If merchants really were travelling so far inland, what were they
hoping to take back in the opposite direction? The most plausible
explanation is refined or bar metal. As I have argued in Chapter 4, the
extraction of metals was a highly specialized skill, while mining and
metallurgy were among the activities that indigenous groups had
invested in over many centuries. The hills on the north-western margins
of the Thracian Plain, north of Plovdiv, are rich in metals and the rivers
are gold-bearing. Local place names reflect these prominent resources,
particularly those referring to gold and iron. Besides these high-value
items, cattle, or cattle products, particularly pelts, skins, and leather,
might also have been added from a region well stocked with herds, as
well as other foodstuffs. The northern tributaries of the River Hebros
provided a ready means of transportation of bulk goods during the
summer months, though an alternative overland route also existed to
Adjiyska Vodenitsa and other sites along the Hebros, and thence either
downstream or through Rhodope.
The whole region created by the triangle of land between the Sredna
Gora range, the Klisoura defile (at the western end of the Thracian Plain)
and the middle valley of the River Hebros around Plovdiv constitutes an
intense concentration of high-value, prestige monuments and moveable
artefacts in the period between thefifth and third centuriesbc. These
forms of local consumption reflect the products of inter-regional
exchange patterns on a substantial scale. There are similar concentra-
tions in the Valley of the Roses, in south-eastern Thrace (in the area
around Kirklareli),^105 and in the combined regions of Emathia and
Pieria, in lower Macedonia. All these particular regional concentrations
coincided with the principal seats of princes and kings. The physical
manifestations of significant consumption partly reflect the exploitation
of regional resources and in part the concentration of royal and princely
funds.
Byzantion—a major hub of northern commerceOur third example is Byzantion (Fig. 5.7).^106 The irresistible rise of this
city, long before it was chosen as the New Rome by the Emperor
Constantine, has somehow escaped the kind of attention from classical
historians that its wealth and strategic importance surely deserve. Almost
all histories of Constantinople begin with Constantine, not with the city
(^105) See further Ch. 8. (^106) Inventoryno. 674, pp. 915–18.
Regionalism and regional economies 237