imperial surplus and local tastes: a comparative study of mediterranean connectivity and trade

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WORKING DRAFT. DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION. 2014

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Imperial Surplus and Local Tastes:

A Comparative Study of Mediterranean Connectivity and Trade

William Caraher and David K. Pettegrew

Introduction

Regional programs of archaeological survey have long offered a unique and important

contribution to the scholarship of connectivity in the Mediterranean. In documenting the

distribution of sites and artifacts across disparate landscapes, archaeological surveys record a

snapshot of the orientation of particular regions toward broader networks of production, trade,

and culture. The most basic and ubiquitous kinds of object recorded through surveyfragmented

ceramic jars, amphoras, basins, pots, bowls, and platesspeak to questions about a regions

links to territories and provinces elsewhere. The sophisticated tools for quantifying, analyzing,

and mapping survey data through databases and geospatial platforms, moreover, have established

a basis for measuring changes in connectivity over time and space. Finally, the juxtaposition of

different sets of survey data side-by-side highlights the differential access of regions,

communities, and sites to the networks of distribution that passed the basic stuff of daily life

across the corrupting seas.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Mediterranean landscape archaeologists in the last

generation have made important contributions to discussions of regional interaction. An

emphasis in survey on the diachronic perspective, a reliance on coarse periodization schemes,

and a focus on regions as the basic unit of study has encouraged a focus on the broadest forces

affecting the trajectories of societies such as state formation, political exploitation, and

environmental change.1The proliferation of survey projects has encouraged a comparison of

regional data sets and historical studies devoted to understanding the common cyclical patterns

of population, settlement, and artifacts across the Mediterranean.2Alcock famously posited that

Roman expansion, annexation, and imperialism could explain the drastic changes in settlement in

Greece between the Hellenistic and early Roman eras.3Even closer to the theme of this volume,

Jameson, van Andel, and Runnels survey of the southern Argolid and Bintliff and Snodgrasss

1C. Renfrew and J.M. Wagstaff,An Island Polity.

23Alcock,Graecia Capta.


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ground breaking work in Boeotia have connected Braudels vision of regional structures and the

longue durewith the boom and bust patterns of rural environment, agricultural production, and

trade networks.4Such studies mark only a few of the many contributions of landscape

archaeologists to previous discussions of Mediterranean connections.

Given the long-standing connections between survey archaeology and the study of long-term

and regional economic and cultural interaction, it is somewhat surprising that survey data has

factored so little in the recent conferences devoted to discussions of The Corrupting Sea. None of

the edited volumes on connectivity in the last decade,5for example, consider questions

surrounding connectivity from the perspective of regional survey. Even Horden and Purcell, who

explicitly recognize the potential for landscape archaeology for understanding ancient

environments,6give attention to regional survey data only in respect to the question of

agricultural production.7Their emphasis on production reflects the focus of most regional

surveys on the settlements in the hinterland of urban areas. These areas were understood to be

zones engaged in intensive agricultural production and, to a lesser extent, consumption, and

closely tied to nearby urban areas and their economic, social, and political networks.

Our experience as participants and supervisors in distributional surveys in the Corinthia,

Greece, and Koutsopetria, Cyprus, and our study of modern landscapes in Greece (see below),

has made us critical of simple assumptions about the correlation of sites, functional categories,

and demographic patterns, and attentive to how artifacts point to the contingencies of

connectivity over time and space.8In contrast to traditional pedestrian survey methods, which

seek to put settlement dots on a map, distributional or siteless survey focuses on regional

patterns of artifacts. Mapping the types and quantities of pottery, tile, glass, and stone draws

attention to the individual artifacts, the most basic unit of archaeological survey, as well as the

formation processes that created, shaped, and changed the surface scatters documented by survey

archaeologists. Most importantly, a focus on the artifacts draws attention to the nature of our

4Jameson, Runnels, and van Andel, The Greek Countryside; for Braudelian approaches, see Bintliff, The "Annales"

School and Archaeology.5Harris,Rethinking the Mediterranean; Malkin,Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity; LaBianca and

Scham, Connectivity in Antiquity: Globalization as a Long-Term Historical Process; Malkin, Constantalopoulou,and Panagopoulou, Greek and Roman Networks in the Mediterranean.6Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 59, 176-177, 547, and 572-574.

7See this initial critique by van Dommelen, Writing Ancient Mediterranean Landscapes, 232-233.

8Alcock, Graecia Capta,1993; Heinrichs, Graecia Capta: Roman Views of Greek Culture,; Sanders, Problems in

Interpreting Rural and Urban Settlement in Southern Greece; Witcher,


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archaeological sources (especially the pottery) and the differential visibility of successive

periods (how some periods are more visible than others), and highlights the unique historical

contingencies that have formed the surface record and shaped regional connectivity.

Distributional survey, in other words, encourages a fine-grained perspective on a regions

engagement in Mediterranean exchange through a more sensitive analysis of the basic units of

the archaeological surface record.

Our aim in this essay is to show how closer attention to the artifact assemblages from two

landscapes contributes to a more nuanced and contingent view of Late Roman settlement and

connectivity in the Greek east. The Late Roman boom in settlement and artifacts is one of the

most consistent patterns documented by surveyors in regions of Greece, the Aegean, Syria, and

the East. The spike in late Roman material in comparison to artifacts from the late Hellenistic

and Early Roman periods has usually been interpreted as a general indicator of demographic

economic expansion in the fourth to seventh century tied to the reconfiguration of the eastern

empire, the growth of the eastern capital of Constantinople, the Roman state actively

encouraging land investments, or simply a general heightened state of prosperity and

connectivity.9The ubiquity of Late Roman sites in the eastern Mediterranean, ranging from

urban centers and suburbs to towns, villages, churches, forts, villas, and small farms, has

demonstrated how deeply both urban and rural areas were engaged in local patterns of both

production and consumption.10

We believe that distributional approaches can make two important contributions to

understanding how connectivity played a key role in economic prosperity. First, an emphasis on

artifacts forces us to engage critically the sources used by archaeologist to define periods of

economic prosperity and connectivity in Antiquity. Our own studies of the exceptional ceramic

visibility of the Late Roman period have shown how durable red slips and distinctive shapes of

exported fine wares context, or combed and wheel ridged transport amphorae, have made the

period much more visible on the ground, influencing in turn conclusions about late Roman

trade.11More critically, though, the refinement of late Roman ceramic chronologies in the

9Kosso, The Archaeology of Public Policy in Late Roman Greece.

10Decker, Tilling the Hateful Earth; Pettegrew, The Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth; Rautman, A

Cypriot Village of Late Antiquity; Dossey,Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa; Lavan, ed.,Local

Economies?: Production and Exchange of Inland Regions in Late Antiquity.11Pettegrew, The Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth; Dossey,Peasant and Empire in Christian North

Africa, 2012


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regions of our fieldwork has increasingly pushed later Roman amphorae and table wares toward

later (more recent) centuries,12

and shown that artifacts were deposited in narrower time frames

than frequently assumed through the broad ceramic period designations Late Roman.

Second, distributional data also complicates debates about whether state-driven

administrative trade (the Finleyan primitivist model) or decentralized small-scale exchanges

drove the Roman and Late Roman economy by showing that different forms of exchanges

produced different archaeological signatures.13On the one hand, the sources for large-scale

administrative trade, such as the provisioning of the army during Late Antiquity, tend to be

particularly visible in the archaeological record through, for example, substantial deposits of

imported amphora types that supplied wine and olive oil to military forces in the northern

Balkans and the Danubian frontier.14

On the other hand, the links between small-scale producers

and the administrative supply chain has tended to produce less visible traces in the

archaeological record at the primary places of production.15

When production sites and villages

do appear, through survey or excavation, the most diagnostic material tends to be imported fine

table wares, particular from North Africa, Asia Minor, and Cilicia and Cyprus. This material

becomes the evidence for the links and practices that connect Late Roman consumers to

production both locally and in the wider Mediterranean world. Amphorae and table wares reveal

contrasting ends of the spectrum of trade in Late Antiquity and show how both imperial-scale

administrative trade and local consumption habits were both important to exchange.

Our paper considers two survey data sets for the late Roman period, the Eastern Korinthia

Archaeological Survey (EKAS) near Corinth, Greece, and the Pyla-KoutsopetriaArchaeological

Project (PKAP) near Larnaka (ancient Kition), Cyprus. Both regions produced substantial

assemblages of later Roman ceramics and appear to support a view of Late Antiquity as enjoying

12Much of this begins with Hayes,Late Roman Pottery; but the conversation is ongoing: Sanders and Slane,

Corinth: Late Roman Horizons; Armstrong, Trade in the East Mediterranean in the 8th century.13Whittow, How Much Trade was Local, Regional, and Interregional? unpack this dichotomy. For our period the

major recent advocates of an economic model grounded in administrative trade, particularly the annona, are

McCormick, Origins of the European Economy and Wickham,Framing the Early Middle Ages. Much of this isgrounded in Finley, The Ancient Economy.14

Karagiorgou, LR2: a Container for the Military annona.15

The use of perishable material to transport olives and grapes or oil and wine (Gallimore, An Interpretation of the

Chersonesos Ostraca, Pea, The Mobilization of State Olive Oil in Roman Africa) and the fluidity of settlementwithin the countryside (Pettegrew, Chasing the Classical Farmstead; Ghisleni, Excavating the Roman Peasant I)

has left only the faintest traces to be detected by intensive surveys and understood on the regional level. Villages,

like those on the limestone massif in Syria or those leaving traces in arid North Africa, represent notable exceptions

to the generally low archaeological visibility characteristic of everyday life in the Late Roman countryside Dossey,

Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa.)


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a prosperous and well-connected Late Antique economy. Our case studies will ultimately

highlight the distinctive character of each assemblage, and locate connectivity and prosperity in

specific historical contingencies in the fifth and sixth centuries. The survey of the Corinthian

Isthmus produced an enormous sample of objects dating to the 5th and 6th centuries, which

reflects both greater production on the Isthmus and the large-scale consumption of imported

goods. Both factors relate to the exceptional state investment in the region during the reigns of

Theodosius II and Justinian in the form of large-scale buildings projects such as the Hexamilion

fortification wall, the city walls of Corinth, and monumental ecclesiastical architecture. The

survey of the microregion of Pyla-Koutsopetriaon the south coast of Cyprus also produced a

massive assemblage of amphorae, tiles, and fine ware, which dates especially to the first half of

the 6th century. The assemblage of Late Roman 1 amphorae reflects the transformation of the

small coastal settlement to a harborside emporium and town that was most likely associated with

the shifting organizational network of Justinians provisioning for troops in the Black Sea and

northern Balkans.

The artifact distributions ultimately highlight the contingent patterns of connectivity across

time and space and add historical nuance to the pictures of Braudel and Horden and Purcell

Purcell based on longer time perspectives. While both Corinth and Koutsopetria seem to be

natural crossroads sites, our studies will highlight the particular factors that gave them unique

connective value in late antiquity. Both regions provide examples of Late Roman prosperity and

their unique assemblages indicate different relationships with the state. Our evidence, then,

supports the vision of Horden and Purcell about the flowing networks of connection between

microregions, but also shows general trends like Late Roman prosperity emerge from particular

methodologies to locate connectivity within particular historical circumstances.16

Distributional Archaeological Survey Methods

The Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey (EKAS: 1998-2003) and the Pyla-Koutsopetria

Archaeological Project (PKAP: 2003-Present) made use of almost identical high-resolution

distributional survey methods to sample intensively artifact-rich environments, and this provides

16This view borrows liberally from Peter Bangs (Bang, The Roman Bazaar) work which adopted the model of the

bazaar to understand the functioning of multiple different registers of the Roman economy in the same place.


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an ideal opportunity for comparative study.17

On both projects, surveyors walked transects at 10

m intervals across relatively small survey units (usually 1,600-3,200 sq m), counting with clicker

counters all cultural remains in their swath, including pottery, tile, lithic, and glass debris.

Walkers covered a swath of ground 2 meters wide which sampled artifacts visible in 20% of the

surface of the unit.18

This procedure allowed us to quantify the amount of pottery, tile, glass, and

stone across the different survey units in the region.

In additional to counting objects, fieldwalkers also collected unique and representative

artifacts according to the chronotype system. The goal of this system of classifying artifacts

and collecting from the surface is to parse the landscape according to the most basic unit of

analysis, the chronotype, or a unique artifact type with specific physical and chronological

characteristics.19

A chronotype may represent a well-known pottery type such as African Red

Slip Form 50 or Micaceous Water Jar, or less overtly diagnostic material such as Medium Coarse

Ware pottery dated sometime between Antiquity and the Medieval period (6000 B.C.-A.D.

1500), or a millstone fragment dated to Antiquity (700 B.C.-A.D. 500). In EKAS and PKAP,

each field walker picked up one example of every chronotype from the swath to produce a

sample of all the artifact types present in a unit.20

This method represents a systemization of

collection procedures often used in earlier pedestrian surveys which took random grab samples

of the most diagnostic artifacts like feature sherds (rims, bases, handles) or pottery with surface

treatments.

Sampling the landscape in this manner improved consistency in our effort to pattern cultural

material across the region and created an assemblage of material well-suited to source criticism.

EKAS field teams counted 140,578 artifacts and collected 36,722 objects from 1,166 survey

units across 3.6 sq km of the Isthmus, while PKAP teams counted 37,883 objects and collected

16,784 items from 465 units across 1.0 sq km of coastal zone and ridges. We can display this

17For EKAS methods, see Caraher, Nakassis, and Pettegrew, Siteless Survey and Intensive Data Collection;

Tartaron et al., The Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey. For PKAP, see Caraher, Moore, and Pettegrew,

Pyla-KoutsopetriaI.18These orthogonal units of space provided an easily comparable set of sub-unit data as each field walker covered

exactly the same percentage of the surface of the unit.19

Meyer, Pottery Strategy and Chronotypes,; Meyer and Gregory, Pottery Collection, Pottery Analysis, and GIS

Mapping,; Gregory, Less is Better:; Moore, A Decade Later: The Chronotype System Revisited,; Caraher,Moore, and Pettegrew,Pyla-KoutsopetriaI.20

For recent discussions of the analytical potential of this system, cf. Caraher et al. The Pyla-Koutsopetria

Archaeological Project: Preliminary Report,; Caraher, Nakassis, and Pettegrew, Siteless Survey and Intensive

Data Collection; Tartaron et al., The Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey; Pettegrew, The Busy

Countryside of Late Roman Corinth; Caraher, Moore, and Pettegrew,Pyla-KoutsopetriaI.


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material spatially in a GIS according to survey unit, zone, and area, and we can analyze the finds

in a database according to chronotypes, period, or fabric group.21

The ability to analyze artifact

data in a very granular way is valuable in highlighting how key type fossilsthe known

artifact types used to identify a particular period in surveyinfluence our understanding of

change in the region.22

Critical analysis of particular artifact types from EKAS and PKAP, for

example, has draw attention to the differential visibility of various historical periods. Within

periods, particular classes of artifacts, like imported fine ware pottery and ridged or grooved

bodysherds and highly diagnostic handles ensured that certain types of connections shown

brightly in the surface record.23Highly diagnostic Late Roman pottery types stand out against the

backdrop of coarse, plain, poorly diagnostic, and probably locally produced body sherds, and

contribute an outsized, but nevertheless meaningful, influence on how we understand surface

assemblages. While this trend has been particularly scrutinized in the rigorously sampled and

quantified assemblages produced by intensive pedestrian survey, these same tendencies applies

to most excavated artifact assemblages and particularly those deriving from residual deposits or

lacking strict stratigraphic control.

Finally, a more critical and attentive assessment of surface distributions reveals the formation

and constitution of surface contexts. In contrast to site-based survey that seeks to associate

artifact scatters with functional categories largely derived from textse.g., villages, villas,

and farmsteadsdistributional approaches encourage reading, parsing, grouping, and

regrouping the landscape in terms of the most basic cultural unit: individual artifacts. Interpreting

the artifacts across the landscape produces assemblages representative of the cumulative

contingencies and patterns of habitation, abandonment, deposition, and land use across different

scales of investment in the territory from one period to the next. The assemblages produced by

siteless survey capture more nuanced signatures of activities in the landscape than data related to

the presence or absence of settlements at any particular spot.

21For the PKAP data see Caraher, Pettegrew, Moore, Open Context, 2013.22

Pettegrew,The Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth. Ceramicists in all surveys assign pottery to ceramic

periods based on their knowledge of specific type fossils derived from a combination of fabric, form, slip, color,

and surface treatment. Some periods have more type fossils than others. The Late Roman period, for example, hastypically greater visibility because of the frequency of widely-traded (and, consequently, better known) table wares

and amphoras.23

Caraher, Nakassis, and Pettegrew, Siteless Survey and Intensive Data Collection; Tartaron et al., The Eastern

Korinthia Archaeological Survey; Pettegrew, The Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth; Caraher, Moore,

and Pettegrew,Pyla-KoutsopetriaI.


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The Isthmus of Corinth

In our first case study, we consider the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey, which

documented 3.6 sq km of the Isthmus of Corinth. The project surveyed a landscape that was

celebrated from the Classical era to Late Antiquity as a central crossroads famous for its defense

of southern Greece, the Panhellenic sanctuary of Isthmia, and the harbors of Kenchreai and

Lechaion which were major commercial ports for Corinth. The character and extent of

Corinthian connectivity was, nevertheless, contingent on both particular historical circumstances

made visible through our archaeological methods.

Connectivity in the Corinthian Isthmus

The Isthmus of Corinth was unusual among ancient landscapes in its reputation for

exceptional maritime connectivity (Figure __). As early as the fifth century BC, the Greek

historian Thucydides attributed (1.13.5) the rise of the citys prosperity and power to its control

of the Corinthian Isthmus at the crossroads of land and sea. The first-century geographer Strabo

called the Roman colony of Corinth wealthy (8.6.20) because its two harbors facilitated long-

distance trade between Italy and Asia. Greek orators praised Corinth for its markets,24

and late

antique preachers blamed the strife in St. Pauls Corinth as a result of an impure devotion to

wealth derived from citys position on the Isthmus and commercial facilities.25

The Isthmus

formed a steady filter for reading and projecting commercial advantages and geographic

consequences on the Greek and Roman city.

Modern scholars have often accepted ancient authors characterization of Corinthian

prosperity as deriving from the economically advantageous position astride the Isthmus. For

example, scholars have long maintained that a great trans-Isthmus slipway, the diolkos,

functioned as a busy commercial highway that made Corinth a maritime state.26

Accepting the

24Dio Chrys.Discourses 8.4; Favorinus [Dio Chrys.] 37.7; Ael. Ar. Or. 46.22-27.25

John Chrys.Hom. 1 Corinthians, Preface 1-2.26

ONeill,Ancient Corinth, 55. Cf. Cary, The Geographic Background of Greek and Roman History, 81: The chief

material asset of Corinth was of course its situation at the Isthmus. See Pettegrew, Diolkos of Corinth, fordiscussion. Cp. Cramer,A Geographical and Historical Description of Ancient Greece, 28-29; Mott, Travels in

Europe and the East, 273, 283-284; and Perdicaris, The Greece of the Greeks1845, vol. ii, 21. Historical

scholarship, travel guides, and overviews of the Isthmus popularized this view in the later nineteenth century: see,

for example, Curtius,PeloponnesosII,521, 539, 545-546, 596; Baedeker,Italy: Handbook for Travellers.3:326-27;

Gerster, LIsthme de Corinthe, 225-226; 1896, 3-4, 38-39; Frazer,Pausaniass Description of Greece,5.


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ancient view of a city awash in commercial riches led scholars to minimize the impact of

agriculture on Corinths economy and recognize in Corinth an exception to what Finley would

call the consumer city. Friedrich Vittinghoff concluded that Julius Caesar refounded Corinth to

recreate a commercial superpower astride a newly cut canal through the Isthmus,27

and Edward

Salmon, likewise, challenged an agrarian view of Roman Corinth when he asserted that the

Roman colony was intended to revive the mercantile glories of the Greek city.28

Donald

Engels controversial monograph on Roman Corinth (1990) engaged Finleys model directly by

arguing that Corinths wealth and prosperity grew not from its pitiful agricultural resources, but

the services it provided to the regions inhabitants and especially to the merchants engaged in

long-distance trade, travelers, and tourists.29The regions ancient reputation for exceptional

connectivity was the principal reason for these assessments.

Detailed archaeological studies and critical textual analysis over the last generation have

undermined the view of Corinthian prosperity as essentially dependent upon the Isthmus as a

commercial corridor. The seemingly enduring features of long-distance maritime connectivity

in the Corinthian landscape, such as ancient canal cuts, ceramic goods, and the diolkos road,

represent artifacts of historically contingent moments of exceptional interregional political,

social, and economic contact rather than the timeless properties of an essentially connecting

Isthmus.30

Situating Corinthian connectivity in a particular historical and archaeological context

provides a complement to recent scholarship emphasizing the frequency, ubiquity, and state of

general connectedness in the Mediterranean. Horden and Purcells overview, in particular,

effectively dismissed the static typologies of Finley (consumer city), Engels (service city), and

others in favor of more fluid models in which connectivity represented the key strategy defining

ancient places albeit manifest in historically contingent ways.31

The connectivity of the Isthmus

of Corinth has varied from one period to another. At times, it has functioned as a corridor linking

southern and central Greece, at times, as a land bridge linking the Saronic to the Corinthian Gulf

for pedestrians, goods, and occasionally ships of war, and at times, as the location for a pan-

27

Vittinghoff, .Rmische Kolonisation, 1302-1303; Baladi,Le Ploponnse de Strabon, 261.28

Salmon,Roman colonization under the Republic, 135.29

Engels,Roman Corinth, 42. Despite many critical reviews, the work spawned some useful debate about the value,limits, and problems in modeling ancient city types: Rich and Wallace-Hadrill eds., City and Country in the Ancient

World;Cornell and Lomas eds., Urban society in Roman Italy; Whittaker, Do theories of the ancient city

matter?, 12-14; Parkins,Roman Urbanism: Beyond the Consumer City .30Pettegrew, The Isthmus of Corinth.31Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, 105-108.


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Hellenic sanctuary and festival at Isthmia.32

The region was clearly an arena for connectivity on

many scalesfrom the small-scale redistributions of cabotage in the harbors to periods of

massive, highly-visible, historically contingent, investments of Late Antique emperors who

fortified the Isthmus both militarily and spiritually.

The Late Roman Corinthia

In the rest of this section, we consider the dynamic changes to the Isthmus over the fifth and

sixth centuries (Figure __). Earthquakes and Visigoth invasions in the late fourth century

affected the landscapes although they were not necessarily the dramatic catalyst for decline once

imagined by scholars.33At Corinth, some public buildings fell down and were never rebuilt, but

the forum itself was renovated and newly monumentalized in the early fifth century and

continued to function into the sixth century, even as elite invested in new private buildings in the

city.34

The site of Isthmia no longer served as a central sanctuary or place of cult after the late

fourth century, but was converted during the reign of Theodosius II into a fortress and garrison

for guarding the major road into the Peloponnese.35

The fortress itself formed a critical node in a

massive new construction called the Hexamilion, a barrier wall that towered over eight meters

above the ground, wound 7.5 km across the Isthmus, and funneled the flow of human movements

into and out of the Peloponnese through a handful of gates.36

Like the fortress and the city wall

around Corinth, these marked large-scale, state-sponsored constructions of the Emperor

Theodosius II, which were later refurbished by Justinian.37

The major harbors at Kenchreai and

Lechaion also continued to function in these periods, and new villa constructions and

monumental churches replaced the abandoned temples. The erection of monumental churches in

32See, for example, Shaws question in his review of Horden and Purcell (Challenging Braudel, 445) why

strongly divergent types of connectivity should not produce strongly divergent and long-lasting kinds of

intensification, both of economic forms and of the locations of human population - and, therefore, fundamentallydifferent types of towns and cities.33

For more critical readings of the effects of these events, see Rothaus, Corinth: The First City of Greece, 16-21;

Sanders, Problems in Interpreting Rural and Urban Settlement in Southern Greece; Rothaus 2008; Brown,

Banditry or Catastrophe?.34

Sanders 1999; Rothaus, Corinth, The First City of Greece, 22-26; Robinson, .Histories of Peirene; Brown 2012.35

Clement 1975; Clement 1977; Gregory,Isthmia: Excavations Volume V; Kardulias, Architecture, Energy, and

Social Evolution at Isthmia, Greece; Kardulias,From Classical to Byzantine.36Gregory,Isthmia: Excavations Volume V.37Gregory, The Late Roman Wall at Corinth,; Gregory,Isthmia: Excavations Volume V.


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the landscape in the late fifth and sixth centuries Christianized the major nodes in the landscape

and contributed to an already busy landscape.38

These landscape transformations can also be read in light of two broader geopolitical changes

of the period. First, the unrest in the northern Balkans positioned the Isthmus at the southern

extension of a line of defense that included barrier walls, fortresses, and outposts at key points

across the diocese of Illyricum.39

From the early fifth century, the Isthmus occupied an important

gate and barrier to the southward movement of armies and barbarians for the first time since the

late archaic to Hellenistic age when fortifications were used to forestall the invasion of Persians,

Goths, and the armies of Greek states or Hellenistic generals. The sporadic presence of Roman

military units and local garrisons at Isthmia marks a departure from the generally peaceful

conditions of the preceding centuries. A second equally significant sea change was the

administrative division of the Roman Empire at the death of Theodosius I, which transformed the

Corinthia from a corridor for east-west traffic, as it had been during the Early Roman Empire, to

a border zone at the western boundary of the Eastern Roman Empire.40

Spiritual fortresses

complemented the military fortifications, and the Corinthia saw an impressive corpus of basilica-

style churches in the landscape which likewise served as boundary markers at the western

periphery of the eastern empire.41

Control over this boundary and corridor to the west became

increasingly important during the sixth and seventh centuries when the northern and central

Balkan routes intermittently slipped out of the control of Constantinople and Italy fell under the

control of Germanic kings.42

Both of these broad changes, then, gave the Isthmus new value to

the Roman state in the fifth and sixth centuries.

The Eastern Korinthia Survey: Production and Consumption on the Isthmus

This historical and archaeological context informs our understanding of the unique

characteristics of the patterns of survey data across the broader Isthmus.43

Three years of survey

by the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey recorded a truly impressive layer of Late Roman

38Caraher, The Ambivalent Landscape of Christian Corinth.

39Dunn, Continuity and Change in the Macedonian Countryside

40Caraher, The Ambivalent Landscape of Christian Corinth.

41Limberis, Ecclesiastical Ambiguities: Corinth in the fourth and fifth centuries; Caraher, Ambivalent

Landscape; Caraher, Epigraphy, Liturgy, and Imperial Policy on the Justinianic Isthmus42

McCormick, Origins of the European Economy. ##-##.43Pettegrew, The Busy Countryside of Late Roman Corinth, 2008, 2010, in press; Caraher, The Ambivalent

Landscape of Christian Corinth.


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artifacts across the Isthmus that indicate one of the most intensive periods of settlement and land

use in the region in antiquity.44

Over half the units on the Isthmus produced artifacts of Late

Roman date and most of the surveyed region produced areas with exceptional density. The

Isthmus produced evidence for widely dispersed settlement in the countryside dense

concentrations of Late Roman material. The pattern marked a continuation of the dispersed

distribution of settlement that began in the early Roman period when high-density concentrations

were present in most of the survey zones.45

The distribution of artifacts certainly points to scattered farms and villas that formed a

network of settlements tied to a production economy supporting the needs of the state and a large

population, as well as a population of elite consumers who made the most of intensive patterns of

importation.46

Our intensive survey revealed a high percentages of grooved and ridged coarse

ware sherds at these small sites, especially the highly visible Late Roman 2 (LR2) amphorae

produced in the northeast Peloponnese, and these point to a period of increased connectivity on

the Isthmus. The smaller percentages of table wares and kitchen wares from these sites, as well

as fixed storage vessels like pithoi and mill stones, reflect sustained habitation with both food

processing, preparation, and dining. Most of the densest Late Roman survey units on the Isthmus

(70%) produced assemblages with some mix of fine ware, transport vessels, and cooking pots

and over a third produced a full array of storage vessels, kitchen ware, and table ware.47

The

presence of building materialstilles, tesserae, plaster, cement, nails, marble revetment, stone

furniture, water pipes, window glass, and cut stone blocks and slabsdemonstrates a substantial

investment in the land.48

It is significant that the Late Roman chronotypes from the EKAS survey area generally date

to the fifth or sixth centuries AD. Highly-diagnostic table wares defined according to expansive

and extensive typologies, for examplePhocaean Ware (LRC) Forms 3 (n=46) and 10 (n=8),

and African Red Slip (ARS) Forms 99 (n=8) and 104-106 (n=8) provide a table ware

44For comparative overview with earlier periods, see Pettegrew, forthcoming.45

For the archaic-Hellenistic survey data, see Caraher, Nakassis, and Pettegrew, Siteless survey and intensive data

collection; Tartaron et al., The Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey; Pettegrew, forthcoming. For the early

Roman Isthmus, see Pettegrew, in press.46

As predicted by Gregory, An Early Byzantine Complex at Akra Sophia near Corinth; Kardulias, Gregory, and

Sawmiller, Bronze Age and Late Antique Exploitation of an Islet in the Saronic Gulf, Greece,; Kardulias, From

Classical to Byzantine.47Pettegrew 2014. See Tables 14.1 and 14.2.48For further discussion, see Pettegrew 2014.


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assemblage contemporary with the most abundant amphorae, LR2 (n=108) and Palestinian

(n=82). All this material dates to fifth and sixth century types, which extend to the seventh

century elsewhere in the Mediterranean. As importantly, the most numerous Late Roman

chronotypes, combed ware (n=370) and spirally grooved ware (n=692), probably date to the fifth

and sixth centuries, as excavated stratified contexts from Corinth have suggested.49

The 1,764 Late Roman ceramic artifacts, then, form a substantial signature of the fifth and

sixth century across the Isthmus that is more robust than those documented elsewhere in Greece.

For example, highly diagnostic imported Late Roman table wares appeared much more

frequently in the Corinthian (n=200) than in the mountainous Asea Valley in Arcadia, Messenia

in the southwestern Peloponnese, the island of Kea in the Aegean, and Boeotia in central

Greece.50

Only the nearby Saronic peninsula of Methana identified a comparable number of

imported fine wares (n=153) but this project surveyed an area nearly three times (n=10.4 sq km)

that of EKAS and produced only half the quantity of Late Roman artifacts (n=801). The Kea

Survey and Pylos Regional Project recorded quantities of pottery (n=199 and 201, respectively)

and imported table wares (n=77 and 112, respectively) that were relatively substantial compared

to other periods in those surveys but numerically insignificant in comparison with the artifacts

documented in EKAS (and those projects surveyed areas 5-11 times greater than EKAS).

Surveys of the Asea Valley and Boeotia (Thespiae) likewise discovered a small fraction (


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investments of time and energy.51

The construction of the walls required large-scale modification

of the landscape through quarrying stone and finishing stone for facing, collecting rubble for the

core of the fortification, tearing down and spoliating ancient monuments along the path of the

wall, artificial leveling of stone and the movement of enormous volumes of earth and stone for

terracing, excavating extensive defensive ditches in front of the walls, and specialized work on

towers and outposts.52

Once the wall was completed, a military garrison of 1,200-2,000 men

defended the region during periods of insecurity.53The time and energy required to refurbish the

walls in the mid-sixth century may have been substantially lower, but still demanded significant

resources. The construction of the Lechaion Basilica as well as several other contemporary

churches during the reign of Justinian, attests to another substantial investment of resources,

manpower, and energy in the mid-sixth century.

Provisioning the crews, soldiers, and hangers-on associated with the work in the Corinthia

would have relied on both local producers and imported goods. In the 6th century, Procopius

praised Justinian for building granaries to supply the garrison at Thermopylae and it seems likely

that the garrison at the Isthmus, as well as the various crews tasked with building or refurbishing

the Hexamilion wall, warranted a state controlled grain supply, but the importing of grain is

unlikely to leave an archaeological signature. The influence of large-scale movement of goods

into the Corinthia is nevertheless supported by the ubiquity of Late Roman transport amphorae in

the countryside. This indicates that the Corinthia was importing oil and wine and it seems hard to

separate this from the influx in outside, administrative investment. These amphorae appeared so

consistently at even the smallest Late Roman sites in the countryside that we have to assume

agricultural producers were relying on imported staples. It seems unlikely, for example, that

small farmers transported wine or olive oil produced from their groves and vineyards overland in

LR2 amphorae. Oil and wineskins were far better for overland travel especially for small farmers

who were unlikely to produce large quantities of oil or wine; LR2 amphora were better suited for

maritime travel. On the other hand, fine and cooking wares, together with building material,

storage facilities, and agricultural processing equipment makes clear that people lived in the

countryside and combined imported provisions with local agricultural activity. In this scenario,

51Gregory,Isthmia: Excavations Volume V; Kardulias, Architecture, Energy, and Social Evolution at Isthmia,

Greece; Kardulias,From Classical to Byzantine.52

Kardulias, Architecture, Energy, and Social Evolution at Isthmia, Greece, 41-47; Kardulias, From Classical to

Byzantine, 101-106.53Gregory,Isthmia: Excavations Volume V,131; Kardulias 1992; 1993;From Classical to Byzantine, 95-101.


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we must assume that the needs of garrisons and work crews stimulated the need both for local

agricultural production and imported agricultural products to local consumers.

The Corinthian Isthmus, in short, marks a region for which historical contingencies were

more influential than some innate characteristic of connectedness in the landscape. In the fifth

and sixth centuries, the region was directly influenced by its location at a military and political

border and the substantial investment by imperial authorities. The archaeological visibility of

Late Roman material in this region allowed archaeologists to recognize the interplay of

settlement and economic activity in a high resolution way. Given the role of Corinth as the

capital of the province of Achaia, the elite of the region necessarily contributed to the

investments of the state yet also made the most of the smaller-scale connections that linked the

territory with the important cities of the Aegean basin.

The Region of Pyla-Koutsopetria

In contrast to the Late Roman Corinthia, the particular history of Late Antique Cyprus

remains relatively unknown as both ancient and modern scholars of the Roman Eastern

Mediterranean have allowed the island to languish in sleepy, if prosperous obscurity. Over the

past three decades, however, intensive and extensive survey as well as excavations have revealed

an island with deep Mediterranean connections as a result of historical circumstances that made

local production and consumption highly visible. The location of Cyprus allowed the island to

serve as a crossroads for maritime traffic from the Aegean, Levantine Coast, and North Africa in

much the same way that Corinth served as a bridge between the Adriatic and Aegean basins. The

similar situation of the two regions, the almost identical methods used to document them, and the

character of the two assemblages offers a useful opportunity to compare the complexities of

connectivity in the Late Roman world. Unlike the Corinthia, however, there is substantial

evidence that Cyprus was a large-scale exporter of agricultural products.

Connectivity in Cyprus

The island of Cyprus has long stood at the margins of conversations about the economic life

of the later Roman world despite an extensive tradition of archaeological research on the Roman

period.54Historically, the copper deposits of the Troodos Mountains represented the best-known

54Hill,History of Cyprus; Mitford, Roman Cyprus; Potter, !"#$%&'($)%*+),-'./)012'


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economic resource for the island, and it is clear that copper veins continued to be mined

throughout the Roman period, but these have most consistently been associated with Late Bronze

Age economic and political development.55

The 1990s saw a sustained critical reexamination of

the place of Cyprus within the Roman period economy. Drawing on a growing body of

archaeological evidence, scholars began to construct a thriving Late Roman economy based on

the islands agricultural output, forestry, and location astride trade routes. This work coincided

with renewed attention to the role of islands in antiquity which argued that islands were far from

insular, but instead formed key hubs amidst the complex connections that created the ancient the

Mediterranean.56This reimagining of islands coincided with Horden and Purcells interest in

microregions, which like islands, relied upon dynamic relationships with other regions.

John Leonards 2005 dissertation brought together many of the key themes in Roman

economic history developed over the 1990s in a focused study of the harbors and coastlines of

Roman Cyprus.57

His extensive archaeological survey identified numerous small inlets, harbors,

and anchorages used during the Roman period and painted a picture of an island deeply

embedded in a network of Mediterranean wide connections. Around the same time as Leonards

publication appeared a group of new excavations and survey projects that recognized the value of

ceramics in tracing the connection between Cyprus and the larger Mediterranean. The wide

distribution of locally made transport vessels as well as archaeological evidence for coastal

emporia and warehouses demonstrated that Cyprus traded agricultural products in bulk. Some

scholars have suggested that coastal warehouses indicate that Cyprus served as a stop over for

the transport of imperial annona from Egypt, but this argument has received little support and it

appears more likely that coastal warehouses served to support the export of locally grown

commodities on a large scale.58

The circulation of Late Roman 1 amphorae produced on Cyprus

reflect, at least in part, the role of the island in provisioning the army. Fine ware and cooking

pots from Cypriot kilns appear to have circulated widely, as well, although these were unlikely to

relate to imperial requisitioning.59

Cyprus enjoyed imports from the Aegean, North Africa, and

)3,&1%),/%+)'.55

Given, Knapp, Sollars, and Kassianidou,Landscape and Interaction , 2013.56

Broodbank,An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades; Boordbank, Making in the Making;Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands.57

Leonard, Roman Cyprus: Harbors, Hinterlands, and Hidden Powers.58

Bakirtzis, The Role of Cyprus in the Grain Supply.59Catling, An Early Byzantine Pottery Factory at Dhiorios in Cyprus; Catling and Dikigoropoulos, The Kornos

Cave; Williams A Byzantine Well-Deposit from Anemurium; Vionis et al. A Middle-Late Byzantine Pottery


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the Levant throughout the Late Roman period. Shipwrecks on the coast of the island reinforced

the presence of both bulk traders and caboteurs,60

although one must remember that a diverse

assemblage of amphora on a ship does not necessarily imply cabotage.61

All this suggests that

like the Corinthian Isthmus, Cyprus was a sea-girt crossroads enjoying a range of contacts with

communities to the east and west.

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Microregion and the Late Roman Period

The Pyla-Koutsopetriamicroregion represents a nearly ideal case study for Horden and

Purcells model of connected and connective landscape.62Koutsopetria is a small area defined

largely by its proximity to a now infilled embayment situated some 10 km to the east of modern

Larnaka (ancient Kition). The earliest settlement and activity at the Late Bronze Age site of Pyla-

Kokkinokremosmost likely depended upon the safe anchorage provided by this embayment.63

While excavation and study of this site is ongoing, there is no evidence for continuity between

the Late Bronze Age and later historical period settlements in the microregion, indicating that

particular economic, social, political, and perhaps military circumstances had to be in place to

make this area an appealing area for settlement and attractive for trade. In other words,

settlement at even a naturally advantageous site like the Koutsopetria littoral depended upon

particular historical conditions. By the Iron Age, the 4 km stretch of territory between Pyla

village and the sea saw an increase in activity including a shrine and, during the Late Cypro-

Classical or early Hellenistic period, a fortification, and by the Roman and Late Roman periods,

a town.

During the Late Roman period, the site saw rapid development including the construction of

a well-appointed basilica style church.64

The area to the east of the church was filled with large

buildings, many of which were brick and had tile roofs, and this built-up area also seems to have

had some kind of drainage system. Further east was an embayment (now infilled) that served as a

small harbor. Trenches dug during the installation of sewage pipes to a nearby water treatment

Assemblage from Sagalassos, for a recent discussion of Cypriot type pottery and its place of origin; Jackson, et

al. Evidence for Late Roman D Ware Production in Southern Asia Minor.60

Demesticha, Amphora Typologies, Distribution, and Trade Patterns; Leidwanger, Between local and long-distance.61

Wilson A Forum on Trade62

For a diachronic study of connectivity, see Caraher, Moore, and Pettegrew, Pyla-Koutsopetria I.63Demas and Karageorghis,Pyla-Kokkinokremos.64Christou, Chronique des fouilles et dcouvertes archologiques Chypre.


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plant revealed a series of evenly spaced parallel walls that might have been warehouses for the

harbor. The presence of an olive press weight and a fragment of crusher stone suggest that the

site saw the primary processing of olive oil during the Roman period.

Over five field seasons, the Pyla-KoutsopetriaArchaeological Project (PKAP) documented

the surface assemblage associated with these features. Our dataset is fully available online

through Open Context.65

To summarize it briefly here, we documented an extensive artifact

scatter with densities over 8,000 artifacts per ha. This scatter produced a substantial and diverse

assemblage of Late Roman material, which ranged from transport vessels to cooking pots and

fine ware. Our discussion below will focus on the amphora and fine ware sherds because they are

the most diagnostic and frequently cited sources for understanding the economy of microregions

and, as we have noted, speak to particular types of connectivity in the Late Roman period. At

Koutsopetria, Late Roman 1 (LR1) amphora sherds constitute over 30% of all amphora sherds

from the site and the vast majority of Late Roman amphorae. While these vessels are common

across the Eastern Mediterranean and can date as early as the 4th century or as late as the 8th,

most of the LR1 amphoras at Koutsopetria date to groups assigned to the 6th century or 7th

century.66

The site also produced a substantial, nearly-contemporary assemblage of 6th to early

7th century African Red Slip (ARS), Phocaean Red Slip (LRC) and Cypriot Red Slip (LRD) fine

table wares. This concentration of architecture and artifacts associated with this coastal

community may represent what a contemporary text by John Moschos called an emporion.67

Coastal sites similar to Koutsopetria, but less well-published, stand on the Akrotiri Peninsula at

Dreamers Bay and west of Paphos at the site of Ay. Georgios-Peyias.68

Pyla-Koutsopetria Survey: Export and Consumption

The amphora and fine ware at Koutsopetria represents two different forms of connectivity in

the Late Roman East, export and local consumption. The numerous amphora sherds point to the

role of the habor in the redistribution of agricultural products. Unlike the extensive distribution

of amphorae in the Eastern Corinthia, which likely reflected the distribution of imported

commodities to small agricultural establishments in the region, the dense concentration of

65Caraher, et al. The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project: A Preliminary Report on Excavations at Pyla-

Vigla.66

Demesticha, Amphora Typologies, Distribution, and Trade Patterns67Prat. Spirit. 30.68Leonard, Fundamental Links in the Economic Chain; Bakirtzis, The Role of Cyprus in the Grain Supply


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amphorae and evidence for the production of olive oil at Koutsopetria suggests that the region

saw the export of agricultural surplus from the microregion. As occurred elsewhere in the

Mediterranean, local agricultural commodities would have arrived at Koutsopetria in perishable

containers like oil or wine skins or even baskets for unprocessed olives and get transferred to

amphorae for export.69

The sixth or seventh century date of most of the forms of LR1 amphorae

at Koutsopetria suggests that the little harbor may have become busier after Justinian reorganized

the provisioning of the army in 536 CE. The revised organization moved Cyprus from the

jurisdiction of Antioch to the quaestura exercitusand directed resources from the island as well

as from Caria and the Aegean to support military forces on the Danubian frontier. The close

association of these regions in the sixth century likely continued to shape provisioning practices

into the seventh century.70

The preponderance of LR1 amphorae at Koutsopetria is similar to assemblages elsewhere on

the island where this amphora type predominates. A kiln associated with their production has

been found near Paphos and another potential kiln on the south coast of the island east of

Kourion.71

It is likely, however, that at least some of the LR1 amphorae on the island were

produced at sites in Cilicia and represent imports to the island.72

The appearance of both local

and imported LR1 amphorae at inland sites is a useful reminder that these amphorae also

functioned outside of the requirements of imperial provisioning. Coastal sites, like Maroni-

Petrerasome 50 km west of Koutsopetria on the south coast, also produced a substantial and

diverse assemblage of imported Late Roman amphoraesuggesting intensive engagement in

small-scale, rather than imperial trade. At Petrera, LR 1 amphorae account for only 21% of this

assemblage despite the presence of a possible kiln site nearby. The assemblage from Maroni-

Petrerawas far more diverse than that from Koutsopetria. Imported amphorae from Syria and

Palestine at sites across Cyprus likewise reflects the steady flow of commodities west to the

island and their desirability in local, even village, contexts.73

Recent work on coastal sites on the

island and the documenting of a small trading vessel at the site of Fig Tree Bay reveals the

69Gallimore, An Interpretation of the Chersonesos Ostraca; Pea, The Mobilization of State Olive Oil in Roman

Africa.70

Haldon and Brubaker,Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era, 723-72971

Demesticha, Amphora Typologies, Distribution, and Trade Patterns; Manning, Maroni-Petrera, 42-4372Demesticha, Amphora Typologies, Distribution, and Trade Patterns.73Rautman,A Cypriot Village of Late Antiquity.


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activity of caboteurs who carried diverse cargoes of amphorae bearing small quantities of

commodities along the coast.74

The assemblage of amphora at Koutsopetria is significant, in part, because it was so

thoroughly dominated by LR1 amphorae and included few highly diagnostic and visible

amphorae from Palestine or Syria, such as LR4 amphorae from Gaza, and only a handful of

amphorae from Asia Minor.75

The absence of these amphorae at Koutsopetria indicates that the

site did not serve as a significant import site for the most common bulk commodities arriving

from the Syrian coast. In contrast to the many sites on Cyprus, Koutsopetria did produce a

significant number of LR2 amphorae which are ubiquitous in the Aegean basin and were the

most common form found from Late Antiquity in the Eastern Corinthia, and which have tended

to be associated with provisioning of garrisons in the Balkans.76

On Cyprus, LR2 amphorae tend

to be rare. At the nearby site of Panayia-Ematousa, for example, only a single LR2 sherd was

documented. At the village site of Kopetra, LR2 amphorae make up around 2%-5% of the

assemblage across various parts of the site.77

The presence of the substantial quantity of LR2 amphorae at Koutsopetria may represent the

movement of ships returning to the site from the Aegean basin and carrying bulk goods in LR2

amphorae to Koutopetria from points west. These amphorae reinforce important links between

Koutsopetria and the Aegean and connect the economy of the microregion to routes north and

west toward the Capital and the frontier. These connections at Koutsopetria are inconsistent with

the more common connections between Cypriot sites and eastern, Levantine ports, although it is

likely that eastern goods did come to port at Koutsopetria at levels too small for them to appear

in our assemblage. This combined with the concentrated quantity of LR1 sherds leaves little

doubt that Koutsopetria was an export port dependent in part on military supply routes.

The presence of a diverse assemblage of fine wares expands this story. Unlike amphorae

which are merely containers for the transport of bulk good, fine wares are the object of trade

itself. As a result, amphorae might only represent one part of trans-shipment process. At a harbor

site like Koutsopetria, local produce transported in more perishable containers would be

repackaged in amphorae for export by sea, and imported bulk goods might be repackaged in

74Leidwanger, Between local and long-distance.

75Caraher, Moore, Pettegrew,Pyla-KoutsopetriaI.

76Karagiorgou, LR2: a Container for the Military annona on the Danubian Border?77Rautman,A Cypriot Village of Late Antiquity , 171


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smaller and easier to transport containers for movement inland.78

This may account for the

relative rarity of LR2 amphorae elsewhere in the neighborhood of Koutsopetria. Table wares

arrived at a harbor like Koutsopetria in significant quantities on their way to inland sites

providing insight into the supply of particular artifacts at a particular time. Koutsopetria, for

example, produced a substantial quantity of African Red Slip (ARS) (25%) and Phocaean Red

Slip (LRC) (15%) largely dating to the final decades of the 6th or the 7th century. The remaining

fine ware from the site is Cypriot Red Slip (CRS), which constituted 60% of the assemblage.

The significant quantities of ARS and LRC sets this site apart from other Late Roman sites in

southern Cyprus where CRS produced in Asia Minor and probably western Cyprus was far more

common.79On the one hand, the significant presence of imports from North Africa and Asia

Minor would appear to parallel the presence of unusual quantity of LR2 amphorae at the site and

connections with the Aegean basin. The prevalence of these types at Koutsopetria, however, did

not directly influence the character of assemblages at other sites in the region. For example, less

that 15 km inland from Koutsopetria at the site of Panayia-Ematousa, imported LRC dominated

the assemblage and CRS and ARS are present only in tiny quantities. It is impossible to

understand this as a difference in access to imported fine wares since the two sites are not

separated by any great distance. Instead, we should see this is as variation in taste and highly

localized conditions in access among sites on Cyprus. Unlike the distribution of LR2 amphora

across the Corinthian countryside, which reflects the uniformity of systematic distribution of

stables, the diversity in assemblages of Late Roman fine ware on Cyprus reflects the varied tastes

of local communities.

Variation in the proportion of highly diagnostic fine ware exists across 6th - 7th century sites

from Cyprus. The amphora assemblage at the coastal site of Maroni-Petrerasuggests that it

functioned as a way station for cabateurs moving goods along the south coast of the island and

possibly served as a local emporium for goods moving south through the Kalavassos valley. The

fine ware assemblage at this site was over 80% CRS suggesting a substantially different

relationship with Mediterranean trade in fine wares than at Koutsopetria. Oddly enough, inland

from Petrera in the Kalavassos valley, the village of Kopetra saw greater quantities of both ARS

(7%) and LRC (37%) and a smaller percentage of CRS. Recent work at the coastal city of Polis-

78

Gallimore, An Interpretation of the Chersonesos Ostraca; Pea, The Mobilization of State Olive Oil in Roman

Africa.79Jackson, et al. Evidence for Late Roman D Ware Production in Southern Asia Minor


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Chrysochouson the far western side of the island revealed a substantial residual assemblage

contemporary with Koutsopetria. It contained only a handful of non-CRS fine ware sherds. The

range of fine ware assemblages that appeared on contemporary settlements across the island

indicates that access to material and taste varied rather significantly across Cyprus.

The interplay of long-distance trade serving the goals of the military supply infrastructure

and regional exchange to support the needs and wants of local populations characterizes much

recent work on the Late Roman economy. How these connections functioned between the state,

local producers, and consumers remains obscure and continues to require both empirical

documentation and theoretical critique. At a site like Koutsopetria, it is appealing to imagine that

compulsory purchases of local agricultural produce helped to monetized the local economy.

Some of the money went back to the state in the form of taxes, but some also purchased imports

entering the port on both the ships commissioned to transport imperial goods and the vessels of

small-scale caboteurs. The presence Late Roman 2 amphorae, otherwise rather unusual on

Cyprus, and the significant presence of pottery from the Aegean (LRC) and further west (ARS)

provides evidence for the reciprocal connection between this port and the west.

This reciprocal relationship, however, does not necessarily dictate local tastes and

preferences. The presence of Aegean imports at Koutsopetria did not produce a substantial

assemblage of Aegean fine ware at Panayia-Ematousaand the absence of imported fine ware at

Maroni-Petreracontrasts with the prevalence of western imports at inland sites in the Kalavassos

valley. It would appear that individual communities preferred various kinds of fine wares and

this explains in a simple way why imported wares made the rugged trip overland to inland

households despite their access to locally made Cypriot Red Slip at coastal sites Koutsopetria,

Maroni-Petrera, and Polis. The contingent and varied character of Horden and Purcells

connectivity between mircoregions is particularly visible in the diverse proportions of fine ware

at different sites across Cyprus. In contrast, the substantial concentration of LR1 amphorae at a

coastal site supports a view of political contingency in the export of Cypriot agricultural produce.

Connectivity on Cyprus reflects varied regional and transregion historical processes.

V. Conclusions and Discussions

The Eastern Corinth and Koutsopetria reflect a diverse range of historically contingent

connections between microregions in the Late Roman world. The character of these relationships


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depends in part on the critical scrutiny of our ceramic knowledge employed by the most recent

waves of artifact-level, intensive pedestrian survey. These archaeological methods have not only

contributed data supporting Horden and Purcells vision of connectivity, but reveal how

archaeology has tended to privilege certain kinds of political, military, and economic landscapes

in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean. The material present at these sites reveals evidence

for the administrative involvement in the local economy through the transport of bulk

commodities at key moments in the regions history. In the eastern Corinthia, these commodities

likely arrived in the area to support builders and garrisons who were fortifying the new border

zone of the Eastern Empire. The assemblage from Koutsopetria suggested that bulk goods

departed the island from the site presumably to provision imperial troops along the increasingly

militarized Balkan and Danubean frontiers. The use of highly diagnostic transport vessels and

their presence in substantial numbers made this kind of economic contact visible to the

archaeologist.

Scrutiny of both transport vessels and fine wares from Pyla-Koutsopetria and elsewhere on

Cyprus, however, indicated that administrative trade and the redistributive powers of the state

were not the only mechanisms involved in producing the visible assemblage. The presence of

Late Roman 2 amphorae at Koutsopetria, for example, seems to demonstrate that administrative

connections with the Aegean brought with them return trade albeit on a smaller scale. The

presence of Aegean and North African fine ware at Koutsopetria reveals access to table wares

from western production sites, but the irregular distribution of these wares even in the vicinity of

Koutropetria suggests that connections between the island and western ports were not the only

condition dictating their presence in an assemblage.

These two case studies are not meant to present a generalized view of Late Roman

connectivity in the Eastern Mediterranean, but to demonstrate the link between the results of

intensive pedestrian survey and the arguments offered by Horden and Purcell. These studies

begin to demonstrate that intensive survey can provide nuanced, historical evidence for the kind

of connectivity proposed in The Corrupting Sea. Moreover, the critical scrutiny of systematically

sampled and quantified bodies of evidence produced by intensive survey has allowed historians

and archaeologists to recognize the forms of connections visible in the archaeological record.

The visibility of large assemblages of amphora, in particular, resonate with the unique role these

vessels played as containers for bulk commodity and administrative trade in the ancient


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Mediterranean.80

The preference in Late Antiquity for highly visible and diagnostic table wares

provided distinctive views of consumption patterns and local taste in the Late Roman word.

Small-scale trade, local production, and perishable containers, however, remain largely outside

the gaze of archaeological scrutiny and indicate that our current view of Mediterranean

connectivity, at least during Late Antiquity, remains only partial.

80Bevan, Mediterranean Containerization.


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