By Dimova, Bela / της Μπέλα Δήμοβα
Το βιβλίο επικεντρώνεται σε
δύο πόλεις-ζώνες επαφής:
-Την Απολλωνία στην Μαύρη
Θάλασσα, και
-Την Adzhiiska Vodenitsa / Βοδενίτσα, στον ποταμό Έβρο / Hebros, κοντά στο σύγχρονο Vetren / Βετρεν.
ΠΗΓΗ: Dimova B. «A Post-Colonial View of Thrace: Thracian-Greek Interactions From the Early Iron Age to the Early Hellenistic Period» (doctoral thesis) https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.60155, University of Cambridge, 2015. ΑΡΧΕΙΟΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΣΜΟΥ, 7.6.2016.
Abstract
The way we see relations between ‘Greeks’ and ‘Barbarians’ in the 1st
millennium BC Mediterranean has changed dramatically over the past 20 years.
Under the influence of post-colonial theory, the narrative has shifted from
colonial conquest to multiple histories of diverse encounters. This thesis
examines the case of ancient Thrace: an under-explored region, which offers a
unique perspective on Greek-Non-Greek relations. Geography endows Thrace with a
long-lived history of interactions with Greece and very different possibilities
for connectivity, compared to the Mediterranean. The aim of this thesis is to
explore what forms interactions between communities in Thrace and Greece took
in different geographical settings, and how they changed over the 1st millennium
BC. I trace how indigenous people adopted and used imported objects and
technologies in different social contexts in Thrace. This enquiry sheds light
on the indigenous perspective, which has been often left off the pages of
history. The evidence is synthesised and discussed in three core chapters.
Chapter II takes a regional-wide and long-term perspective. I review the
settlement dynamics, burial and religious practices across Thrace through the
Iron Age, and I examine the place of imports in each of these spheres. Chapters
III and IV focus on two contact-zone cities: Apollonia on the Black Sea, and
Adzhiiska Vodenitsa on River Hebros, near modern Vetren. At Apollonia – a
classic example of a coastal Greek colony, we can follow how a community of
diverse origins constructed a unified community identity as a Pontic Ionian
city. Apollonia’s trade and diplomatic relations with neighbouring communities
started from its establishment and unfolded prosperously. Vetren is also
considered a colony – a Thasian emporion – but after re-assessing the
epigraphic, historical, and archaeological evidence, I argue that this
identification is unconvincing. The site is better understood as a market town
with a mixed population, under Thracian authority. Vetren therefore invites us
to rethink the rise of indigenous urbanism, and particularly the role of
imports in the constitution of early towns and urban economies. The two case
studies and the regional review recuperate some of the diverse interactions
between Thrace and Greece, including technological transfer, trade, migration,
and elite contacts, among others. They offer a perspective on how aspects of
Thracian society changed through cultural contact, on indigenous terms: by
embracing and adapting some elements (coinage, wheel-made pottery), and showing
limited interest in others (e.g. writing). In the processes of cultural contact
and social change, people manipulated the boundaries of identity and alterity
in more complex and historically meaningful ways than the binary classification
of Greek and Thracian allows: by creating idiosyncratic local identities such
as the Pontic Ionians at Apollonia; or by living an urban lifestyle, which had
more in common with urban centres of the Aegean, than other Thracian
settlements, as at Vetren.
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