satisfy the demand.^20 On the other hand, documents like the speech
Against Lakritosshow that major transports were potentially vulnerable
to erratic changes at the supply end, if investors or ships’captains
decided, for whatever reason, not to put up capital (in the case of the
former), or not to chance a distant voyage (in the case of the latter). It is
by no means clear which of the possible causes may have triggered the
shift in traffic away from the underlying vector of Aegean trade in the
Classical period (when Athens-basedfinance was linked to north Aegean
products and Pontic grain), in the direction of the axis fuelled by
Rhodianfinance and shipping, bringing Rhodian wines, as well as
other southern Aegean commodities, to the northern Aegean and Balkan
region. The demise of the Piraeus played a part, as did the reduction in
Athenian grain demand.^21
There seems to have been a series of major discontinuities in the
vectors of trade across the region. One is represented by the disruption
to commerce that occurred at the time of Macedonian expansion east-
wards under Philip II and Alexander III. The disappearance of Atticfine
wares, which were very widely disseminated up to the end of the fourth
centurybc, is probably connected,first of all, to the occupation of
Mounychia hill by a Macedonian garrison after 322bc, and then, in
295 bc, with Demetrios Poliorketes’blockade of Piraeus, which pre-
vented the supply of essential commodities to Athens by that route
and, by the same token, of Athenian exports. Third-centurybcAthenian
exports, particularly tableware in the‘West Slope’style, are much less
well represented.^22
The brief appearance and subsequent disappearance of imported
amphorae(with other evidence of a direct Greek presence) at Krastevich,
deep in the foothills of the Sredna Gora mountains of central Bulgaria,
testifies to the uncertainties experienced by merchants, who explored this
new opportunity in thefirst half and probably into the third quarter of
the fourth centurybc, only to retreat thereafter.^23 At Adjiyska Vodenitsa,
Vetren, there is evidence of a series of destructions,c. 300 bc, when the
fortified tower above the Eastern Gateway collapsed and was never
(^20) Wrecks of wineamphorae: Gibbins 2001; Lawall 2011 and forthcoming; see Ch. 7 for
further evidence of consumption patterns and quantification by context at Pistiros.
(^21) Oliver 2007, 49–68, esp. 48–55 (Piraeus); 86–100 (population changes in the late
fourth and third centurybc).
(^22) Rotroff 2005, 13–28.
(^23) Krastevich: see above n. 16; I am grateful to the excavator, Mitko Madjarov, for his
current interpretation of the data accumulated up until 2012.
Regionalism and regional economies 203