capture the full range of materials and assets that would have been
relevant to the economies of classical antiquity in this region. Some
historically attested places, as we saw in Chapter 2 in the case of the
pre-Hellenistic city of Maroneia, have evaded modern expectations of
what should have survived from the ancient past. Such examples remind
us that the remote past is in some measure genuinely inaccessible or
cannot be demonstrated to the satisfaction of the rationalist modern
observer.
Essential commodities that circulated inland from coastal areas
included salt, scarce minerals (alum, dyes, and pigments; building
stone, glass, and tin), wine and other bulk foodstuffs, tiles and ceramic
products. Wool, metal ingots and manufactures, hides, timber, cereals,
and other foodstuffs travelled in the opposite direction towards coastal
ports. A dense network of inland routes complemented long-haul mari-
time voyages and short-haul, more regular‘cabotage’along the north
Aegean and western Black Sea coasts, while river traffic along the
principal waterways, such as the Haliakmon, the Loudias and Axios,
the Strymon and Hebros Rivers, was probably highly seasonal, making
use of the higher water levels and calmer conditions of late spring and
summer.
A COLLAGE OF LANDSCAPES
The Thermaic Gulf and PellaThe investigation of historic landscapes is a resource-intensive activity.
In the nineteenth century, individual scholars could travel the country-
side on mule or horseback, collecting notes and drawing inscriptions.
Twentieth-century archaeological practice created the concept of the
team project, with interdisciplinary objectives and specialist involvement
fromfields as diverse as engineering, botany, speleology, forensics, and
veterinary science, as well as the more predicable collaborations with
geographers, ceramic experts, zooarchaeologists, chemists, and analytic
scientists. All of thesefields of expertise have had an impact on the study
of the north Aegean region and much of it has yet to be fully absorbed
into the literature. Individual projects slice up the countryside to exam-
ine locations for defined research purposes. At the same time, modern
development produces unexpected evidence that must somehow be
coordinated with existing information. This breadth and variety of infor-
mation makes it hard to evaluate what should be included in a study of
Thelongue duréein the north Aegean 135