Dardanians of Upper Macedonia were allowed access to salt from the
coast, which was taken to Stobi in Paionia (Liv. 45.29.12–13) for redistri-
bution farther afield. The fact that Paullus put a price on it immediately
suggests that there were revenue implications, so perhaps a tax on salt, or
a monopoly on the sale of salt, had become a customary royal practice
under the Argead kings.^78 Salt is an essential component of diet,
although we need very little of it in practice to satisfy the basic biological
requirement. Nevertheless, the distribution of salt represents one of the
principal drivers of the increase in intra-regional exchange in Late
Bronze Age continental Europe, a process that underwent a significant
step change in thefirst millenniumbc, when there was a veritable
explosion in the demand for salt and salt products, which included
preservedfish, particularly in the most highly populated parts of south-
ern Europe and the Mediterranean.^79
The salty‘limans’of the Pontic coast were among the major producers
of salt and salted products for export and we have already seen how this
specialization probably lay at the heart of the‘Monopoly War’between
Kallatis and Byzantion over Tomis. However, not all domestic salt was
produced from the evaporation of seawater. In inland areas of the east
Balkan peninsula, toponyms that include the name‘Slatina’may hold
further clues about sources of salt from brine springs.^80 On the north
Aegean coast the lagoons east of Abdera created a number of interior
lakes, including at least one salt lake, associated in Herodotus’account
with the site of Pistyros (Hdt. 7.109.2).^81
Rivers, routes, and roadsBesides salt, a great deal of bulk traffic, including building materials, mill
stones, and cattle, as well as containers of wine, oil, nuts, and various dry(^78) Davies inHellEcI, 25; cf. Millett 2010, 482.
(^79) This is the theme of Harding 2007 and Moinier 2007; Carusi 2007 and 2008 presents
the Mediterranean perspective more systematically.
(^80) Gaydarska and Chapman 2007 for Iron Age sources of salt in the east Balkan
peninsula; 148fig. 1 shows Slunchev Bryag, Obzor, Solnik, Mirovo and Topola as coastal
sources; possible inland sources listed include: Slatino, Slatina, Biala Slatina (western
Bulgaria); Rozovets, Goran Slatina, Maisko Lyubentsi, Ivanski, Malak Porovets (north-
east Bulgaria); Gabrielsen 2011, 224–5 on salted products in the‘Monopoly War’of
Byzantion; cf. Carusi 2008, 70–9, on Pontic salt; Byzantion as a chief centre for salt
products: Str. 7.6.2 and Carusi 2008, 77–9 and nn. 82, 83, 84 [= Plb. 4.38.2–4].
(^81) Carusi 2008, 67 (who uses this as evidence to deny the validity of Salviat’s thesis that
Pistyros and Pistiros were one and the same, but located in the interior of Thrace);
Loukopoulou and Psoma 2008b, 67–71 on Lake Ismaris and the lagoons east of Abdera.
Regionalism and regional economies 223