AEGEAN-LEVANTINE TRADE, 600–300 BCE 297
nor do the addition of the Asia Minor and Egyptian goods, which also were travelling in
both directions.
23 This does not include the items from the ubiquitous category (Table 12.1:E), e.g., arms,
metal-ware, perfumes, textiles, and wines. Also, the distinction between some of these cate-
gories, e.g., manufactured and semi-processed is not easily determined. Wine, for example,
is the product of an elaborate and even artisanal process. Is it then a manufactured product
or semi-processed?
24 Again, this does not include items from the ubiquitous category (Table 12.1:E), like per-
fumes, textiles, and metal-ware, which no doubt appeared in westbound cargoes.
25 Bresson ( 2008 : 150–4; 2016: 353–8) provides an overview of the use of these raw materials
in textile production.
26 Industrial metals, like copper, tin, lead, and iron, could be included in this list; however, the
amount of refining required to produce an ingot of copper, for example, warrants the inclu-
sion of the metals under ‘manufactured’ rather than ‘raw or semi-processed.’
27 I use only the goods found in Table 12.1:A, B to calculate these figures. Only two raw
industrial goods, fuller’s earth and unfinished marble, appear in the list out of the total ten,
i.e., 20%. Once again, these figures do not constitute trade volume, but simply discrete
commodity types.
28 See Bass 1997 for a detailed discussion of the raw materials found on the wreck.
29 Manufactured goods from the east are a cohesive group, forming ca. 9% of the trade, but are
greatly overshadowed by the spices and so are not included in the ‘core.’
30 See van der Veen 2003 for the problem of ‘luxury’ foods.
31 For a study of ‘owl’ and other coin hoards in the east see van Alfen 2012b. The question of
the mechanisms by which some Archaic and Classical Greek coinages appeared in Egypt
and the Near East is contested: Picard 2011 and Tzamalis 2011 , for example, have argued
that Persian tribute was the primary motor, while Kroll 2011 and van Alfen 2012b suggest
commerce.
32 See note 8.
33 Sommer 2004 looks at Phoenician commercial networks in the Iron Age, while Malkin
2011 examines the nature and extent of archaic Phoenician and Greek networks across the
Mediterranean. Peacock 2011 reconsiders Phoenician-Greek commercial connections as
seen through the lens of Homer.
34 See Malkin 2011 : chapter 5 for a recent reappraisal of Phocaean activity in the west, and
van Alfen and Bransbourg 2013 for a snapshot of archaic Phocaean minting at home and
abroad. For an overview of imitative owls in Arabia see Huth 2010 ; for a statistical analysis
of Sabaean and Qatabanian owl production see van Alfen 2010.
35 See especially Braund 1994 and Kallet 2007.
36 Ober 2010a and Scheidel 2010 both demonstrate how real wages and living standards in
Athens in the Classical period, and by extension other parts of the Greek world, were suf-
ficiently high to allow some discretionary spending by a reasonably large proportion of the
population. Antiphanes, for example, in the Timon (fr. 204 K-A apud Ath. 7.309d) depicts
Timon as being too stingy to even buy an obol’s worth of incense for the gods and god-
desses; this shows that even the poorest Athenians could purchase at least small amounts of
this commodity (my thanks to Edward Harris for this reference). Cf. also Foxhall 2005 : 240
on the occasional consumption of ‘semi-luxuries’ by non-elites.
37 Berry 1994 : 32 similarly argues that it is not possible, in a modern context, to ‘democratize’
luxuries, but this is due to his concept of luxury being those items found in what may be
regarded as Appadurai’s highest register, and the function of those highest register items
to maintain social distance between elites and masses. While I agree with Berry that those
items in the highest register cannot, for a time, be ‘democratized,’ there could eventually be
slippage, some items falling out, others welcomed in. I argue here against Braund’s apparent
efforts to freeze this dynamic and place most, if not all imports in the highest register.