and of grave goods, is noticeably different from that of the Early Iron Age
burials in the same cemetery, and even from more recently excavated
interments of the later sixth centurybc. These chronological distinctions
reflect significant socio-economic changes in Macedonian communities
over the course of thefirst half of thefirst millenniumbc, including the
enrichment of rural foci, the emergence of urban centres, and the self-
conscious display of an expanding array of material possessions. The
economic development of the modern regional units, or nomes,of
Macedonia has triggered a vast array of newfield investigations, which
have produced rich rewards in research terms, much of it still awaiting
full study and publication. Alongside town plans, élite country resi-
dences, and organic remains of dinner parties, a wide range of inscrip-
tions and other written data has transformed the basis on which
historians form their basic ideas about northern communities.
The discoveries of Manolis Andronikos were in the van of this river of
change. The social iconography and dinner sets of Macedonia’s cavalry
class have strong resemblances with the material culture and lifestyles of
their peers in Thrace and north-west Anatolia. Unplundered tombs, such
as Tomb II at Vergina, and the quantities of grave goods that have
emerged in Central Thrace, provide more information than ever before
about landowners in the east Balkan region, their cultural tastes and
social connections. Such cachets of wealth were not restricted to a
narrow, centralized élite, but widely distributed in all regions, as the
geographical network of cavalry-type burials demonstrates. Élite tomb
distributions in turn prompt a reconsideration of the assumptions that
can be made about forms of social control, about the nature of local
community organization, and the kinds of social contacts that existed
between such landowners and their opposite numbers within the east
Balkan region and across the Straits.
The members of our scholarly quartet shared several common fea-
tures. They were visionaries, able to make connections beyond the
specific, localized evidence that they were concerned with. They were
all interested in the value of artefacts for the study of long-term history.
Each of them grappled with the abstract and conceptual implications of
the material that they studied. Hence they travelled farther in seeking
ways to explain historical processes.
If we look at the Aegean from the north, through the eyes of our four
scholars, then economic relations between north and south begin to look
very different from southern ones looking northwards. The hinterland
does not consist simply of a narrow coastal strip, but extends deep into
the continental interior. The organization not only of agricultural
resources and their by-products, but equally the exploitation of minerals,
34 Introduction