REASSEMBLING NORTHERN AEGEAN ECONOMIES
I have left the subject of mortuary data to the end of this book. Graves are
problematic as sources of information about living societies, because they
incorporate partial, consciously reconstituted data, not a panorama of
everyday life; and because we do not really know how to relate the sample
evidence that survives with the past societies to which the incumbents
belonged. On the other hand, burials show us how resources were
consumed on behalf of individuals in a way that no other cumulative
evidence can.
Much of the content of this book has been concerned with networks of
exchange within the east Balkan landmass. Exchange only forms one
component of economic behaviour; but neither the depth nor the com-
plexity of inland exchanges, reaching far into the east Balkan landmass,
have been explored before and deserve exposition in their own right.
Since the documentary evidence rarely extends beyond Greek-speaking
communities, it is not easy to appreciate the scope of overland transac-
tions in a region that is still comparatively unknown to classical scholars.
In Chapter 1 I proposed that the argument used by Corinthian represen-
tatives in Thucydides’narrative of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian
War—namely, that people living inland need to pay attention to those
with harbours and ships (Thuc. 1.120.2)—applies just as well to the
northern Aegean landmass as it does to the Peloponnese. The capil-
lary-like movement of storageamphoraefrom the harbours of Thasos’
mainland ports, and from other‘gateway’locations along the north
Aegean and west Pontic coastlines, suggests a combination of riverine
and overland traffic. The residual distribution of such containers can
only act as a broad-brush indication of the directions of travel. Distribu-
tion maps of artefacts rarely show any kind of straightforward traffic
patterns. What they do show, however, is something about the dynamics
of travel, the preferred routes, and the sort of infrastructure (upland
tracks, roads, inland harbours) that repeated traffic entails.
The generous provision of artefacts as grave goods in the northern
Aegean reveals how local and non-local resources were combined to
create new meanings. If Hatzopoulos is right about the connection
between status and particular forms of dress and equipment among
Macedonian men and youths, then the choice and range of weapons or
other accoutrement in burials was intended to signal the military and
social achievements of the deceased.^45 The highly specific range and
(^45) Hatzopoulos 1994a, 87–111.
Continuity and commemoration 317