metals under Philip II and his successors served to enhance the monetary
value of gold at the expense of its social significance.
The competition for resources in the lower Strymon area, to which we
will return in Chapter 6, has usually been explored in terms of rival
Greek claims in the region, rather than from inter-cultural perspectives.
One reason for the reluctance to consider these broader, inter-cultural
connections is a widespread assumption that culturally, as well as polit-
ically, the region combined very different partners, comprising not only
the kingdoms of Macedon and Thrace, but also a number of independent
Thracian‘tribes’ and the coastal Greek cities.^40 For a region to be
recognized as an economic entity does not requireprima faciecultural
or ethnic unity. Reger has drawn attention to a number of examples
where cultural differences are no barrier to regional convergence:‘the
Native American tribe of the Maricopas, who speak a completely differ-
ent language from their neighbors the Akimel O’odham and moved into
the [Sonoran] desert in the 1700s, adopted cultural practices virtually
identical to the Akimel O’odham, to the point that the two groups
merged and now share a reservation in the US state of Arizona’. These
south-western American communities share a very similar ecological
environment, and have adapted to it using similar agricultural and
seasonal practices, festivals, and housing.^41 Cultural and ethnic congru-
ence may play a part in the manner in which economic patterns emerge
and develop, but we need not assume that the absence of these common
features constituted barriers to economic relations. On the contrary, it is
a key argument of this book that cultural differences contributed to the
economic space of east Balkan social and commercial culture in the
second half of thefirst millenniumbc.
Nevertheless, there is a well-embedded assumption about the cultural
distinctiveness and separateness of the partners involved in commercial
transactions that has complicated our understanding of how economic
life was articulated. Since economic relations cannot be dissociated from
social ones, as we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, it is appropriate to return at
this point to the historiography of the region in order to comprehend
(^40) e.g. Hatzopoulos 2002, 272 n.43, citing Mihailov 1989, 55:‘the principle of royal
power in Thrace brought it closer to the political régime in Persia and opposed it to the
Greek city-state (polis), but it should be borne in mind that this country was located
between two different worlds, and served as a bridge between them in many aspects of
life’(although this strikes a different note from Mihailov’s earlier thoughts on urban
development, esp. Mihailov 1986). Cf. Hatzopoulos 41 ’own remarks, 2002, 266–70.
Reger 2011, 374; cf. also Reger’s remarks on the legal application of the notion of
‘homelands’to New England states.
210 Regionalism and regional economies