Non-urban sites and the evolution of the‘dispersed city’Not all large agglomerations, leave alone small towns, need necessarily
have been recognized politically aspoleis,a term that denotes significant
legal as well as urban status. Some quasi-urban centres were evidently
too small to be able to nominate a council. More importantly, those
centres that did not have the capacity, or the authority, to make decisions
on an international level lacked one essential characteristic determinant
of autonomy. In Macedonia such centres were legally qualified aspoli-
teiai, meaning that they could own land and receive property, as well as
enact legal decisions through an annually elected magistrate, but in other
respects did not have the means or the mechanisms to deal with extra-
territorial powers, whether in their own region or outside it.^53 Discussion
of Aegean sites has focused rather too narrowly on the legally defined
status of communities and on nucleated sites that can be identified
with relative ease, either from inorganic surviving remains, or from
some literary credentials. There has been far less interest in genuinely
holistic descriptions of all the different kinds of settlement in a given
environment. Most historical communities included a range of lesser
and bigger sites, as well as functionally different components, including
fortified towers, upland shelters, various kinds of processing facilities
(around mines, workshops, harbours), and, particularly in regions
such as the north Aegean, country estates, foresters’huts, and hunting
lodges.
Intensive surveys are beginning to add an important and independent
source of information about the large-scale pattern of anthropogenic
sites of thefirst millenniumbc, alongside Greek settlement nomenclat-
ure. Although such surveys are still available only for a limited range of
locations, they provide good comparative data and a variety of site
forms.^54 The Langadas survey, in the north-eastern hinterland of Thes-
saloniki, has produced evidence of a significant increase in site numbers
during thefirst half of thefirst millenniumbc, with a configuration of
small settlements, alongside a few large ones (notably Lete). Sites were
(^53) Hatzopoulos 1996, I, 80–1, referring to the decree of the Battynaioi (Rizakis-Tour-
atsoglou 186,ad193), together with the closely similar wording of a much earlier decree
from Gazoros (Hatzopoulos 1996, I, 51–72).
(^54) Langadas survey: Andreou and Kotsakis 1999, with further refs; Middle Strouma
Archaeological Survey and Kazanluk survey: see note below; Tundja Regional Archaeo-
logical Project (TRAP) 2008–2011: A. Sobotkova and S. Ross, AIA/APA Annual Meeting,
Philadelphia, January 2012 (preliminary report); Bintliff 1997 for comparisons with central
and southern Greece.
66 Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces