Trade, Traders and the Ancient City

Helen Parkins, Christopher Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134709410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Trade, exchange and commerce touched the lives of everyone in antiquity, especially those who lived in urban areas. Trade, Traders and the Ancient City addresses the nature of exchange and commerce and the effects it had in cities throughout the ancient world, from the Bronze Age Near East to late Roman northern Italy.
Trade, Traders and the Ancient City employs the most recent archaeological, papyrological, epigraphic and literary evidence to present an innovative and timely analysis of the importance and influence of trade in the ancient world.

1

Time for change?
Shaping the future of the
ancient economy

Helen Parkins

Crisis, what crisis?

This collection of papers, taken from a 1995 conference with the same working title, brings together work on two of the currently most popular, but also most provocative subjects in ancient history – namely, the ancient economy and the ancient city. To bring these two subjects together for the specific purpose of joint consideration might be thought overdue for, in the past few years in particular, much research on the ancient economy has converged on economic structures engendered by the city, while, at the same time, discussion of the ancient city has frequently been diverted towards economic issues.¹ This volume includes chapters on these subjects in Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history. The broad aim, then, is to explore more closely, and to offer new perspectives on, the types of relationships between trade, traders and the city in antiquity and the ways in which they impacted on one another.

There are those who might question the value of such an exercise, for the markedly polarised and ideological debate over the ancient economy has suffered from considerable critical press in more recent years. Keith Hopkins (1983, 1) memorably described the situation as it stood in 1983; the ancient economy, he claimed, is ‘an academic battleground … The contestants campaign under various colours – apologists, marxists, modernizers, primitivists … the war continues.’ The relationship between trade and the city has been a specific focus for this kind of polemic, especially since the Weberian ‘consumer city’ model was resurrected for ancient historians some twenty-five years ago.² But while the various schools of thought have continued to engage in lively combat on the one hand, on the other, to the many innocent by-standers ‘there is a danger that familiarity with the debate leads to boredom, as though it did not matter any longer’ (Whittaker 1995, 22)³

It is partly for these reasons, then, that the study of the ancient economy appears to some, at least, to have taken itself down a cul-de-sac (Kuhrt, this volume), and hence, a tangible sense of crisis has emerged. Now, however, a combination of fresh approaches and new information (most notably, in the case of the latter, from archaeology), offers a way out. The papers brought together here, then, collectively testify to the renewed vitality of research in this field. They also bear witness to something of a sea-change; gone, for the most part, is the apparent confidence of the 1970s and early 1980s in applying all-encompassing models, and in its place is greater caution. The continuing addition of archaeological data to our other sources is without doubt primarily responsible. Since archaeology allows us to study society from the bottom up, as it were, it can reveal detail otherwise obscured by other types of sources, or by generalising models, and puts us in an increasingly strong position to be able to challenge established ideas.

While several chapters in this volume make use of archaeological material in their arguments, those by Smith and Lawall offer pertinent examples of novel perspectives made possible only by archaeology. Smith shows how the role of artisans (as distinct from traders) and, more specifically, the goods that they produced (pottery, and terracotta decoration), can shed light on the society and economy of archaic central Italy, and even on the origin of the city. Pottery is also Lawall’s chosen diagnostic tool for illuminating Chian history. Through investigation of the shapes and markings primarily of sixth-and fifth-century BC amphoras he uncovers two periods of significant internal economic change on Chios during the fifth century, the extent of which is undocumented by any other source. Both Smith and Lawall demonstrate above all the unique contribution that archaeology continues to make to our understanding of the ancient economy, for it potentially gives much greater geographical and chronological accuracy to our picture of trade than the textual sources by themselves permit. And, as Lawall himself suggests, with more and more archaeological work being undertaken all the time, we can hopefully look forward to increased precision in the years to come.

At the same time, Alston and Kuhrt prove that other sources long since known to historians (papyri, and Near Eastern cuneiform tablets respectively) still have a great deal of potential yet to be tapped, and can extend our knowledge both geographically and temporally.

Alston’s chapter, for example, adds to the growing body of impressive work on Roman Egypt, much of which has been directed at exploring systems of landholding and of agricultural management (e.g. Kehoe 1988 and 1992; Rathbone 1991; Rowlandson 1996). Combining detailed papyrological analysis with a broad historical perspective, Alston shows how this particular body of Egyptian source material can be used to construct a wider picture of inter-regional trade, even ‘international’ trade. Furthermore, with new archaeological survey and excavation happening apace in this most important of Roman provinces,⁴ we can expect further dimensions to be added to the picture in the years to come.

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, Kuhrt demonstrates what can be learnt about Assyrian trade mechanisms from Akkadian cuneiform tablets. Indeed, Kuhrt suggests that the debate over the ancient economy may have become sterile because of extensive reliance on, and over-working of, Graeco-Roman evidence from the classical period. Fresh life could be injected into the discussion, she proposes, if we were to look more frequently at different historical periods. Her chapter, on trade and traders in Old Assyria, lends considerable weight to her argument, revealing as it does a level of economic sophistication that few might have anticipated.

Old models, new perspectives?

Ever since the 1960s and early 1970s, when Moses Finley and A. H. M. Jones separately set out a ‘primitivist’ model for understanding the ancient economy, their hugely influential work has set the tone for much of the debate as to the roles and functions of trade, traders, and the ancient city. The crux of their model is that agriculture was the dominant mode of production in antiquity and that, for this reason, there was little or no interest in developing ‘industrial’-type production. Towns and cities were thus net consumers, industry remained minimal and local, and commercial activity ‘was always a side-issue compared to landowning’.⁵

This model, at the time of its inception, stood in sharp contrast to its ‘modernising’ predecessor, associated primarily with Rostovtzeff. Much of the debate that has taken place over the last twenty or thirty years has revolved around the question of which of these two pictures, together with similar and related conceptualisations, is the more accurate.⁶ Now, however, particularly in the face of a great deal of additional evidence, it has become apparent that, in some respects at least, neither of these models is entirely adequate nor necessarily helpful.⁷ As a result, historians are tending away from both ends of the ideological spectrum and finding novel and different ways of addressing problems in ancient economic history.

A handful of specific themes that recur throughout all the chapters in this book – economic integration, interdependence and the role of traders – illustrate the point particularly emphatically, and underline also the various ways in which new data are serving as a driving force behind current approaches.

Economic interdependence and integration

The primitivist scheme holds that inter-regional trade was minimal, largely because of limited specialised production (due to lack of ‘industrial’ development) and poor and expensive transport. Especially for the archaic period, but also in later periods, trade is regarded as having been essentially opportunistic, independent, and inherently local, built as it was around a subsistence economy. For these reasons, interdependent markets are believed to have been all but non-existent. In the past few years, however, archaeology has been making an ever more important contribution to this aspect of Greek economic history.⁸

Tsetskhladze tacitly addresses the validity of this picture in his chapter on Greek colonisation during the archaic and early classical periods. The colonising drive of many Greek cities in these periods is conventionally explained by the Greeks’ need to secure vital supplies that they lacked, chiefly grain, metals, and slaves. Needing to pay for these imports, the Greek craftsmen were spurred into production; a degree of interdependence is thus envisaged. Using archaeological and other evidence, Tsetskhladze challenges the traditional interpretation of Greek colonisation of the Black Sea region, arguing that the same evidence can in fact be used to reach very different conclusions. Both the Greeks’ requirements and the ability of the colonised areas to supply them, it is claimed, have been seriously misjudged.

Robin Osborne (1996) is one of the latest in a line of scholars who have used ceramics to argue that the archaic Greek economy was in fact based on interdependent markets, in which supply and demand can be qualitatively proven.⁹ It should be noted, however, that Osborne benefits from the wealth of pottery studies that have materialised only in the last few years. Osborne studied sixth-and fifth-century Attic pottery, concentrating on two main features: the shape and the painter of the pottery. He found that the pottery indicates significant geographical variation in supply and demand according to these two attributes, even in the smaller number of sixth-century samples; put simply, ‘different places generated different demand, characteristically met by different workshops’ (Osborne 1996, 38). Further, if we accept, as Osborne does, that pots were not ‘intrinsically valuable’,¹⁰ then the patterns of exchange that they reveal cannot have been created solely by the demand for pottery, which suggests that the pottery trade started on the back of some other kind of trade – maybe that of grain. In sum, Osborne’s study points not just perhaps to a greater volume of trade, but to a much greater degree of organisation and integration than previously thought. That the production and consumption of the cities involved seems clearly to be interdependent cannot be explained satisfactorily by trading opportunism.

A similar position is taken in this volume by Mark Lawall, who in effect extends Osborne’s argument into the classical period through a study of fifth-century BC Chian amphoras. Using data relating to imports of amphoras at Athens and elsewhere, along with evidence of Chian marking practices and changes in amphora shapes, Lawall’s study serves as powerful testimony to the high visibility of trade from the archaic into the classical period and, as mentioned earlier, also brings greater geographical and chronological clarity to our picture of trade during this time. In addition, and more importantly for present purposes, the Chian marking systems demonstrate a striking degree of sensitivity to both internal and external markets. Once again, trading opportunism hardly seems an adequate explanation.

As we move into the classical period the quality and quantity of evidence improves markedly – as is manifest in Lawall’s chapter – especially with regard to those two most atypical of cities, the imperial capitals of Athens and Rome. Indeed, one of the major attractions of studying the ancient economy from the perspective of the big cities is that we have so much information with which to play; if we are to try to prove or disprove economic interdependency, then Athens or Rome would therefore seem good places from which to start. But the greater volume of evidence for this period generates its own potential hazards. The vast array of data (particularly archaeological and epigraphic), once assembled and rendered accessible,¹¹ can shed important light on a number of areas of economic history. But it can just as easily prove tantalising, deceptive, or simply unreliable. Facts and figures hold out the key to understanding the ancient economy, but in themselves do not necessarily take us further, as Whitby’s chapter emphasises. In addressing the long-running debate over Athens’ grain supply – once regarded as a key test for the assertion that interdependent markets in antiquity were non-existent¹² – Whitby suggests that the underlying difficulty is the overly quantificatory and technical nature of the debate, which has led to the grain trade being abstracted from its actual context. Whitby argues that more telling than sets of figures and calculations are the many ways in which the Athenians can be shown to have kept tabs on their grain supply.¹³ These underline the importance of the grain trade to Athens, and the practical irrelevance to the Athenians of precise information-gathering; much more effective in practice were ‘impressions, rumours and hunches’. While as yet these conclusions do not ultimately resolve the question of interdependence, they may at least point in the direction of where more appropriate answers may be found.

For the Roman period, a picture of limited integration and inter-dependence becomes still harder to sustain, since our ev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Time for change? Shaping the future of the ancient economy
• 2 The Old Assyrian merchants
• 3 Traders and artisans in archaic central Italy
• 4 Trade on the Black Sea in the archaic and classical periods: some observations
• 5 Ceramics and positivism revisited: Greek transport amphoras and history
• 6 The grain trade of Athens in the fourth century BC
• 7 Land transport in Roman Italy: costs, practice and the economy
• 8 Trade and traders in the Roman world: scale, structure, and organisation
• 9 Trade and the city in Roman Egypt
• 10 Trading gods in northern Italy
• 11 Ancient economies: models and muddles
• Index