produced much sought-after (and hence expensive) arms, because they
were, quite simply, made to a high specification.^38 When Plato talks
about craftsmen (2. 369b–370e, 370e–371a, cf. Xen.Cyrop.8.2.5), it is
clear that purchasers in Athens had very high expectations, which less
populous and less prosperous areas probably failed to match. Many
writers tell us that the north was among the more prosperous regions
of the Aegean. Thucydides is explicit about the general materialeudai-
moniaof the Odrysian-controlled territories, while many of the tribute
payers in thefifth-century Delian League, not just the big spenders, such
as Thasos, Byzantion, Ainos, and Abdera, were among the higher-rated
members of this Athenian-led maritime defensive network.^39 In the
Macedonian and Odrysian kingdoms, demand for high-quality products
was driven by élites whose interests and lifestyles made them gravitate to
the countryside as well as to towns. The hundreds of élite burials that
have been investigated across the east Balkan landmass show that quality
craftwork was widely distributed in spatial, if not social terms.
The issue of the quality of human workmanship and its relationship to
social groups will continue to be a preoccupation in the discussion that
follows. The other, more intractable challenge posed by material data,
namely the meanings that these objects had in their social settings,
depends on some prior assumptions about social relations. Despite
what has already been said about the semiotics of artefacts, we do not
have any ready-made tools for‘reading’archaeologicalfinds, which do,
after all, constitute the largest reservoir of data about these northern
societies. Although as modern observers we tend to see artefacts in an
isolated way, they usually existed in a matrix of other objects and in
defined settings. The very fact that we are distant from these material
phenomena gives us an advantage; because we have less information, we
can at least distinguish what is innovative from what is normal and
routine.^40
(^38) Xen.Mem.3.10. 9–15:‘why do you charge more for your breastplates than any other
maker, though they are no stronger and cost no more to make?... the goodfits are not the
tight ones, but those that don’t chafe the wearer?’Veblen puts a slightly different interpret-
ation on serviceability:‘It is notorious that in their selection of serviceable goods in the retail
market, purchasers are guided more by thefinish and workmanship of the goods, than by
any marks of substantial serviceability. Goods, in order to sell, must have some appreciable
amount of labour spent in giving them the marks of decent expensiveness, in addition to
what gives them efficiency for the material use which they are to serve.’(Veblen 1899, 188).
This statement still rings true, notwithstanding large-scale industrial production of retail
commodities. 39
Thuc. 2.97.5 (see Ch. 2 n.57); on northern tribute payers: Nixon and Price 1990, 152–8.
(^40) Latour 2005, 80–1.
Thelongue duréein the north Aegean 157