Zosia Archibald
In Book 7 of Xenophon’s Anabasis, when the surviving Greek mercenary army, which had largely avoided capture or confrontation in its return journey from the River Euphrates to the Bosporus in 400,1 took up service with the Thracian Seuthes, readers seem at first sight to be given a panorama of Thracian society. There is a local ruler, or would-be ruler, Seuthes, who takes on the mercenary army for one month (Xen., Anab. 7.1.5, 2.36). We get what appears to be a first-person narrative from Seuthes’ own lips, describing his personal background, including the dispossession of his father, Maisades, evidently a man of rank and property in the southeastern parts of Thrace, bordering on the Black Sea coast, but excluding the hinterland of Byzantion (7.2.32). He had been a ruler himself, though a princeling, it seems, of the Melanditai, Tranipsai, and Thynoi, communities that can all be located inland of the Black Sea, above Salmydessos (7.2.22). There is also a “high” king, Medokos, located in the interior, to whom interstate embassies are directed (7.3.13–16: emissaries from the city of Parion, bearing gifts). We also hear about other men entrusted with military and administrative responsibilities, who served Seuthes as his lieutenants, and owned territory in the region (7.1.5, 2.10, 2.23–25, 7.15–16: Medosades; 7.2.32, 4.21, 5.1: other high-ranking Odrysians). The intervention of the Greek mercenaries shows the modern reader what happened when a huddle of villages, whose inhabitants otherwise minded their own business, were suddenly catapulted into an aggressive scenario. First they escaped from their lowland settlements into the mountains. Then, when threatened with having their property burned down by Xenophon and his freebooters, they decided to come down and negotiate.
The villagers were not left alone. Some found themselves being taken away as captives, evidently to be sold as slaves (7.3.48). Xenophon put the figure at around a thousand, alongside twice as many cattle, and perhaps tens of thousands of other small animals – mainly sheep and goats. These people ended up being sold in the market at Perinthos, on the coast west of Byzantion, by an intermediary from Maroneia, called Herakleides, who seems to have been good at making himself useful, though Xenophon wants us to have the impression that this was mainly about being useful to his own pocket (7.4.2; cf. 7.5.2). This first-person narrative tells us more about the social processes involved in human traffic on the northern coasts of the Aegean than any documents could, short of actual commercial contracts, of which there is a growing number from the Black Sea, though not from the Aegean coast itself, except for one from Torone, in Chalkidice. A law from Abdera, dating from ca. 350, regulates the sale of people and pack animals, stipulating that a surety needed to be provided by the sellers (presumably in case the sale fell through). This provides exactly the kind of context for the sale of “booty” undertaken by Herakleides on behalf of Xenophon and his fellow mercenaries.2
The impression Xenophon wanted to make on readers of the Anabasis was of a feisty band of brothers, who might disagree at times about what they should do next, but who fundamentally shared the same outlook. He proudly sacrificed the due animals when this was required, waiting patiently for the right omens,3 and thought of himself as a defender of human freedom (7.7.29, 31). This did not stop him from attacking civilians and kidnapping them, in order to build up some capital, and being quite open about the idea of free individuals being enslaved (because some of the villagers amongst the Thyni, who had been attacked by the Greek mercenaries, tried to defend their village (7.4.24)). Despite his philosophical and scholarly pretensions, Xenophon does not appear to see anything contradictory in his speech about human freedom and his unvarnished acceptance that might is right. From this point of view, Xenophon is a less self-conscious commentator on contemporary societies than Herodotus had been (on whose Thracian perspective see further Irwin 2007). By the same token, the modern reader needs to consider his vivid and colorful scenes of Thracian provincial life with a degree of skepticism. At least, we need to be aware of the fact that the author had his own reasons for writing this account in the way he did, and that Xenophon’s reasons shape the narrative as a whole.
Considering the length of time that his mercenaries were operating in European Thrace, there is less historical content in the chapters of this book than the reader might like – evidence that the author was certainly aware of. We can see the difference of perspective when we compare the content of Book 7 of the Anabasis with those chapters of the Hellenika where Seuthes appears on the international scene, cooperating in the winter of 398 with the Spartan commander Derkylidas, who was conducting a campaign against native Bithynians, and in the following year provided support for the same Derkylidas (Hell. 3.2.2–5, 9), when he set about rebuilding the wall across the neck of the isthmus, whose earliest version dated from the time of Miltiades, son of Kypselos, of Athens, with the apparent aim of keeping Apsinthians from making incursions into the peninsula (Hdt. 6.35–36). It is tempting to think that Xenophon, writing with hindsight about events that had taken place several decades earlier, was conscious of the fact that he had very quickly ceased to be at the center of attention in the area of the Hellespontine Straits, where more powerful individuals had taken over the prosecution of military policy. Xenophon, who was yesterday’s man by then, spends a good deal of ink in Book 7 (chapters 6 and 7) explaining to the reader that he had done everything in his power to deliver pay to the Greek mercenaries and to deflect arguments that he had received gifts on the side, which his pals did not know about (e.g., Anab. 7.7.44). Xenophon’s attention on these matters means that the rather casual references he makes to Thracian leaders and commanders deserve to be examined closely, since he himself does not seem interested in the relative importance of local and regional issues.
Herodotus, who was interested in a very big historical and geographical canvas, manages to introduce a considerable amount of nuance, as well as providing some general impressions of Thracians and their lifestyles (especially about their populousness: Hdt. 5.3; the taste of the better off for polygamy: 5.5; of the impoverished for selling their children; the freedom of unmarried girls and strict control over wives: 5.6; the burial customs of rich men: 5.7–8). The historian had an eye and an ear for the unusual and the exotic. So he chose to write about the curiously black world view of the Trausi on the one hand (5.5), and the immortality of the Getae on the other, which idea seems to have proved especially intriguing, since Herodotus provides a digression about this theme, including two different stories about Zalmoxis, which interrupt his description of the progress of the Persian King Darius across the Strandja range and along the western Black Sea coast, through the territories of the lowland communities, the Skirmiadai and Nipsaioi, whom he locates “above” or “beyond” (ὑπέρ = hyper) Apollonia and Mesembria (4.93–96.2).
The three chapters that Herodotus offers his readers about the Getae and Salmoxis/Zalmoxis are a striking example of the layers of reflection and thoughtfulness that the historian had accumulated over the course of his researches. They form a very brief interlude in a chapter that is mainly concerned with the so-called Scythian logos, which takes the reader from the Bosporus to the steppe regions. Yet the two stories about Salmoxis/Zalmoxis are replete with detail and suggestion. The first story presents us with the conviction of the Getae that they will go to Salmoxis when they die, and then offers us a vision of men being tossed in the air on spearheads, in order to effect their passage into the next world. The second story, on the other hand, which Herodotus is careful to distance himself from, concerns the notion of a “historical” Salmoxis, a slave in the household of Pythagoras on Samos, who learned a great deal from the philosopher and from other Ionian thinkers, developed his own theories of immortality, and proceeded to put these into practice amongst his own people, spending three years in an underground chamber. The historian discreetly points out that if Salmoxis were a historical figure, he would have lived long before Pythagoras. Herodotus’ many-layered presentation of these concepts shows that he had considered the significance of the Salmoxis legend both in the context of contemporary metaphysical ideas, but had also thought through the ways in which the different communities in his broad historical perspective succeeded in articulating the universal challenges of human existence and added something to the international dimension of cultural practice.
Thucydides the historian had personal connections with Thrace. He tells us that he had inherited mining rights in gold mines on the mainland opposite Thasos (4.105.1), which meant, according to his own account, that he had considerable influence among people of standing there. His father’s name, Oloros, is the same as that of the grandfather of the great Athenian general and plenipotentiary, Kimon – a Thracian landowner called Oloros, whose daughter Hegesipyle had married Miltiades the Younger (Hdt. 6.39.2). The elder Oloros is otherwise unknown, but most scholars assume that Thucydides’ hereditary rights stemmed from this connection, which must have been more significant than the rather dry reference he himself gives would suggest. The great Athenian family of the Philaidai, who had become associated, through Miltiades the Elder, with personal rule in the Chersonese, are unlikely to have contemplated a union with anyone who was not a man of exceptional standing. Herodotus’ account of Miltiades the Younger’s assumption of power makes it clear that the marriage to Hegesipyle was material to his success as a ruler. So we are led to conclude that Oloros was a man of substance with wide-ranging influence in southern Thrace. This is also important evidence that there were exceptional leaders in the region before the period of the Persian Wars, which heralded the emergence of a dynastic ruling house among the Odrysians, who are briefly mentioned by Herodotus in the context of Darius’ invasion of Scythia and again during Xerxes’ invasion of Greece (4.80; cf. 7.137.3).
Thucydides knew a great deal about the interior of Thrace and has left some tantalizing hints of this knowledge in his account of king Sitalkes’ invasion of the Chalkidic peninsula in 429 (2.95–101). In terms of Thracian society, the most important statements he makes are those concerning the ethnic composition and geographical extent of the Odrysian kingdom (2.96–97). We learn about a wide range of named communities, though the ones that are referred to specifically seem to have concentrated particularly in the Thracian Plain, in the center of the country, and in the south, both within Mount Rhodope and to the south of this range, although Thucydides did know people who had traveled as far as the Danube, and knew that this was a journey of 11 days, whilst a traveler crossing the kingdom from Byzantion to the land of the Laiaioi would take 13 days, in good conditions (2.96.1–2).4 This detailed knowledge suggests that his dynastic connections also gave him openings at the Odrysian royal court, or to some of its higher-placed individuals. When the historian talks about his contacts with influential people, he may have the king and his entourage in mind, who in 424 might still have been Sitalkes, and if not his successor, Seuthes (I), rather than some local landowners in the vicinity of Amphipolis. Mining rights, particularly to gold mines, were the privilege of leaders, not their lieutenants.
Thucydides ought to be our most informative historical source. His statement about the nature of royal revenues, and of gifts that were assiduously offered, to the paradynasteuontai (literally, “those ruling alongside”) and gennaioi (nobles) of the Odrysians, is accompanied by the emphatic contrast between the Persian and Odrysian Thracian practice of gift-giving, with the collective onus being placed on the donor, and the respective kudos on the recipient (2.97.3–4). The contrast that Thucydides implies between Persian and Thracian customs of gift-giving is no longer very transparent. The revenues of the Persian Empire and of the Odrysian kings of Thrace both relied on a system of tribute payment in the form of metals and other commodities. Sculpted reliefs on the Apadana staircase at Persepolis show processions of tribute-bearing subjects. Xenophon, like Thucydides, refers to the importance of giving presents among the Odrysians (Anab. 7.3.13, 16–18, 26–27). The relationship between giving and receiving remains a subtle one, with individual power relations overlapping with the wider customs connected to revenue collection.
Thucydides’ brief but highly perceptive comments and Herodotus’ depth of vision should play a larger part in informing our perception of the communities that lived in the east Balkans in the second half of the first millennium. Yet it is Xenophon whose autopsy has generally been given greater prominence in modern analyses of Thracian society, despite the fact that his account of the Greek mercenaries’ experiences in Thrace is focused on the mercenaries, and their Spartan associates, rather than on native customs. Nevertheless, Xenophon’s account provides direct evidence of interactions between Thracian troops and their commanders and Greeks operating inland, whether for military, diplomatic, or commercial purposes.
These literary accounts from the second half of the fifth and early fourth centuries are the most revealing reports of east Balkan societies to have survived from the second half of the first millennium. Book 7 of Strabo’s Geography covered this terrain, and Strabo did engage with some of the specific topics covered by his predecessors. He cited a number of other authors who wrote about the polygamous practices of the wealthier Thracians, including fragments from lost plays by Menander.5 But Strabo was primarily interested in the geography of the region and its resources; social content is included partly as anecdotal relief, partly as moralizing themes, such as his comments on the merits of a frugal lifestyle, compared with the excesses and immorality of his own contemporaries (7.3.7–8 (C301)). Occasionally we find valuable nuggets in later sources. The fifth-century CE lexicographer Hesychius refers to the term Zibythides, which means noble Thracian men and women, and must have been drawn from a much earlier literary source.6
Greek writers thus give us glimpses of mores at either end of the Thracian social spectrum – the polygamous élite, with half a dozen or more wives, honored in death as well as life; and the frugal, apparently landless men, who were unmarried, possibly deliberately so, but who nevertheless had a measure of social respect because of this status – whether these were indeed shamans or not (Strabo 7.3.4).7
Greek authors had various reasons for writing about the north Aegean and beyond. Herodotus alone made the ethnography of the Mediterranean and Near East his main subject matter. But even he gives only a very partial view of Thracian society. Modern scholars have had to interpret this evidence in the light of general social theories of ancient societies. Karl Marx formulated his economic theories about the remote past at a time when historians had not yet developed any coherent social theories of Classical antiquity. It is not therefore surprising that Marx’s proposition that Classical societies were early examples of class formation have been among the most influential theories to shape ideas about Thracian society. The study of ancient history as a subject area distinct from Classical philology did not become widely established in university departments until the twentieth century. By the time that scholars such as Gavrail Katsarov (Kazarow 1916) began to compile synthetic studies of Thracian culture, antiquarians and archaeologists had accumulated a wealth of material evidence to put alongside the literary sources.
It would be impossible to discuss the conceptualization of Thracian society without referring to Michael I. Rostovtzeff, whose main specialist publications were on Scythian culture, but whose omnivorous research on the ancient Classical world included an important sketch of Classical Thrace in the opening sections of his Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (1941, 111). This formed a prelude to his main topic, but encapsulated a good deal of contemporary scholarship, presenting this in a broader intercultural context. As a scholar living in exile after 1918, and spending the productive years of his research mainly at Yale, in the United States, Rostovtzeff’s ideas about ancient societies were based on analyses formed before the Russian Revolution and continued to be formulated in conservative terms, with assumptions about social orders and classes that sounded (in the ears of historians writing after the Second World War) “modernist” in tone, even if Rostovtzeff himself thought of his opinions as balanced between the viewpoints of the great proponents of Universalgeschichte, E. Meyer and K. J. Beloch – on the modernizing end of the historiographical spectrum – and those like K. Bücher and J. Hasebroek, who felt that ancient societies were much more “primitive” in character than contemporary historians imagined (see further Archibald 2001).
Theory, Marxian or otherwise, did not make a significant impact on studies of Thrace until after the Second World War, when Bulgarian scholars, following the lead of influential Soviet philologists and archaeologists, working on social relations between Scythians and Greeks in south Russia and Ukraine (K. K. Zelin, M. K. Trofimova, L. M. Gluskina, E. S. Golubtsova, G. A. Koshelenko), began to develop ideas about the distinctive character of Thracian culture, and the differences between Thracians and their neighbors, particularly Greeks living along the shores of the Black Sea, the Aegean, and Propontis. These ideas were stimulated further by the discovery and rescue excavation of the Thracian city of Seuthopolis, in the Valley of the Roses, west of Kazanlak, and identified by an inscription in Greek found at the site (IGBulg 3.2, no. 1731; Velkov 1991, 7, no. 1; Elvers 1994). The excavations were subsequently buried under the Georgi Dimitrov (Koprinka) Dam. Seuthopolis followed the equally sensational discovery of a vaulted tomb with magnificent painted decoration just above the town of Kazanlak, and the gold treasure found near Panagyurishte in 1949.
Seuthopolis provided the most important focus for social theory about ancient Thrace. The excavations revealed a fortified civic center, with a separately fortified inner enclosure, comprising a single building complex, subsequently identified as a royal residence (although this identification has not been universally accepted); and, outside it, a grid pattern of streets, separating large house units. The first presentations of the evidence by the Director of excavations, D. P. Dimitrov, began to appear in the late 1950s. An important synthesis of the field data was published in English in 1978, by the two principal excavators, D. P. Dimitrov and M. Chichikova, but is not often cited. The first Bulgarian monographs began to appear in 1984. Dimitrov identified the excavated “city” of Seuthopolis as the capital of Seuthes III (whose impact could be identified not only through the reference to it in the inscription found on the acropolis, but in coins depicting the portrait head of Seuthes), and developed a theory about royal residential centers, based around a fortified enclosure with a tower, resembling the location where Xenophon first met Seuthes, the prince of the Propontic region (Anab. 7.2.21), although there is a fuller description of such a residence later in the Anabasis, when Xenophon and his mercenaries attacked Asidates, in Mysia (7.8.12–14).
The ancient material culture that was emerging from below ground in the Valley of the Roses ensured that the period between the fourth and third centuries became the fulcrum of theoretical debate. Scholars were interested in exploring the distinctiveness of Thracian culture. The study of the past is never dissociated from preoccupations in the present. Studying ancient societies was a way of developing new approaches to modern society and heritage. Archaeological discoveries provided a setting in which the modern societies of southern Europe could present new research in national and international contexts, outside the constraints of political, and party political, allegiances and differences. The forum for international scholarship became the International Congress of Thracology, whose first meeting took place in 1972, the same year in which the Institute of Thracology was formed under the aegis of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia (also the venue for the first Congress). Bulgarian scholars have been the driving force behind the study of ancient Thracian society, although the Congress has increasingly drawn in researchers from other countries. The identification of Thracian culture as a distinct historical phenomenon has had wide implications in terms of the organization and management of research. The Institute of Archaeology in Sofia has a separate Section for Thracian Archaeology, which covers the Bronze Age and Iron Age of Bulgaria, and is distinct from Ancient Archaeology, a Section that covers the investigation of historically attested civic centers along the Black Sea coast. The guiding spirit behind these scholarly developments, and its leading theorist, has been Alexander Fol. It was Fol who took up Dimitrov’s concept of the royal residence and incorporated it in a series of studies about Thrace, beginning with an important monograph, published in 1975. Fol was interested in what he termed the Palaeo-Balkan heritage of southern Europe and its distinctive historic contribution to European culture. He identified Thracian culture as characterized by ethnos identification, in contrast to the polis structures of the Greek world, and developed a discourse on the essentially oral nature of Thracian culture, in juxtaposition with the written cultures, as he saw them, of Greek speakers.
Some of these ideas have remained controversial; others have been more widely accepted. Two topics in particular have aroused a good deal of scholarly interest and they are conceptually closely connected. The first is the nature of settlement life, while the second is the status of ordinary Thracians. What were the majority of settlements like? Was land privately owned? Were most Thracians free, or did they owe everything to the country’s rulers, and were therefore, to all intents, dependent on them? These are the kinds of questions that scholars, particularly Bulgarian scholars, were asking themselves in the period between the 1970s and the 1990s. The debate was partly determined by the discourse on the ancient city. Marx had identified ancient Classical cities as the seats of slave-owning élites. Students of ancient Greek societies became especially interested in the idea of the polis, and the “rise” of polis-based societies has done a great deal to shape scholarly research in the Mediterranean, especially the eastern Mediterranean, during the last four decades. The single greatest contribution to this interest has been the Inventory of Archaic and Classical poleis (Hansen and Nielsen 2004). In some respects, the publication of this massive resource on certain types of ancient settlement nuclei has exposed some of the formal and conceptual problems associated with the project. The organization of entries by place-names has given prominence to names that may have had an ephemeral physical presence, while entries that, for one reason or another, have no surviving ancient name associated with them, have proved hard to characterize. The contributors have in some cases struggled to answer their remit, whilst retaining a fair coverage of settlements for their given area. The format of contributions does not allow for any evaluation of total site numbers in a particular region, that is, in relation to the names inventoried. So the attentive reader cannot judge whether only a part of the overall settlement pattern is fairly represented in the surviving documentary record, or whether there are huge gaps.
This question may be less pressing in coastal areas, where periploi and other geographical accounts or epigraphic records (notably the Athenian Tribute Lists), provide extensive information about a large number of settlements, albeit for limited periods. It becomes much more relevant as soon as regions further away from coastlines are considered. Many inland parts of the Greek mainland were organized along territorial lines, often for rather specific historical reasons, whether we consider Sparta and its neighbors in the southern Peloponnese, Arkadia and Elis, Aetolia, or Thessaly. In these areas, the ethnos was often a key determining unit, even though settlement foci, whether spatially extended ones, or more nucleated agglomerations, could be termed poleis in various accounts or documents (Morgan 2003). In this respect, the ethnos as a social unit was an important organizing principle in Greece, just as it was in non-Greek-speaking areas of southern Europe and Asia Minor. At the same time, the polis as a form of social organization was manifestly present in Thrace, as the Seuthopolis inscription clearly demonstrated, even though the nature of political forms that this name parades has sometimes been qualified (cf. Archibald 2004; Dimitrov 2011). Although the title of the Inventory does not specify its geographical remit with any precision, the editors have, on the one hand, included regions with culturally and ethnically mixed populations, such as southern Italy, Sicily, Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor, and the land areas surrounding the Black Sea; on the other hand, these same areas have not been examined to include all settlement types, but rather only those that approximate to their definition of polis. This makes it difficult to relate the contents in a transparent way to studies of population distribution in the same regions.
At an early stage of the scholarly debate about Thracian social structures, Alexander Fol took the view that rulers had absolute power over their territory and its people, by virtue of their religious or cult responsibilities, as well as their political roles. This implied that ordinary Thracians lacked rights to property and land ownership, and were in essence dependent on their rulers. From the 1980s onwards, Fol moved the focus of his research increasingly towards the investigation of abstract ideas and cult associations, culminating in his book on Thracian Orphism (1986). The study of Thracian social structures, and their relationship to known population settlements and material evidence, was left largely to other scholars. In the Institute of Thracology, there were aspirations to build on Fol’s ideas. K. Porozhanov has distinguished a number of sites as “royal residences,” fortified enclosures with a proto-urban character (esp. Porozhanov 2009). It remains to be seen whether the physical remains of some 20 sites in southeastern Thrace, alongside Seuthopolis, can be identified from etymological and spatial evidence as socially distinctive environments. The question of land ownership and social autonomy remain unresolved so long as a more closely argued thesis about Thracian society is lacking.
The historian Margarita Tacheva developed the most sustained narrative about Thracian social structures in a series of reflections published originally in 1987 and republished in an expanded edition in 1997. Tacheva recognized that one of the operating factors in any solution to some of the methodological problems in this discussion was the role played by Macedonian institutions, since it was a dynasty of Macedonian monarchs, beginning with Philip II, who affected social organization in Thrace just at the time when it becomes historically as well as materially visible. Tacheva believed that those fortified sites that display a degree of urban planning, such as Seuthopolis, were royal residences, as D. P. Dimitrov (1957, 70–71; 1958, 697–698; 1984, 17) and Fol (1990, 88, 104–105, 166) had argued, and that production was driven by the needs of the royal élite, whose members occupied the houses revealed in excavations, and who were subsequently buried in the chamber tombs identified in the vicinity of the city. True autonomy, with the private ownership of land and the development of open markets, did not, in her view, take place until after the establishment of Roman provincial organization in the first century CE (Tacheva 1997, 13–50, 96–149, esp. 146).
Tacheva’s thesis, which links economic relations with social relations, has thrown into sharp relief the contrasting interpretations by different scholars of Thracian social structures in the pre-Imperial period. Her ideas reflect a top–down view of society, in which rulers have absolute control over all activities and events. This view reflects a long tradition of historical analysis, which was particularly marked in Russian research during the twentieth century, and which tried to isolate certain essential characteristics that made one society different from another. Royal power, in her perspective, was exclusive and Thracian society was divided into power-holders and the powerless. In this respect her views did not differ substantially from those of D. P. Dimitrov and, for somewhat different reasons, Alexander Fol. The powerless included a variety of retainers and dependent craftsmen, as well as those who are otherwise classified as slaves. Xenophon’s account of southern Thrace shows how easily slaves could be made from otherwise free individuals. Xenophon’s account is rather imprecise about social relations, as I have indicated; but the historian’s rhetoric about freedom would have little value if the Thracians who were addressed in his speeches had no freedom. Either Xenophon’s speeches bear no relationship to actual practice in Thrace, or the radical interpretations of royal rule, such as Tacheva’s, have been unduly categorical about the nature of social stratification. This is not to deny that slaves existed in royal households and that Thrace was one of the key sources of slaves in the Aegean (Velkov 1964; 1967). A recent reevaluation of the evidence for the origins of slaves in the Aegean area shows that although slaves identified in various ways as having come from Thrace form a significant component of the pool, they need to be viewed alongside other, equally significant sources, notably the interior of Asia Minor and other provinces of the Persian Empire (Lewis 2011).
Archaeological approaches to social organization have developed along rather different lines. Velizar Velkov, philologist, historian of slavery, and epigrapher, was troubled by the absence of a systematic approach to settlement identity and formation. He founded the series of symposia entitled “Settlement Life in Thrace,” which have provided a forum for the accumulation of data and ideas about community organization. One of the great assets of these symposia has been the willingness of organizers and contributors to explore all kinds of settlement organization, including evidence from the Black Sea ports, Thracian settlements along the Aegean coastline and in Turkey, as well as the evidence of evolving community structures at Roman cities with pre-Roman foundations, as well as other inland sites. This has enabled a fruitful dialogue between students of complex urban sites, such as Kabyle, Philippopolis, and Seuthopolis, as well as those that have been less easily categorized, some of which have ancient names (such as Dobelt-Deultum), but many more of which are unnamed.
Developing investigations at a number of complex urban sites are beginning to show that the economic status of a large number of ordinary inhabitants did not differ markedly from that of wealthier individuals. There can be no one-to-one relationship between archaeological finds and social relations; but in view of the explicit connection made by historians, such as Tacheva, between access to exchange facilities and social status, then we can argue that the material concomitants of everyday life should be fully explored when considering social relations. Totko Stoyanov explicitly rejected the claims made by D. P. Dimitrov about the supposedly inferior housing and conditions of the socially “powerless” living outside the walls of Seuthopolis, whose activities were identified particularly on the northwest side of the city’s circuit, an area about twice the size of the enclosed territory of 5 ha (Stoyanov 2006, 85). His own investigations at the fortified site at Sboryanovo, identified with ancient Helis, show that extra-urban settlement extended initially over 20 ha, but developed and flourished at a number of separate locations within a wider area of ca. 100 ha. This larger ground area corresponds to the smallest category of urban nucleus identified by the Inventory of Archaic and Classical poleis. However, since many Greek poleis have sizes determined by the extent of their fortified circuits, rather than residential areas, and only 635 of the 1,035 identified sites (61%) can be connected with a known area, Sboryanovo would have been far from unusual amongst the range of small “urban” centers. For the sake of comparison, Priene, in Ionia, one of the sites used for comparative purposes by Stoyanov, and whose urban circuit was defined at an uncertain date but still in the fourth century, enclosed 37 ha, of which 15 ha were available or suitable for residential accommodation, and could have contained ca. 500 domestic units (Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 1093, with further refs). Stoyanov has pointed out that although the building materials used in domestic construction often leave few traces other than roof tiles, the only inorganic materials that can be used as evidence, that is, artifacts and other material remains, including grave inventories, tend to suggest a much greater degree of shared characteristics, in Thracian society as a whole, than earlier scholars were prepared to admit.
The conclusions that we can draw about Thracian living standards are beginning to suggest that these were rather more homogeneous than the language of social differentiation implies. Recent work by Ian Morris on living standards in the Aegean might indicate a similar evaluation of the evidence for the fifth to fourth centuries at least (Morris 2005). In the case of Thracian sites, the apparent absence of large agglomerations of civic type may partly be due to insufficient field research in areas where we might expect some – not necessarily many – large centers, notably in the Thracian Plain. However, the limited scope of large agglomerations was also, in part, the result of a pattern of fragmented settlement. The least well understood aspect of this problem is the nature of country estates in the pre-Roman period. We know that Odrysian kings moved from one location to another, rather than having fixed centers of administration and justice (Theopomp. FGrHist 115 F31 = Athen. XII. 531e–532a). A recently published fortified site below the peak of Kozi Gramadi (1364 m), in the Sushtinska Sredna Gora range, north of the town of Starosel, and northwest of Plovdiv, may have been a royal or princely hunting lodge. The excavator initially suggested that this was a “sanctuary” (on the basis of the central, masonry structure), as well as a fortified princely residence, of the kind in which Xenophon first met prince Seuthes. The evidence of more extensive residential structures has increased as excavations have progressed (Christov 2011–2012). If this were a princely hunting lodge, we can explain both its location, high up in the mountains, as well as the site’s connections with the principal patterns of exchange. A surprising number of high value and copper alloy regal coins, belonging to Thracian and Macedonian rulers of the fourth century, as well as contemporary silver coins of Parion, the Thracian Chersonese, Thasos, and imitations of Thasian “Silenos and nymph” types, may represent a relatively short period of occupation of the site itself. The mountain and its vicinity were nevertheless visited at other times, as a hoard of late Republican denarii demonstrates.
The most influential views of the twentieth century have been based primarily on evidence drawn from Classical sources, mainly narrative literary accounts, and, to a lesser extent, epigraphic documents. Archaeological evidence has also played a part, in amplifying, moderating, and illuminating the literary data. One area that has been neglected in studies of the second half of the century, by comparison with early scholarship, is the wider international and intercultural dimension, as well as the broader development of social patterns over a larger time period. Studies of the Greek polis were reinvigorated by reexamination of the emergence of settlement agglomerations in the course of the first millennium (see, e.g., Morgan 2003). In the north Aegean coastal regions, investigation of settlement trends in the first half of the first millennium has provided important insights into patterns of land use in different ecological zones (Baralis 2010). This kind of work makes it feasible to compare Aegean Thracian social groups with those of neighboring coastal Macedonia (see, e.g., Perreault and Bonias 2010; Manakidou 2010; Tsiafaki 2010). I attempted to do something similar, looking at social formation in Macedonia, Thessaly, and Thrace a decade ago (Archibald 2000). At Adjiyska Vodenitsa, identified with ancient Pistiros, the nature of social interactions in Classical Thrace has perhaps been even more challenging than at any other settlement site. Here, on the banks of the River Hebros (Maritsa) west of Plovdiv, and a short distance from Mount Rhodope, the intense coexistence of merchants and traders, from a wide variety of origins, is reflected in the range of coins and artifacts that offer a spectrum of contemporary political and economic relations. Black Sea transport amphorae from Herakleia Pontika, Sinope, and coins from Mesembria and the Hellespontine region (particularly Parion and the Thracian Chersonese), are found alongside quantities of coins and containers from the north Aegean coast, notably Thasos, the Chalkidic peninsula, and fine pottery from Athens. Products of the area, and more generally of the east Balkan region, are represented by tiles and storage or table pottery, iron tools and weapons, metal jewelry and beads, as well as textiles (judging by the numbers of loom weights and spindle whorls). The inscription found 2 km away from the excavated site, which refers to the legislative framework for commerce in the region, in the time of Kotys I and under the administration of an unnamed successor, is entirely consistent with the evidence excavated at Adjiyska Vodenitsa (SEG 48.486, 46.872*, 47.1101; Velkov and Domaradzka 1994; Chankowski and Domaradzka 1999).
This work reflects studies of social groups in their economic and residential context. A parallel transformation has been taking place in scholarly understanding of institutional evolution, particularly of Macedonian institutions under the Argead kings (Hatzopoulos 1996). Until two decades ago, scholars believed that the kingdom of Macedonia was a highly militarized society, with a power structure focused firmly on the person of the king. Before the systematic study of epigraphic documents from the period of Argead rule, relations between rulers and their subjects, particularly subject cities, were based largely on biographical material for the reigns of Philip II, Alexander III, and the last Antigonid kings, Philip V and Perseus, much of it written from hostile perspectives, or at later periods still. Epigraphy from the period of the Argeads has revealed that these relationships were much more nuanced than the biographical literature allows (see esp. Mari 2006). Not only do we now know a great deal more about the kinds of civic agglomerations that existed in the Macedonian interior, but it is also clear that these communities could dispose of land independently of any involvement by royal officials. At the same time, kings did allocate land acquired by conquest to favored members of the Macedonian élite (Hatzopoulos 1988; 2011). Nevertheless, deeds of sale from Amphipolis show that not all land in a conquered city was made over to new ownership, though individual plots might be sold to new owners, and for a variety of reasons. The consequences of these institutional developments have yet to be absorbed into current theory about Thracian society.
Thracian women may not have played a prominent role in political narratives, but their presence and importance is implicit, not just in Herodotus’ and Thucydides’ tales of dynastic marriages (such as that of Oloros’ daughter Hegesipyle to the Athenian Miltiades the Younger) and in interstate negotiation, but also in various aspects of material culture. The generous provision of grave goods, not just in the burials of wealthier females, but on behalf of numerous women of less pretentious standing, makes clear that women’s status, whether as kin, as mothers, or as organizers of households, was recognized with great seriousness. Women’s graves were often accompanied by quantities of pottery, occasionally metal implements, including knives; as well as a surprising variety of personal ornaments. The polygamous practices already referred to did not necessarily imply that women were less highly valued than men. Polygamous societies of recent times suggest that only some men had multiple wives and that other men had none, which would have made women more, not less significant as social agents.
Students of Herodotus and Thucydides have a formidable array of literature to choose from. For Herodotus, a commentary compiled by David Asheri and his team (2007), updated and edited for the English-language edition, is now the indispensable aid for students, just as Simon Hornblower’s (1991–2008) three-volume commentary is essential for Thucydides. Stronk’s (1995) commentary on the final part of Xenophon’s Anabasis deals with the adventures of the Cyrean mercenaries in southern Thrace. Thrace has received less attention from scholars of Herodotean ethnography (but see Karttunen 2002 and Irwin 2007; Sharankov 2006 on Salmoxis; and Kotova 2009 on Thracian women and kin structures; Archibald 2005 for related perspectives on Macedonian women). Baladié’s (1989) notes to the Budé edition of Strabo’s Book 7 are also fundamental for various aspects of ethnography and geography.
The most prolific scholar of ancient Thracian society has undoubtedly been Alexander Fol, whose early synthetic studies on politics and social groups (Fol 1972; 1975; see also Fol 1990) have been formative in constructing a discourse in the period after the Second World War. The epigraphic and archaeological finds from Seuthopolis have played a central role in Fol’s work and in subsequent debates on society. The excavators, D. P. Dimitrov and M. Chichikova, have made key contributions to this debate, as has their son, Kamen Dimitrov (Dimitrov 1957; 1958; 1984; Dimitrov and Chichikova 1978: K. Dimitrov 2011; see also now Nankov 2008; 2011; and Rose 2009 on concepts of class). Recent work on historically attested settlements in the east Balkan region (notably the cumulative picture of some inland and all documented coastal sites in Hansen and Nielsen 2004) and systematic publication of data on Macedonian administration (Hatzopoulos 1988; 1996; 2011; Mari 2006; Paschidis 2006) has taken the discussion of social structures in new directions, which have yet to be considered in full for the Thracian interior. The nature of landholding remains a key concept for our understanding of society. This and other aspects of society and economy in the region are examined in more detail in Archibald 2013.