 1993: ‘Mixed marriages at the frontier of the early Greek world’. OJA 12, 89–107. Connor, W. 1994: Ethno-Nationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton). Curty, O. 1995: Les Parenté legendaries entre cités grecque (Geneva). Dougherty, C. 2001: The Raft of Odysseus. The Ethnographic Imagination of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford). Eriksen, T.H. 1993: Ethnicity and Nationalism. Anthropologocal Perspectives (London). Foley, H.P. (ed.) 1994: The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary and Interpretive Essays (Princeton). Fornara, C.W. 1983: Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War, 2nd ed. (Cambridge). García, J.F. 2002: ‘Symbolic action in the Homeric Hymns’. ClAnt 21, 5–39. Graham, A.J. 1986: ‘The historical interpretation of Al Mina’. DHA 12, 51–65. ——. 1990: ‘Pre-colonial contacts: questions and problems’. In Descoeudres, J.-P. (ed.), Greek Colonists and Native Populations (Oxford), 45–60. Hall, J. 1997: Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge). Hartog, F. 2001: Memories of Odysseus. Frontier Tales from Ancient Greece (Edinburgh). Haubold, J. 2000: Homer’s People. Epic Poetry and Social Formation (Cambridge). Hoffman, G.L. 1997: Imports and Immigrants: Near Eastern Contacts with Iron Age Crete (Ann Arbor). Hutchinson, J. and Smith, A.D. (eds.) 1996: Ethnicity (Oxford). Just, R. 1989: ‘Triumph of the ethnos’. In Tonkin, E., McDonald, M. and Chapman, M. (eds.), History and Ethnicity (London), 71–88. ——. (1998): ‘The historicity of ethnicity’ [review of Hall 1997]. CAJ 8.2, 277–79. Konstan, D. 2001: ‘To Hellènikon ethnos: Ethnicity and the Construction of Ancient Greek Identity’. In Malkin, I. (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC), 29–50. Kurke, L. 1992: ‘The politics of èbrosÊnh in Archaic Greece’. ClAnt 11, 91–120. ——. 1999: Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold. The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton). Malkin, I. 1998: The Returns of Odysseus. Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley/Los Angeles). ——. 2001, ‘Introduction’. In Malkin, I. (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC), 1–28. Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D. 1988: A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC, revised ed. (Oxford). Mitchell, L.G. forthcoming: Panhellenism and the Barbarian in Archaic and Classical Greece (Swansea). Möller, A. 2000: Naukratis. Trade in Archaic Greece (Oxford). Moretti, L. 1957: Olympionikai, i vincitori negli antichi agoni Olimpici (Rome). Morgan, C. 1993: ‘The origins of pan-Hellenism’. In Marinatos, N. and Hägg, R. (eds.), Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches (London/New York), 18–44. Morris, I. 2000: Archaeology as Cultural History. Words and Things in Iron Age Greece (Oxford). Morris, S.P. 1992: Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton). Negbi, O. 1992: ‘Early Phoenician presence in the Mediterranean islands: a reappraisal’. AJA 96, 599–615. Osborne, R. 1996: Greece in the Making, 1200–479 BC (London). ——. 1998: Archaic and Classical Greek Art (Oxford). Papadopoulos, J.K. 1997: ‘Phantom Euboians’. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 10.2, 191–219. Parker, R.C.T. 1998: Cleomenes on the Acropolis (Inaugural lecture, Oxford). Price, S. 1999: Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge).

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Ridgway, D. 1990: ‘The first western Greeks and their neighbours, 1935–85’. In Descoeudres, J.-P. (ed.), Greek Colonists and Native Populations (Oxford), 60–72. ——. 1992: The First Western Greeks (Cambridge). ——. 1994: ‘Phoenicians and Greeks in the West: a view from Pithekoussai’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. and De Angelis, F. (eds.), The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Essays Dedicated to Sir John Boardman (Oxford), 35–46. Smith, A.D. (1986): The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford). Snodgrass, A.M. 1994: ‘The growth and standing of the early western colonies’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. and De Angelis, F. (eds.), The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Essays Dedicated to Sir John Boardman (Oxford), 1–10. ——. 2000: The Dark Age of Greece, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh). Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1990: ‘What is polis religion?’. In Murray, O. and Price, S. (eds.), The Greek City from Homer to Alexander (Oxford), 295–322. Vian, F. 1963: Les origins de Thèbes (Paris). Vidal-Naquet, P. 1981: ‘Land and sacrifice in the Odyssey: a study of religious and mythical meanings’. In Gordon, R.L. (ed.), Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge), 80–94. West, M.L. 1966: Theogeny (Oxford). ——. 1985: The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford). ——. 1997: The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford).

HELLENICETIES: MARGINAL NOTES TO A BOOK AND A REVIEW CHRISTOPHER TUPLIN Jonathan Hall has written an elegant book, Lynette Mitchell an elegant review. If my task is to disturb the dignity and repose of this situation, and to do so to some purpose, then I fear I shall disappoint. To achieve this would require the disclosure of radically subversive insights into the matters at hand, and I am too much in sympathy with too much of the book and of the review (though not always, of course, at the same points) for such a disclosure to be on the agenda. Professor Hall’s big story is that Greekness is not a given going back to some aboriginal year dot but a concept that needed to be constructed. This process had two phases, treated at unequal length in the book. The first (and most extensively discussed) occurred during the Archaic period and its salient feature was use of fictive genealogy—enshrined in the ‘Hellenic Genealogy’ recovered from Hesiodic fragments—to embrace categories such as Ionian, Dorian or Aeolian (themselves the products of early Archaic processes of self-definition) within a single Hellenic system. This reflects principles already adumbrated in Hall 1997, according to which the criteria for distinction of ethnic groups are association with specific territory, subscription to a myth of common descent, and a sense of shared history, while other features we may be inclined to associate with an ethnic group—e.g. language, religion, somatic characteristics, general cultural behaviour—are mere symbols or indicia of ethnicity. The second phase occurred during the Classical era. This involved the use of broad cultural criteria to define Greekness and the process went hand-in-hand with the ‘invention of the barbarian’: it was subscription to and practice of certain political, social and moral norms—ones which barbarians did not respect—that now distinguished people who thought of themselves as Greeks. In Hall’s terms this sounds like an abandonment of ethnicity: there is ex hypothesi no issue of shared descent, there was no association with specific territory (the Greek diaspora was too extensive and discontinuous for that), and we cannot apparently speak of shared history, since in Hall’s view we should be leery of assuming that the ideological baggage associated with the ‘Great Event’ of 480–479 in Athenocentric literature and art was taken on board by all Greeks (or even by all Greeks who had resisted Xerxes). This is a beautifully clear model for thinking about central questions of the Greek experience over a considerable span of time, and one laid out with a lucidity (perhaps a dangerously seductive one) that was perhaps sometimes lacking in Hall’s earlier book. But it is, of course, a reviewer’s function to ask if the water is perhaps a touch muddier than Hall would have us believe. This is what Mitchell has done— though my slightly grubby cliché is far removed from the spirit of polite enquiry in which she has conducted the exercise—and it is what I shall do. Time is short and my remarks may lack the elegant through-composed quality that the works which prompt them (and the readers of AWE ) would properly deserve. 1 First, various points arising more or less directly from the Hellenic Genealogy. 1.1 Mitchell (above p. 410) complains that this excludes, for example, Argive Inachidae, Arcadians and Locrians, and that it will not do to claim that these are people who were not thought of as Hellenic in Archaic times. But I imagine Hall could respond that the representation of Hellenicity through this genealogy is partisan spin, not a sober and systematic attempt to embrace in the same way everyone who

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would actually have been seen as part of the Hellenic continuum. His view of the genealogy does, after all, explicitly and importantly involve a degree of deliberate Thessalian manipulation. 1.2 Mitchell draws attention (above p. 411) to Archaic autochthony-myths as assertions of local identity ‘at the cost of’ Hellenic identity—i.e. as signs of the incompleteness of the general fictive genealogy as a criterion of identity.1 But can they not be seen (perhaps most importantly seen) as powerful constructive evidence for the existence of that Hellenic identity? States which espoused autochthony-myths were arguably claiming a special place within the Hellenic continuum, not seeking to secede therefrom. Mitchell (above p. 411) implies there might be a difference in use of such myths between the Archaic and the post-Archaic period. But why should there be? Imperial Athenian claims about autochthony were surely quite as assertive as any Archaic attempts to trade on the concept, but they were not denials of Greekness— whatever you think Greekness means in the Classical era. This is not to deny, of course, that we are dealing with a very specific example of the general phenomenon of ethnic identity-construction through fictive genealogy—one in which a place is reserved for particularity as well as absorption.2 Hellenicity is not a melting-pot, just a container. 1.3 For Hall the only criteria of ethnic identity categorically parallel to fictive genealogy are association with a territory and a sense of shared history. But what about shared mutually intelligible language? Is this not really a sine qua non for the attempt to create a genealogical link between a set of people and therefore something more than a logically incidental indicium? Is it not more than a contingent fact (even if not demonstrably an analytically necessary one) that the targets of the Thessalian genealogical (and political) agenda were Greek-speakers? These questions lead to two further and distinct lines of thought. 1.3.1 On the one hand, it is, of course, true that the genealogies in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women extend to embrace representatives of (sometimes very distant) areas whose historical inhabitants spoke other languages. But this is precisely the point at which the genealogical exercise is doing something other than defining Hellenicity— or rather engaging in a different aspect of that process, the one that consists in asserting superiority over outsiders. Ethnic identification always involves the drawing of contrasts: if (some) Archaic Greeks were using genealogy to establish ethnic identity (and if, as we must admit, they were doing so against a backdrop of other than purely anthropological agendas) it is not very surprising if the process involved not only pecking orders within the Hellenic container (contrast the position of Aeolus and Dorus with that of Ion and Achaeus) but also the assertion of some sort of power relationship with/over people whom no one would have regarded as Greek. Of course, all of this does not represent a single coherently thought-out set of actions by a single mind at a single moment. Rather we see reflected in the genealogies different aspects of the way ‘us and them’ played in the Archaic Zeitgeist. 1 In doing so she runs together being earth-born and being aÈtÒxyvn—a distinction Hall (p. 205) is for keeping, perhaps because it allows him to maintain that Athenian autochthony is more about the link with a particular piece of land than with particular descent-group. 2 It is symptomatic that for Herodotus the people of Ceos can be ‘an Ionian ethnos from Athens’ (8. 46. 2). This statement, functionally equivalent to calling the Naxians ÉI«new épÚ ÉAyhn°vn gegonÒtew (8. 46. 3), makes the Ceans an ethnos, not just part of an ethnos. Similarly 8. 66 (the further Xerxes went into Greece the more ethnea joined him) is a statement about political states conceived as ethnea.

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1.3.2 On the other hand, we need to look further at Hall’s views about language. His position seems to amount to this: the Greeks were unable to perceive Ionic, Doric and Aeolic speech as related versions of a single ‘Greek’ language, not because they were not clever enough to notice subtle consistent differentiae (and so simply regarded it all as a single Greek language rather than a series of related dialects) but because the differentiae were, to them, so gross that they heard the several modes of speech as different languages. Hence, language cannot have been a driving factor in the emergence of an ethnic community which (as it happened) embraced the speakers of Ionic, Doric and Aeolic. Instead (presumably) the conscious discovery of mutual intelligibility turns out to be a consequence or epiphenomenon of emergent ethnic consciousness. But is this really very plausible? Can we validate Hall’s claims of comparatively poor mutual intelligibility between what we see as Greek dialects? Comparison with dialects of modern languages begs the question; and Classical texts do not very reliably justify the claim.3 So far as the Archaic era is concerned, the Odyssey poet’s treatment of Achaeans and Dorians (along with Cydonians, Eteo-Cretans and Pelasgians) as different language groups in Crete does not prove anything about mutual intelligibility (19. 172f.). The whole question is precisely whether the grossness of the differentiae can be large enough to permit ‘Achaean’ and ‘Dorian’ to be different gl«ssai while being mutual intelligible. So it would be best not to make the argument depend on absolutes of poor intelligibility. So long as, for whatever reason, ‘Achaean’ and ‘Dorian’ can be thought of as different languages, language does militate against rather than in favour of Hellenicity. But the crucial point in the story is the one at which speakers of Doric realise that speakers of Ionic are (very much) more perfectly and naturally (i.e. without conscious process of language-learning) intelligible than speakers of Phoenician or Carian or Lydian or Sicel or Thracian or whatever. This is something which (a) could (should?) be part of the general process of mutual cultural discovery of which Mitchell speaks, (b) needs to happen at the centre of the Greek world (since it depends on an inter-active awareness of several ‘Greek’ and non-Greek modes of speech and particularly on awareness of the different experience of dealing with Greek and non-Greek speakers among Greek speakers who did not normally co-exist with non-Greek speakers),4 (c) might take quite a long time (so the time slippage between the start of colonisation and textual evidence for ‘Hellenes’ does not prove that colonisation has little causal connection with the emergence of Hellenic consciousness: cf. 2.1.2), and (d) is, if not a logical prerequisite for construction of fictive genealogies, also surely not logically posterior to the true emergence of Hellenicity. 1.4 I have moved a little away from the Hellenic genealogy itself in some of these comments. I come back to it with one further remark. One might reasonably feel that ethnicity always involves some intimation of ‘family’ relationship between the participants. (That is why ‘the tribe of lawyers’ must always be a metaphor.) But one might assume that Hall is seeking to prove something more than this about the Greek

3 I have in mind passages such as Thuc. 3. 94, Plat. Prot. 341C, Apol. 17D, A.Ch. 560f. or Boeotian, Megarian and Spartan speakers in Aristophanes. 4 Hall is right enough, no doubt, that bilingualism in colonial areas would qualify simple ethno-linguistic differentiation—though the philological evidence for such bilingualism is fairly thin. It should not be forgotten, though, that in a world devoid of immediate long-distance communications, contact with non-Greek speakers may be needed to prompt a conscious realisation that all the people one normally meets are Greek speakers.

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case, since he gives fictive genealogy such a high status in his account of the Archaic move to Hellenicity. The question then is whether there is anything that makes the Greek case special. The answer suggested by perusal of the evidence and of Robert Fowler’s paper on the topic5 is precisely that Greek genealogical thinking is particularly artificial, but this brings one back again to the role of a manipulative and partisan ‘political’ agenda. Visible terminological fall-out from that agenda is (a) a pointer to the existence of that agenda and (b) a terminus ante quem for the emergence of Hellenicity, but this conjunction is not a guarantee that the agenda is the major cause of the Hellenicity. First visibility is not first existence,6 and what we see might just be a well-targeted exploitation of an already emerging sense of community—something which plays a significant role in the way Hellenicity actually turned out (and the terms in which it was expressed, including the role of the word ÜEllhnew) but is only a part of the picture and one whose absence would not have meant that some version of the picture never got drawn.7 2 Next, then, various remarks about other parts of the picture. 2.1 A feature of Hall’s position on developments in the Archaic period is that, while Ionian, Dorian or Achaean identity is seen as having resulted from contact between emerging subethnic groups, Hellenic identity cannot be imagined as emerging in the same way, because (a) there was a lack of suitably different ethnic groups for enough Greeks to respond to together as ‘Greeks’ (as opposed to in reference to smaller-scale entities) and (b)—a different sort of reason—because Hellenic identity did not emerge when it should have done on such a scenario, i.e. (given the colonising era) in the 8th century. Mitchell responds to (a) by adducing the Hellenium and to (b) by questioning Hall’s expectations about a chronologically close relationship between colonisation and Hellenic consciousness. 2.1.1 The Hellenium at Naucratis is an ‘important moment of articulation of the Hellenic community’ (Mitchell, above p. 416), but it is not necessarily the first such moment (the first survival of terminology cannot be assumed to be the first moment of possible use: cf. 1.4) and should rather be seen as a proof of pre-existence of the concept—a concept which, it turns out, is available for use by a disparate group of Greeks (Chios, Teos, Phocaea, Clazomenae; Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, Phaselis; Mytilene) not only to distinguish themselves from Egyptians but also to mark themselves off from Aeginetans, Samians and Milesians who had their own Naucratis sanctuaries. The interplay between crystallisation of Hellenicity and maintenance of identities within Hellenicity already noted (1.2, 1.3.1) recurs. Mitchell does recognise this prin5

Fowler 1998. I have suggested elsewhere (Tuplin 1999) that there could have been more bãrbaroi in Greek discourse before the Persian Wars watershed than we now see. The same goes for ÜEllhnew. The local particularity of the text-categories surviving from the Archaic period militates against preservation of the signs of Hellenicity as well as those of barbarousness. 7 The terminology is also no guarantee of a particular story around the agenda. Fowler, for example, assumes the Thessalo-Amphictyonic genealogy postdates the Sacred War. But need it be so? Thessaly is a dominant force at all relevant dates before and after the Sacred War; and the idea that a range of central Greek peoples within Thessaly’s political ambit are ‘Hellenes’ is already embedded in the Odyssey poet’s ‘Hellas and Argos’ formulae. (Fowler even believes Hesiod Op. 653, on the hosts from Hellas at Aulis, to presuppose a widely extended sense of ÑEllãw.) Central Greek audiences for epic performances could have been wondering what ever became of Homer’s (narrow) Hellas and Hellenes and be ready to accept creative answers long before the early 6th century. The prompt that turns an expanding Hellas into the progenitor of Greeks from other localities is unknowable, but a literary component is not excluded. 6

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ciple (when, for example viewing Corinthian foundation of the Isthmian Games as a ‘Hellenic’ event which will also create differential kudos for Corinth) but she neglects it in this instance, seeing only the differentiation between Greeks and Egyptians. Her wish is to demonstrate that as a matter of fact, if enough different Greeks did together confront a non-Greek environment, they duly reached for ‘Hellene’ as a term to describe themselves and to suggest that as a matter of principle Hall is therefore wrong to think that the colonial environment is logically detached from the birth of Hellenicity. But—and not least because not all the ‘Greeks’ in the place were as a matter of fact gathered into the Hellenium—Hall could probably plead that this is exceptio quae probat regulam. 2.1.2 Any process of collective self-definition would always be a slow-burning epiphenomenon of colonial diaspora within a larger context of a post-Bronze Age development involving contacts both inside what would become the Greek world and between components of that world and what would in the long run be seen as firmly outside it. Hence, a delay between 8th- or 7th-century colonisation and 6th-century Hellenicity does not disprove a causal link. There is perhaps a danger here that the whole discourse goes into reverse and the colonial phenomenon turns out to be an epiphenomenon of the post-Bronze Age story, so that (in a sense) Hall could say he was right after all—colonisation as such is not a distinct driver of Hellenicity. Certainly what is in fact important in Mitchell’s view is not what was happening out at the periphery (cf. also 1.3.2) but the structural features that brought representatives of both inner and outer bits of the emergent ‘Hellenic’ world together either virtually (wandering bards who carry a shared or soon-to-be-shared story around: cf. also n. 7) or actually (panegyric events at which people congregate). In particular, the collection of lots of disparate people in one place at Olympia provides fertile opportunity to refine a sense of similarity and difference. It is also a barometer: if a Smyrniot is there in 688 BC winning a competition, then this shows Smyrna buying in to an emerging sense of belonging, whether or not what he was belonging to might yet have been called Hellenic. Hall, of course, agrees in thinking Olympia an important locus in the story, but he differs from Mitchell in insisting that the significant horizon is 6th century (that being when exclusive access to competition for ‘Hellenes’ started, something Mitchell contends is inadequately demonstrated—or demonstrable?) and in neglecting the cultic aspect of the site—a wider issue for Mitchell who, understandably enough (one may think) in the light of Herodotus 8.144 (cf. below 2.3), suspects that religious activity has an at least slightly privileged status in the construction of Greek identity.8

8 Two incidental Olympian observations. (1) Hall (p. 157) notes Cleisthenes’ wish for Agariste’s husband to be ‘the best of the Hellenes’ and the story’s association with an invitation issued at Olympia, as a way of linking Olympia, an exclusive Hellenic right-to-compete, and promotion of the concept of ‘Hellene’. Yet, the suitors included an Aetolian (Males), though elsewhere Hall sees the absence of Aetolian victors in 6th century Olympia (and putative absence of Aetolian competitors) as tellingly in line with persistent questions about the Greekness of Aetolians (and thus another confirmation of Olympia’s role in the embedding of Hellenicity). Perhaps this is a harmless irony, perhaps it shows that lacunose victor lists make argument from silence tricky. Without prejudice to Males’ Greekness, one might also wonder whether the wish of an Athenian source to insist that the eventual Athenian victor was the ‘best of the Hellenes’ had an impact of the formulation of the story as Herodotus heard it. (2) Hall claims a significant coincidence between the pattern of appearance of Central Greek Olympic victors and first attestations of the term ‘Hellenes’ (to show that Olympia was a locus through which

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2.1.3 Hall’s picture of the emergence of sub-group identities (Achaean, Ionian, etc.) in the context of relationships in the colonial diaspora does something to satisfy an instinctive feeling that the colonial experience ought to make some contribution to the emergence of Greek identity. If colonial life does not embed a sharp sense of Greek and non-Greek (‘Greeks and barbarians’ avant la lettre) then at least it can help with that other characteristic of Greekness (already alluded to several times), the fact that in appropriate contexts ‘foreigners’ start very close to home. But one might go a little further and say that it exemplifies a process of more-or-less consciously artificial identity-construction which will later be used to produce the specifically ‘Hellenic’ version of a general Greek sense of community. That is, although distilling ‘subethnicities’ at first sight militates against a general sense of Greekness, the process both creates some largish building blocks which can in due course be used in fictive genealogy and provides a model for agenda-driven identity construction. 2.2 Mitchell (above pp. 417–18) outlines criticism of Hall’s second phase in the history of Greekness, the putative emergence of a new, Atheno-centric and culturebased definition to replace kinship-related ethnicity. In fact, she goes so far as to describe the contrast between ethnic identity and cultural identity as a straw man, the truth being that both before and after any notional early Classical divide caused by the Persian Wars and the ‘invention of the barbarian’, Greekness had both a fictive kinship and a cultural component. Matching the smaller space Hall devotes to this phase, I offer just a couple of remarks. 2.2.1 A central feature of much modern discourse about ethnicity is the stress laid on its being a construction which trades on a variety of features. Is not the proposition that at one time Greeks saw their Greekness as essentially an issue of shared descent whereas later they saw it as one of cultural characteristics inherently unlikely? (It would be an illegitimate equivocation in this context to maintain that, in Hall’s terms, the second phase is not a matter of ethnicity at all.) 2.2.2 Hall’s eventual suggestion (p. 228) is that conditions after 480 made the size and extent of the group of people to be considered Hellenic too great for the imagined kinship community to be sustainably real; so ethnicity was abandoned (at least above the sub-group level: Ionians, Dorians and so forth went on being self-conscious) and culture had to do instead. I think it might be more to the point to say that post480 hegemonic arrangements were predicated on splitting the ‘Greek community’ (not least along sub-Hellenic ethnic lines), and a great deal of the discourse about ‘cultural Greekness’ occurs within a context which is broadly political and therefore in the end coloured by those hegemonic arrangements.9 Put another way, after 480 the the Thessalo-Amphictyonic fictive genealogy was promoted). The victors in question belong in 680, 648, 616, 556, 536, 524, 508, 504, 500, but since (a) the doubling of the number of victors as between the 7th and the 6th century has to be set against the 66% increase (53 to 89) in the number of victors’ names known from the two centuries and (b) Alcman’s later 7th century use of ‘Hellas’ in reference to mainland Greece (fr. 77P) was followed by an absence of central Greek victors for some half-century, one could question whether there is any very clear patterning here. 9 Much of it is too implicit to admit of specific comment. But Pericles’ Funeral Speech or Isoc. 4. 150 (on ÜEllhn as the name for a diãnoia and Athenian pãideusiw, not koinØ fÊsiw, as the qualification for being called ÜEllhn) evidently fit the bill. Another perhaps less familiar case is Thuc. 7. 63. 3: when Nicias speaks of foreign sailors being ‘not really Athenian [but] deemed such because of [their] understanding of our dialect and imitation of our trÒpoi’, this is the desperate—albeit still self-regarding—persuasive redefinition of an imperial general in a pickle.

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Persian empire was always a fact of potential relevance (at least in the Athenocentric record which is mostly what lies to our hand). Self-identification in that regard was apt to draw on an ideologically based sense of identity: it was deemed to be certain political, moral and practical qualities which had enabled the victorious defence of Greece against Persian attack, and everyone knew both that that defence had not been conducted by all of the Greeks within the mainland and that that attack had partly been carried out by Greeks from the Aegean and Asia. One could not express the matter in strictly ethnic terms, and talk of the barbarians could in time surreptitiously remove misaligned Greeks from the frame (even if the motives for so doing were not entirely altruistic). Meanwhile discourse about the relations between one set of Greeks and another took for granted by now that one knew who counted as Greeks (unless, of course, there were grounds for concern: hence the dubious tones adopted by Thucydides when writing about Aetolians) and concentrated on more particularised contrasts, sometimes exploiting subethnic categories and associated stereotypes, sometimes more local ones. Greekness was not the issue here, and we are just dealing with the same general centrifugal tendency in the Greek experience (cf. Fowler 1998) which was always there and was (as Mitchell notes) inherent in the aggregative approach to ethnic definition. There is continuity here either side of 480 BC. In these circumstances we hear little about fictive kinship as such. At the same time, as Hall himself acknowledges, the idea of the Hellenic genealogy is real enough for people to tinker with it and produce new versions appropriate to new contexts. Since the genealogical game was always artificial, new artifices in Athenian tragic texts (partisan and local though they be) can still be seen as a sign that kinship is a live concept rather than hailed as a proof that it meant nothing. The difference is in the impact that could be made. A particular conjunction of Homeric texts, cultural developments and Thessalian hegemonic aspirations had managed to wish into existence and general acknowledgment an ethnic category of Hellenes. This had been so successful (and had indeed been reinforced by the possibility of saying that it was ‘Hellenes’ who had defeated the clearly alien Persians, whether or not this was only said after the event)10 that there was no possibility of radically changing it. The paternity of Ion could be adjusted or the relationship of Macedonian kings to Greek descent groups overhauled, but even the power of imperial Athens could not alter the ethnic name.11 2.3 The conjunction of Athens, the ethnic name and the defeat of Persia brings me finally to the master-text of Greek ethnic definition, Herodotus 8. 144. In this chapter the Athenians represent themselves as prevented from siding with Persians by (a) the destroyed sanctuaries of Attica and (b) ‘the Greek [nation], which is of the same blood and language, and the common sanctuaries and sacrifices and customs which are of the same type’ (tÚ ÑEllhnikÒn, §Ún ˜maimÒn te ka‹ ımÒglvsson, ka‹ ye«n fldrÊmatã te koinå ka‹ yus¤ai ≥yeã te ımÒtropa). It may be that the sanctuaries and sacrifices and the êthea are characteristic of those embraced in tÚ ÑEllhnikÒn; but the mode of expression seems to associate blood and language more specially closely with what constitutes tÚ ÑEllhnikÒn than the other matters—almost in Hall’s terms a distinction between criteria (blood, language) and indicia (religion, customs). The use of

10

On this cf. Tronson 1991. It is not irrelevant that at a much more local level claims of sugg°neia between cities flourished as a species of political discourse ( Jones 1999). 11

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tÚ ÑEllhnikÒn is characteristic, making it a sort of slightly depersonalised or conceptualised equivalent of ofl ÜEllhnew. On the one hand, it is not literally ‘the Greeks’ who are stopping them (as though they were all there in Athens standing in the way) but the virtual community of Greeks; on the other hand, we are not entirely divorced from a collectivity of real people ( just as when sÊmpan tÚ ÑEllhnikÒn collects at Plataea: 9. 30): they constitute a ‘personal’ argument, where religious emplacements and processes and social customs constitute a conceptual one. It is thus illegitimate for Hall to claim implicitly that we have four items (blood, language, religion, customs) in an order of ascending or descending importance and explicitly that it is an ascending order, with culture (≥yea ımÒtropa) at the end = top of the list.12 On the contrary it is, if anything, blood and language which have primacy—and of the two perhaps blood (named first), i.e. membership in some extended sense of a single ‘family’. In short, if Herodotus has anything black-and-white to contribute in the present context, it is as an expressor of Hall’s Archaic conception of Hellenicity not (as he himself claims) the Classical conception. In reality, however, this is not the way to look at it. A distinguished historian of Greek religion has written of Herodotus’ sentence as follows: It is also often the case that shared blood and shared religion and many other things besides are felt to go together, and if we apply the analyst’s distinction between definitional criteria and mere indicators too rigorously we will not be catching the native view. I am not wishing to displace blood from its first place in Herodotus’ list of the Greek criteria of identity, but I would insist that a Greek would normally simply assume that shared blood would have as a consequence shared religious practices and most commonly actually shared festivals. One sacrifices with one’s kinsmen, near and remote. (Parker 1998, 21)

That seems to me to get it right. What Herodotus’ text actually does is express the co-existence of ‘ethnic’ and ‘cultural’ components in a fashion alien to neither the late Archaic nor the Classical frame of mind. It is a significant part of the peculiar fascination of the Histories that their author seems at home with both frames of mind. But in this case he does not have to make a choice. Nor do we. The sub-title of Hall’s book is ‘Between Ethnicity and Culture’: enough said. Department of Classics and Ancient History School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology University of Liverpool 12 Abercromby Square Liverpool L69 7WZ UK [email protected]

12 Translation are apt to (appear to) support the idea of a single list of commensurate items. ‘Then again there is the fact that we are all Greeks—one race speaking one language, with temples to the gods and religious rites in common, and with a common way of life’ (Waterfield). ‘Again there is the Greek nation—the community of bloody and language, temples and ritual; our common way of life’ (De Selincourt). ‘Ce qui unit tous les Grecs—même sang et même langue, sanctuaires et sacrifices communs, semblables moeurs et coutumes’ (Legrand).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Fowler, R.L. 1998: ‘Genealogical thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the creation of the Hellenes’. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44, 1–19. Hall, J., 1997: Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge). Jones, C.P. 1999: Kinship Diplomacy in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass.). Parker, R.C.T. 1998: Cleomenes on the Acropolis (Oxford). Tronson, A. 1991: ‘The Hellenic League of 480 BC—Fact or Fiction?’. Acta Classica 34, 93–110. Tuplin, C.J. 1999: ‘Greek Racism? Observations on the Character and Limits of Greek Ethnic Prejudice’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. (ed.), Ancient Greeks West and East (Leiden), 47–75.

THE GOOD OF ETHNICITY ROBIN OSBORNE Lynette Mitchell makes two main points in her useful discussion of Hall: that cult is important, as well as (fictive) kinship in the formation of the ethnic identity of the Hellenes; and that the circumstances in which Hellenic ethnicity was formed must have been more oppositional than Hall suggests. Between them, I suggest, these two points raise rather sharply the question of what was, and what is, the good of ethnicity. There were all sorts of ways in which individuals might associate themselves with one another within the ancient Mediterranean. Of these it is hard to think that language was not prime. An individual unable to communicate with another can hardly find it easy to claim a common bond. But language might establish only the weakest of links, and dress, bodily practice (naked athletics, ligatures), use of characteristic elements of material culture (kylikes, kraters), forms of ritual activity (sacrifice, burial), and the like were all available to allow claims to be strengthened, or denied. Cult would seem to offer a further means of association or disassociation of a very similar sort. Greek polytheism allowed the envelope to be stretched more or less at will; absence from some list of Olympians would not necessarily be sufficient to exclude a cult from being worshipped by a Hellene, but equally, as Herodotus’ keenness to indulge in interpretatio Graeca suggests, identification of a divinity worshipped with a divinity worshipped in Greece would not of itself do much to back up identification as a Hellene in the face of scepticism. Kinship, however, was always different. Kinship was invisible and undeniable. What is notable about the Hellenic genealogies on display in, and even before, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women is that they are not exclusively interested in bloodlines. Marriage is a sufficient way in. As a result, the autochthonous can be joined up. Local identities can be combined with Hellenic identity without conflict. The fiction of kinship was one that it was never in anyone’s interests to deny, since by the same measure that kinship claims were undeniable, they were also unprovable. Any attempt to expel from the club on this criterion was liable to backfire. Just as Cyrene will acknowledge the Theran claims to it so Xanthos will acknowledge kinship ties with Kytenion: neither could ever know when it might want to make use of the link so established. Shared cults might have all sorts of uses—though the cultic variety to be found across Greece should not be underestimated—but they would never substitute for kinship. If ethnicity is good for anything at all, Hall must be right to insist that it should not be subsumed into cultural identity more generally. But was Hellenic identity really something formed ‘in the élite environment of the Olympic games during the course of the sixth century’ to strengthen the alliances between ruling families of various regions? It is easy to see how the Olympic, Nemean, Pythian and Isthmian games could take advantage of a sense of Hellenic identity, advertising themselves as places where anyone who claimed to be anyone within the Hellenic world needed to be and be seen to be. But this is something very different from those festivals, or any one of those festivals, being the occasion for the formation of Hellenic identity. As I have just argued, the importance of kinship-derived ethnicity lies in the undeniability. When the Macedonians wheel out kinship links with Argos, they cannot be denied the right to participate (not that that stops them from being defined as culturally different for centuries to come). Hall’s attraction

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(p. 167) to Wilamowitz’s suggestion that the emergence of Hellenic identity was founded on exclusion seems to me to sit ill with his commitment to Hellenic identity being fundamentally based on (fictive) kinship. But if ethnicity would not serve the purposes of keeping the Olympics (etc.) exclusive, nor is it easy to see that ethnicity would be much of a magnet to attract participation. Anyone moved by the argument ‘if you don’t come and participate at Olympia we won’t continue to recite your bit of the Hellenic genealogy’ is going to be someone to whom the networking which Olympia makes possible was already important. What ethnicity was good for was bonding together groups that might otherwise seem disparate in the face of some further group from which it was necessary or important, for whatever reason, to maintain a distance. The self-identification of those from various Greek cities who find themselves in strange places and faced with an established resident population shows clearly what the choices are. Those mercenaries in Egypt who identify themselves as alloglossoi simply market their difference: what they have in common is that they don’t speak the language of the Egyptians. But those in whose company Archilochos found himself on Thasos he identified as Panhellenes. ‘Scum’ they may have been, but they laid claim to something other than merely their difference from the Thracians to bind them together. Once the potential for asserting a common identity was realised in such situations of opposition, that common identity could be mobilised in other circumstances too, as a means of embarrassing a wide range of people into participation. But the initial opposition seems to me fundamental, not because anthropological theory says so, but because of what fictive-kinship based ethnicity was and was not good for. But what is ethnicity good for? What do we understand better as a result of Hall’s work? Surely what is most striking is that ethnicity was so little good to the Greeks. If Hall is right that it is not the Persian wars that produce Greek ethnicity, it remains the case that the Persian wars call forth the most prominent parading of arguments based on ethnicity. Yet Herodotus provides not only the classic articulation of Greek identity (8. 144), but also the classic demonstration that fictive kinship could as well unite as divide Greeks and Persians, were anyone interested in doing so (7. 150). As Mitchell points out, the paltry showing of Greek states on the Serpent Column shows clearly how little political force the salience of ethnicity could generate. Unlike Mitchell, however, I see this as justifying, not undermining, Hall’s take on ethnicity. Both for our understanding of ancient Greece and to retain any optimism in the present, it is with Hall’s demonstration that Greeks found ethnicity far less good for anything than cultural Panhellenism, that is for criteria of identity that could be proven or denied, that the chief importance of his book seems to me to lie. King’s College Cambridge CB2 1ST UK [email protected]

SANCTUARY, SHARED CULT AND HELLENICITY: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL ANGLE ANTHONY SNODGRASS This contribution will address one of the areas where a difference of opinion emerges between Lynette Mitchell and Jonathan Hall. Mitchell is probably right that more attention could have been paid to Greek sanctuaries and cult in Hall’s two books (Hall might even agree), because ‘participation in common cult was from the outset an important element in the realisation of the Hellenic community’ (Mitchell, above p. 413). Community of cult might then challenge or compete with Hall’s preferred emphasis on the primacy of fictive kinship in defining Hellenic identity. This in turn might call into question his late dating of this defining process: he believes that only in Classical times did Greeks come to conceive of their differences from other peoples ‘in Hellenic terms’. To simplify, the Archaic period is the field, and cult the main occasion, for this area of disagreement. If there is one field which Greek archaeology can congratulate itself on having thoroughly explored, it is Archaic sanctuaries. From the point of view of the early excavators, searching for great works of art and architecture, the major sanctuaries were the natural first choice: these were the sites which (as the ancient texts had promised) would offer them most. But the dominance of the Archaic period, in certain important classes of finds—sculpture, jewellery, metal vessels, weapons, tools— was largely unforeseen, and probably came as a disappointment to them. Even nowadays, we are only beginning to search for the possible explanations for this phenomenon;1 but it is nevertheless a fact, and it has been repeated in many a more recent excavation. On the simplest level, the profusion of (often modest) Archaic dedications at Greek sanctuaries is testimony, in a form that does not really persist into later times, of a widespread sentiment evoked by these places. But these early dedications tell us a great deal more than that. A natural further step is to classify them, not only in the traditional terms of typology, but by their localities of origin. Nearly 20 years ago, Imma Kilian-Dirlmeier published a paper2 on the regions of origin of dedications of the 8th century BC and the beginning of the seventh, at four major Greek sanctuaries—one of the most valuable studies of this kind, duly cited and discussed by Jonathan Hall.3 Putting on one side all dedications which can be classed as regional, local, in some cases even on-site products, Kilian-Dirlmeier then surveys the range of extraneous or imported objects at the Artemis Enodia sanctuary at Pherai in Thessaly, the Heraion at Perachora, the Panhellenic sanctuary of Olympia and the Heraion of Samos. Among these four sites, Pherai at once sets itself apart because the imports comprise so small a number, proportionately and absolutely, of the mass of dedications: just 2% of the whole, or 77 pieces: it is, as Kilian-Dirlmeier says, a typical Regionalheiligtum.4 But the other three, better-known sites have a wealth of extraneous objects—enough to form a fair sample statistically—and their distribution of origins brings out some 1 2 3 4

For two possible lines of approach, see Snodgrass 1990; de Polignac 1994, 12–13. Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985. Hall 2002, 95, for Perachora and Samos; 159 for Olympia. Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985, 216.

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startling contrasts. This ‘extraneous’ category includes what are, on any definition of Hellenicity, both the Greek and the non-Greek worlds, and it is the balance between the two which is exactly our point of interest. Kilian-Dirlmeier, we should note, formulates this distinction in purely geographical terms, as between different land-masses. One consequence of this, which of course affects the balance, is the absence of a ‘Western Greek’ category: all offerings of Italian (or Sicilian) type are grouped together in the non-Greek element. At Olympia, we find a distribution which nevertheless leans heavily towards the Greek world: 77% of the non-local dedications are from within the Greek world, 23% from outside it. This preponderance would increase still further if some or many of the ‘Italian’ dedications (more than seventy of them, nearly 9% of the whole) could have passed through Greek hands on their way there, as the later pattern of Western Greek activity at Olympia would lead us to expect and as Kilian-Dirlmeier herself surmises (see below). But if this conforms to what we expect from a major (or for that matter, a minor) Greek sanctuary, then we are in for a surprise. At the Samian Heraion, these proportions are more than reversed: just over 15% of the dedications from further afield are of Greek production, nearly 85% of non-Greek. There are big contributions from Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia, North Syria and Phrygia, substantial ones from Mesopotamia and beyond, not to speak of the well-known ivories probably from Andalucia. This time the Italian element is too small to have any impact. At this stage, it might seem a natural reaction to explain the contrast in economic and social, or indeed in geographical terms—inland Peloponnesian Olympia against insular, East Aegean Samos. But there is an important check on this, in the findings from Perachora. Here we have an almost equal preponderance of non-Greek objects over Greek as at Samos—over 78% against less than 22%—with an especially large contribution from Phoenicia (325 pieces, mainly consisting of faience scarabs and beads). Geographically, this is at first sight surprising: Perachora’s most direct maritime links, like Olympia’s, are westwards, not eastwards,5 and most of the finds must antedate the building of the diolkos across the Isthmus of Corinth. But Perachora was a polis sanctuary which might be frequented by anyone from Corinth (possibly also from Megara), and these were places with an Aegean coast-line and a strong maritime tradition. Kilian-Dirlmeier singles out another such city sanctuary, Lindos in Rhodes, as providing a rare parallel for Perachora in its profusion of faience.6 The important question that lurks behind this is, of course: who were the carriers of these exotic and far-travelled, yet frequently dedicated objects? Kilian-Dirlmeier herself naturally addresses this question.7 For the mainly ‘female’ dedications of Phoenician objects at Perachora, her inclination is to look to Greek women, benefiting from long-range trade, whether on the part of their own menfolk or of Phoenicians; but in other cases, to see a substantial element as directly contributed by foreign pilgrims, coming from the lands where the objects originated (or Greek pilgrims in the case of the ‘Italian’ dedications at Olympia). Most commentators since then have much preferred the former line of explanation to the latter,8 with the addition of piracy and gift-exchange to the mechanisms in play. The neat correspondence between

5

Compare Morgan 1994, 132. Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985, 228. 7 Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985, 230 on Perachora; 231, 241 on the Italian dedications at Olympia; 241 again on Balkan dedications generally; 243 on Samos. 8 For example, Morgan 1993, 33; and Hall himself, 2002, 95–96. 6

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the ivory combs from southern Spain found at Samos and the story of the voyage of Kolaios was seen long ago9 and adds its weight to the first hypothesis. But on the other side, Christopher Simon for one believes in ‘considerable foreign influence and involvement’ at the sanctuaries of Ionia.10 Two things lend weight to Kilian-Dirlmeier’s own case for actual visitors, foreign or from overseas, at these and other Greek sanctuaries: first, the nature of some of the dedications; secondly, the fairly high incidence of two particular sources, on the one hand a region (southern Italy) where there were Greek settlers who would make plausible visitors to homeland sanctuaries, on the other an area where supporting evidence for Greek penetration and even exchange is largely lacking (the central Balkans). It is perhaps safest to follow her in her final verdict: that motivations were various, and that pilgrimage from overseas was indeed one of several practices that resulted in dedication. With all these qualifications in mind, we can return to the salient, almost polar contrast that emerged earlier in the pattern of dedications, between Olympia on the one hand, and Samos and Perachora (and perhaps Lindos by assimilation—see above p. 433) on the other. What lay behind it? The factor of the gender of the deities (and thus of their worshippers) may have affected the figures, but it cannot explain them unsupported: Olympia was, after all, a sanctuary of Hera as well as of Zeus, and there are plenty of ‘female’ dedications there too (over 100, Greek and foreign, in Kilian-Dirlmeier’s lists). The special status of the athletic festival at Olympia would perhaps also be a favoured explanation: but, as Jonathan Hall has rightly observed, Olympia ‘had a cultic life independent from the games’.11 Even when all allowance is made for distorting factors, it still emerges that, throughout the 8th and early 7th centuries BC, Olympia was apparently less favoured by foreign dedicants, and certainly very much less for foreign dedications, than certain other contemporary Greek sanctuaries. The reverse side of this coin is that Olympia is receptive to a uniquely wide range of outlying Greek regions, far beyond its own catchment-area of the western Peloponnese.12 By Archaic times, it had long ceased to be the kind of Regionalheiligtum that we find at Pherai. It looks, then, as if Hall was right to assume some special degree of specifically ethnic exclusiveness on the part of Olympia. Lynette Mitchell could justifiably make the rejoinder that the evidence cited for this exclusivity belongs entirely to a period before the dates at which Hall places the general adoption of the term ‘Hellenes’ and, presently, the introduction of the exclusion clause at the Olympic Games—that is, in both cases, within the 6th century BC. But there is nothing to prevent both arguments keeping their validity. If the early sanctuary at Olympia had a pre-existing stature, which gave it a claim on the piety of the greater part of the Greek world, but which did not strongly extend beyond the limits of that world, then it would not have been surprising for its athletic festival, in due course, to grow until it achieved recognition within the same broad limits; and finally to be formally restricted to those limits.

9 10 11 12

Freyer-Schauenberg 1966, 125. Simon 1988, 279. Hall 2002, 159. See Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985, 220 and Abb. 3.

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Addendum It would be satisfying to be able to address, in so far as one can from an archaeological viewpoint, Mitchell’s further suggestion (above p. 412) that the other three centres on the ‘stephanitic circuit’ may have operated the same ethnic exclusion as Olympia for their athletic festivals. But at present the published evidence from Delphi, Isthmia and Nemea does not enable us to carry out an exercise fully parallel to the one just attempted: in particular, the Nemea publications to date, both preliminary and final, have a primarily architectural focus. For Delphi, however, there are at least some glimpses. In his study of Orientalising cauldrons and their attachments at Olympia, H.-V. Herrmann also lists the parallel finds from Delphi.13 The proportional prevalence of non-Greek pieces over Greek imitations (13:2) closely matches that of the Olympia finds (36:5), and suggests a rough parallel between the two sanctuaries in at least this category. In a less obviously cosmopolitan class of object, bronze figurines of Geometric date, C. Rolley lists up to 10 imported examples in a total of 163,14 where Kilian-Dirlmeier noted none at all among 212 examples at Olympia.15 L. Lerat studies three bronze shields at Delphi, for each of which he posited a loosely eastern Mediterranean origin,16 in a category where Olympia offered just one miniature. Thus far there is, if anything, a hint of less ethnic exclusivity at Delphi than at Olympia; and there are well-known later Archaic dedications at Delphi to support this impression. For Isthmia we know that, after the very early inception of activity at the sanctuary, the site soon attracted pottery offerings from at least as far afield as Attica,17 in this respect perhaps echoing Delphi, but not Olympia, which was never favoured for pottery dedication. But the metalwork—the main category of comparison in Kilian-Dirlmeier’s lists—has proved to tell a much more circumscribed story. Down to the end of the 8th century at any rate, Isthmia shows little sign of having attracted dedications in metal from other regions of the Greek world, let alone from beyond it: Catherine Morgan notes just one tripod-attachment of Argive origin before concluding ‘The remaining metalwork is probably local.’18 Such selective evidence as I have given is clearly inadequate as a basis for wider conclusions. The most one can say is that it does not undermine the belief that, before its athletic festival became famous and long before it became ethnically exclusive, Olympia had been in some sense unusual: not only in the breadth of its appeal across the Greek world, but in its preferential association with visitors who came from within that world. Faculty of Classics Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DA UK [email protected] 13

Herrmann 1966, 57–58, nos. 37–49; 102, nos. 1 and 4 (Delphi); 30–32, nos. 1–36; 91–92, nos. 1–5 (Olympia). 14 Rolley 1969, 94–100, nos. 154–163. 15 Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985, 234, Abb. 16 and 17. 16 Lerat 1980. 17 For a helpful summary, see Morgan 1994, 117–28. 18 Morgan 1999, 327.

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de Polignac, F. 1994: ‘Mediation, Competition and Sovereignty: the Evolution of Rural Sanctuaries in Geometric Greece’. In Alcock, S.E. and Osborne, R. (eds.), Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece (Oxford), 3–18. Freyer-Schauenberg, B. 1966: Elfenbeine aus dem Samischen Heraion (Hamburg). Hall, J. 2002: Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago). Herrmann, H.-V. 1966: Die Kessel der Orientalisierenden Zeit (Berlin). Kilian-Dirlmeier, I. 1985: ‘Fremde Weihungen in griechischen Heiligtümern vom 8. bis zum Beginn des 7. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.’. JRGZM 32, 215–54. Lerat, L. 1980: ‘Trois Boucliers Archaïques de Delphes’. BCH 104, 93–114. Morgan, C. 1993: ‘The origins of pan-Hellenism’. In Marinatos, N. and Hägg, R. (eds.), Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches (London/New York), 18–44. ——. 1994: ‘The Evolution of a Sacral “Landscape”: Isthmia, Perachora and the Early Corinthian State’. In Alcock, S.E. and Osborne, R. (eds.), Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece (Oxford), 105–42. ——. 1999: Isthmia VIII: The Late Bronze Age Settlement and the Early Iron Age Sanctuary (Princeton). Rolley, C. 1969: Fouilles de Delphes V.2: Les statuettes de Bronze (Paris). Simon, C. 1988: ‘Foreigners, Greek Women and the Use of Archaic Ionian Shrines’. AJA 92, 279 (Abstract). Snodgrass, A.M. 1990: ‘The economics of dedication at Greek sanctuaries’. Scienze alle Antichità: Storia, Archeologia, Antropologia 3–4, 287–94.

HELLENICITY: MORE VIEWS FROM THE MARGINS GILLIAN SHEPHERD Jonathan Hall introduced his first book, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge 1997), with a somewhat apologetic statement of what the book was not about, namely the study of a collective Hellenic identity in the ancient Greek world. Instead, he concentrated on intra-Hellenic identities (Dorian, Ionian, etc.) and the problems of evidence and methodology accompanying the study of ethnic identity in the distant past. His latest work, Hellenicity, closes the loop: here Hall completes unfinished business by addressing some of the issues he earlier only touched upon with regard to Hellenic identity. Once again, his definition of ethnicity is narrower than most: relegating biological and cultural features to the level of ‘surface pointers’, he distinguishes ethnic groups by means of ‘putative subscription to a myth of common descent and kinship, an association with a specific territory and a sense of shared history’.1 He propounds two main arguments: firstly, that an overarching Hellenic identity emerged only in the 6th century, rather later than is often suggested; and secondly, that in the 5th century this Hellenic identity shifted from an ethnic basis to one dependent upon cultural criteria. Much of Hall’s first argument is contained in Chapter Four, ‘Identity and Alterity? The View from the Margins’, where he disputes the view that a sense of Hellenic identity emerged in conjunction with the overseas colonising ventures of the Greeks in the 8th century BC, as Greeks came into contact with non-Greeks. It is this issue of the role of the Greeks at the margins—particularly those in Sicily and Italy—in the development of a Hellenic identity which is addressed here, together with some of the wider ramifications of Hall’s arguments for Greek settlement in the West. One of Hall’s central arguments is that, before the 6th century, ‘sub-Hellenic’ rather than Hellenic identity was critical for group identity amongst the Greeks and that these sub-Hellenic affiliations were based upon notions of (fictive) kinship and shared history and descent. He argues further that the assertion of Dorian, Ionian, Achaean or Aeolian heritage on the part of a city was integral not only to the provision of a group identity beyond the civic, but also to laying claim to territory. If Hall is correct in emphasising the significance of these constructions of common descent in Archaic Greece, then it must have posed interesting problems for Greek colonies, for which the articulation of kinship may well have been even more fictitious than for many other Greek states. In particular, it may go some way towards expanding our explanations for the foundation stories that accompany the history of many Greek settlements abroad, particularly those in the West. Hall discusses these in the context of the Achaeans in southern Italy, arguing from them that the formulation of Achaean identity in Italy predates that in the Peloponnese and was the result of competition with the Ionians of Siris and possibly also the Dorians of Taras.2 Similar foundation stories are attached to many other sites in the West and it may be worth considering these more broadly in the light of Hall’s arguments. Sicily is an area for which we have quite specific information—mainly supplied by Thucydides—regarding the origins of the Greek settlements there. On the whole, the 1 2

Hall 2002, 9. Hall 2002, 58–65; see also Morgan and Hall 1996.

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accounts appear relatively straightforward. They name the founding city or area and the oikist(s) and lack legendary additions such as the ‘Homeric Akhaians’3 of southern Italy, although some are accompanied by racy stories such as the murder committed by Archias, the Corinthian oikist of Syracuse.4 A conspicuous aspect of these and other foundation stories is the general insistence that the settlement derived from a single area in Greece (or very occasionally two), sometimes indicated by the origin of the oikist. Thus, for example, Gela was founded by Rhodes and (in some accounts) Crete; Megara Hyblaea by Megara; Naxos by Chalchis and so on. Occasionally slight variations in origin are implied: Strabo (8. 6. 22), for example, notes that the majority of Archias’ settlers came from Tenea, but even in this case the group is still narrowly restricted to the Corinthia.5 These sorts of stories, purporting to record events of the 8th and 7th centuries and effectively endowing the colony with single, geographically based descent groups, appear to be the ‘official’ history promulgated certainly in the 5th century and in all likelihood very much earlier as well. Nothing is said about other Greeks apart from a few exceptions,6 in direct contrast to Archilochos’ poetic complaint that the settlement founded at Thasos by Paros was composed of the ‘misery of all Greece’ (frag. 102); nor, indeed, are there explicit references to the participation of the indigenous population of Sicily, although as Carol Dougherty argues there may be more covert allusions in other literature.7 As such, they have been accepted at face value by modern scholarship, at least until recent years. The general view of older studies has been that the settlers did indeed derive from a single location and were perhaps reinforced by later arrivals from the same place;8 further, that the settlements maintained their inherited customs and traditions together with close links with their respective mother-cities and did not incorporate Sikels into their populations other than as slaves—an understanding of Greek settlement in the West which perhaps owes as much to the model of British imperialism and notions of Greek cultural superiority as it does to the bald statements of Thucydides et al. regarding Greek foundations abroad. Now, however, the picture is changing: despite the appearance of historicity that the accounts have, it is widely believed that they are at best highly simplified versions of events. As Anthony Snodgrass points out, the enthusiasm of some Greek cities for sending out colonising parties suggests that they can at most have only provided the oikist and perhaps a core group, if home populations were not to be dangerously depleted.9 Thus other Greeks—in line with Archilochos—may have supplemented the numbers and in addition, as Hall and others argue, there was probably cohabitation and intermarriage with the indigenous population. The latter phenomenon is used by Hall to support his argument that a sense of Hellenic identity did not develop through contact with

3

Hall 2002, 59. Plutarch Moralia 772d–773d; Diodorus Siculus 7. 10. 1–3. 5 It is debatable as to whether this means the settlers actually originated from Tenea or simply foregathered there prior to departure: cf. Malkin 1998, 90. 6 As for example Strabo’s information that en route to Syracuse Archias picked up some Greeks (specified, perhaps significantly, as ‘Dorians’) who had parted company with the founders of Megara (Strabo 6. 2. 4). 7 Dougherty 1993, esp. 69. 8 For the evidence for reinforcement generally, see Graham 1964, passim. See also Dunbabin (1948, 236–37) who argues for a new wave of Rhodians arriving at Gela in the second half of the 7th century on the basis of funerary evidence. 9 Snodgrass 1994, 2. 4

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non-Greeks beginning in the 8th century and although I am more sceptical than Hall of the ability of archaeology (or indeed onomastics)10 to reveal such liaisons, nevertheless it remains highly likely that they occurred. If this view of how the populations of these settlements were formed is correct, then differences in origin of the inhabitants must have been conspicuous, not only in early years but also through new arrivals subsequent to foundation. It would, one might think, have made ideas of shared history and descent untenable. But this does not seem to have been the case: as noted above such mixed origins are not revealed by the textual record nor, I would argue, by the archaeological. The tendency of individual cities to concentrate on a single oikist through his cult (and by implication a single mother-city), even in cases where more than one is attested, has been explained by Irad Malkin as due to the advantages of a single focus for city self-identity through history creation.11 In the 5th century at least—when much of the past may well have been rewritten—such claims to an exclusive origin gained added value in that they were also politically expedient. Requests for aid were made on the basis of mothercity/colony relationships, although admittedly these are almost entirely limited to Corinthian circles. Further, as Hall notes, elite groups were aided in the establishment and maintenance of their status through claims to descent from the founder.12 Yet all such explanations, while certainly valid, do not extend beyond the level of the individual city and civic identity. The appeal of Hall’s thesis regarding the significance of sub-Hellenic identities before the 6th century is that it adds another possible dimension to the apparent suppression of all but one of set of protagonists in the creation of each Greek state in the West: through the added fiction of descent from a single group which could derive its own fictitious ethnic kinship from the historical mother-city, the Western Greek states could insert themselves seamlessly into the arena of competing sub-Hellenic identities which Hall envisages for the early Archaic Greek world.13 The construction of ethnic identities (as defined by Hall) in the West may also find support in the archaeological record which likewise appears to disguise a lack of shared history. If the literary testimonia regarding the origins of Greek states in Italy and Sicily are problematic in terms of the date and hence agenda of their creation, the archaeological at least may be traced over a longer period of time, even if they do fall into Hall’s category of ‘secondary indicia’ (p. 9) for ethnicity. In particular, the burial record which, as Hall notes elsewhere, tends to be paramount in discussions of ethnicity,14 displays little in the way of the variation that might be expected for communities of mixed origins. Instead, the overall impression is one of subscription to new burial systems where variations are best explained in social terms such as rank, age and possibly even gender, while declarations of ethnicity (however defined) remain circumscribed through overarching coherence.15 The literary and archaeological evidence for oikist cults based around the graves of founders is less clear, but

10

Hall 2002, 100–01. Malkin 1987, 241–60. 12 Hall 2002, 61. 13 Compare also the mixed ethnic make-up of Ionian cities in Asia Minor (including, in the case of Miletus, intermarriage with the local population) and accompanying claims to pure Ionian descent which bothered Herodotus (1. 142–147). 14 Hall 1997, 111ff. 15 For further discussion, see Shepherd 2005. 11

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such cults may well have been prevalent and of early date. If so, the links to a subHellenic identity which they provided may have facilitated claims to territory similar to those in Greece, where tomb cult also appears significant, and southern Italy, where Hall argues they were legitimated through sub-Hellenic affiliations.16 Those cities which also claimed heroic pedigree through epic nostoi added another element to the creation of their histories and claims to territory, although here one must ask why such heroic ethnography occurs in Italy rather than Sicily: the Sicilian Greeks did not, apparently, find it necessary to develop such direct links with heroic genealogy but tended to confine their manipulation of the past to the ‘historic’ version of events.17 If myths of common heroic ancestry and resulting claims to membership of a sub-Hellenic group played a fundamental role in the mapping out of territory, there seems to have been less need for such concoctions in Sicily. Could the nostoi reflect more intense levels of competition for territory in southern Italy? There is, however, also something of a paradox in the comparison of the material culture of the Western Greek settlements, especially those in Sicily, and their associated literary testimonia. While both appear internally consistent in their emphasis upon subscription to a single group identity, on the one hand the material culture does not replicate that of the mother-city but sets up an independent cultural profile, while on the other the historical evidence—assuming it is not entirely a creation of the 5th century when, as Hall argues, sub-Hellenic identity gained new salience in the context of the Peloponnesian War—insists vociferously upon a connection with a specific mother-city. If the assertion of origins was essential in history creation, why were the ‘secondary indicia’ not put to good use in order to underline and substantiate such claims? Here also Hall’s argument that sub-Hellenic affiliations emerged in the 8th and 7th centuries and were paramount for group identification until the 6th century may reconcile the evidence: sub-Hellenic identities in general allowed different city-states to claim common ethnographies yet at the same time to differentiate themselves at a civic level from each other through cultural features, including areas such as religion as well as material culture. Thus they could maintain both civic and supracivic identities which could interact with that of other states via both difference and similarity as required and without contradiction. But does the existence of strong sub-Hellenic identities necessarily militate against the existence of a Hellenic identity, as Hall suggests? As he argues, the sorts of oppositional relationships set up between Greeks and non-Greeks and ‘othering’ of the latter which we are familiar with from the 5th century should probably not be retrojected into the Archaic period. At the same time, as Hall admits, the differences in language and other cultural features must have been conspicuous and unavoidable. These distinctions and considerations may well have not impeded social relations such as intermarriage in the way they might have in later centuries, but neither that nor the existence of potent sub-Hellenic identities necessarily means that the Greeks in the West had no sense amongst themselves of Hellenic ‘sameness’. Indications that there was an underlying notion of Hellenic identity may appear in certain competitive relationships set up by Sicilian and Italian Greeks, which were not, on the whole, directed at the indigenous population.

16

Hall 2002, 58–65; see also Antonaccio 1999, with references. Dunbabin 1948, 23. For nostoi generally, see Malkin 1998. For discussion of the more limited mythology associated with Sicily, see Antonaccio 2001, 122–24. 17

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If the Greeks were operating from the platform of purely sub-Hellenic identities (including civic or regional identities),18 then other ethnic groups in Sicily and Italy— be they sub-Hellenic or indigenous—would presumably be viewed in like terms and as holding similar status: no particular distinction would be made between other Greeks and non-Greeks. Yet there are hints that such distinctions were made through the evidence that Greeks tended to pick other Greeks as the objects of competition and competitive emulation. As Hall himself argues, Achaean identity may have been formulated in southern Italy not as a result of confrontation with the indigenous populations but through competition with Dorian Taras or Ionian Siris; competitive emulation between Greeks states in Sicily may be detected in the formulation of burial practice;19 and, as Hall notes more generally, ‘the target populations to which . . . cultural messages may have been addressed are more likely to have been rival Greek cities’20 rather than the indigenous populations. This sort of selective competition no doubt promoted the articulation and maintenance of sub-Hellenic identity on an oppositional basis. However, it also suggests the recognition of some commonality between sub-Hellenic groups as the basis for competition—a sense of Hellenic identity in other words. Faced with a whole range of different groups to compete with, the Greeks still chose each other. The sorts of competitive relationships and emulation seen in the West may be viewed as an early manifestation of those seen throughout Greek history in general: the constant efforts of Greek states to be the same but different, bigger and better are well-attested, especially in such areas as the temple-building programmes of the 6th and 5th centuries, when the Western Greeks were amongst the fiercest competitors. As Hall notes, the constant warring of Greek states in Sicily does not present an obstacle for the existence of a ‘collective Hellenic consciousness’.21 If cultural messages were directed at other Greeks rather than indigenes, then rather than the oppositional context generally thought to be a necessary pre-requisite for ethnogenesis,22 perhaps something more akin to the exclusionary context which Hall proposes for the Olympic Games may have existed. He argues that the Games were instrumental in the formulation of Hellenic identity in the 6th century through the exclusion of non-Hellenes as participants.23 Could a similar process have already occurred in the Greek West on an informal but also far wider scale as Greek settlers chose other Greeks rather than indigenes as their rivals? If so, Hellenic identity may still have developed on the margins, but with different reference to the indigenous populations from that which has been assumed in the past. On the other hand, a sense of collective identity developing in places like Sicily and Italy through peer selection and exclusionary rivalry could be interpreted as the emergence of something more regional rather than a fully Hellenic identity. The term ‘Sikeliotai’ implies just such a regional identity, since it refers not to a group of common descent but to those inhabiting the island of Sicily, incorporating all Greeks.24

18

Cf. Hall 2002, 91. Hall 2002, 110; Shepherd 1995. 20 Hall 2002, 111. 21 Hall 2002, 122. 22 Hall 2002, 63. 23 Hall 2002, 154–68. See also Hall’s suggestion that the formation of Dorian identity was the result of ‘exclusionary social closure’ rather than oppositional relationships (2002, 89). 24 Whether or not the term also includes non-Greeks is less clear: see Antonaccio 2001; Hall 2002, 104, 123. 19

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The word is not attested before the 5th century (Thuc. 3. 90. 1), but it is not inconceivable that some sort of ‘Sicilian Greek’ identity existed before then. Irad Malkin has argued that the Altar of Apollo Archegetes, where Thucydides (6. 3. 1) claims sacred envoys sacrificed before departing for Greece, acted as a meeting place for all the Greeks of Sicily.25 If so, it would have provided just the type of location required for the development and affirmation of some more overarching identity. There are, however, some problems in accepting it as such, partly in the interpretation of Thucydides’ text and also due to the fact that the altar has not yet been excavated.26 Sicily and Italy are, as Hall notes, otherwise lacking in the sort of communal sanctuary which might facilitate an overarching identity. It is, however, difficult to see where such a sanctuary would be located: the success of such sanctuaries in Greece was in part due to their location beyond the control of any major power. In Sicily and Italy any potential area was claimed by either the Greeks or indigenous groups, allowing little or no room for neutral zones. Fortunately, Olympia was not beyond reach and may have provided an arena for the development of a collective identity at earlier date than Hall suggests, as well as enlarging such an identity from a regional Sikeliote one to something on a wider scale through extending the assertion to mainland Greece as well. As mentioned above, Hall sees the role of Olympia in the development of a Hellenic identity as based in the 6th century, when such an identity was asserted through participation and exclusion at the Olympic Games. The Western Greeks were early— and highly successful—competitors at the Games and some of the more profligate donors judging by the evidence of the Archaic treasuries. Yet their presence at Olympia appears to date to a much earlier period as well. Although there are obvious risks in associating objects with people, the Western Greeks are nevertheless the best candidates for the donors of the Italian and Sicilian metalwork deposited at Olympia in the 8th and 7th centuries which forms some 8.9% of all foreign dedications for the period.27 Such evidence as there is also suggests that Olympia was chosen in preference to mother-city sanctuaries. If this is correct, then we have to ask why the Western Greeks would have bothered to make the journey to Olympia and to deposit votives (whether or not in connection with the Games) if not as part of the assertion of some sort of collective and Hellenic identity. Olympia could provide precisely the sort of location for the affirmation of an overarching identity which was unavailable in the West. The Olympic Games and their restrictions upon participants may have formalised what it was to be a Hellene in the 6th century, but that may not preclude a sense of Hellenic consciousness before that period.28

25

Malkin 1986. Hall 2002, 122; Antonaccio 2001, 134. 27 Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985; Shepherd 1995, 73–76. 28 Cf. further on this point Hall 2004, 46: ‘such conspicuous and competitive display confirmed the donors’ status as Panhellenes qualified to participate in a wider élite community, not as Hellenes defined through opposition with indigenous “barbarians”.’ On the other hand, Hall argues in Hellenicity (chapter 5) that a Hellenic identity emerged and was diffused in the 6th century through ‘the agency of the élite’, namely aristocratic participation at the Olympic Games. Hall rightly stresses the role that elites may have in providing an identity for the larger group (pp. 164–65), so the question still remains as to whether or not such a Hellenic identity may have its roots in earlier elite gatherings at Olympia which included Western Greeks, ‘barbarians’ notwithstanding. 26

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However, while competition between Greeks in the West and at Olympia before the 6th century may be of significance, it is nevertheless the encounter with indigenous populations which lies at the core of the older view that the emergence of an overarching Hellenic identity was prompted by the colonisation movements of the 8th century. As Hall argues, the 8th century is no longer to be seen as the period of initiation of contact with non-Greeks, but rather as a period of intensification of such contacts. Yet the fact that the Greeks were already familiar with many other groups does not necessarily disqualify the 8th century as the watershed for the recognition of a Hellenic identity. Contacts before the 8th century seem to have been largely trade-related; those of the 8th century and later involved the foundation of permanent settlements abroad which must have not only intensified but also altered the nature of encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks.29 If ethnogenesis is to occur, it may not always be in the context of initial encounters: rather, it may remain in abeyance until interaction reaches a certain pitch and the intensification of contact may provide a more potent context for the development of identity. The other main feature of the traditional argument that colonisation was instrumental in the formulation of Hellenic identity is of course that the Greeks perceived distinctions between themselves and non-Greeks sufficient to make them aware of their own nature as Greeks. While recognising that the Greeks cannot have failed to notice the cultural and linguistic differences between themselves and indigenous populations, Hall downplays the significance of these factors, arguing that the archaeological evidence and linguistic parallels indicate that differences between Greeks and non-Greeks were less recognisable and salient than has been assumed.30 This may well have been the case, yet the degree of perceived difference required for ethnogenesis remains indeterminable and was conceivably very low. Certain areas of indigenous culture, such as religion, are still today barely known or understood and may have offered greater opportunity for contrast. While it may be true, as Hall argues, that ‘there is little evidence for the hypothesis that the cultural traditions of Greek cities were endowed with a special symbolic significance as a result of confrontation with indigenous populations’, in the absence of literary records it is difficult to see how we should identify such evidence.31 A further point which Hall rightly makes is that these perceptions of difference and opposition in various parts of the Mediterranean must have had elements in common and have been communicated rapidly between regions in order for an single overarching identity to be realised as opposed to a series of individual sub-Hellenic identities. While the nature of Greek and non-Greek encounters did certainly vary around the Mediterranean, that in itself does not necessarily preclude the construction of a common experience—especially if the experience was reflexive, creating the ‘“mirror” in which Greek settlers might contemplate their own specificity’.32 As Hall

29 As Hall notes (2002, 97–99), these encounters could be violent and result in enslaved groups such as the Killyrioi of Syracuse, who are generally assumed to be of indigenous origin. Interaction of this sort could have radically altered earlier attitudes of both parties. 30 Hall 2002, 97–117. 31 Hall 2002, 111; see also 121. As Hall notes, there are indications of the influence of indigenous practice on Greek, mainly in the area of burial customs (p. 110), but nevertheless it remains generally Greek in character. Hall also stresses the priority of the literary record in investigating questions of ethnicity (Hall 2002, 19–29). 32 Hall 2002, 91.

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points out (p. 111), the demonstration that ‘formal correspondences’ in Greek material culture were specifically viewed as Hellenic is problematic, but given the process of selection in adopting such formal correspondences, perhaps the onus should rather be on demonstrating that they were not. Again, the lack of literary evidence presents an obstacle in interpretation. The rapid communication and spread of such ideas around the Mediterranean in the 8th and 7th centuries BC is not in itself unlikely: the appearance, for example, of an architectural oddity like the stoa in the 7th century at Greek sites from Sicily in the West to Asia Minor in the East demonstrates the efficacy of communication systems and a forum like Olympia would be the perfect place to exchange such ideas. With intensification of contacts and provision of arenas for competition and communication, the 8th century remains a plausible context for the emergence of a Hellenic identity. Jonathan Hall has produced a fascinating and wide-ranging book. Many will not agree with his narrow definition of ethnicity for good reasons. However, while it is difficult to dissociate cultural features completely from the concept of ethnicity, an advantage of Hall’s definition is the clarification it gives to a phenomenon that hitherto has never really been unequivocally defined and which is fraught with methodological issues. His definition also clarifies and gives added salience to the notion of cultural identity, allowing for more sensitive gauging of the operation of different forms of identity according to time and place. In highlighting the significance of subHellenic identities, Hall expands our understanding of Greek settlement in the West. Although I find it hard to believe that any sense of Hellenic ‘sameness’ was completely absent from Greek thought before the 6th century BC, Hall is probably right in his argument that it was not fully developed or articulated until then, when social structures allowed it to emerge more clearly. But while the development of a Hellenic identity was clearly a more complex process that a simple core-periphery situation, nevertheless I still suspect the Greeks on the margins may have had something to do with it. Gillian Shepherd Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT UK [email protected] BIBLIOGRAPHY Antonaccio, C.M. 1999: ‘Colonization and the Origins of Hero Cult’. In Hägg, R. (ed.), Ancient Greek Hero Cult. Proceedings of the Fifth International Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult (Stockholm), 109–21. ——. 2001: ‘Ethnicity and Colonization’. In Malkin, I. (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC), 113–57. Dougherty, C. 1993: The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece (Oxford). Dunbabin, T.J. 1948: The Western Greeks (Oxford). Graham, A.J. 1964: Colony and Mother City in Ancient Greece (Manchester). Hall, J. 1997: Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge). ——. 2002: Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago).

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——. 2004: ‘How “Greek” were the early Western Greeks?’. In Lomas, K. (ed.), Greek Identity in the Western Mediterranean. Papers in Honour of Brian Shefton (Leiden), 35–54. Kilian-Dirlmeier, I. 1985: ‘Fremde Weihungen in griechischen Heiligtümern vom 8. bis zum Beginn des 7. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.’. JRGZM 32, 215–54. Malkin, I. 1986: ‘Apollo Archegetes and Sicily’. Annali della Scuola Normale di Pisa, n.s. 3 (17.4), 959–72. ——. 1987: Religion and Colonization in Ancient Greece (Leiden). ——. 1998: The Returns of Odysseus. Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley/Los Angeles). Morgan, C. and Hall, J. 1996: ‘Achaian Poleis and Achaian Colonisation’. In Hansen, M.H. (ed.), Introduction to an Inventory of Poleis (Copenhagen), 164–231. Shepherd, G.B. 1995: ‘The Pride of Most Colonials: Burial and Religion in the Sicilian Colonies’. Acta Hyperborea 6, 51–82. ——. 2005: ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales: Ethnic Diversity in Sicilian Colonies and the Evidence of the Cemeteries’. OJA 24, 115–36. Snodgrass, A.M. 1994, ‘The Growth and Standing of the Early Western Colonies’. In Tstetskhladze, G.R. and De Angelis, F. (eds.), The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation. Essays Dedicated to Sir John Boardman (Oxford), 1–10.

HELLENIC IDENTITY AND GREEK COLONISATION ADOLFO J. DOMÍNGUEZ The analysis and definition of the ‘ethnic identity’ of the Greeks has received detailed examination in recent years. Many studies have formulated distinct visions of the problem and the discussion should continue. Jonathan Hall’s book, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, is one of these recent contributions and it is destined, without a doubt, like its predecessor Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge 1997), to become a standard work of reference on this question. In her review, Lynette Mitchell has approached some of the problems that she sees in the book. In general I concur.1 My approach here will be centred mainly on Hall’s vision of the role of colonisation in the process of creation of a Greek identity. However, and before beginning my analysis, I believe that Mitchell has made the point when she asserts that, for Hall, in his two books ‘the basis of ethnicity is fictive kinship’; this is, certainly, one of the main arguments that Hall develops in Hellenicity, and this vision might mean that other possibilities are rejected. My purpose here is to review Hall’s attitude with regard to the eventual role that Greek colonisation may have played in the process of definition of Hellenic identity. Already in the first chapter he announces ‘the view that a self-conscious sense of Hellenic identity first emerges as a result of the colonial expeditions of the eighth century is challenged in chapter 4’ (p. 6), where he summarises his main ideas: 1) The encounters between Greeks and non-Greeks were not new in the 8th century, and they had taken place earlier; the foundation of colonies was only the intensification of that process. 2) There is no feeling of permanent hostility between Greeks and non-Greeks, although Greek occupation sometimes took place in a violent way. 3) Acculturation questions should be separated from expressions of ethnic identity. 4) Linguistic differences would not have sharpened ethnic differences given the attested phenomenon of bilingualism. 5) Literary information on non-Greeks in Archaic times is scarce and it shows little disregard for the natives, in comparison with what happens from the 5th century onwards. I shall follow this preliminary outline in my comments. It is difficult to think that the Greek colonial process, which put Greeks in contact with non-Greeks, did not play a role in the development of a Greek ethnic identity. Since ethnic identity is a social construct, human groups usually emphasise some aspects against others when building their own identity. An important factor in this construction is the contrast with other groups that are perceived or considered as alien. The tension between the Self and the Other is a factor we must take into account to understand the elaboration of ethnic identities. In spite of recent contrary claims, in the colonial world this tension had numerous elements.

1

Mitchell, above pp. 409–20.

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Hall’s view of the ‘fictive’ character of the Hellenic ethnic identity is very interesting, based on a relationship of kinship that would not be real from our perspective, but was from that of the Greeks. Hall himself asserts ‘what matters is that ethnic members act as if they are related’ (p. 15); but that does not exclude that these ‘theoretical’ elaborations were sustained on some basis that can be perceived as the foundation of that kinship. In Chapter 4 Hall elaborates in detail the proposals already made in Chapter 1, contributing additional arguments.2 With regard to the first argument, we can say that contacts of Greeks with environments outside the Aegean world were already intense during the 2nd millennium BC, although it is difficult to know if there was already a sense of common identity (which one?: Achaean?, Danaan?, Argive?—see Thuc. 1. 3. 3) or if, as Hall himself suggests, ‘everything in the Linear B corpus . . . suggests that self-identification operated principally at the local level and not further’ (p. 53), which is a not very prudent statement in view of the evidence we have. I cannot continue this line but it might be necessary to think that some sense of belonging to the same world could be given by participation in the same ideology (tombs and palaces), in the same tastes (an argument of inferior quality), and by the use of the same language (or of the same dialect) and of the same writing system (Linear B); that would apply, at least, to the ruling circles. This vision has been rejected maybe too quickly by Hall (pp. 48–49). Returning to the main thread of the argument, Hall indicates that contacts between Greeks and non-Greeks were not new in the 8th century, but the intensification of previous ones; consequently, the encounter between the worlds cannot have influenced the development of a Hellenic identity; and as he shows in different parts of the book, from Mycenaean times and in succeeding centuries the Greeks had made contact with diverse territories in the East and in the West. Leaving aside the modalities of these contacts, still under debate, but which seem to include sporadic contacts, permanent presence and even ‘colonies’ (Miletus?), it seems that the beginning of the 1st millennium BC marks a slow but progressive recovery of the relationship of peoples from Greece with these territories. Hall reviews the resurgence of these contacts ( pp. 92–96 ) to point out that ‘it is against the background of these extensive Mediterranean contacts and encounters that the western foundations need to be situated’ (p. 96). But the beginning of Greek colonial enterprise starting about the mid8th century BC cannot be seen just as an ‘intensification’ of that type of contact, because it implies a new reality; independent of the consideration that we must give to Al Mina (and here the recent analyses by Boardman are helping to give this site a more defined personality),3 Pithekoussai marks a new period in Greek history. In fact, the latest discoveries are also beginning to modify ideas previously held about Pithekoussai as a centre exclusively dedicated to trade.4 In any case, the Greek foundations in Italy and in Sicily during the second half of the 8th century represent a different concept. Now we are dealing with a colonial process, which implies something very different to what had been seen in previous centuries, namely occupation of lands and the creation of political structures similar to those developing in the

2 3 4

Similar arguments in Hall 2004, 35–54. Boardman 1999, 135–61; 2002a, 315–31. Gialanella 1994, 169–204; 2003, 178–83; De Caro and Gialanella 1998, 337–53.

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mother cities. We can take into account the doubts of Osborne, who questions whether ‘the classical model of settlement abroad—state-led, at a pre-chosen site, for military and/or agrarian ends—can reasonably be retrojected to the earlier archaic period’,5 and we can also value the importance of ‘private enterprise’ in these activities,6 but we cannot forget that in the Archaic Greek polis private enterprises led by aristocrats frequently intermingle with activities of the polis, governed by those same aristocrats.7 Although the history of the first Greek foundations in the West has been embellished by later foundation stories, archaeological evidence confirms not only an emerging urban structure (Megara Hyblaea, Naxos, Syracuse) but also the occupation of territory from the beginning of Greek settlement (decline and abandonment of Pantalica in Sicily, occupation of the Timpone della Motta in Sybaris, end of the necropoleis of Canale and Janchina in Locris, etc.). If we consider the process that begins by the middle of the 8th century as a simple intensification, we might be forced to believe that changes had not taken place. However, if we consider this process as something new, the consequence is that the kind of relationship established between Greeks and non-Greeks, and among Greeks themselves, has changed; and that change may have contributed to a reconsideration of the role played by the Greeks in the process and could even have accelerated changes in the perception that the Greeks of the colonies, who reproduce models already existing in Greece, but with a non-Greek population beside them, had of themselves. If we pass to the second point, we enter into the question of the non-existence of permanent hostility between Greeks and non-Greeks, although occasionally Greek occupation was violent. It is true that we have no precise evidence for that hostility, and that in cases such as Tarentum, where a presumed foundation oracle justifies a permanent hostility (Antiochus FGrHist 555, 13), the same served to apply to the origins of the city a situation that only arose later. However, and although the manners of contact at the moment of the foundation of the colony were quite diverse,8 the fact that there was not necessarily any hostility between Greeks and non-Greeks does not mean that there was not a perception of difference. Perhaps these differences had no special relevance (although this is also doubtful) when the Greeks did not need to settle down in the land. However, when settlement takes place and the Greeks also claim lands for themselves, there is a competition that may be just economic but can soon be modified to include contrasts of identity. The existence of relationships (even matrimonial) among the elites would not prevent the exclusion of nonelite groups from elite circles where Greeks were included; these high-level circles would also include some individuals of the non-Greek elite, but not the rest of the non-elite non-Greeks. The offspring of these marriages would soon be integrated in the citizenship of the Greek cities and they would develop a sense of belonging to that citizenship, very different from that shared by the natives who had not been integrated. Hall’s third point refers to the distinction between acculturation and the expression of ethnic identity. In this sense, however, the general tendency of the process gives away, at least in certain places, to the creation of contrasted ethnic identities opposed to the Greek. It is difficult to know how cities such as Tarentum or Sybaris 5 6 7 8

Osborne 1998, 255. Osborne 1998, 268. Domínguez 2000, 507–13. Domínguez 1991a, 149–77.

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had been able to influence the elaboration of identities different from Greek identity in their respective indigenous environments, although in both cases there are elements of interest. Thus, the references to the ‘empire’ of Sybaris made up of four ethne and 25 tributary poleis (Strabo 6. 1. 13), or the strong Iapygian identity capable of defeating the Tarantines and the Rhegines (Hdt. 7. 170). However, the most outstanding ethnic personality is that of the Sikels, manifested in the second half of the 5th century BC in Ducetius’ revolt. Certainly, in the cases here mentioned, we are referring to processes in late Archaic or Classical times, but beyond doubt the reason for the progressive formation of these identities was to counteract the strong Greek identity that arose from the beginning of contacts with non-Greeks. In connection with this is Hall’s fifth point, where language would not have been a decisive factor in sharpening ethnic differences. Although we cannot dismiss the possibility of more or less sporadic bilingualism between Greeks and non-Greeks, we can hardly consider this as a widespread process during the first centuries of contact; on the other hand, language does not necessarily sharpen ethnic differences, but it was a primary criterion of differentiation between the arriving Greeks and the nonGreeks already there. Colonial contingents are not homogeneous, but rather are composed of people of different origins, although according to some common criteria. Among others, an important vehicle for the cohesion of heterogeneous people was language, which allowed them, in spite of dialect differences, to understand each other; this (common) language separated them, hopelessly, from those non-Greeks who did not speak it. Bilingualism undoubtedly existed,9 but would only have affected some segments of colonial and indigenous societies. In this sense, I consider somehow misleading Hall’s sentence (p. 115) when he asserts that ‘to maintain that it was in the act of such “switching” [i.e. from a Greek to a non-Greek language] that a speaker became conscious of his or her linguistic (and hence ethnic) Hellenic heritage, it would need to be shown that there was an awareness of a common Hellenic language, spoken from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.’ Let me propose an example. An 8th-century Euboean who travels through the islands and arrives in Rhodes and thence to the Syrian or Phoenician coast, and again sails West and arrives at Corinth, thence to Leukas, would know perfectly where he could be understood by the locals without change of language, and where not. In Rhodes or in Corinth he had no need to change; in Phoenicia or in Leukas he could find somebody who understood him and whom he could understand (especially in harbour surroundings). But apart from these, except for some words he had learned, his language could not serve him for communication. The Euboeans and Megarians who participated in the first foundation of Leontinoi would have understood each other better than the Sikels with whom they lived at first. Possibly neither the Sikels could speak Greek nor the Greeks Sikel, although those from Megara and Euboea who spoke different dialects did understand each other or at least they understood most of what the other said. I do not believe that in the 8th century any linguistic theory had determined whether the dialects were different languages or variants of the same language, but if practical experience allowed mutual understanding, I do not see any difficulty in believing that they regarded their different dialects just as variants of the same language. Therefore, language could become a clear element of

9

Hall 2004, 41–43.

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difference only with those who did not speak it. The well-known Homeric expression of barbarphonos (Il. 2. 867) applied to the Karians raises enough problems (Hall, pp. 111–12). It is not easy to find its true meaning, but it is difficult to believe that the Greeks did not always observe linguistic differences; when other factors are also involved, such as competition for the same territory with non-Greeks, language could have acted as an (additional) factor of cohesion, although not the only one. The example advanced by Hall minimising the role of language in elaboration of a Hellenic identity is somewhat perverse: ‘this means that a Greek citizen of, say, Ephesos could have communicated with a Karian with whom he came into daily contact just as easily (and perhaps more easily than) with a visitor from remote Arkadia’ (p. 117). Linguists observe how languages genetically different can end up adapting their systems through contact with other systems and so arrive at certain convergence levels, including phenomena of pidginisation and creolisation;10 but that does not mean that the Ephesian and Karian, in Hall’s example, did not recognise that they were speaking different languages or that the presumed difficulty between the Arcadian and the Ephesian could be overcome after a brief period of mutual adaptation. I find problematic this minimising of the role of language as a vehicle of identity (although not the only one). To minimise Greek linguistic unity by alluding to the myriad of dialects (p. 116) would imply doubt that the Greeks were able to communicate with each other from the 8th century (and before) and that they continued doing so from that moment, taking into account the increasing complexity of the Greek world as a consequence of colonisation.11 There are factors that have maintained, in spite of dialects, a substantial unity in the Greek language, from the Homeric poems (written themselves in an ‘artificial dialect’) to the lyric poetry that is usually composed in Ionic dialect and which seems to have been understood in cities whose dialect was different. It is possible (according to Hall) that in the 8th century BC a ‘Hellenic identity’ had not still arisen, but we cannot doubt that when the Greeks disembarked in new territories, bonds like language or a certain identity of behaviour and mores (nomima) are what maintain cohesion and these also lay the foundations of their identity. As I have already argued in another place,12 Thucydides only refers in his story on the Greek foundations in Sicily (6. 3–5) to the nomima chosen for a city when its foundation has been carried out by two or more different groups of colonists. It is only when there are different contingents that it is necessary to agree what must be the common uses which will govern the new community; this could hardly have happened with non-Greek populations, whatever was their level of integration with the Greek colonists. It is difficult not to admit that, for example in Sicily, where in little more than 40 years numerous new cities arose, inhabited by Greeks coming from almost every part of Greece, with different local traditions and with diverse dialects, language and common practices did serve as element of integration. I do not say that a ‘Hellenic identity’ had arisen but it is not true that the cities remained isolated from each other and without contacts. As Shepherd has shown,13 in the field of funerary rituals, a progressive likeness can be observed between cities of different origins and traditions 10 11 12 13

Lehiste 1988, 9–75. Mora 2004, 34–35, 39–40. Domínguez 2006. Shepherd 1995, 51–82.

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such as Syracuse, Megara Hyblaea and Gela, and even some emulation between them. We cannot sustain an ‘ethnic identity’ only through funerary rituals, but what Shepherd’s study shows is how the cities implanted in Sicily had as a basic point of reference the other Greek cities of the island. I do not doubt that this is a consequence of the feeling of being part of a kindred community (although maybe still loosely articulated at the ideological level), and which is elaborating a common identity (although perhaps firstly Sikeliot14 and only in the second place Hellenic). We cannot forget that ‘identity is . . . a vital component of diasporas’.15 All these interrelations caused the emergence of a complex web of ties that is also a feature of ‘diasporic communities’, as Greek colonies are in many respects; and these communities may have developed diasporic identities, ‘which both preserve and often extend and develop their original cultures’,16 but without losing sight of the relationship with what continued to be perceived as the ‘homeland’.17 That this eventual identity which integrated the Greek cities was not still fixed would be shown, for example, in the similarities among a series of funerary rituals which can be observed in places like Cumae and that would be imitated by nonGreeks in Latium and Campania.18 But here we also find another model for building identities, which links together the elite groups. Ascription to elite groups is not exclusive and can show different levels because the ties between Greek and nonGreek aristocrats can differ from those between Greek aristocrats, and certainly from the relationship between Greek aristocrats and Greek citizens of the cities whose political leadership they control. Hall’s last point alludes to the absence of data in the literary tradition showing disregard for the natives during the 8th century, against what will happen during the 5th century. It is certain that contemporary evidence about the first colonial moments is not plentiful but we can still make some observation. In the Odyssey, whose composition can be placed in the second half or later 8th century, therefore contemporary with the first Greek colonial foundations, there are several levels of identity and we cannot speak of a ‘Hellenic identity’.19 However, we can observe how a clear feeling of otherness is expressed with regard to peoples like the Phoenicians (Od. 14. 288–289; 15. 415–416) or the Taphians (Od. 15. 427; 16. 426), not to speak of the Cyclopes (Od. 9. 106–107; 9. 125–140). Only the Phaeacians seem to fit the values represented by Odysseus himself, partly because both have had the same enemies, the Cyclopes (Od. 6. 4–5), but also because they welcome the hero with the gifts of hospitality.20 Moreover, that shared identity is reinforced in the challenge that Euryalus throws to Odysseus when he wonders if the hero is one of them (Od. 8. 158–164), although the excellence of Odysseus persuades Euryalus and all the noble Phaeacians that he belongs to their circle (Od. 8. 235–249). I do not know whether we have here the consciousness of at same ethnic identity or only of the identity of the same social group, but we cannot forget that the Phaeacians are second-generation emigrants who live ‘far from the laborious men’ (Od. 6. 4–12) and that they maintain the rites and 14

Antonaccio 2001, 113–57. Butler 2001, 207. 16 Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2000, 68–70; cf. Hingley 2003. 17 Butler 2001, 204–05. 18 D’Agostino 1975, 107–10; 1977, 3–20. 19 Konstan 2001, 32. 20 As Malkin (2001, 187), has outlined, ‘a “mode of life” . . . could serve as an ethnic line of demarcation.’ 15

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customs practised in their place of origin. Odysseus’ stay among the Phaeacians shows that all participate in the same shared values; incidentally, the same values that we see during the trip of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta to ask for his father’s fortune. In the case of the Phaeacians it would be possible to wonder whether that insistence on sharing the same values as people living in Greece had something to do with the anxieties of the colonial world, wishing to continue to be considered to belong to the same world as that which their predecessors had left behind. If this is so, we could see that a shared identity was arising, which comprises both the people who had left their homeland and those who remained. The Odyssey, consequently, shows how a common identity based on the sharing of certain values by people living in different environments had begun to arise in the Greek mentality of 8th century; and that this does not imply, necessarily, a disregard of others. We can return to the case of the Phoenicians, occasionally mentioned in the Odyssey with certain pejorative tones, as a result of the identity construction by the Greeks;21 notwithstanding that the products they provide are worthy of admiration;22 moreover, the Greeks need them and, they even collaborate with them23 and they do not consider them as enemies.24 If we leave the Odyssey, where we can already perceive the first steps in the elaboration of a common identity, and we pass to the first testimonia of lyric poetry, we will see a much more vivid panorama. Let us consider, for example, Archilochus, some of whose fragments (for example, 43, 93a, 216 West) show how hate, bitterness and scorn towards non-Greeks in colonial environments are part of the justification of actions carried out by the poet, as a warrior. Consequently, it is not completely certain that there was no negative vision of non-Greeks at such an early time; but the vision need not be negative for the differences among those who considered themselves united by certain bonds to stand out.25 Besides, we also find in Archilochus the expression ‘Panhellenes’ (Frag. 102 West), also present in Homer (Il. 2. 530) and in Hesiod (Op. 528); if we accept Strabo’s interpretation (8. 6. 6), both Hesiod and Archilochus already called all the Greeks Hellenes and Panhellenes.26 Surprisingly, the passage in which Archilochus uses the term seems to show a certain pejorative character, because the poet mentions in it that in Thasos the misery of all the Hellenes (or the ‘Panhellenes’) gathered, which shows how scorn not only operates against nonGreeks, but also affects those with whom identity is shared. In any event, already in the foundations of the 8th century or in those of the 7th century (such as Archilochus’ Thasos), Greeks of very diverse origins gathered long before a sanctuary would arise in Naucratis—the Hellenium (Hdt. 2. 178), dedicated to the ‘gods of the Hellenes’, necessary in Egypt because this country was not Greek land.27 I shall not discuss here whether the creation of a ‘Hellenic identity’ is based on the idea of a fictive kinship; what seems certain, from what I have argued, is that the colonial movement of the 8th century BC played an important role in the rise

21

Winter 1995, 262–64. Latacz 1990, 11–21. 23 Plácido 2000, 267–68. 24 Davison 1992, 387. 25 Mitchell, above p. 416. 26 Fowler 1998, 10. 27 Mitchell, above p. 415, considers the Hellenium as ‘an identification and expression of the Hellenic community in the face of difference’. 22

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of the consciousness which Greek peoples, who had lived quite apart until then, had developed, of sharing more common elements than those apparent with non-Greek peoples. They shared not only a language that, in spite of dialect differences, they could understand but, above all, they shared the same set of values for the most part common to all of them. The evident cases of interaction between Greeks and nonGreeks (mixed marriages, ‘diplomatic’ contacts, etc.) act at the level of the elites and may have been developed along the lines of a ‘Middle Ground’, such as Malkin has suggested in the Bay of Naples,28 where ‘both play roles according to what each side perceives to be the other’s perception of itself ’.29 But apart from these elites such perceptions seem have been shared only at the margins of the social structure, not in the core of Greek society, composed of peasants whose basic concern was to occupy lands for cultivation. I share the idea that Greek aristocracies could be closer to certain non-Greek elites than to the greater part of the population of the Greek cities (p. 103, after Herman),30 but when aristocrats exercise their leadership in these cities, and especially in the colonies, they behave according to norms acceptable for the majority of their members, who own full rights because they possess land and because they have participated in the enterprise under conditions of basic equality. Hall also rejects the idea (p. 111) that we can use material culture as a proof of a shared identity: ‘the formal correspondences that archaeologists recognize within Greek material culture from Spain to the Black Sea are irrelevant for our purposes unless it can be demonstrated that they were perceived as specifically Hellenic by the Greeks who were scattered throughout the Mediterranean, but this requires a reification of Greek culture as a singular, organic expression of Hellenic identity that is hard to trace before the fifth century.’ This is curious; if the likeness of material culture was not perceived as something purely Hellenic or, better, if some objects do not imply some particular behaviour which can be considered as constituting ‘Greek character’, how is it that they are so similar? Why did the Greeks find it necessary to import Corinthian pottery during a good part of the 8th and 7th centuries if these objects did not respond to some of the necessities that they felt as their own and even shared? And when the imports are not enough, they produce imitations of these shapes and decorations. It is certain that Greek pottery and local imitations exist in many other places that are not Greek cities, but, with some exceptions, complete sets of pottery of Greek type only appear in Greek settlements. Pottery can be a status-symbol for non-Greeks, but it has a utilitarian character for the Greeks during the 8th and 7th centuries when Greeks prefer to use crockery of Greek type, and mainly of Corinthian origin, in all the places where they enjoy a way of life which we can call ‘Greek’. On the other hand, Boardman has reaffirmed and argued convincingly in recent works about the close bond that usually exists between people and the specific vases they use for drinking, eating or for burial.31 If in all the places occupied by Greeks we find the same repertoire of shapes and, even, an absolute prevalence of Corinthian production, it is because that pottery is a constituent part of what it means ‘to be Greek’, independently of any possible theoretical (or literary) elaboration about what it is ‘to be Greek’. Greek pottery is not used, as it is in a Greek city, in places which

28 29 30 31

Malkin 2002, 151–81. Malkin 1998, 5. Herman 1987, 8; see also in this direction Domínguez 1991b, 78–86. Boardman 2001, 39; 2002b, 1–16; 2004, 149–62.

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are not Greek. There may be some exceptions in places like Etruria (at least partially), but neither in Italy nor in Sicily, Gaul, Iberia or the Black Sea, did nonGreeks use the pottery in the same way as Greeks. Could we speak, consequently, of a ‘Greek identity’ based on pots? No, but in spite of some excesses in the valuation of material evidence to identify ‘ethnicities’, we should not minimise the importance that the choice of a certain group of material objects can have when creating an identity.32 The important thing is that the Greeks who from the 8th century BC had begun to establish their cities outside Greece remained faithful to some objects (to the same objects) that they used in their mother cities; consequently, both Greeks in Greece and Greeks outside Greece shared to a certain level the same material culture. This is not by chance, but by the desire to mark a shared identity not just through objects, but mainly through the rites, uses and customs that those objects imply.33 To conclude. In his Chapter 4 Hall asks: ‘Identity at the Margins?’ to conclude that ‘to trace and understand the construction of a specifically Hellenic identity, it is not to the margins that we must direct our sight but to the heart of the Greek mainland itself ’ (p. 124). I do not know if in the 8th century the colonies were at the ‘margins’ or at the ‘centre’, although I believe that without colonisation many Greek areas would have remained isolated and with few external contacts over several centuries. The colonies enabled Greeks of different origins and with different traditions to agree to undertake common enterprises; the appearance of new cities fostered intense contacts between new territories, both inside and outside Greece, as well as new economic development. These movements and the new situation permitted the rise of a new type of identity. In the colonial areas, the Other could be easily identified with the non-Greek who lived in the new territories, and those recently arrived, although of different origins, could be recognised as participating in the same identity, however loose that was. At the same time, the proliferation of cities in Sicily and in southern Italy, related to each other but also to their mother-cities and with other privileged environments of Greece (for example, some sanctuaries like Olympia and Delphi)34 contributed to that identity, and could include the Greeks of Asia, of Greece and of the West. All of them spoke a language which everybody understood (in general lines), worshipped the same gods in a very similar way and shared some common values which the epic and lyric poets expressed, and that were also expressed in the development of other types of relationships (xenia, war, games, etc.). It is not unlikely that from the 6th century BC a new kind of Hellenic identity had developed, articulated around some mythical relationships, establishment of differences between Dorians and Ionians, etc.35 But that process was perhaps superimposed on a concept of Hellenic identity which was perhaps looser, but based on some tangible realities, no matter how much it had been transformed into legend and tradition by the literary elaboration. In this process colonisation played a fundamental role, not from the ‘margins’, but from the very ‘core’ of the Greek history

32

For a brief review of the historiography of the comparison of archaeological cultures with ethnic identities, see Jones 1997, 15–39; see also Díaz-Andreu 2001, 4817–20. 33 As Morris 1998, 270 has put it: ‘I see no reason to assume that the identities people construct through words should automatically have precedence over those they construct through their manipulation of material culture.’ See also Jones 1998, 272–73. 34 Morgan 1990. 35 Alty 1982, 1–14.

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of the early Archaic period. Without colonisation the process that led to the elaboration of a Hellenic identity would have known other rhythms and, possibly, its development would have been different. Concepts like centre and margins are not applicable to explain the Greek historical process during the 8th and 7th centuries. It is maybe necessary to remember that colonisation is one of the first results of the creation of the political structure we know as the polis, and at the same time that we cannot forget that the colonies were the first to put into practice some of the ideas already latent in Greece and whose fulfilment was sometimes delayed in the homeland.36 Thus, the Achaeans settled down in Italy, independently of the development and maintenance of an ‘Achaean identity’, and created poleis there, while in Achaia the phenomenon of the polis is, at least, difficult to perceive before the Classical period;37 the same thing seems to have happened with the Locrians. A merit of the diaspora studies of recent years has been to have shown how a common ideology existed which linked the communities of the diaspora to each other, and all of them to the centre (the ‘ancestral homeland’), ‘thus creating the whole of this transnational community’.38 The emphasis that Herodotus (8. 144. 2) places on the main features of to hellenikon, recaptured centuries later by his countryman Dionysius (Roman Antiquities 1. 89. 4)—language, gods and mores—can be only explained in an atmosphere in which the Greeks had been in contact with alien environments (as much with non-Greeks as with Greeks of other origins), and this has only happened in the colonies, which are diasporic communities. According to the criteria established by K.D. Butler in an important article, ‘diasporan communities are consciously part of an ethnonational group; this consciousness binds the dispersed peoples not only to the homeland but to each other as well.’39 If the ethnicity concept alludes to a group of people bound together because of a perceived shared characteristic, a fictive kinship can be the result of a theoretical elaboration that arose as time went on, substituting or improving previous perceptions. Rather, the actuality of the colonising experience contributed more true and more primary elements before the development of these theoretical elaborations. It is difficult to find them in the literary tradition. Some time before the representatives in Egypt of nine Greek cities (Ionians, Dorians and Aeolians) could show at the beginning of the 6th century that they were fully aware that all of them were Hellenes and dedicate a sanctuary to the gods of the Hellenes (Hdt. 2. 178),40 the assessment of a common identity had already taken place, and this could only have happened in the colonies that, from the second half of the 8th century, were being founded in different parts of the Mediterranean. Hall affirms that the Greek elites of the 6th century were responsible for creating a Hellenic identity ‘in the elite environment of the Olympic Games . . . and that it served both to cement alliances between the ruling families of various regions and to promote the hegemonic claims of the Thessalians over their neighbours in central Greece’ (p. 227).41 It may be at this moment that Hellenic identity assumed its first theoretical formulation. However, some of the arguments of diverse type here advanced suggest that

36

Domínguez 1991b, 98–101. Morgan 2003, 201–02. 38 Butler 2001, 208; also, on the overcoming of the dynamic centre/margins once we accept the existence of ‘diasporic cultures’, see Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin 2000, 70. 39 Butler 2001, 192, 207. 40 Möller 2000, 182–84. 41 See also Fowler 1998, 1–19. 37

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in the colonial environments (and, quickly influenced by them, in Greece proper) the feeling of being part of the same group and the acceptance of a shared identity had already arisen not very long after the first colonial foundations. Facultad de Filosofia y Letras Universidad Autonoma de Madrid Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco 28049 Madrid Spain [email protected] BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbreviations AIONArchStAnt Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Dipartimento di Studi del mondo classico e del Mediterraneo antico, Sezione di Archeologia e di Storia Antica. Alty, J.H.M. 1982: ‘Dorians and Ionians’. JHS 102, 1–14. Antonaccio, C.M. 2001: ‘Ethnicity and Colonization’. In Malkin, I. (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC), 113–57. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. and Tiffin H. 2000: Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London). Boardman, J. 1999: ‘The excavated history of Al Mina’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. (ed.), Ancient Greeks West and East (Leiden), 135–61. ——. 2001: ‘Aspects of “colonization”’. BASOR 322, 33–42. ——. 2002a: ‘Al Mina: the study of the site’. AWE 1.2, 315–31. ——. 2002b: ‘Greeks and Syria: Pots and People’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. and Snodgrass, A.M. (eds.), Greek Settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea (Oxford), 1–16. ——. 2004: ‘Copies of pottery: by and for whom?’. In Lomas, K. (ed.), Greek Identity in the Western Mediterranean. Papers in Honour of Brian Shefton (Leiden), 149–62. Butler, K.D. 2001: ‘Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse’. Diaspora 10, 189–219. D’Agostino, B. 1975: ‘Ideologia e rituale funerario in Campania nei secoli VIII e VII a.C.’. Contribution à l’étude de la société et de la colonisation eubéennes (Naples), 107–10. ——. 1977: ‘Grecs et ‘indigènes’ sur la côte tyrrhénienne au 7 siècle. La transmission des idéologies entre élites sociales’. Annales. Économies, sociétés, civilisations 32, 3–20. Davison, J.M. 1992: ‘Greeks in Sardinia: Myth and Reality’. In Tykot, R.H. and Andrews, T.K. (eds.), Sardinia in the Mediterranean: a Footprint in the Sea. Studies in Sardinian Archaeology presented to M.S. Balmuth (Sheffield), 384–93. De Caro, S. and Gialanella, C. 1998: ‘Novità pitecusane. L’insediamento di Punta Chiarito a Forio d’Ischia’. In Bats, M. and d’Agostino, B. (eds.), Euboica. L’Eubea e la presenza euboica in Calcidica e in Occidente (Naples), 337–53. Díaz-Andreu, M. 2001: ‘Ethnic Identity/Ethnicity and Archaeology’. In Smelser, N.J. and Baltes, P.B. (eds.), International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences 7 (Amsterdam), 4817–20. Domínguez, A.J. 1991a, ‘Los griegos de Occidente y sus diferentes modos de contacto con las poblaciones indígenas. II. El momento de fundación de la colonia’. Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 18, 149–77. ——. 1991b: La Polis y la expansión colonial griega. Siglos VIII–VI (Madrid). ——. 2000: ‘Phocaeans and other Ionians in Western Mediterranean’. In Krinzinger, F. (ed.), Die Ägäis und das Westliche Mittelmeer. Beziehungen und Wechselwirkungen 8. bis 5. Jh. v. Chr. (Vienna), 507–13. ——. 2006: ‘Greeks in Sicily’. In Tsetskhladze, G.R. (ed.), Greek Colonisation. An Account of Greek Colonies and Other Settlements Overseas I (Leiden), 253–357. Fowler, R.L. 1998: ‘Genealogical thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the creation of the Hellenes’. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44, 1–19.

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Gialanella, C. 1994, ‘Pithecusa: Gli insediamenti di Punta Chiarito. Relazione preliminare’. APOIKIA. I più antici insediamenti greci in Occidente: Funzione e modi dell’organizzazione politica e sociale. Scritti in onore di G. Buchner. AIONArchStAnt. n.s. 1, 169–204. ——. 2003: ‘Pithekoussai’. In Stampolidis, N.C. (ed.), Sea Routes . . . From Sidon to Huelva. Interconnections in the Mediterranean 16th–6th c. BC (Athens), 178–83. Hall, J. 2004: ‘How “Greek” were the early Western Greeks?’. In Lomas, K. (ed.), Greek Identity in the Western Mediterranean. Papers in Honour of Brian Shefton (Leiden), 35–54. Herman, G. 1987: Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge). Hingley, R. 2003: ‘The Roman Army in Britannia: diasporic communities?’. Paper presented to the Fifth World Archaeological Congress. (Washington, DC): http://godot.unisa.edu.au/ wac/pdfs/156.pdf; consulted 22 May 2004. Jones, S. 1997: The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present (London). ——. 1998: ‘Ethnic Identity in Discursive Strategy: the Case of the Ancient Greeks’ (Review Feature: Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity by Jonathan M. Hall). CAJ 8, 271–73. Konstan, D. 2001: ‘To Hellènikon ethnos: Ethnicity and the Construction of Ancient Greek Identity’. In Malkin, I. (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC), 29–50. Latacz, J. 1990: ‘Die Phönizier bei Homer’. In Gehrig, U. and Niemeyer, H.G. (eds.), Die Phönizier im Zeitalter Homers (Mainz), 11–21. Lehiste, I. 1988: Lectures on Language Contact (Cambridge, Mass.). Malkin, I. 1998: The Returns of Odysseus. Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley). ——. 2001: ‘Greek Ambiguities: “Ancient Hellas” and “Barbarian Epirus”’. In Malkin, I. (ed.) Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Washington, DC), 187–212. ——. 2002 ‘A Colonial Middle Ground: Greek, Etruscan and Local Elites in the Bay of Naples’. In Lyons, C.L. and Papadopoulos, J.K. (eds.), The Archaeology of Colonialism (Los Angeles), 151–81. Möller, A. 2000: Naukratis. Trade in Archaic Greece (Oxford). Mora, F. 2004: ‘Tra identità linguistica e consapevolezza culturale. Considerazioni intorno a J.M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture, Chicago 2002’. Polifemo 4, 34–43. Morgan, C. 1990: Athletes and Oracles. The Transformation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth Century BC (Cambridge). ——. 2003: Early Greek States beyond the Polis (London). Morris, I. 1998: ‘Words and Things’ (Review Feature: Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity by Jonathan M. Hall). CAJ 8, 269–70. Osborne, R. 1998: ‘Early Greek colonization?. The nature of the Greek settlement in the West’. In Fisher, N. and van Wees, H. (eds.), Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Perspectives (London), 251–69. Plácido, D. 2000: ‘Los viajes griegos arcaicos a Occidente: los procesos de mitificación’. In Fernández, P., Wagner, C.G. and López, F. (eds.), Intercambio y comercio preclásico en el Mediterráneo (Madrid), 267–70. Shepherd, G. 1995: ‘The Pride of most colonials: burial and religion in the Sicilian colonies’. In Fischer Hansen, T. (ed.), Ancient Sicily (Copenhagen), 51–82. Winter, I.J. 1995: ‘Homer’s Phoenicians: History, Ethnography, or Literary Trope? [A Perspective on Early Orientalism]’. In Carter, J.B. and Morris, S.P. (eds.), The Ages of Homer. A Tribute to E.T. Vermeule (Austin), 247–71.

ETHNICITY-SHMICITY? JOHN BOARDMAN There is no reason to think that the Greeks agonised over ‘ethnicity’ as do moderns and modern scholars, or that they did anything other than observe non-Greeks and react to similarities and differences in many different spheres (religion, language, etc.); so we perhaps do wrong to force such preoccupations on what little evidence there is for a society where it was not necessary to carry a passport and asylum did not depend on origin. Today it may be more important to identify oneself as a Catholic, Moslem or Jew, regardless of nationality—not a problem in antiquity, where declared identity seems to have depended wholly upon the context in which it might need to be declared or might be challenged, if at all or ever. ‘Ethnicity’ is virtually a modern word, associated with heathenism, and certainly a modern concept; one wonders whether, for those who prefer to try to study antiquity on antiquity’s terms, it is a subject at all. I wrote the preceding paragraph before seeing Jonathan Hall’s new book and Lynette Mitchell’s penetrating review, influenced by what I had read on ‘ethnicity’ already, but looking for some starting points. I am still not clear that ‘Greek ethnicity’ is a real subject, but it is certainly one that can generate a lot of writing. ‘In today’s cosmopolitan world, ethnic and national identity has assumed an ever-increasing importance’ (the blurb to Hall’s new book)—so, like slavery, gender and, in time no doubt, animal rights, the subject becomes one for obsessive study, too often on modern terms, not ancient. Aristotle saw no problem (Hall, p. 217); should we, on behalf of an indifferent antiquity? An ancient Greek would have recognised a non-Greek by the fact that he did not speak Greek, of whatever dialect, but talked ‘bar-bar’, a barbarian, and did not worship Greek gods. The existence of the Olympic Games and implicit rules for entrants makes this clear enough, not defining it but simply acknowledging it, and it must have been apparent even earlier in the few (if any) circumstances where it might have seemed to matter. Within Greece it might have been important on occasion to identify oneself as a Spartan and not an Athenian, or Ionian not Dorian, although accent would probably help to do that. The Macedonian language may be a rather remote dialect of Greek, not readily intelligible to a Greek, and Macedonians and Greeks seem not to have been anxious to claim close kinship, while other factors determined the perceived differences, which were also a stimulus to political and military action. In other circumstances, being an Ionian might excuse one from siding with barbarians against other Greeks. I suspect that Herodotus was no less proud, or more proud, of being a Karian than a Greek; he ‘signs’ himself by naming his home city. If there was any truly bilingual fringe (Epirus, Cyprus) a visiting Greek might have doubts, and the native would probably respond according to circumstances, but if it was merely the problem of a funny accent ‘Greek’ would qualify. Living together in ‘Greece’, despite it somewhat fluid boundaries, was the closest bond, but took nothing from the Greekness of colonials who lived far away, where the barbarian might seem a more apparent contrast for his behaviour, religion and speech. But to hold that folk speaking different languages or even dialects could not understand each other is to undervalue the ability of the mainly illiterate to make themselves understood come what may, and to impose yet more modern problems

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on antiquity. In a Greek enemy a strange dialect was the most difference to be observed (Aeschylus Septem 170, heterophonos). A mixed marriage would produce ‘Greek’ children; but perhaps not if not in a ‘Greek’ town even with a Greek father. There were no ‘racist’ riots, and the barbarian was observed objectively for the most part, often sympathetically, when not actually on the battlefield. A look askance by a barbarian or a Greek at one of his fellows behaving in an alien manner is not a criterion for serious thoughts of ethnicity. See now also Hall’s rather more relaxed approach: ‘How “Greek” were the early western Greeks?’, in K. Lomas (ed.), Greek Identity in the Western Mediterranean. Papers in Honour of Brian Shefton (Leiden 2004), 35–54. Judging ancient ethnicity on antiquity’s terms, which might seem the most that we should or can do, is not thought to be enough. Yet the scholarly validity of a study that explores problems of tension and contrasts of autochthony or Hellenic identity, while there is no evidence for any serious concern over such matters in antiquity (except perhaps when politically convenient), or that over-evaluates mainly concocted genealogies which sought, in the Greek (Hesiodic) manner, to introduce an element of discipline in the record, rather than to promote one ‘race’ or family over another, must remain questionable. 11 Park Street Woodstock Oxford OX20 1SJ UK [email protected]

REVIEWS NEW PUBLICATIONS ON THE NEAR EAST A. Sagona (ed.), A View from the Highlands: Archaeological Studies in Honour of Charles Burney, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Suppl. 12, Peeters Press, Louvain/ Paris/Dudley MA 2004, XX+742 pp., illustrations. Cased. ISBN 90–429–1352–5 R. Biscione, S. Hmayakyan and N. Parmegiani (eds.), The North-Eastern Frontier Urartians and Non-Urartians in the Sevan Lake Basin, I: The Southern Shores, Documenta Asiana VII, Istituto di Studi Sulle Civiltà dell’Egeo e del Vicino Oriente CNR, Rome 2002, 474 pp., illustrations. Cased. ISBN 88–87345–06–6/ ISSN 1126–7321 U. Seidl, Bronzekunst Urartus, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2004, IX+218 pp., 155 figs., 72 pls. and 3 fold-outs. Cased. ISBN 3–8053–3265–3 A. Sagona and C. Sagona, with contributions by J.C. Newton, E. Pemberton and I. McPhee, Archaeology at the North-East Anatolian Frontier, I: An Historical Geography and a Field Survey of the Bayburt Province, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Suppl. 14, Peeters Press, Louvain/Paris/Dudley MA 2004, XXI+597 pp., 32 maps, 196 figs. (summary in Turkish). Cased. ISBN 90–429–1390–8 M. McConchie, Archaeology at the North-East Anatolian Frontier, V: Iron Technology and Iron-making Communities of the First Millennium BC, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Suppl. 13, Peeters Press, Louvain/Paris/Dudley MA 2004, XXI+393 pp., 205 figs. (summary in Turkish). Cased. ISBN 90–429–1389–4 Colloquium Anatolicum/Anadolu Sohbetleri II, Institutum Turcicum Scientiae Antiquitatis/Türk Eskiça< Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Istanbul 2003, 137 pp., illustrations. Paperback. ISBN 975–92507–1–3/ISSN 1303–8486 Anadolu Akdenizi, Arkeoloji Haberleri, 2003–1; 2004–2: News of Archaeology from Anatolia’s Mediterranean Areas, Suna-Inan Kiraç Akdeniz Medeniyetleri Ara{tirma Enstitüsü/Suna and Inan Kiraç Research Institute on Mediterranean Civilizations, Vehbi Koc Vakfi, Antalya 2003, 2004; 2003–1: 67 pp., illustrations; 2004–2: 140 pp., illustrations. Both paperback. ISSN 1308–9660 G.B. Lanfranchi, M. Roaf and R. Rollinger (eds.), Continuity of Empire (?). Assyria, Media, Persia, History of the Ancient Near East/Monographs V, S.a.r.g.o.n. Editrice e Libreria, Padua 2003, XI+468 pp., illustrations in text and 22 black and white and colour pls. Paperback. No ISBN/ISSN I would like to start this review with the volume dedicated to Charles Burney. I knew Charles’s name thanks to his book, written with David Lang, The Peoples of the Hills. In Oxford in the early 1990s the university’s newly formed Central Asia and Caucasus Society planned a conference dedicated to the memory of David Lang. I asked Charles to be the keynote speaker. Although unfortunately the conference never took place, our correspondence has continued ever since. I could not wait to meet

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someone who combined such a detailed and wide-ranging knowledge of the Caucasus/ Anatolia with such a warm personality. We never met in England; we did meet at a conference in Van, the heart of Urartu, in 2001. This seemed symbolic: he has done so much for the study of Urartu and my own interest in archaeology began also with Urartu. Since then we have become even closer friends. A View from the Highlands is not just a massive volume, it is a well-deserved tribute to this extraordinary scholar. There are 32 contributions from 39 authors covering all of Charles Burney’s academic interests. The work is in four sections. The first is the Introduction, where there are three personal recollections of the dedicatee. Then comes Anatolia and North Syria, with pieces on the Neolithic of eastern Anatolia, early Transcaucasian houses, an Early Bronze Age cemetery in North Central Anatolia, the Hurrian identity of early Transcaucasian culture, Upper Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, pastoral tribes and early settlements, Urartian fortresses, city planning at Ayanis, the susi temple at Adilcevaz, bronze quivers from the Upper Anzaf fortress, Xenophon’s information on the historical geography of north-eastern Anatolia, etc. The section on Transcaucasia contains contributions on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic in Georgia and Armenia, Transcaucasian obsidian, the Early Bronze Age in northern Azerbaijan, social boundaries and ritual landscapes in Late Prehistoric Transcaucasia and Anatolia, the chronology of the Caucasus during the Early Metal Age, and Urartu and the southern Caucasus. The final section is on Iran, presenting studies of the Late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age, the Kangavar survey, Hasanlu, etc. This cannot be called a Festschrift: all contributions are substantial, offering new material and interpretations. The collection itself makes a considerable contribution to scholarship, an appropriate tribute to its dedicatee, doyen of Anatolian archaeology. A. Sagona should be congratulated for assembling such a field of scholars from so many countries, as well as for his editorial work. The publishers also deserve praise for the high physical quality of the volume. An index would have been helpful but difficult to compile; and it would have been nice to have a full list of Charles’s publications included. The results of the Armenian-Italian joint archaeological expedition to the Sevan Lake basin are published in The North-Eastern Frontier Urartians and Non-Urartians in the Sevan Lake Basin. The project and the volume are the fruits of a collaboration between the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the Institute for the Study of Aegean and Near Eastern Civilisations of the Italian National Research Council. This handsome book, the first volume of a series, enriches our knowledge of the Urartian north-eastern frontier and the antiquities of the Sevan basin. The first chapter provides an overview of the Italian archaeological survey of the region, conducted between 1994 and 2000. Individual chapters cover the natural geography, geology and environment; the historical geography of the region in the Urartian period, based mainly on the study of Urartian inscriptions; provide a description of the sites; Bronze Age to Roman period surface pottery; the fortress of Tsovinar; its architecture; Iron Age settlement patterns; and graves of the Urartian period. A few chapters reconstruct the historical-environmental circumstances and landscape of the region. The pre- and post-Urartian periods are also covered through the publication of a few graves. This volume brims with new information but also re-examines existing evidence. The project itself and the book are a clear demonstration of how much can be achieved through close collaboration, both between Western and Eastern scholars and by specialists in different disciplines. The subsequent volumes are keenly awaited.

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Bronzekunst Urartus is the result of many years of painstaking study by U. Seidl, and it is a magnificent achievement which represents German scholarship at its best. Practically all known Urartian bronzes housed in museums around the world have been brought together under one cover. Virtually no piece, however small, escaped S.’s attention. The book is organised by object-type and then by date. Each section or sub-section contains a detailed catalogue. Nearly every piece is illustrated by line drawing or photograph or both. One chapter is devoted to the iconography of the depictions on the bronzes. The book is no mere catalogue and description; it examines and explains the influences shaping Urartian bronzework and places the bronzes in a cultural and social context. The archaeology of north-eastern Anatolia has not been well known. Thanks to a team from the University of Melbourne this gap in our knowledge is receding. The team began its project in Bayburt province in 1988, and in Erzurum in 1994. The results of investigations in Bayburt are now published in Archaeology at the North-East Anatolian Frontier, I: An Historical Geography and a Field Survey of the Bayburt Province. The principal site investigated is Büyüktepe Höyük, but an extensive survey has been made of the whole area. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction and discussion of the meaning of ‘frontiers’, ‘borders’ and ‘boundaries’, seeking not just geographical, political, anthropological, etc. definitions but how archaeology can contribute to the discussion. A. Sagona also provides a short description of the Australian North-East Anatolian Project within this context. Chapters 2 and 3 are written by C. Sagona. She has collected all available literary evidence on the area, mainly inscriptions from the Hittite, Assyrian and Urartian empires and information from Greek and Roman authors. One of her main conclusions is that Büyüktepe may possibly be identified as ancient Sinoria, known in connection with Mithradates. A very helpful table of toponymic, tribal and other names concerning north-eastern Anatolia featured in ancient texts (pp. 70–71) concludes Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, really a continuation, she gives an historical overview of the north-eastern highlands, concentrating on the so-called Median, Achaemenid, post-Achaemenid, Byzantine and Persian, and Islamic periods. Too much credence is given to Herodotus and his Median logos when it is well known how carefully one should treat his information about the Median empire.1 J.C. Newton contributes Chapter 4, an examination of the geology, soils, climate, hydrogeography and ecology of the region. The core of the book (almost half the text) is Chapter 5, an archaeological survey of the province written jointly by the Sagonas; it encompasses some 100 sites dating from the Late Chalcolithic to the Ottoman period. The short Chapter 6 (A. Sagona) describes settlement patterns. Over half the book is formed of appendices—maps, site plans, photographs and a catalogue of finds (the Sagonas, E. Pemberton and I. McPhee). These are very helpful in works of this kind, clarifying details in the text and combining with it to present as comprehensive a picture as possible of the area. Future detailed publication of the material from Büyüktepe itself would be welcome; so too would an index. Archaeology at the North-East Anatolian Frontier, V: Iron Technology and Iron-making Communities of the First Millennium BC (written by M. McConchie) is one of the volumes containing

1 For the latest discussion, see the final volume considered in this review and C. Tuplin, ‘Medes in Media, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia: Empire, Hegemony, Domination or Illusion?’. AWE 3.2 (2004), 223–51.

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results of the Melbourne project in north-eastern Anatolia.2 It studies iron objects from the excavations of Büyüktepe Höyük (Baybert province) and Sos Höyük (Erzurum province). McC. also provides us with detailed descriptions of the methodology and the analytical procedures used (preparation of samples for microscopic examination, reflected light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, hardness testing, chemical analysis, etc.). She discusses at length pre-Urartian, Urartian, Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Early Roman period metallurgy from many sites in surrounding areas (as far as eastern Turkey and the Caucasus) in order to place the iron production of the region in context. Furthermore, she has a general discussion about iron-making societies and sources of iron in Assyria, Anatolia, the Levant, etc. One chapter is dedicated to technological processes such as mining and smelting. The main conclusions, that postUrartian iron production was on a small scale and that production was for the immediate needs of the community (to generate local trade and exchange), sound convincing. There is a large number of illustrations. North-eastern Anatolia adjoins the territory where the Chalybes once lived. They were by repute the inventors of ironworking (Xen. Anab. 5. 5. 1). It would have been interesting had McC. explored this. When she talks about iron metallurgy and furnaces in Colchis (pp. 52–53), McC. cites only D. Khakhutaishvili’s article of 1976; he later published a whole book on the subject.3 In any case, Khakhutaishvili’s dating of iron furnaces and the earliest iron objects from Colchis is disputed.4 The information given about the Armenian satrapy (p. 83) is based entirely on Xenophon, yet archaeology also provides valuable information.5 I could find no discussion of the trade in metals in the general examination of the role of metallurgy in ancient societies.6 An index would have been helpful. One could make other comments and suggestions, but as it stands the book is an extremely valuable and pioneering study. The Turkish Institute of Archaeology, based at Istanbul University, is increasingly active not just in organising conferences but in publication of Anatolian archaeology and history.7 The second volume of Colloquium Anatolicum includes the preliminary results of excavation of the Lower and Upper Anzaf Urartian fortresses at Van between 1991 and 2002, the Hittites in an Indo-European context, Neolithic and Chalcolithic Anatolia, Max von Oppenheim’s contribution to archaeology, the Palaeolithic cultures of Anatolia, and Ammianus Marcellinus and his descriptions of foreign tribes. The papers are in Turkish, German and English.

2 Another volume had appeared the previous year: L. Hopkins, Archaeology at the North-East Anatolian Frontier, VI: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Sos Höyük and Yigittasi Village, Ancient Near Eastern Studies Suppl. 11 (Louvain/Paris/Dudley MA 2003) (a review of this book will appear in a later issue of AWE). 3 D.A. Khakhutaishvili, Proizvodstvo zheleza v drevnei Kolkhide (Tbilisi 1987). See also I.A. Gzelishvili, Zhelezoplavil’noe proizvodsto v drevnei Gruzii (Tbilisi 1964). 4 G.R. Tsetskhladze, ‘Did the Greeks Go to Colchis for Metals?’, OJA 14.3 (1995), 307–32. 5 G.A. Tiratsyan, Kul’tura drevnei Armenii VI v. do n.e.-III v. n.e. (po arkheologicheskim dannym) (Erevan 1988), 21–76. See now R. Vardanyan (ed.), From Urartu to Armenia: Florilegium Gevork A. Tirats’yan, in Memoriam (Neuchâtel 2003). 6 See, for example, M.Yu. Treister, The Role of Metals in Ancient Greek History (Leiden/New York/Cologne 1996), 96–97, 116–20, 248–60, 347–61. 7 See, for example, International Symposium on Settlement and Housing in Anatolia through the Ages, 5–7 June 1996. Papers Presented to the Symposium, Istanbul 1999; B. Fischer, H. Genz, É. Jean and K. Köro