Panel 5.1 – The Friction of Connectivity – Greco-Roman trade in archaeology and texts

Organiser/Chair:

• Peter F. Bang (University of Copenhagen)
• Mark L. Lawall (University of Manitoba)
• John Lund (The National Museum of Denmark)

Speakers:

• Mark Lawall (University of Manitoba)
  Archaeology of friction and integration: transport amphoras, geography and economy (5th and 4th centuries BC)
• Kristian Göransson (Swedish Institute in Rome)
  Cyrenaica and its neighbours: evidence of trade and absence of evidence
• Jennifer Gates-Foster (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  Distant Contacts and Local Imitation: Early Ptolemaic Transport Amphorae from Egypt’s Eastern Desert
• Sitta von Reden (University of Freiburg)
  Greco-Roman trade and institutional change in a frontier zone of the Ptolemaic and Roman Empire (300 BCE to 300 CE)
• Roberta Tomber (British Museum)
  Trade beyond the Empire: the Quantification of Roman Amphorae and Implications for Indo-Mediterranean Trade

Throughout the 20th century, archaeologists developed ways of applying quantitative data to traditional questions of scale of production, fluctuating levels of imports etc. But historians on both sides of the old primitivist-modernist divide often relegated archaeology to a largely illustrative role vis-à-vis text-based history. Interest in New Institutional Economics (NIE) has opened up significant new pathways for a productive collaboration between archaeology and history investigating the ancient economy, since NIE emphasizes the development of institutions to reduce transaction costs or points of friction in economic systems. Such interest encourages both historians and archaeologists to redefine the questions being asked of the archaeological record and the texts. An important task for an institutional history of ancient economies is the identification and evaluation of those factors adding to the cost or effort of transactions. Distance alone and the relative costs and risks associated with overland and maritime transport have long been recognized as factors well suited to archaeological inquiry. Already in the 1970s and 1980s, economic geography was suggesting ways that different economic systems could modify the basic distance decay model. Such modifications do not depend on geography alone. Historians have begun to identify and continue to debate the impact of institutions such as systems of measurement, long-distance communication, taxes, and political alliances in increasing or decreasing the 'distance' between transactors. Sophisticated ways of modeling ancient travel are increasingly being compared with patterns in the archaeological record. Other factors, not least information asymmetry, also slow or impede transactions. Texts, especially papyri and to a lesser extent stone inscriptions, shed some light on the changing transactional friction caused by such uncertainties. Study of economic artefacts including transport amphorae, coins, ceramic epigraphy, and even the architecture of market locations are equal if not greater contributors to this line of research. The papers in this session will bring specialists in the historical, text-based study of ancient economies with particular interests in transaction costs and friction together with specialists in transport amphorae, coins, and architecture.

1. Mark Lawall (University of Manitoba)

Archaeology of friction and integration: transport amphoras, geography and economy (5th and 4th centuries BC)
Economic geographers have long recognized that a simple distance-decay model rarely describes or predicts distributions of goods with accuracy. Modifications to the model often stem from the recognition of institutions, whether physical structures or cultural practices, as facilitating trade (integration) or impeding it (friction).
Transport amphoras – as the most common container for wine, oil and many other agricultural goods, and identifiable as to region and date of manufacture – are particularly suited to the study of friction and integration in the Classical economy. Recent decades have seen an explosion of publications from across the Mediterranean world allowing a sufficiently precise description of distribution patterns and their changes over time.
Topography alone is a poor predictor of these patterns. Further factors to consider include political or military interests, pre-existing social or economic pathways connecting regions, and the amphoras themselves. Amphora shapes might provide important information as to point of origin and qualities of the original contents; however, some jars’ shapes deliberately obscure such information, instead offering only the most generic knowledge to the consumer. Stamped impressions indicated the place and date of production and often name individuals involved either in the organization of production or filling of the jars. Graffiti and dipinti provided information about owners, contents, or other qualities no longer decipherable.

2. Kristian Göransson (Swedish Institute in Rome)

Cyrenaica and its neighbours: evidence of trade and absence of evidence
Several Greek cities along the Cyrenaican coast, such as Apollonia, Taucheira and Euesperides, flourished as important nodes in long-distance maritime trade with the rest of the Greek world. But what were the commercial contacts with the Cyrenaican cities’ immediate neighbours, Tripolitania and Egypt, like? Excavations in Cyrenaica have yielded a fair amount of Punic material but very little from Egypt. Did Cyrenaica import commodities from Egypt, and if so what was such a trade made up of? How did the markets operate and what might have been traded in return from Cyrenaica to its eastern and western neighbours? This paper aims at investigating the sources – texts as well as archaeology – available from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period in an attempt to answer these questions.

3. Jennifer Gates-Foster (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Distant Contacts and Local Imitation: Early Ptolemaic Transport Amphorae from Egypt’s Eastern Desert
The excavation between 2013-2017 of the Ptolemaic fortifications at B’ir Abbad and B’ir Samut in Egypt’s Eastern Desert has yielded a wealth of new information about the networks of supply that supported Ptolemaic exploitation of the region’s resources during the late fourth and third centuries BCE. The ceramic assemblages from the two installations reveal a diverse array of sources for the pottery supplied to the fort, which in turn suggests a wide-ranging web of economic and social connections between the fort’s inhabitants and the Egyptian countryside, as well as the Aegean.
Notable among this data is the presence of a very large number of amphorae, now known to be used both as vessels for the storage and transport of water, and, in reuse, as repositories for grain and other commodities stored in the forts. The amphora assemblage from both installations contains a range of imported Aegean amphora as well as many locally-produced Egyptian amphorae in a range of forms. Some of these local products precisely imitate Aegean types, while others present a distinctive form that is best understood as a mélange of attributes borrowed from imported types, but combined with local elements to produce a form that is neither imitative, nor entirely free from the influence of Aegean models. This paper offers an overview of the amphora assemblage from these two sites and considers the economic and social implications of their form and use in the third century BCE.

4. Sitta von Reden (University of Freiburg)

Greco-Roman trade and institutional change in a frontier zone of the Ptolemaic and Roman Empire (300 BCE to 300 CE)
It has long been recognized that the Eastern Desert in Egypt served as an important imperial periphery for supplying imperial centers such as Alexandria and Rome with “luxuries”, that is, low-volume and high-value goods. Intense archaeological research has confirmed the frequency and scale of this trade the value of which is impressively illustrated by the Muziris papyrus of the 1st century AD. This paper aims to go beyond assessments of scale and value, asking how imperial change affected the economies of the peripheries institutionally. Contractual security, stable currencies, stable currency exchange, increasing technological knowledge, control of dangerous environments, and above all much greater transparency (and thus accessibility) of local exchange networks are among the most important of these.

5. Roberta Tomber (British Museum)

Trade beyond the Empire: the Quantification of Roman Amphorae and Implications for Indo-Mediterranean Trade
Classical historians and archaeologists have long sought to understand the ancient economy through the study of artefacts. A variety of reasons – their durability, abundance and potential for source characterisation – make ceramics particularly amenable for investigating the economy. Of the different functional categories of pottery, transport amphorae primarily containing wine, oil and fish products, are thought to be particularly indicative of the agricultural economy so important throughout the Mediterranean world. The now established trend for quantification has resulted in a fairly comprehensive overview of amphora distribution throughout the Mediterranean, which provide a basis for investigating the forces behind this distribution. Related but separate from this distribution is Roman amphorae found beyond the Empire, throughout the western Indian Ocean and India, where they generally but not always occur in smaller numbers than in the Mediterranean. Furthermore they tend to be mostly wine amphorae, although from a variety of source areas. By comparing the distribution of Roman amphorae throughout the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean, this paper will investigate the similarities and differences of trade in these two regions, focusing especially on suppliers, consumers and the role of institutional backers.