Emporiae

The emporion's definition is closer to a function than an ontological description.  The role of emporia is to facilitate connection within and, most clearly in the archaeological record, between networks.  This is essential to the fulfilment of microregional opportunities.  Emporia appear in a broad spectrum of settlements of different origin, size, location and organisation.  They are not a narrow type like Polanyi’s port of trade.  Their initial purpose need not have been as emporia and the emporion role may be one of several contemporaneous functions.

During most campaigns at Dorestad, a significant number of beads were excavated. In contrast to beads from Scandinavian emporia such as Ribe, the beads from Dorestad have never been studied as a complete set. Several small bead assemblages from different excavation locations in Wijk bij Duurstede have been briefly published in excavation reports , but a closer look at these beads was necessary, focusing on their use, deposition and provenance. As the publications of beads found in Scandinavian emporia show , their study can contribute significantly to our understanding of the international networks Dorestad was part of.
Throughout the Early Middle Ages, beads occur very regularly in north-western Europe. In cemeteries dating to the Merovingian period  colourful strings of beads were deposited in graves on a regular basis.  This deposition pattern changed in the second half of the seventh century: beads were excavated from only a handful of cemeteries dating to the late seventh and eighth centuries in the Netherlands. These rare bead sets have not been intensively studied at all, which has resulted in a lack of knowledge of Late Merovingian and Carolingian  beads. This lack of bead studies in north-western Europe stands in sharp contrast to bead research in Scandinavia, where (pre) Viking-Age  beads have received a lot of attention during the past decades.  Some researchers of Scandinavian bead material have suggested that Scandinavians had few opportunities to obtain beads from the West, as they believe the use of beads had largely fallen out of fashion in north-western Europe.  The study of the beads from Dorestad thus presents an opportunity to create a basic corpus for beads from the late seventh, eighth and early ninth century in the Netherlands, and can indicate whether bead-networks between the west and Scandinavia had indeed come to a stand-still.
In this article, 395 beads found during the Dorestad excavations will be discussed. These are the Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads from twentieth- and twentyfirst-century excavations of the settlement sites at Hoogstraat, De Heul, Voorwijk, Veilingterrein, De Horden, Zandweg and Albert Heijn, and the cemeteries on De Heul and Willigenburg, plus some beads from nineteenth century excavations of which the find location remains vague. They are all kept in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.  Several more beads from nineteenth-century excavations are present in the PUG collection, but the largest “chunk” is definitely presented in this article. Hopefully the author will have the opportunity to study the remaining beads in the future. Due to a lack of sieving activities during the Dorestad excavations far into the nineteen-nineties, many more beads must have been missed. With this article comes a catalogue with a description per bead and a set of colour plates on which each bead from Dorestad is depicted.

Modern scholars tend to view Ottoman-Safavid relations from a sectarian angle as well as through a military lens. Such a narrow focus often comes at the expense of broader
strategic and political considerations. The subject of this paper, the capture of an Indian elephant by Ottoman troops, its handover to the French embassy, and the ensuing diplomatic
developments, may not be central to the campaign that the Ottomans launched against Iran in 1548-49, yet it offers unique insight into the relations between these powers.
What is more, it sheds light on Safavid-Mughal and Ottoman-Mughal relations as
well as on wider rivalries between European powers that were tangentially involved in
this struggle, the Habsburgs, France, and Venice.

When one examines the general characteristics of a colony established by a Greek city-state, Naukratis does not tick many boxes other than being inhabited by Greeks, that it had temples and Greek administrators that made sure the civic and economic life of the town ran smoothly.

A colony tends to have a foundation myth and an oikist, a metropolis and a complicated relationship to the colonised “natives”, and its physical, civic and political organisation tended to conform to the general polis-style of most Greek states. Naukratis has neither of these aspects in the Archaic period (our period of focus). Yet it was a very successful settlement that thrived on its opportune location close to the Nile. Its main purpose for existence seems have been centred on trade and production. Though when one looks at what has been found during excavation, the picture becomes more complicated and multi-faceted.

This essay will try to show this far fuller picture of Naukratis, by highlighting other aspects than simply trade and production. Most aspects of Naukratite life were however very closely linked to the economic life of the town, and so it would be impossible to give a full picture of Naukratis without a strong emphasis on trade, but it is not the only aspect of Naukratis.

REGULAR ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS AT EMPORION PISTIROS IN 2020

The regular archeological excavations were funded by the Ministry of Culture and were conducted in collaboration with the Archaeological Museum “Prof. M. Domaradski”. The excavations took place during September-October 2020 and were focused in two different zones within the fortified area.
The first aim was to trace the route of the fortification wall in a northwesterly direction from the East Gate in the attempt to generate new stratigraphic data about its chronology (Fig. 1). After the removal of two mechanical layers in Sq. E 7, a depth of 0.10-0.30 m was reached (Fig. 2). The discovery of red-figure, black-glaze and gray ceramics, as well as loomweights, amphora toes and fragments of Corinthian pan tiles indicate that the wall was built after the first half of the 4th c. BC. Immediately outside the wall, several negative contexts were documented, the chronology of which and their connection with the fortification will be established in the future.
The second study area was in the SE part of the site, near the fortification wall. The aim of the research here was to complete the exploration of the clay altar in sq. B’3 and to clear the profile between B’3 North and South. Excavations focused in Sq B’3 and B’4 on an area of ca. 60 m2.
Excavated was a round clay altar, on which clay sealings with images were found in previous campaigns. Fragments of handmade and wheel made gray pottery,  imported Greek pottery and transport amphorae were found. A stamp was identified on an almost complete amphora from Ainos which was found in a fragmentary state (Fig. 3a). Another stamped amphora handle of Thasos was also found among the amphorae. (Fig. 3b). A bronze ring, an iron arrowhead and other small objects were also found in the layer (Fig. 3 c, d). A stone fragment of dark gray color and a very smooth, polished surface was found. On the upper surface there are 11 incised, almost parallel lines whose purpose remains unknown (Fig. 4 a, c, d). The fragment was found together with burnt wattle-and-daub and fragments of an eschara (Fig. 4 b, e).
Graphic and photo documentation of the E-W profile in Sq. B’3 was completed. Mechanical layers with a thickness of 0.10 m were removed successively. Among the materials stand out fragments of household ceramics, including fragments of a red-figure crater, heavily corroded iron objects and a bronze coin of Kotys I (Fig. 5). The latter was found on the periphery of Negative Structure 3.4, which may provide data about its chronology.

The Greek city of Emporion is one of the few Greek emporia which ultimately became a polis. Consequently, the city had to adapt the previously held structures of an emporion to cope with the new circumstances which being a polis required; thus its urban space, territory, population, laws, government had to be modified in the conversion from one situation to another. Furthermore, this change had to be fulfilled in the midst of a non-Greek environment, which obviously had consequences in the development of Greek identity within the city. Fortunately, in the case ofEmporion we have both archaeological and literary evidence (although not very abundant) to observe these processes. The aim of this paper is, consequently, to consider this evidence in order to see how interactions worked in Emporion itself as well as in the surrounding region in different historical moments and how those interactions contributed to shaping several interrelated identities within the Greek city, which also became a strong point for building the identity of the non-Greek peoples in that region of north-eastern Iberia.

Treball Final de Grau (TFG). https://dugi-doc.udg.edu/handle/10256/14807

El present treball s’ha plantejat com una visió global i general de la terra sigillata fent especial esment a les produccions itàliques i sud-gàl·liques, analitzades detalladament i exemplificades a partir d’uns materials fruit d’una intervenció recent a Empúries

Two significant developments during the later Mediterranean Iron Age (roughly eighth to sixth centuries BCE) are the proliferation of long-distance trade networks and the growth of urban settlements around the Mediterranean. In the paper I argue two main points: 1) that overseas communities geared largely (but not solely) towards trade were vital in facilitating and intensifying commercial and social relations between culturally diverse societies and 2) that common religious identifications within these settlements formed fundamental institutional structures to mediate transactions between foreigners. I thus examine, first of all, some recent scholarship surrounding the concept of the emporion in the ancient world, particularly in terms of its social and urban functions. I then turn to a specific case study involving the cultic activity unearthed at an emporion on the Tiber River in Italy dating to the sixth century BCE, on the site of what would later be known as the Forum Boarium, or cattle market, of Rome. The religious identities as illustrated through the archaeology and literature surrounding gods such as Herakles, Mater Matuta, and Fortuna were crucial in reaching across cultural boundaries, and speak to the diverse groups of people engaging in social and economic transactions within this emporion. I end with a consideration of how both a theory of institutions and comparative evidence from later periods can help us divulge the explanatory power of these cults in terms of the larger processes of urbanization and economic growth in the ancient world.

Keywords: emporion, religion, sanctuaries, syncretism, cross-cultural interaction, institutions, long-distance trade, economy, Iron Age

Following a shift in discussion away from an analysis of prestige goods and towards an examination of the circulation of bulk commodities instead, the nature of commodity production within the north European wic sites has come into focus. As yet, comparatively little is known about how commodity production was organised within the English wic sites. Objects and waste of antler, bone and horn form a significant component of commodity production within all four of the English wics. One of the best settlements to study the manufacture of objects made from skeletal materials is Hamwic, which is situated in a suburb of Southampton. Production there was mainly (but not entirely) centred in the northern part of the settlement, in the Six Dials area. An analysis of the waste materials and objects associated with Structure 15 at Six Dials shows how production was organised in this area from c 720 to 820

Las 39 marcas que presentamos pertenecen al fondo del Museo Episcopal de Vic. Se trata, básicamente, de marcas bien conservadas en pequeños fragmentos de cerámica, mayoritariamente pertenecientes a ánfora, pero también existe un pequeño grupo en tegula, y una sola marca en mortero.

This paper is a first attempt to identify the source of black limestone objects from Emporiae and Ruscino which, due to their highly similar macroscopic appearance, were thought to share the same provenance. Petrographic analysis has been peformed on to a small number of samples from archaeological record as well as a possible local stone from the Ruscino area, as the evidence strongly suggest a local origin for these stones.

Publicadas en su mayoría por Almagro en el año 1955 en este trabajo estudiaremos las necròpolis altoimperiales de Ampurias desde dos puntos de vista: el de su relación con la ciudad de los vivos -así como su propia ordenación espacial- y el de la tipología de sus monumentos y ajuares.

Over the recent decades, historians and archaeologists alike have greatly enhanced modern understanding of the urban development in early medieval Britain. However, as of now, there seems to be a lack of a meta-analytical synthesis of the collected information, i.e. scholars have so far not put forward any concise framework to collate this information with, the need for which is especially acute in the light of the multifaceted Anglo-Scandinavian interaction. For instance, the contribution of the Danish settlement to the English urban landscape has on multiple occasions been emphasised, but it remains hard to evaluate in the absence of a comparison with both native Scandinavian urban development and parallel late Anglo-Saxon urbanisation.
The suggested paper aims at presenting one of the possible typologies of the post-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian urban centres and communities up until the beginning of the High Middle Ages. The expected framework, built on the firm chronological principle, shall categorise them on the basis of:
1. origins: (post-)Roman settlements, early Anglo-Saxon wīcas/emporia, later Scandinavian fortresses, West Saxon burhs, etc.;
2. functions: royal centres, territorial capitals, commercial hubs, etc.;
3. regionality: Southern England, Western Mercia, and the Danelaw.
Of a special interest is the integration of the pre-existing urban settlements in the Danelaw into the West Saxon administrative system, particularly when compared to the parallel process in English Mercia to the west.
It is anticipated that the resultant analytical scheme can find application beyond the British Isles and can contribute to the multidisciplinary Scandinavian research just as much.

Journal of Greek Archaeology 3: 165-201

By the Classical period, the Greeks knew Aphrodite by two major epithets, Ourania (“Heavenly”) and Pandemos (“All the People”). Ancient authors generally recognized Ourania as the more ancient of the two, evolving out the Near East, while Pandemos came to be associated with the emergence and civic unity of the Athenian polis. Our earliest evidence for the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos, however, comes not from Athens but from Naukratis in the Nile Delta, an emporion settled by several Greek city-states amidst Egyptians, Cypriots, Phoenicians, and others from the late 7th century BC onwards. Earlier scholarly evaluations downplayed Aphrodite Pandemos’ civic functions at this site, based on Naukratis’ ambiguous political status and the late nature of most of our literary sources for this goddess. Here I revisit the question of Pandemos’ civic functions through two avenues: (a) the new evidence for Aphrodite’s multicultural worship at Naukratis revealed through recent work by the British Museum, and (b) Aphrodite’s longer-term evolution, as Ourania, from Near Eastern deities like Hathor, Ishtar, Astarte, and the Cypriot Great Goddess, deities connected to overt and widespread ideologies of divine kingship across the Near East and eastern Mediterranean from the Early Bronze Age onwards. By situating the ritual patterning of Aphrodite’s worship against both her long-term evolution and her new persona as Pandemos in the Archaic period, I argue that her civic functions emerged amidst the vast social and political transformations taking place in the Iron Age and Archaic Mediterranean world. Within these shifts, new types of mixed, self-governing communities like Naukratis required novel religious and political ideologies that, while drawing from Aphrodite’s older Near Eastern roots, emphasized shared access to the divine in a newly-established, multicultural emporion.

Publicadas en su mayoría por Almagro en el año 1955 en este trabajo estudiaremos las necròpolis altoimperiales de Ampurias desde dos puntos de vista: el de su relación con la ciudad de los vivos -así como su propia ordenación espacial- y el de la tipología de sus monumentos y ajuares.

The Greek city of Emporion is one of the few Greek emporia which ultimately be- came a polis. Consequently, the city had to adapt the previously held structures of an emporion to cope with the new circumstances which being a polis required; thus its urban space, territory, population, laws, government had to be modifi ed in the conversion from one situation to another. Furthermore, this change had to be fulfi lled in the midst of a non-Greek environment, which obvi- ously had consequences in the development of Greek identity within the city. Fortunately, in the case of Emporion we have both archaeological and literary evidence (although not very abundant) to observe these processes. The aim of this paper is, consequently, to consider this evidence in order to see how interactions worked in Emporion itself as well as in the surrounding region in different historical moments and how those interactions contributed to shaping several interrelated identities within the Greek city, which ...

Resum: L'oli betic, durant I'Alt Imperi, es va difondre en grans quantitats per tota ['Europa occidental, i per aconseguir aquesta elevada difusió van haver d'existir-hi uns circuits comercials específics amb unes caraeterístiques concretes. Dins d'aquestes rutes hi haurd dos ports, Narbona i Empúries, que faran d'entrada d'aquest producte de primera necessitat al sud de Fran~a i al nord de Catalunya.