The Greek Expansion to the Black Sea

Abstract

The study of the Greek presence on the shores of the Black Sea goes back to the 19th century, but serious, con tinuous research dates largely to the latter half of the 20th century. Most research, along the portion of the coast cor responding to the former Soviet zone of influence, has been conducted and published by eastern European scholars. Accordingly, a rich scholarly tradition about the subject has developed but mostly in languages not easily accessible to western scholars. This tradition parallels western scholar ship in that it emphasizes above all the study of the relevant ancient sources and the correlation of their historical narra tives with archaeological data, when and where available or relevant. In addition, just as in the west, catalogues of objects and the description of architectural features dominate ar chaeological reports and monographs. Until the early 1990s, little direct contact was possible between scholars of the two areas (Grammenos and Petropoulos [1221]), reflecting the political divisions of contemporary Europe. Eastern Euro pean scholars gained knowledge of the western tradition of classical studies mainly through the?often incomplete? collections of research institute libraries. Several congresses and symposia regularly took place in the Soviet Union and its allied states to which few western scholars had direct access.1 This situation dramatically changed following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Until recently, little extensive research has been conducted along the Turkish portion of the shore, so that knowledge of the subject there remains patchy, and its argumentation still depends to a great extent on the analysis of classical sources. Today, central and eastern European scholars publish regularly in western periodicals; twojournals, both published by Brill,2 cater in part to the study of the classical history and archaeology of the Black Sea. Monographs on Black Sea studies are also being made available in western languages by European publishers.3 Several congresses, both small4 and large,5 have gathered together considerable numbers of schol ars from both east and west, so that contacts and exchanges are now regular and substantial. In addition, several research projects on which scholars from Black Sea countries and the west collaborate are active in the Black Sea area.6 One recent collection of essays examines the chora of several Greek set tlements on the Black Sea coast with a view of encouraging comparative approaches to the problem.7 Despite this abundant recent activity, little work is available to western scholars unfamiliar with the languages of eastern Europe, apart from summaries published as reviews of field work or as chapters in thematic works.8 The book edited by Grammenos and Petropoulos aims to fill this gap by providing extensive coverage of a large number of the ancient Greek settlements on the shores of the Black Sea; it constitutes, as its title clearly indicates, the second installment of a wider project.9 Its coverage is not exhaustive, but this would not be possible. It contains 34 mostly lengthy articles covering a wide range of subjects: half deal with specific urban sites and/or their chora; the rest present regional themes: aspects of Greek culture in a Black Sea context, Greek influence on local cultures and the diffusion of Greek material in the Black Sea hinterland, and local cultures and sites. This book should be approached together with the 2003 publication;10 it adds considerable depth to the earlier collection of reports (which covers the major ancient Greek towns along the coast to the exclusion of almost everything else). In contrast, Hellenic Colo nization in Euxeinos Pontos by Petropoulos constitutes a study devoted to a narrow theme: the nature of the earliest Greek settlement on the northern shore of the Black Sea.