The mechanics of exploitation only provide afirst step in understand-
ing what the miners and those who supervised mining processes were
trying to do. Philip V may have felt the intense pressure triggered by a
geopolitical situation over which he had little control, and in which he
was attempting to maximize his resource base using a range of
approaches, including the outright acquisition of assets (one of the
possible motives for his capture of King Amadokos of Thrace), as well
as the exploration of possible new sources of revenue from new mines
(a potentially lucrative strategy, but one that he could realize only by trial
and error). The ways in which metals, mining, and smiths were perceived
is rather more difficult for us to understand. The scientific understanding
of pyrotechnology provides us with an explanation of how ores are turned
into metal form. This contemporary understanding‘reveals’what has been
understood for centuries as a magical process, with practitioners who were
treated as magicians, capable of transforming nature by methods that
defied explanation. Those who were interested in technology knew that
there were‘recipes’for making particular substances and knowledge about
such recipes was potentially a very powerful asset. Pliny’sNatural History
includes‘recipes’that were accessible to him in libraries and information
was evidently exchanged amongst those who had certain technical inter-
ests in common.^88 In practice there was a huge gulf in terms of under-
standing, and of practice, between those who knew something about
pyrotechnology and minerals, and those who did not. As we have seen
in Chapter 2, around the time of the Persian Wars, gold was a socially
exclusive metal. It was not in commercial circulation among indigenous
groups and the minting of gold by the city of Abdera, as well as the
circulation of some Persian electrum coin, is thefirst evidence of gold
becoming a commercially available commodity. Nevertheless, these
coinages did not change the socially driven value of gold in the north
Aegean. Gold artefacts and ornaments continued to be deposited with
socially distinguished individuals, notwithstanding the adoption of gold as
a medium of exchange by Philip II and his successors.^89
(^88) ‘What emerges from [Pliny’s] selection of tests, often misunderstood by Pliny, and
often obscure, even with our chemical knowledge, is a widespread habit of systematic
discrimination, subject to a consensus of method and interpretation. This is by no means
to be taken for granted in any period or community. It is easy to observe excellence of
workmanship in surviving artifacts or to note the endurance of monuments, and to infer the
skill of individual craftsmen or designers. What is less obvious is the way in which
continuity of practice was ensured.’(Greenaway 1986, 158; Healy 1999, on Pliny’s
approach). 89
See further Ch. 8; Abdera’s gold coinage: Chryssanthaki 2002; Chryssanthaki-Nagle
2007; Kagan 2006; Persian gold in the North Aegean: Archibald 1998, 90 with M. Price,CH
Thelongue duréein the north Aegean 175