Of Odysseys and Oddities: Scales and Modes of Interaction Between Prehistoric Aegean Societies and their Neighbours

400 Pages·2016·13.495 MB·English

by  Barry Molloy (ed.)

SHEFFIELD STUDIES IN AEGEAN ARCHAEOLOGY
ADVISORY EDITORIAL PANEL
Professor Stelios ANDREOU, University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Professor John BARRETT, University of Sheffield, England
Professor John BENNET, University of Sheffield, England
Professor Keith BRANIGAN, University of Sheffield, England
Professor Jack DAVIS, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece
Dr Peter DAY, University of Sheffield, England
Dr Roger DOONAN, University of Sheffield, England
Dr Paul HALSTEAD, University of Sheffield, England
Dr Caroline JACKSON, University of Sheffield, England
Dr Jane REMPEL, University of Sheffield, England
Dr Susan SHERRATT, University of Sheffield, England

Published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
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and in the United States by
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© Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2016
Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-231-0
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-232-7 (epub)
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Molloy, Barry.
Title: Of odysseys and oddities: scales and modes of interaction between prehistoric Aegean societies and their
neighbours/edited by B.P.C. Molloy.
Description: Oxford; Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2016. | Series: Sheffield studies in Aegean archaeology |
Papers from the 2013 Sheffield Aegean Round Table. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007208 (print) | LCCN 2016008303 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785702310 (paperback) | ISBN
9781785702327 (digital) | ISBN 9781785702327 (epub) | ISBN 9781785702334 (mobi) | ISBN
9781785702341 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Aegean Sea Region–Antiquities–Congresses. | Prehistoric peoples–Aegean Sea Region–
Congresses. | Social interaction–Aegean Sea Region–History–To 1500–Congresses. | Intercultural
communication–Aegean Sea Region–History–To 1500–Congresses. | Spatial behavior–Social aspects–Aegean
Sea Region–History–To 1500–Congresses. | Material culture–Aegean Sea Region–History–To
1500–Congresses. | Aegean Sea Region–Relations–Congresses. | Neolithic period–Aegean Sea Region–
Congresses. | Excavations (Archaeology)–Aegean Sea Region–Congresses. | Social archaeology–Aegean Sea
Region–Congresses.
Classification: LCC GN776.22.A35 O34 2016 (print) | LCC GN776.22.A35 (ebook) | DDC 551.46/1388–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016007208
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Front cover: The MBA village of Punta Milazzese on Panarea. Photograph by Helen Dawson.
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Thinking of Scales and Modes of Interaction in Prehistory
BARRY P.C. MOLLOY
2. An Elite-Infested Sea: Interaction and Change in Mediterranean Paradigms
BORJA LEGARRA HERRERO
3. Scales and Modes of Interaction in and beyond the Earlier Neolithic of Greece: Building Barriers
and Making Connections
PAUL HALSTEAD
4. Impressed Pottery as a Proxy for Connectivity in the Neolithic Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean
ÇILER ÇILINGIROĞLU
5. A Question of Scale? Connecting Communities through Obsidian Exchange in the Neolithic
Aegean, Anatolia and Balkans
MARINA MILIĆ
6. Salting the Roads: Connectivity in the Neolithic Balkans
DUSHKA UREM-KOTSOU
7. Aspects of Connectivity on the Centre of the Anatolian Aegean Coast in 7th Millennium BC
BARBARA HOREJS
8. Kanlıgeçit – Selimpaşa – Mikhalich and the Question of Anatolian Colonies in Early Bronze Age
Southeast Europe
VOLKER HEYD, ŞENGÜL AYDINGÜN AND EMRE GÜLDOĞAN
9. The Built Environment and Cultural Connectivity in the Aegean Early Bronze Age
OURANIA KOUKA
10. Emerging Economic Complexity in the Aegean and Western Anatolia during Earlier Third
Millennium BC
LORENZ RAHMSTORF
11. Trade and Weighing Systems in the Southern Aegean from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron
Age: How Changing Circuits Influenced Changing ‘Glocal’ Measures
MARIA EMANUELA ALBERTI
12. ‘Brave New Worlds’: Islands, Place-making and Connectivity in the Bronze Age Mediterranean
HELEN DAWSON
13. Nought may Endure but Mutability: Eclectic Encounters and Material Change in the 13th to 11th
Centuries BC Aegean
BARRY P.C. MOLLOY
14. Distributed Practice and Cultural Identities in the ‘Mycenaean’ Period
MICHAEL J. BOYD
15. Anatolian-Aegean interactions in the Early Iron Age: Migration, Mobility, and the Movement of
People
NAOÍSE MAC SWEENEY
16. Komai, Colonies and Cities in Epirus and Southern Albania: The Failure of the Polis and the Rise
of Urbanism on the Fringes of the Greek World
JOHN K. PAPADOPOULOS
The 2013 Sheffield Aegean Round Table took place during a rather frigid January with snowfalls
threatening to cut our plans short. Thankfully, we had a very fruitful meeting and a lively discussion
over the course of three days. Most of those who engaged in the Round Table have been able to publish
their papers in the volume, though the event was much enhanced by the oral contributions of John
Bennet, Sue Sherratt, Sara Strack and Roger Doonan. We were also fortunate to have Kristian
Kristiansen deliver a thought (and discussion) provoking keynote address and our meeting concluded
with an eloquent final discussion by John Barrett.
The event took place during a Marie Curie Fellowship that the editor held at the University of
Sheffield 2011–2013. I was very fortunate to work with and learn from Roger Doonan during this
period. Along with acting as mentor for the fellowship, he co-organised the Round Table event with me
and played a key role in designing the research agenda for the event and this publication. Thank you
also to all of the student helpers who made the event run so smoothly. The Round Table is generously
supported by the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, to whom we are most grateful.
The Sheffield Aegean Round Table is a type of event that is relatively rare these days, as it takes
place in a relaxed atmosphere where people freely speak their minds. This is really made possible
through the welcoming environment that is created by Debi Harlan, Valasia Isaakidou and John Bennet.
The home baked fare that they so kindly made on the opening night (thanks also to Vuka Milić) set the
guests up for a very comfortable and enjoyable event. Debi and John also hosted all of the guests at
their home the next evening, making a very memorable climax to the convivial environment that makes
the Round Tables such unique events.
The panel of reviewers, including many of the contributors, provided invaluable advice that was
vital in bringing this volume to publication, for which we are grateful. I would finally wish to express
my gratitude to the participants at the event and contributors to this volume who made the entire
process so stimulating. It was indeed testimony to our aspiration to work across political and traditional
boundaries that have influenced Aegean archaeology that we had participants representing eleven
nationalities from institutions on three continents. A final note on behalf of the authors is that papers in
this volume were submitted in 2013 and 2014, and as a consequence many will be missing citations to
some important more recent publications.
1
Introduction
Anton Adner died in 1822 when he was 112 years old. He had become something of a legend in his
time in Bavaria because of his unique way to circumvent local taxation laws. A carpenter by trade,
strict regulations meant that he could produce one specific product for local markets, and should he
transport his goods across borders, a tax must be paid. That is unless the items were carried on him
personally. Adner chose to manufacture wooden boxes. In his spare time he produced other craft items
– from toys to woollen socks. He then placed his items in the wooden boxes, attached these to himself,
and proceeded to walk not only across local borders, but throughout Bavaria, Austria and as far afield
as Switzerland (Kastner 2015).
This volume is about scales and modes of interaction in prehistory, specifically between societies
on both sides of the Aegean and with their nearest neighbours overland to the north and east. The story
of Adner may be far removed in time and space, but it speaks of the quirks of a person’s place in the
world – how their knowledge is moulded by society yet how their choices can shape that society in
return. To excavate his home, we may expect to find the sparse belongings of a Bavarian peasant
craftsman, but his knowledge of the world was far broader than we might ascribe to his humble
dwelling. We may invoke the individual agency of such a person who acted at his own behest to
explain his particular case, yet it was the social and economic structures within which he operated and
did business that drove his decision making. This reflects tensions at the very core of how we consider
interaction in archaeology, particularly the motivations and mechanisms leading to social and material
encounters or displacements. Linked to this are the ways we conceptualise spatial and social entities in
past societies (scales) and how we learn about who was actively engaged in interaction and how and
why they were (modes).
The Aegean has long been considered a powerful testing ground for evaluating the nature of
connectivity in prehistory. This is to no small degree due to the wealth of material culture and
high-standards of publication in this area. It provides an ideal environment for researching how we
think about scales and modes of interaction there and in archaeology more generally. The ability to
maintain connections with other, often distant, groups can be seen as a defining characteristic of the
social dynamics of the peoples living around the Aegean. We find cultural practices and objects that
have currency throughout areas that are distinguished by diverse land- and sea-scapes that range from
enabling to dramatically restricting mobility. Our objective in this book has therefore been to evaluate
practical approaches for recognising material correlates for connectivity within their local and regional
contexts. Contributors take account of variable scales of both past interactions and contemporary
analyses, along with a parallel consideration of functional and social elements influencing modes of
interaction.
When we speak of scale, this is typically related to the component parts of ancient societies, from
the intimate scale of the ground beneath the individual through to the land they inhabited and on to the
world they lived in (Parkinson and Galaty 2010: 11–18; Knappett 2011: 28–36; 2012: 393–396). As we
move through these scales, we progress from the local environment that was familiar to most
individuals up to a wider world that becomes incrementally less familiar the farther they moved from
home (Helms 1988; Barrett 1998). For the archaeologist, this question of boundaries and familiarity
relates at once to the geographical scope of a case-study but also to the pragmatic issue of the volume
and character of materials to be utilised in research (Roberts and Vander Linden 2011). We are also
concerned with temporalities, and so scale further relates to the chronological parameters we select as
appropriate for a given study. For these reasons, contributors were invited that covered a wide range of
materials, places and prehistoric periods.
In relation to modes of interaction, we may simply define these as the ways in which people
engage with each other and with their material and cosmological worlds (Kristiansen 2004; Knappett
2011: 3–36; Earle 2013; Fontijn 2013; Hahn and Weiss 2013a). The movement of people beyond their
communities is commonly explored through the lens of trade and exchange, though interaction between
people can include travel for religious reasons, political purposes, family reasons, exploration, violence,
health and many more (Renfrew 1993; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005: 40). By taking a diachronic set
of case-studies, the book is concerned with the longevity, resilience of character, and intensities of
networks of connectivity and the ways these can be visible in the material record. With regard to
exploring such pathways, contributors incorporated analyses of restricted circulation/elite objects
alongside those representing practices intrinsic to the daily rhythms of life. This promoted a critical
approach to various forms of interaction to account for stability and changes alike. The range of case
studies is intended to better understand how global traditions shape local practices, while building from
these heterogeneous arrays of local practices to contribute to less model-driven and therefore at times
‘messy’ bigger-scale narratives. This brings us to the ‘Odysseys and Oddities’ of the title, which is
intended to reflect at once the diversity of purpose of ancient journeys alongside those often select
array of objects we archaeologists invoke to characterise connectivity. For this reason we were as much
interested in interaction within and between groups in their geographic and social environment as with
the influences of interaction of an intercultural nature.