The passage is opaque and requires some imagination to make sense of
it. But the two components of the sentence must be understood as parts
of a single statement—in other words, the phrase about taxation on roads
is to be understood in direct connection with the statement about
vehicles being opened. The gesture implied by this way of understanding
the text, as Alexandru Avram has explained, would have been a key
element in enabling commodities to make what amounts in this docu-
ment to a guaranteed‘extra-territorial’journey‘to Maroneia from Pis-
tiros, or from otheremporia, or from Maroneia to Pistiros, or to the
emporiaBelana of the Prasenoi’(ll. 21–25), thefirst known instance of
formal international commodity transportation.^89
It is hardly surprising that the location of Pistiros has aroused so much
discussion. Can it really have been located deep in central Thrace?
Would it not make better sense if it were located somewhere in the
Thasianperaia,nearer the coast of the Aegean? How can there be apolis
in the heart of the continent of Europe?^90 These are the kinds of
questions that have been asked about the place name itself, irrespective
of where the stone was discovered. The arguments about status once
again resemble wider discussions aboutpoleis.One of the best analogies
to Pistiros is Naukratis in Egypt, which was also a large trading centre
within a kingdom. Naukratis became apolisin the fourth centurybc.^91
On the other hand, Pistiros is unlike Egypt, because there were many
historic links that encouraged institutional parity amongst trading
partners. The long-term proximity and interactions that are implied
by networks of exchange from the Bronze Age onwards in south-
eastern Europe make it much more likely that the kinds of distinctions
contemporary historians make amongst the ethnic communities of the
(^89) Avram 1997/98, 41; Chankowski and Domaradzka 1999, for the revised text, and
Domaradzka inPistiros II, 339–42 for further addenda.
(^90) For a discussion of the various arguments, seeDossier Pistiros;(Fr. Salviat argues that
thefindspot of the inscription requires us to locate the Pistyros referred to by Herodotos
(7.109) in central Thrace, rather than along the north Aegean coastal strip (BCH123, 270),
and even attributes membership of the Delian League to the same community by identify-
ing it with the‘Kystirioi’of the Tribute Lists). B. Bravo and A. Chankowski, on the other
hand, affirm that the epigraphically attested Pistiros is apolis, but deny that it has anything
to do with the archaeological remains at Adjiyska Vodenitsa (BCH123, 275–317). The
other contributors to the volume, V. Chankowski and L. Domaradzka (247–58), K. Bošna-
kov (319–29), O. Picard (331–46), L. Domaradzka (347–58), and L. Loukopoulou (359–71),
accept the identification of the latter with the epigraphic Pistiros. Salviat was not aware of
some more recent investigations of Persian movements in Thrace when he compiled his
article (e.g. Archibald 1998, 79–90); Archibald 2002a; Archibald (forthcoming a/;
Chankowski 2010.
(^91) Bresson 2000, 74–84.
226 Regionalism and regional economies