The Ancient Greek Economy. Markets, Households and City-States

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11

TRANSPORT AMPHORAS, MARKETS,

AND CHANgINg PRACTICES IN THE

ECONOMIES OF gREECE, SIXTH TO FIRST

CENTURIES BCE

Mark L. Lawall

Introduction

The pre-requisites of a market economy, according to Moses Finley (1985b: 34),

are ‘extreme division of labor’ and ‘the absence of household self-sufficiency’; a

major feature for the existence of an ‘economic system,’ too, is the ‘enormous

conglomeration of interdependent markets’. By insisting on these defining

parameters, then not finding evidence of these conditions, Finley did away

with the ancient economy altogether.

Finley was offering a view of markets that conceived only of a fully devel-

oped market entirely in keeping with the constructs of formal economic

theory. He thereby excluded just the historical and comparative perspec-

tives that had been fruitfully embraced by his mentor Karl Polanyi and

other members of the Columbia University seminar (Polanyi et  al. 1957 ;

Pearson 1977 ; Halperin 1994 ). Such an approach might have led Finley to

ask:  Can a market economy exist as a not-so-enormous conglomeration of

somewhat interdependent markets? Can a market economy exist if house-

holds are only somewhat self-sufficient? And most importantly, does the place

of the market in ancient society change over time? As Polanyi (and oth-

ers) accepted, markets did exist in antiquity; Polanyi’s greater interest lay

in how specific elements of markets (supply, demand, price) were articu-

lated and to what extent market interests shaped and structured society (e.g.,

Polanyi 1957b: esp. 250–6 and 266–9; Neale 1957 distinguishing between Self