the region’s past economic potential. Almost everything is relevant in
some way. A larger number of small, highly focused studies, driven by a
variety of individual and institutional objectives, means that a historical
synthesis must work with a collage of data sets that are not fully repre-
sentative of the geographical space under discussion, but that do provide
a very rich historical canvas.
It is appropriate to begin with a topic that has shaped a great deal of
thinking about the pre-imperial history of Macedonia, namely the evo-
lution of the Thermaic Gulf. Until the last decade, reconstructions of the
ancient shore line of the Thermaic Gulf were founded on a combination
of ancient accounts, particularly the brief but decisive evidence of the
coastal locations of Pella and Ichnae in the Classical period (Hdt. 7.123.3;
Thuc. 2.99.4), and the observations of nineteenth-century travellers,
especially of the Frenchman Alfred Delacoulonche and the Austrian
A. Struck, who both studied the Roman bridge at Klidi, dating from
the third centuryad, located on the southern side of the Gulf, which
must once have spanned a river course, but is now buried some 5 km
inland and is located north-east of the present bed of the River Haliak-
mon.^8 Struck concluded that much of the Gulf had become silted up by
alluvial deposits in the period betweenc. 500 bcandad500. Hammond
took a rather different approach to the topography and hydrology of the
area, believing that the changes in the geomorphology observed by
Struck took place on a shorter time scale and were the result of marine
intrusion, rather thanfluvial dynamics.
This picture did not satisfy either historians or geographers, but a
coherent reconstruction of the Gulf area has only begun to emerge since
the completion of a major new geomorphological project, which has
composed thefirst systematic map of the rivers and coastline, based on
the analysis of cores from six boreholes, combined with data from
satellite photographs. This new map shows the location of known pre-
historic and early historic sites around the foothills of the main mountain
massifs, Mount Paiko in the north, Bermion and the Pierian range in the
south, with alluvial silts and gravels accumulating as cones at the junc-
tion with lower-lying terrain. According to the new data, the dynamic
processes that caused the progressive silting of the river estuaries and the
progradation of the coastline away from preferred settlement locations
(^8) Ghilardi et al. 2008, 113fig. 2, 115fig. 3, with discussion of Struck and Hammond,HM
I, 142–62; in Ps.-Skylax (66) Pella is linked to the sea by a channel of water,flowing out of a
lake, Loudias, on the shore of which the city then stood. Cf. Str. 7 fr. 20 (the island of
Phakos, where the Macedonian treasury was located, was connected by an island to the
mainland and the city itself); Livy 49. 46 (refers to theintermuralis amnis).
136 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean