offer a far broader canvas against which to make sense of the entrances
and exits that narrative histories proffer. What is more, new discoveries
have not been confined to material culture. Important textual evidence,
including the papyrus fragments from one rich burial at Derveni, north-
east of Thessaloniki, and a growing body of inscriptions in Greek, offer a
rich and articulate resource independent of the kinds of narrative
account already referred to.
Much of the scholarly as well as popular interest in the region has been
preoccupied with the identities and cultural associations of the commu-
nities to which the material evidence and documents belonged. Were the
Macedonians Greeks? In what sense did Macedonian and Thracian
societies share features in common with their Greek-speaking neigh-
bours to the south? These questions are difficult to answer, because they
have been formulated according tofixed assumptions about past iden-
tities that are rarely disconnected from questions about identity and
ownership in the present. Perhaps these and similar questions need to
be reformulated before satisfactory answers can be produced. In the
meantime, we may consider the consequences of the dissemination of
the Greek language throughout the peninsula and the ways in which this
communication tool provided access to a new community of cultural
practices, new kinds of knowledge, and above all, a greatly enhanced
social network.^26
The material culture of the Balkans invites economic questions along-
side cultural ones. Where did the wealth of these rich northern societies
come from? What happened to their wealth once Roman military per-
sonnel and administrators had created a new institutional framework for
the region’s inhabitants? The coastline of the north Aegean and the
geological formations of central Thrace contain some of the most sig-
nificant mineral resources of the eastern Mediterranean that were
exploited in antiquity. Mount Pangaion was the single most important
source of precious metals in the north Aegean. Competition for its
wealth explains why so many different agents attempted to monopolize
(^26) ‘For my purposes the“Greek world”is, broadly speaking, the vast area (described
below) within which Greek was, or became, the principal language of the upper classes.... In
Europe the dividing line began on the east coast of the Adriatic, roughly where the same [19th
meridian east of Greenwich] cuts the coast of modern Albania, a little north of Durazzo (the
ancient Dyrrachium, earlier Epidamnus); and from there it went east and slightly north,
across Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, passing between Sofia (the ancient Serdica) and
Plovdiv (Philippopolis) and joining the Danube at about the point where it turns north below
Silistra on the edge of the Dobrudja.’(De Ste Croix, G. E. M. 1981, 7–8). This process was
already well under way by the fourth centurybc, judging by the widespread evidence of
graffiti (See further Ch. 2).
16 Introduction