Ancient Economies of the Northern Aegean. Fifth to First Centuries BC

The idea that a group of transhumant shepherds operating within the

Pierian mountains‘settled down’at the site of Aigeai is not consistent

with any reasonable interpretation of the archaeological data. There is no

evidence and no theoretical basis for conceiving a social group without

any connections to local farming regimes inserting itself into the fabric of

lower Macedonian society in the seventh centurybc. On the contrary,

the close symbolic connections between the Early Iron Age burials at

Aigeai and their historical successors makes this even less likely. There

are more fundamental ecological and historical reasons for rejecting the

notion of itinerant pastoralists in the Pierian hills. Chandezon argues

that significant transhumant behaviour occurs on the margins of desert

and temperate zones, not within the temperate zone as such. What is

more, large-scale transhumance was not possible prior to the late Hel-

lenistic period because of the complex pattern of land ownership in the

east Balkan region, and the epigraphic evidence for the transmission of

rights to pasturage, orepinomia, bears this out.^108 Despite the evidence

of systematic diachronic studies of pastoral behaviour, which show very

clearly that pastoral economies are closely integrated with arable ones,

the idea that there were exclusively pastoral societies has not entirely

been erased.^109

Horse power

Most of the animal species that were present in classical times already

belonged to the fauna of the Balkan peninsula in the Neolithic period.

Horses are different. Levine has recently argued, on the bases of mito-

chondrial DNA testing, that mares from at least 77 separate lineages have

contributed to the modern genetic pool—in contrast to the‘seven

daughters of Eve’reputed to have been the female progenitors of ana-

tomically modern human beings. The implication of the equid DNA is

culturally and politically more akin to the Epeiroticethnethan to the Lower Macedonians
(or the Thessalians). Hammond has long since drawn attention to the fact that they were
called Molossicethneby the earliest writers, that like their Epirote brothers they practised
transhumant pastoralism, that they did not live in cities but in open villages (ŒÆôa ŒþìÆò),
and that they were organised in territorial units (ŠŁíÅ)’. (Hatzopoulos 1996, I, 479).

(^108) Chandezon 2003, 393 and n.15.
(^109) In addition to the arguments presented by Chandezon 2003 (170–81, 333, 371, 377,
396 onepinomia) and the authors cited above, n. 106, see esp. Nixon and Price 2001, 401–3,
for a systematic study of pastoral regimes on Crete; nevertheless, McInerney still envisages a
division of pastoral and non-pastoral (?) societies, although he later assumes that pastoral
practices were part of a mixed economy in ancient Greece (2010, 27–8, 71–2, 164–72).
Thelongue duréein the north Aegean 183