Panel 5.22 – The archaeology of cross-cultural trade: multi-disciplinary approaches to economic and cultural exchange at Naukratis


Organiser/Chair:

  • Alexandra Villing (British Museum)

External Discussant:

  • John Davies (University of Liverpool)

Panel abstract

Commercial exchange between people of different cultures has long been a topic of scholarly interest, yet like all trade and exchange, its quality, quantity and socio-economic implications are notoriously difficult to grasp in the archaeological record. The aim of this session is to explore and debate the possibilities and limitations of multidisciplinary approaches to the topic, taking as a case study the current reassessment of one of the most pivotal locations of ancient cross-cultural trade: Naukratis. The Nile Delta has long been a contact zone between Egypt and the Mediterranean world, channelling people, goods and ideas between Europe, Asia and Africa. The trading port of Naukratis, established in the 7th century BC as the earliest Greek settlement on Egyptian soil, was a key hub for such exchange until the 7th century AD. It thus provides an ideal basis for charting long-term patterns of exchange while affording close-up views of individual praxis and experience of interaction. At the same time, Naukratis is exemplary for how present-day knowledge has been shaped – and compromised – by heterogeneous and serendipitous bodies of evidence filtered through selective frameworks of interpretation. It is only recently that a critical reassessment of 19th and 20th century scholarship alongside new archaeological work has begun to reveal a more complex, in depth picture of a pluri-ethnic harbour town, home to diverse international communities, which played role in regional and 'global' networks of trade and exchange for well over a thousand years. Papers in this session will explore different methodologies and perspectives to investigate the port city of Naukratis as a hub and conduit of intercultural trade and as a multi-ethnic community. Their objective is twofold: presenting the results of new research, they will chart the port's diachronic development and role in wider Mediterranean (Greek, Roman), African (Egypt, Libya?) and Near Eastern (Levantine) networks and examine the agents and processes involved in trade and exchange, from the role of religion to the impact of technological transfer. On a more general level, they aim to provoke discussion about the role of archaeological, geo-archaeological, technological, historiographic and culture-historical approaches in teasing out economic history from the 'archaeological archive'.

 

Paper abstracts

1. Alexandra Villing (The British Museum)

Greece, Egypt and cross-cultural trade – an introduction
Throughout history, economic exchange has been inseparable from political, cultural, religious and social relations. From the Assyrian trading colonies of the 2nd millennium BC to medieval Gao in sub-Saharan Africa, the 17th century Dutch outpost at Dejima, or the 19th century British treaty port of Shanghai, long-distance commerce has engendered contact and exchange but also conflict and segregation between peoples of different cultural backgrounds. With commercial exchange being founded on institutional frameworks as much as on social networks, international trading ports and trading diasporas have been key agents in these processes.
This paper aims to set the scene for a wider discussion of such issues in relation to the topic of Egyptian-Greek economic and cultural exchange, including but not confined to the study of the ancient port of Naukratis. It will give a brief introduction to the history of Egyptian-Greek exchange and to the role of Naukratis against the wider background of scholarly approaches to cross-cultural trade, as well as raise some of the crucial questions to be addressed in subsequent contributions: To what extent can the archaeological exploration of a multi-cultural gateway community provide insights into ancient economic practice? How should we approach the archaeological record, and what are the dangers and pitfalls we need to wary of?

 

2. Alexandra Villing und Aurelia Masson-Berghoff (The British Museum)

Alternative facts? Classical archaeologists, Egyptologists, and changing views of Naukratis from the 19th to the 21st century
A Greek port city with an Egyptian suburb, or an Egyptian town with a Greek quarter? Classicists’ and Egyptologists’ views of Naukratis can differ fundamentally, shaped by different disciplinary traditions and selective views on a problematic body of archaeological evidence moulded by changing epistemological approaches and their political and economic backgrounds from the late 19th century until today.
In the British Museum’s ongoing reassessment of Naukratis, interdisciplinary collaboration and a critical review of fieldwork old and new enables a new perspective on the port’s multi-ethnic populations and their religious and economic activities. Among the key results is the greater recognition of Egyptian agency and of the way that both Greeks and Egyptians shaped the town’s life and history from its foundation.
A deeper understanding of the site and its archaeology also allow us to more fully appreciate the processes behind diverse scholarly constructs of Naukratis – including our own – and to assess their wider impact on the perception of Egyptian-Greek economic and cultural exchange.

 

3. Astrid Lindenlauf

Economising in an inter-cultural context: practices of repair, re-use and re-utilization of pottery at Naukratis
Clay objects break at different rates but they tend to break eventually. Yet breakage does not necessarily end the use life of a clay object. If a damaged vessel is not considered irreparable, it may be mended and used for the same purpose (re-use) or a different function (re-utilization). Individual potsherds may be considered useful because of their properties, such as their form (to serve as a writing surface or lid), their weight (to serve as a loomweight), or sharpness (to serve as a scraper or knife). Some clay objects may have to be modified to serve their new function, as in the case of stoppers or games pieces. Sherds may also be broken down completely to reclaim the material (material reprocessing) as temper but this practice is difficult to trace archaeologically.
At Naukratis, most repaired and recycled clay objects have been found in rubbish deposits. While the findspots of recycled pots do not necessarily reflect the original location and context of their use, it is possible to reconstruct diverse technological practices of repairing cracks and breaks and of recycling damaged vessels and potsherds. Correlating frequencies of repair and recycling techniques with vase shapes and production centres provides insights into the management of resources and value systems in place at Naukratis, from Archaic to Roman times. It also provides the foundation for better understanding the factors that motivate repair and recycling within a multicultural trading community.

 

4. Ross Thomas (The British Museum) / Benjamin Pennington (The University of Southampton)

Networks of trade and landscapes of connectivity: the port of Naukratis from the 7th century BC to the 7th century ADBefore the founding of Alexandria, Naukratis and its sister port Thonis-Heracleion were Egypt’s main gateways to the Mediterranean. The rediscovery of Thonis-Heracleion, new British Museum excavations at Naukratis and the ongoing interdisciplinary reassessment of earlier fieldwork enable a comprehensive review of trade between Egypt and the Mediterranean world and the role of the riverine networks and port facilities that enabled it.
I will first discuss the cityscape and riverscape of Naukratis based on the latest geophysical, geological and archaeological studies of Naukratis and related sites, which have shed important new light on the navigability of the river, the harbour facilities and sailing technology.
Secondly, an assessment will be given of the scale and nature of trade as evidenced by the large dataset of archaeological remains from the new and old excavations at Naukratis. The limits and biases of the data and the relative merits of different artefact groups will be considered.
Finally I will discuss the implications of this research for our understanding of Naukratis and of trade relations between Egypt and its Mediterranean and Near Eastern neighbours through the ages. Tracing trade along the Canopic branch from c.620BC to AD650 and considering the impact of short and long term geo-political trends, I will address the question of how pivotal was Naukratis as a hub of trade.

 

5. Giorgos Bourogiannis (Museums of World Cultures)

Cypriots at Naukratis or Cypriots to Naukratis? A brief discussion of material evidence and some writing
Contacts between Egypt and Cyprus in the first millennium BC and their archaeological manifestation are an intriguing subject that has not always been in the centre of scholarly attention. In spite of her strategic position, natural assets and sophisticated socioeconomic structures, Cyprus is often viewed as a mere recipient of Egyptian cultural influence, particularly in the 6th century BC, when the island was under the political control of Egypt. Although the brief period of Egyptian domination left its trace on the island, especially in the art, evidence suggesting a Cypriot activity in Egypt is more difficult to assess.
Looking at sites across Egypt, including the bustling emporion of Naukratis at the Nile Delta, the paper will seek evidence of Cypriot activity and, possibly, presence in the affluent land of the Pharaohs, by examining the archaeological data and written record from selected case studies. The chronological range of the paper is set between the 9th/8th and the 4th centuries BC. Discussion will consider different groups of material evidence with also due consideration whenever possible of the existing epigraphic record and literary evidence for ancient Cyprus (written exclusively by non-Cypriots). In order to better assess the nature of Cypriot activity in Egypt, comparisons with other areas of the Mediterranean will be made. The paper will focus on issues of pottery production and distribution, trade activity, cultural interaction and its archaeological visibility.

 

6. Christopher Parmenter (New York University)

Biographies of Faience: Naukratis and the Culture of the Commodity
During the 6th cent. BCE, Aegean merchants became increasingly active in Mediterranean borderlands. The entry of new commodities into the Greek world sets in motion a series of cultural transformations as these goods create space for new behaviors and new ideas of the world and its peoples (J. Skinner calls this the population of a ‘cultural imaginaire’). Studies of mass consumption both contemporary (Appadurai, Trentmann) and in the Archaic Mediterranean (Villing, Dietler) demonstrate consumption is central to identity construction. Commodity biography, a genre of historiography from Atlantic history (Mintz), offers a useful analog for how foreign consumers managed interactions with new commodities. The spread of faience Egyptianizing ‘trinkets,’ some made in Naukratis, and some deliberately produced for export, offers an example of how a specific type of product facilitates new behaviors and forms of knowledge among consumers. I will discuss an unpublished deposit of faience from Kourion, Cyprus to show how worshippers displayed and curated faience objects to demonstrate their connectivity in an increasingly ‘globalized’ Mediterranean. A ‘biographical’ approach to faience sheds light on how diverse tastes for single product, sourced from mineral resources in the western Nile delta, sets in motion a wider ‘Egyptianization’ in the 6th cent. The widespread, selective, adoption of this good is background for Greek conceptions of Egypt and its cultures in the Classical Period.

 

7. Barbara Kowalzig (New York University)

Trading Religions at Naukratis
This paper will examine the role of cult in trading relations in the light of the new findings at Naukratis. In particular, it will attempt to understand the ‘pantheon’ of Naukratis as working within a specifically maritime belief system, i.e. catering to the needs, interests, and anxieties of traders, travellers, and seafarers. It will try to pinpoint the workings of Aphrodite in transcultural trading relations by placing Naukratite Aphrodite within her network of cults emerging from the milieu of a maritime merchant elite of the Eastern Mediterranean. I will furthermore look at the role of Hera in long-distance trade, taking into account the insights from a recent monograph devoted to her agency within Greek polytheism (V. Pirenne-Delforge, G. Pironti, L'Héra de Zeus. Ennemie intime, épouse definitive (Paris, 2016)). A final aspect to be explored is how the community of Greek gods at Naukratis relates to the site’s Egyptian pantheon, notably Amun-Ra, the port’s main Egyptian god, and his possible role as protector of seafarers.