live in; by specific aspirations; by limited knowledge or availability. The
social constraints that operated in the north Aegean are not transparent
from the material record. To the dispassionate observer, surviving arte-
facts present us with two quite specific methodological challenges to our
understanding of ancient demand patterns (and this applies principally
to what survives, which means, overwhelmingly, inorganic materials).
One difficulty is the fact that, leaving aside recognizably exclusive objects
(such as gold items, which as we saw in Chapter 2, were reserved for élite
families and outside the normal circulation of commodities), much of
the built environment and surviving movable objects that are found in
excavations seem to offer a surprising degree of social comparability.
There are, to be sure, many unique, exceptional artefacts, that represent
bespoke commissions, often found as grave goods in the north Aegean
area; but there are many more everyday objects, which do not seem to
differ very much in typological terms. Presented with single examples of
a given form, it is not easy to judge why one knife blade, or spearhead, or
dress pin might have been chosen over another. In themselves, these
items do not tell us very much about social differentiation. If anything,
they imply that a large number of people had access to a good range of
essential tools and ornaments. Outside some coastal colonies (Pontic
Apollonia, Abdera, or Akanthos in Chalkidike), the apparent absence of
largeflat cemeteries, which could tell us something about broad social
groups, makes it difficult to draw any general conclusions about the ways
in which northern societies treated their ordinary members. Most funer-
ary artefacts from the north come from discrete groups of objects, every
one of which is slightly different from every other. The traditions of
mound burial in particular disguise shared features of commemorative
practice and emphasize instead the individual’s uniqueness.^37
We might conclude from the configuration of burials and grave goods
that the language of social differentiation operated on at least two
levels—the level of uniquely commissioned pieces, and the level of widely
disseminated forms. This distinction seems to operate in relation to all
types of objects and in different materials—metal, glass, and clay, and
was probably echoed in organic items. This only refers to their method of
manufacture, whereas there may well be other considerations at play in
the application of ranking or other social distinctions, involving numbers
of objects, or specific combinations. The high quality, bespoke items rank
alongside the best that could be obtained anywhere in the Aegean. We
know from Xenophon’s recollections of Socrates that some metal smiths
(^37) See Ch. 8 for further discussion of funerary consumption practices.
156 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean