270 MARK L. LAWALL
their contents, is clearly indicated especially by finds in non-Greek burials and
settlement sites.Fourth through Second Centuries BCE
The Hellenistic evidence is in many ways richer, but even in areas of evidence
that are shared in the Archaic period there are clear differences in behavior.
At the supply end, the city is prominently involved in amphora produc-
tion with many (although not all) production areas using stamping systems
that refer explicitly to the city and civic magistrates (Garlan 2000 ; Kac 2007 ).
Other stamping systems never refer to the city but do use names or abbrevia-
tions, generally interpreted as makers’ names. The named individuals, however,
could be landowners who control both production of the goods and the jars
and could even have been involved with distribution. Hellenistic amphora
shapes often refer to a narrower region, sometimes even a specific political unit
(e.g., the amphoras of Rhodes). Kiln sites are known from a much wider area
than was the case in the Archaic period and show a much wider topographical
spread of production areas both near and far from urban centers (Lawall 2011a).
This distribution raises the likelihood of connection between the agricultural
producers and the container producers, hence facilitating coordination of pro-
duction and packaging of surplus. These changes in terms of the amphora
evidence should be considered alongside the textual evidence in this period
for institutions supporting supplies to transactions: banks for the productive
investment of cash assets and building needed capital (Gabrielsen 2005 ); state
mandates for precisely how civic land is to be used (Reger 2007 : 465–6); diver-
sity of options for landownership and opportunities for emigration or immi-
gration (Archibald 2011 ; Oliver 2011 ); as well as social and political pressures
to convert produce of the land to cash assets for money-based services to the
state (Osborne 1991 ; cf. Martin 1996 , arguing for these pressures already in the
sixth century).
Hellenistic evidence for prices is simply very different from the Archaic.
For certain areas and periods in the Hellenistic world, we have useful series of
prices (Reger 1994 ; 1997 ; Cadell and Le Rider 1997 ; Chankowski-Sablé 1997 ;
Grainger 1999 ; Bresson 2006 ); and government intervention in pricing is well
attested (see pp. 265, 267). In terms of amphora-borne commodities, Ptolemaic
papyri tend to a focus on three variables: the number of containers of unspec-
ified volume, the names of the containers nearly always carrying a place-name
designation, and the product in very general terms (usefully compiled by Kruit
and Worp 2000 ). Such documents, however, also attest to other costs (taxes,
transport costs, accidental losses; see McGing 1998 on banditry) behind sales
and the potential for military demand. A greater portion of Hellenistic jars
shows better standardization than their Archaic counterparts, so reckoning up