only Hellenic institutions matter in understanding how any of these sites,
whether Greek or non-Greek, operated in their own localities. In some
inland communities, as in Sicily, or in southern Italy, and in Macedonia
and Thrace, the majority of the inhabitants still spoke languages other
than Greek in thefifth and fourth centuriesbc, languages that continued
to be spoken by a proportion of the population for many centuries
thereafter. Yet Greek was the preferred language for inter-community
negotiation in all these regions, partly because, aside from Punic, it was
the principal language of commerce in the Mediterranean. Documents of
an official character, with supra-local significance within the eastern
Mediterranean, were written in Greek from the sixth century bc
onwards, which is the time when documentsfirst become archaeologic-
ally visible (principally in the form of lead letters, overwhelmingly of a
commercial nature).^42
In the absence of any strong institutional precedents, organized by
territorial entities with the power to regulate the external relations of
individual communities, it is likely that organizational practice in regions
neighbouring Greece was progressively affected and shaped by inter-
state custom in the eastern Mediterranean area as a whole. The territorial
entities that are relevant in the east Balkan area, the kingdoms of
Macedonia and Thrace, were institutional latecomers in the context of
settlement histories. Sites like Toumba Kalamarias demonstrate that
locations that cannot be shown to have been designatedpoleisin the
pre-Hellenistic period were nevertheless operating as significant centres
of production and exchange, with demonstrable inter-regional commer-
cial connections, long before the termpolisacquired currency. However
we view the development of civic institutions in the north Aegean—and
this process may have been a lengthy one—it had very deep roots.
If we consider the distribution of known Macedonianpoleis, it is not
irrelevant that many of the place names refer either to sites that had
special regional functions (Dion as the most sacred focus of Macedonia;
Aegeai and Pella as royal capitals), or operated as local central places
(Aiane for Elimeia; Europos, Ichnai, and Allante in the lower Axios
valley). As we proceed eastwards, the organization of populations is
complicated by historical dynamics. The 65 sites in the Chalkidic penin-
sula include a few substantial sites, with longish histories (Aineia,
Akanthos, Dikaia, Mende, Olynthos, Torone), and a longer list of rather
modest place names, which happen to have featured in the Athenian
Tribute Lists as named payers, but whose overall profile suggests that
(^42) Harris (forthcoming) for a recent discussion.
62 Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces