Ethnicity and Language in the Ancient Mediterranean 29In antiquity, amber was collected along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. This area
had been inhabited by Baltic tribes since the second millenniumBCE. There were two
routes on which amber was transported to the south. One was directed to the southeast
and terminated on the northern shore of the Black Sea. The other route is better known,
and is traditionally called the “amber route.” This was directed to the southwest, and the
terminal market for its goods was Rome.
Three groups of merchants with differing ethnic affiliations were engaged in the Baltic
amber trade. The primary trading lay in the hands of Roman merchants who obtained
amber, as raw material, in the region of western Prussia, in exchange for Roman luxury
goods (i.e., bronze and silver coins,terrasigillataceramics, iron ore, glass, fibulae, trinket
beads, and precious cloth). The secondary trading was controlled by Germanic merchants
who traded amber for lower-quality Roman goods from the Balts. The Balts in west-
ern Lithuania entertained a tertiary trading network with their kinfolks who exchanged
amber, wax, and honey for Roman bronze coins and beads.
In theGermania,written at the end of the first centuryAD, Tacitus speaks of the Aestii
as amber traders, who, for the most part, are astonished at the willingness of the Romans
to pay gold for a substance that washes up on the Aesti’s shores. Other ancient writers,
such as Cassiodorus, also describe the Aestii as a Baltic tribe, and in theGetica(120), Jor-
danes describes them as “dwelling on the farthest shore of the German ocean” (Wolfram
1988: 86–88; Curta 1999). Scholarly discussion of the earliest evidence for amber trade
has tended to focus on the different words for amber. Tacitus, for example, usesglae-
sum, which is related to Germanicglaes“clear, transparent” (cf. Old English “glaes”).
However, the use of Germanic terminology raises questions. Why would the Romans
adopt a Germanic term for an article that came from the land of the Balts? The words for
amber in the Baltic languages aregintaras(Lithuanian),dzintars(Latvian), andgentars
(Prussian) (Botjár 1999: 31). “Either Tacitus was relying on German informants who
had substituted their own word, or, more likely, the Aestii had accepted a German loan
word because it was Germanic middlemen who were their portal into the amber route
and the distant Roman world to the south” (Sidrys 2001: 168). In fact, it is also possible
that even the Baltic words were borrowed from either Hungarian or Finno-Ugrian tribes
in the Oka basin. More significant is the fact that a persistent theme of the discussions in
the Roman sources is ignorance of the Aesti. Cassiodorus (V.2) relates how an embassy of
the Aesti came with offerings of amber as a mark of goodwill. They collect the amber on
their shores but are unable to explain whence it comes there, whereupon Cassiodorus,
citing Tacitus, is able to explain the origins of the amber—it is the sap from a tree in
the middle of the ocean—back to the very people who have brought it to them. In the
accounts of Tacitus, Cassiodorus, and Jordanes, amber serves as marker of ethnicity: it
is associated exclusively with the Baltic people who produce it. Indeed, as Botjár shows,
the transformation of the raw material into a luxury item serves to signify the superiority
of the civilized Romans and the inferiority of the crude Aesti.
The example of the amber trade demonstrates that the discourse on ethnicity goes well
beyond the findings from only one scientific discipline. Instead, it reveals a matrix of
different threads from various disciplines: that is, archeology (surveying articles of trade
from grave goods and findings in settlements; identifying trade routes), anthropology