266 MARK L. LAWALL
(Van Alfen 2011c: 217–24), and no
wonder consumers making small
purchases are often depicted in
textual and visual sources as tast-
ing before purchasing. Such com-
plaints and concerns, however,
only show that some merchants
went too far in upsetting the
system; the majority must have
played within workable parame-
ters or the system would not have
functioned at all.
Large-scale and hence higher
risk purchases of amphora car-
goes did occur, and we have
seen that some producers went
to some lengths to improve the
informative nature of their con-
tainers at least in that initial ship-
ment. In the background, too, is
the possibility that ‘paperwork’
that no longer survives helped
to ease some of the risks inher-
ent in such larger purchases. The
broader debate of the extent to
which long-distance shipping in
any period was dependent on
pre-established ties is also closely related to discussions in modern econo-
mies in which transactions occur within an ‘embedded’ social structure (see
p. 259). Garlan has explored this question in terms of the distribution of
Thasian fabricant (producers) stamps and has concluded that there are no such
patterns, as would be expected if producers and long-distant consumers had
longstanding ties (Garlan 1999a: 91; 2000 : 182). From Athenian court cases
of the fourth century one gets the sense that there was some pre-planning
of shipping ventures, but others simply trusted to luck (as pointed out by
Pébarthe 2012 ). The ‘sample-size’ in terms of texts is fairly small, so the actual
extent of dependence on existing social connections in long-distance ship-
ping is difficult to measure from that perspective alone. And yet, to return to
Johnstone’s ( 2011 ) focus on containerization and Wallace’s ( 2004 ) observation
that risk is greatly reduced for amphora transactions involving bulk cargoes,
trust between unfamiliar merchants and buyers might not be so problematic at
the port as it would be at the retail market.11.2 Black Figured Pelike, reverse (no. RC 1063) Image cour-
tesy of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell’Etruria
Meridionale.