Rural hinterlands of the Black Sea during the fourth century BCE: expansion, intensification and new connections

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>This paper takes a holistic approach to the data for rural hinterlands in the Black Sea region in the fourth century BCE to reveal pan-Black Sea patterning, importantly including the southern coast and the territory of ancient Sinope. During a period of dynamic mobility and prosperity, the rural hinterlands of Greek settlements around the Black Sea expanded in ways that demonstrate significant regional commonalities in terms of increased settlement, intensified agricultural infrastructure, new connections via road and path networks and the inclusion of dependent territories beyond the traditional chora. Decisions to expand rural territory and intensify agricultural production were taken at the local level, but this patterning demonstrates that such developments were also a response to the dynamics of Black Sea economic and political networks. The associated increased density of occupation and connectivity in these rural hinterlands made them key facilitators of social networks, creating stronger ties between Greek settlements and other local communities, and ultimately enmeshing a more diverse group of people within Black Sea networks.</jats:p>

Climate change and modernization drive structural realignments in European grain production

“…The fertile croplands of the Black Sea hinterland had been integrated into the Mediterranean Greek trading system by the early 2nd millennium BC. The steady, regular supply of grain from the Black Sea Basin was underway, and was to become by the latest in the fourth century BC 10,11 a key resource maintaining the relatively high population density in the Eastern Mediterranean world. Subsequent developments notwithstanding, for example, hegemony over the majority of Black Sea region by, among others, the Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Russian empires, the grain of the Eastern European steppe was an integral part of Eastern Mediterranean food security until the communist takeover 12,13 .…”

Jason Lucas, Carrie Ann Murray and Sara Owen, eds, Greek Colonization in Local Contexts: Case Studies in Colonial Interactions (University of Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology Monographs 4. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2019, 249pp. with b&w illustr., pbk, ISBN 9781789251326)

“…The active role of landscape and settlement patterns in shaping the experience and development of cultural interactions has not been a key focus of investigations of Greek settlements abroad over the past decade but several papers in this volume remind us why this is such a fruitful avenue of research (see also Rempel & Doonan, 2020). For example, Lucas (Ch.…”