Bogucki P., Crabtree P. Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.-A.D. 1000: Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. Volume 2

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

of the vessels had been manufactured at Massalia;

others were imported from elsewhere in the Medi-

terranean basin. Fine pottery, some made at Mas-

salia and some from as far away as Athens, also circu-

lated from the trade center to communities

throughout the lower Rhône Valley. Especially

common among the ﬁne ceramics are pitchers, small

bowls, and cups—all vessels used in the consump-

tion of wine. The lands around the town of Massalia

produced wine, and wine was imported from other

regions of the Mediterranean. According to the

Greek geographer Strabo, the rocky soils around

Massalia would allow the successful cultivation of

wine grapes and olives but not grain.

Shortly after they established Massalia around

600

B.C., Phocaean Greeks also founded a new town

called Emporion, located on the northeastern coast

of Spain, where modern Ampurias is situated. Em-

porion did not grow as large as Massalia, but around

that town, too, is abundant archaeological evidence

for interaction with indigenous peoples. Within a

century of its establishment, Massalia began found-

ing other daughter towns in the south of France.

MASSALIA AND WEST-CENTRAL

EUROPE

In addition to their activities in and around Massalia

and along the northern coasts of the western Medi-

terranean, the merchants based at the Greek port

engaged in signiﬁcant interactions with peoples of

interior regions of continental Europe, especially in

the region known as west-central Europe, which

now is made up of eastern France, southwestern

Germany, and northern and western Switzerland.

The signiﬁcance of these interactions between the

prehistoric, Early Iron Age peoples of temperate

Europe and merchants from the literate civilization

of the Greek Mediterranean has been much dis-

cussed, and they certainly were of fundamental im-

portance to cultural development within Europe.

They also were signiﬁcant to the Greek world, espe-

cially with respect to the trade products that Mas-

salia and its commercial partners acquired through

the interactions and in regard to the forming of

Greek attitudes toward the non-Greek peoples who

lived in the interior of the Continent. The principal

concern here is with the effects of these interactions

on the peoples of west-central Europe.

Archaeological Evidence for Interactions.

The

archaeological evidence for interactions between

communities in west-central Europe and the Greek

establishment at and around Massalia consists large-

ly of objects manufactured in the Greek world that

are recovered by archaeologists on settlements and

in graves in west-central Europe. The most studied

imports are pottery from Athens, pottery from Mas-

salia and from workshops in its region, transport

amphorae (some manufactured at Massalia and oth-

ers brought in from abroad), and bronze vessels

(some from Greek workshops and some from Etrus-

can Italy). Other objects, discussed later, also have

signiﬁcance. All of the imported objects are luxury

goods, and all were consumed by the elite groups

of Early Iron Age west-central Europe. The great

majority of the objects are associated directly with

the transportation, serving, and consumption of

wine.

The most thoroughly investigated assemblage

of Greek imports is from the Heuneburg on the

Upper Danube River in the German state of Baden-

Württemberg. At Mont Lassois on the upper Seine

River in eastern France, even larger quantities of

Greek pottery have been identiﬁed, and the Vix

grave just below the fortiﬁed hilltop settlement con-

tained numerous important objects. Between the

Heuneburg and Mont Lassois, in the valleys of the

Upper Rhine, the Doubs, and the upper Rhône Riv-

ers, Greek imports have been recovered at many

other settlements and graves. The Heuneburg and

Mont Lassois stand out in being especially well

studied and in providing important evidence for

both settlement and burial contexts.

A number of different categories of imported

Greek pottery have been identiﬁed at the Heune-

burg, Mont Lassois, and the other sites, including

pottery made in and around Massalia, pottery from

eastern Greek workshops, and pottery from the cen-

ter of Attica, Athens. Small numbers of Greek im-

ports are apparent before the middle of the sixth

century

B.C., but the quantities increased greatly

during the second half of that century. The import-

ed Attic pottery has attracted special attention, be-

cause it can be dated very precisely and because ar-

chaeologists know a great deal about how it was

produced and used in its land of origin. To date

ﬁfty-eight sherds of Attic pottery have been identi-

ﬁed from the materials excavated at the Heuneburg

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

200

ANCIENT EUROPE

and more than three hundred at Mont Lassois. The

vessel forms represented are part of the Greek wine-

serving set—kraters for mixing wine and water

(standard Greek practice), jugs for serving wine, and

cups for drinking it (ﬁg. 1). Most Attic pottery at

these sites dates to the second half of the sixth cen-

tury

B.C., especially to the ﬁnal quarter (525–500

B.C.). Amphorae used to transport wine from the

Mediterranean coast into temperate Europe also are

well represented, with ﬁfty-ﬁve sherds from thirty-

seven amphorae recorded from the Heuneburg, the

majority of them dating to the same period as the

Attic pottery. Early in the ﬁfth century

B.C. the

quantities of Greek imports that were arriving into

west-central Europe declined, for reasons that are

not well understood. The cause of the decline may

have lain principally in political and economic cir-

cumstances in west-central Europe or in the eco-

nomic fortunes of Massalia or in a combination of

factors.

Bronze vessels are an important category of

Greek imports in west-central Europe, but they are

much less abundant than ﬁne pottery and am-

Fig. 1. Greek kylix, or drinking cup, made in Athens and found in the rich burial at Vix. THE ART

ARCHIVE/ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM CHÂTILLON-SUR-SEINE/DAGLI ORTI. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

phorae. While the imported pottery and amphorae

are represented mainly by sherds on settlement sites

(though a few complete vessels do appear in graves,

such as the two wine cups in the Vix burial), the

bronze vessels are found principally in graves. The

most spectacular is the Vix krater. Others include

the cauldron in the Hochdorf burial; fragmentary

sets of tripods and cauldrons from Sainte-Colombe

near Vix in France and from Grafenbühl near Hoch-

dorf in Germany; a hydria (water jug) from Gräch-

wil in Switzerland; and relatively plain jugs from

Ihringen, Kappel, and Vilsingen in the Upper Rhine

Valley region.

Other imported luxury items from the Greek

world that probably arrived by way of the port of

Massalia are small ornaments and lavishly decorated

furniture. In the Grafenbühl grave (looted in antiq-

uity) were a small sphinx ﬁgure carved from bone

and with an amber face. In the same grave and in a

grave nearby at Römerhügel were carved amber,

bone, and ivory pieces from furniture, perhaps

couches. Coral from the Mediterranean Sea was im-

ported in quantity for use as inlay in bronze jewelry.

GREEK COLONIES IN THE WEST

ANCIENT EUROPE

201

At the Heuneburg a partly worked coral branch in-

dicates that the material was processed in a work-

shop on the site. Dyes for coloring textiles, evident

at Hochdorf, were imported from the Mediterra-

nean region. Even new foods were introduced to

the Early Iron Age centers from the Mediterranean

world at this time, including chickens and ﬁgs.

Nature of the Interactions.

Much debate sur-

rounds the nature of the interactions that brought

the imports from the Greek world of the Mediterra-

nean to the communities in west-central Europe.

Most often the interactions are referred to simply as

“trade,” but that term oversimpliﬁes the situation

and may not be accurate, if in using that word one

thinks of modern trade.

An important factor in attempts to understand

why and how Greek luxury imports reached west-

central Europe is the concentration of such imports

at a few major centers dating to the latter part of the

Early Iron Age (550–480

B.C.). The Heuneburg,

Mont Lassois, the Hohenasperg (north of Stuttgart

in Southwest Germany), Bragny-sur-Saône in east-

ern France, Châtillon-sur-Glâne in Switzerland, and

other sites include hilltop settlements enclosed by

fortiﬁcation walls. Below them are unusually large

burial mounds that cover elaborate wooden burial

chambers housing rich graves containing Greek im-

ports, gold ornaments, wagons, feasting equip-

ment, and in the case of men’s graves, weapons.

Thus there is a clear association between high status

in Early Iron Age society and the Greek imports.

Greek ﬁne pottery, wine amphorae, and bronze ves-

sels are rarely found on typical agricultural settle-

ments or in modestly outﬁtted graves.

Written Greek sources tell of slightly later times

that Greek cities sought to obtain a variety of raw

materials through trade. These materials included

grain to feed their urban populations, meat and ﬁsh,

metals (iron for tools and weapons; copper and tin

to make bronze for ornaments, statuary, and vessels;

and gold and silver for ornaments), timber for

building ships and other purposes, salt, pitch and

tar, honey, leather, hides and fur, textiles, and per-

haps slaves. In some other regions of the greater

Mediterranean basin, such as on the north coasts of

the Black Sea, appear patterns similar to those at

Massalia and west-central Europe, with the estab-

lishment of Greek ports and the transmission of

Greek pottery and other goods inland to special for-

tiﬁed settlements. One set of interpretations views

the Greek imports in west-central Europe as repre-

sentative of one side of trade relations between elites

at the Early Iron Age centers and merchant groups

at Massalia. Centers such as the Heuneburg and

Mont Lassois can be thought of as collection sites

for the accumulation of materials sought by Greek

merchants—raw materials, such as honey and furs

from the forests, and partly made goods, such as

wool textiles from the farming communities. The

situation of all of the Early Iron Age centers on

major rivers would support this model of economic

trade in commodities from west-central Europe in

exchange for ﬁnished luxury goods from the Greek

world. According to this view, the elites at the cen-

ters controlled the trade, and thus they acquired and

consumed the great majority of the luxury imports.

They distributed some imports to the smaller com-

munities that supplied the trade goods; coral inlay

on bronze jewelry is well represented not only at the

major centers but at many smaller communities as

well.

This model is too simplistic, however, and

anachronistic. It assumes that trade in the sixth cen-

tury

B.C. operated through exchange principles sim-

ilar to those of more modern times. Some archaeol-

ogists have advocated a prestige-goods model for

the exchange. In this view, rather than a barter trade

of raw materials for Greek luxury goods, overseen

and controlled by local elites, the key factor is the

circulation of particular objects that bore high status

and prestige in society—the Greek luxuries in Early

Iron Age communities. According to this interpre-

tation, the key element was the circulation and dis-

play of prestige goods. This model downplays the

relationships between the elites at the centers and

the smaller communities that produced goods for

trade and emphasizes instead the interactions be-

tween groups of elites in their competition for status

and power at the centers.

Several objects provide important information

about the nature of the interrelations between the

centers of west-central Europe and the Greek

world. The Vix krater has been interpreted as a dip-

lomatic gift from a Greek community to a potentate

on the upper Seine, presented in order to seal a trea-

ty or to create a useful relationship. That unique ob-

ject is much more precious than any other Greek

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

202

ANCIENT EUROPE

imports in Europe, and it requires a different expla-

nation from the ﬁne pottery, the wine amphorae,

and the other bronze vessels. The Greek historian

Herodotus, writing around the middle of the ﬁfth

century

B.C., described a similar vessel that was

made to present to a king of a non-Greek people in

Asia Minor (modern Turkey). It seems likely that

the Vix krater also was made and presented for a

particular purpose that went far beyond what would

be considered “economic” trade and lay rather in

the realm of diplomatic and political relationships.

The clay-brick wall at the Heuneburg similarly

provides unique information. The fortiﬁcation wall

surrounding the hilltop settlement at the Heune-

burg was built in several phases. In all but one of the

phases, the wall consisted of a typical central Euro-

pean earth-and-timber structure. For one phase of

construction, however, the wall was built of clay

bricks, set on a foundation of cut stone—a technol-

ogy that was foreign to west-central Europe but at

home in the Greek world of the Mediterranean.

This wall was about 3 meters thick, and it included

10 rectangular towers on the north side of the site,

creating what must have been an impressive view for

the inhabitants of the settlement below. The dimen-

sions of the bricks in the Heuneburg wall even

match those in contemporaneous walls at Greek

cities.

While objects such as Attic pottery and even the

Vix krater could have been transmitted to the west-

central European centers by indirect trade, without

individuals from Massalia and the Early Iron Age

centers ever coming directly into contact with one

another, the building of the clay-brick wall demon-

strates the direct transmission of technical knowl-

edge between individuals of the two societies. Ei-

ther an architect from the Mediterranean world

must have overseen the construction of the wall at

the Heuneburg, or someone from west-central Eu-

rope must have learned the technique during a visit

to a Greek city. Either way, direct interpersonal

technology transfer is required to explain the wall.

Transmission of speciﬁc technical information

from the Mediterranean world to west-central Eu-

rope also is indicated by the statue from Hirschlan-

den, a burial mound near the Hohenasperg hillfort.

This life-size statue of a male warrior is sculpted of

local sandstone. The modeling of the back and the

legs shows familiarity with sculptural traditions cur-

rent during the sixth century

B.C. in the Mediterra-

nean world among Greek and Etruscan sculptors

but otherwise absent in west-central Europe at this

time. Since objects represented on the statue—hat,

dagger, and belt—are of local character and the ob-

ject is made of local sandstone, its local origin is not

in question. As in the case of the Heuneburg brick

wall, however, the Hirschlanden ﬁgure displays

technical knowledge brought one way or another

from the Mediterranean world.

EFFECT OF THE INTERACTIONS

The role that the interactions between west-central

European communities and the Greek world at and

around Massalia played in Iron Age Europe also is

a greatly debated issue. The principal matter of con-

tention is whether the interactions represented by

the Greek luxury goods were an important factor in

the emergence of elites in Early Iron Age west-

central Europe or whether the emergence of the

elites happened as a result of processes internal to

European society. Put into simple terms, did the

commerce with Massalia “cause” the greater social

differentiation that is apparent in the rich graves at

the Heuneburg, Mont Lassois, the Hohenasperg,

and the other centers? Or did the elites emerge

through locally based social changes and participate

in trade with the Greeks in order to acquire attrac-

tive luxuries?

These questions are difﬁcult to answer. The

Greek luxury imports clearly are associated with the

elites—the individuals buried in the richest and

most elaborate burials. The Early Iron Age centers

of west-central Europe rose to importance only dur-

ing the sixth century

B.C., after Massalia had been

established and at the time that the ﬁrst of the im-

ports were arriving. Economic activity ﬂourished at

the centers in the ﬁnal decades of the sixth century

B.C., at the same time that the larger numbers of im-

ports were arriving and the rich graves were most

lavishly outﬁtted. Thus it is clear that there was a

close connection between the social and political

changes in Early Iron Age west-central Europe and

the interactions with Greek Massalia. But it is not

yet possible to explain exactly how these changes

happened.

Some archaeologists argue that these interrela-

tionships can best be understood in terms of core-

periphery relations, in which the Greek Mediterra-

GREEK COLONIES IN THE WEST

ANCIENT EUROPE

203

nean is viewed as the core and west-central Europe

as the periphery. In support of this approach, the ar-

chaeological evidence shows similar patterns of im-

portation of Greek pottery, bronze vessels, and

other luxury goods at other locations in the greater

Mediterranean world, such as Iberia, the east coast

of the Adriatic Sea, and the lands north of the Black

Sea. These other regions also contain evidence for

the same kinds of changes in local societies that are

evident in west-central Europe—the appearance of

new fortiﬁed hilltop settlements, on which Greek

imported pottery is found, and increase in differen-

tiation reﬂected in burial equipment. Thus from the

broader perspective of Greek-native interaction all

along the north coasts of the Mediterranean and

Black Seas, the evidence seems to indicate that simi-

lar social changes were stimulated (not to say

caused) by the establishment of Greek commercial

towns eager to acquire commodities in the interior

regions of Europe.

Those that argue in favor of local changes rather

than external commerce as the critical factors point

out that the total numbers of Greek imports in west-

central Europe are small. The ﬁfty-eight sherds of

Attic pottery recovered so far at the Heuneburg, for

example, represent only about thirteen vessels. Only

thirty-seven wine amphorae have been identiﬁed

from the sherds at the site. Viewed over some ﬁfty

or more years of interaction, these numbers of ves-

sels do not indicate a substantial trade. Other inves-

tigators counter that in archaeology researchers al-

ways work with fragmentary evidence. Perhaps

much or most of the importation of Greek luxury

goods was in perishable materials, such as the ﬁne

textiles in the grave at Hochdorf and the silk from

the Hohmichele burial mound at the Heuneburg.

If this was the case, then the Attic pottery, wine am-

phorae, bronze vessels, and other objects are only

the most visible signs of interactions, and archaeolo-

gists must reckon with much larger quantities of

goods that are not as readily recognizable.

These debates are still ﬂourishing. To an extent,

new data from excavated settlements and graves will

help provide support for one perspective or the

other. Much of the debate depends upon how one

thinks economic and social systems in the past oper-

ated, and thus agreement may never be achieved. In

any case, it is clear that the contacts with the Greek

world and the emergence of the economic and so-

cial centers with their elites were closely intercon-

nected.

Perhaps the most important effects of the inter-

actions were the more subtle ones involving the

sharing and exchange of information, ideas, and

practices. With any kind of trade or political interac-

tion between groups, information and ideas are

passed, resulting in changes in attitudes, beliefs, and

values of all parties concerned. One clear example

in the case of west-central Europe and the Greek

world is the apparent adoption of the Greek practice

of the symposium. This was a ritual wine-drinking

party in which particular types of vessels were used

for speciﬁc purposes, and the event served to express

social distinctions between members of the elite

groups. The sets of feasting vessels that were placed

in rich burials such as Hochdorf and Vix provide all

of the functions required for the performance of a

feast structured like the Greek symposium—large

mixing vessels, jugs, and drinking cups. Some of

these vessels were Greek and Etruscan imports, and

others, such as the horns in the Hochdorf tomb,

were local versions. In Greece at the time revelers

reclined on couches; perhaps the Hochdorf couch

and those represented by ornaments at Grafenbühl

and Römerhügel indicate a local use of this item of

furniture. It is on this level of practice and perfor-

mance, with elements from the Greek world and

from Early Iron Age west-central Europe integrated

into meaningful practices, that much important and

exciting research will be done in the near future.

See also Status and Wealth (vol. 1, part 1); Hochdorf

(vol. 1, part 1); Iron Age Feasting (vol. 2, part 6);

Vix (vol. 2, part 6); The Heuneburg (vol. 2, part 6).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold, Bettina. “‘Drinking the Feast’: Alcohol and the Le-

gitimation of Power in Celtic Europe.” Cambridge Ar-

chaeological Journal 9, no. 1 (1999): 71–93.

Boardman, John. The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies

and Trade. 4th ed. New York: Thames and Hudson,

1999.

Brun, Patrice, and Bruno Chaume, eds. Vix et les éphémères

principautés celtiques: Les VIe–Ve siècles avant J.-C. en

Europe centre-occidentale. Paris: Éditions Errance,

1997.

Diepeveen-Jansen, Marian. People, Ideas, and Goods: New

Perspectives on “Celtic Barbarians” in Western and Cen-

tral Europe (500–250

B.C.). Translated by Christine Jef-

feris. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2001.

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

204

ANCIENT EUROPE

Dietler, Michael. “The Iron Age in Mediterranean France:

Colonial Encounters, Entanglements, and Transforma-

tions.” Journal of World Prehistory 11, no. 3 (1997):

269–358.

———. “Early ‘Celtic’ Socio-Political Relations: Ideological

Representation and Social Competition in Dynamic

Comparative Perspective.” In Celtic Chiefdom, Celtic

State: The Evolution of Complex Social Systems in Prehis-

toric Europe. Edited by Bettina Arnold and D. Blair

Gibson, pp. 64–71. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1995.

Kimmig, Wolfgang, ed. Importe und mediterrane Einﬂüsse

auf der Heuneburg. Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Za-

bern, 2000.

Kristiansen, Kristian. Europe before History. Cambridge,

U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Moscati, Sabatino, ed. The Celts. New York: Rizzoli, 1991.

Pare, Christopher. “La dimension européenne du commerce

grec à la ﬁn de la période archaïque et pendant le début

de la période classique.” In Vix et les éphémères princi-

pautés celtiques: Les VIe–Ve siècles avant J.-C. en Europe

centre-occidentale. Edited by Patrice Brun and Bruno

Chaume, pp. 261–286. Paris: Éditions Errance, 1997.

Les Princes celtes et la Mediterrannée. Paris: La Documenta-

tion Francaise, 1988.

Shefton, Brian. “On the Material in Its Northern Setting.”

In Importe und mediterrane Einﬂüsse auf der Heune-

burg. Edited by Wolfgang Kimmig, pp. 27–41. Mainz,

Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 2000.

Wells, Peter S. Culture Contact and Culture Change: Early

Iron Age Central Europe and the Mediterranean World.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

ETER S. WELLS

■

VIX

At the small settlement of Vix near Châtillon on the

upper Seine River in eastern France, an unusually

richly outﬁtted grave was excavated in 1952 and

1953. Numerous burial mounds are still visible

around the fortiﬁed hilltop site of Mont Lassois, but

the mound above the Vix grave had eroded and was

no longer apparent on the surface. Excavations re-

vealed the remains of a mound 42 meters in diame-

ter and probably about 5 meters high, within which

was a wooden chamber 3.1 by 2.75 meters in size,

covered by a layer of stones. Inside was an undis-

turbed burial that included the skeletal remains of

a woman about thirty-ﬁve years of age, buried c.

480

B.C., at the end of the Early Iron Age.

The grave contained goods that characterize

rich women’s burials of the Early Iron Age, but also

unique objects. The woman’s body was laid on the

box of a wagon in the center of the grave, with her

head toward the north. The wagon’s detached four

wheels had been arranged along the east wall of the

chamber. On the western side was an extraordinary

assemblage of ceramic, bronze, and silver vessels.

Around her neck the woman wore a uniquely orna-

mented gold ring of exceptionally ﬁne workman-

ship, weighing 480 grams. At the two terminals

were lion paws, tiny winged horses, and intricately

incised ornamentation. Gold neck rings are charac-

teristic of richly outﬁtted Early Iron Age burials in

temperate Europe, but the Vix ring is different from

all others. The style of ornament suggests connec-

tions with Greek and Scythian decorative traditions,

but specialists have not agreed on the probable

place of manufacture.

Her other personal ornaments are of types com-

mon to well-equipped women’s graves, but she was

Fig. 1. The Vix krater. THE ART ARCHIVE/ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM

CHÂTILLON-SUR-SEINE/DAGLI ORTI. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

VIX

ANCIENT EUROPE

205

buried with more of them, and many are unusually

richly decorated. On each wrist she wore three

bracelets of schist and one of thin bronze. A neck-

lace was made of amber, diorite, and serpentine

beads. On each ankle was a hollow bronze ring.

With her were eight ﬁbulae, ornamental brooches,

which worked on the principle of the modern safety

pin, that were used to fasten garments and for deco-

ration. Two were of iron, the other six of bronze,

and some were ornamented with gold, amber, and

coral. Amber and coral were both exotic luxuries—

amber came from the coast of the Baltic Sea to the

northeast and coral from the Mediterranean to the

south.

The feasting equipment in the grave consisted

of eight vessels, at least six of them imports from the

Greek and Etruscan worlds. Two wine cups were

products of the luxury ceramic industry in Athens.

One was painted in the black-ﬁgure style about 525

B.C., and the other was a plain black cup made about

515

B.C. A bronze jug and three basins all may have

come from Etruscan workshops in Italy. A silver

bowl with a central omphalos, or knob, of sheet

gold was 23 centimeters in diameter. The most un-

usual object in the grave was an enormous bronze

krater, a kind of vessel used in the Greek world for

mixing wine and water at feasts, made by Greek

bronzesmiths.

The Vix krater is 1.64 meters tall and weighs

208 kilograms—the largest metal krater known. It

would have held about 1,100 liters, but there is

some question as to whether it could, in fact, have

been used. It is possible that the weight of so much

liquid would have burst the thin bronze. While the

body of the krater is hammered sheet bronze, the

base, handles, rim, and ﬁgures around the neck are

all cast. The handles represent ﬁgures of gorgons,

and the cast bronze ﬁgures on the neck are Greek

warriors, their horses, and chariots. With the krater

was a bronze lid 1.02 meters in diameter, in the cen-

ter of which stood a ﬁgure of a women 19 centime-

ters tall.

Based on stylistic analysis, art historians believe

that the krater was made in a Greek workshop in

southern Italy about 530

B.C. This unusually large

and ﬁnely made object may have been transported

in pieces across the Tyrrhenian Sea, up the Rhône

Valley, and overland to the headwaters of the Seine

and then to Vix. Each of the small bronze ﬁgures

has a Greek letter on the reverse side and is attached

to a spot on the neck with a corresponding letter,

as if assembly was required. The most interesting

questions are, Why was this very unusual and costly

object brought to this place far from the centers of

power and wealth of the Mediterranean civiliza-

tions? And who was the woman with whom this ex-

traordinary vessel was buried? Most scholarly opin-

ion is that it was a political gift—a present from a

powerful Greek group to a potentate in Early Iron

Age Europe, perhaps to establish favorable relations

for the trade system that is represented so well by

Greek and Etruscan luxury goods in this grave and

at other sites of the period. At some stage between

manufacture and burial, someone removed all of the

spears held in the hands of the warriors ﬁgured on

the neck of the krater. Who might have done this

and why?

Archaeological excavations in 1991–1993 un-

covered a square enclosure 23 meters on a side,

bounded by a ditch, 200 meters southwest of the

Vix burial. An opening in the ditch 1.2 meters wide

at the center of one side faces the fortiﬁed hilltop

settlement on Mont Lassois. Animal bones and re-

mains of ceramic bowls in the ditch suggest that rit-

uals associated with funeral rites were conducted in

the enclosure. In the ditch just east of the opening

were two almost life-size limestone sculptures of

seated humans, one of a woman wearing a neck ring

resembling that in the rich grave and the other of

a man wearing a sword and holding a shield. Appar-

ently these ﬁgures were placed at either side of the

entrance into the enclosure. The Vix burial and as-

sociated enclosure provide unusually rich informa-

tion about wealth and status, contact with Mediter-

ranean societies, the role of feasting and display in

social and political systems, and the character of fu-

nerary ritual in Early Iron Age Europe.

See also Hochdorf (vol. 1, part 1); Greek Colonies in the

West (vol. 2, part 6).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chaume, Bruno. “Vix, le Mont Lassois: État de nos connais-

sances sur le site princier et son environnement.” In Vix

et les éphèmères principautés celtiques: Les VIe and Ve siè-

cles avant J.-C. en Europe centre-occidentale. Edited by

P. Brun and B. Chaume, pp. 185–200. Paris: Éditions

Errance, 1997.

Joffroy, René. Le trésor de Vix. Paris: Fayard, 1962.

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

206

ANCIENT EUROPE

———. La tombe de Vix (Côte-d’Or). Vol. 48, fascicle 1.

Paris: Monuments et Mémoires (Fondation Eugène

Piot), 1954.

Moscati, Sabatino, Otto-Herman Frey, Vencelas Kruta,

Barry Raftery, and Miklós Szabó, eds. The Celts. New

York: Rizzoli, 1991.

Wells, Peter S. Beyond Celts, Germans and Scythians: Archae-

ology and Identity in Iron Age Europe. London: Duck-

worth, 2001.

ETER S. WELLS

VIX

ANCIENT EUROPE

207

THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

GREEK COLONIES IN THE EAST

■

The Black Sea littoral, initially called by the Greeks

“inhospitable,” was colonized intensively by them.

Ancient written sources number these colonies be-

tween seventy-ﬁve and ninety. According to the an-

cient Greek geographer Strabo, Miletus, the most

prosperous city of Ionia (ancient East Greece, the

western part of modern-day Turkey), was known to

many. Its fame was due mainly to the large number

of its colonies, since the whole of Pontus Euxinus

(the Black Sea), Propontis (Sea of Marmora), and

many other places had been settled by Milesians.

The reasons for Ionian colonization have been

argued for many decades as one aspect of the gener-

al debate about why the Greeks established so many

colonies. Nowadays, most scholars agree that colo-

nization was enforced migration. Ionian cities were

situated in favorable geographical locations and

possessed large tracts of fertile land. Miletus, called

“the pearl of Ionia,” was in the Archaic period the

center of Greek culture. At the end of the eighth

century, Ionians began advancing deeply into the

hinterland: Miletus, for example, pushed its fron-

tiers twenty to thirty miles up the river valley. This

expansion led to conﬂict between Lydians and Ioni-

ans, with Lydian kings seeking to push the Ionians

back toward the coast. The principal outcome was

to diminish the amount of cultivable land available

to the Ionians. This was the chief reason why from

the mid-seventh century, Miletus, which had never

undertaken colonization, became the last Greek city

to do so.

The struggles between Lydia and Ionia came to

an end at the beginning of the sixth century, when

Miletus was obliged to accept a treaty reducing its

territorial possessions. This, in turn, provoked an in-

ternal crisis in Miletus, whose resolution prompted

large-scale migration and the establishment of new

colonies on the Black Sea. New and hitherto unpar-

alleled difﬁculties arose in the middle of the sixth

century as the expanding Persian empire conquered

Ionian cities. Ancient written sources state directly

that the Ionians faced a stark choice: death and en-

slavement or ﬂight. In these circumstances migra-

tion was the obvious course, leading to the founda-

tion of more new colonies. This did not mark the

end of forced migration: in 499

B.C. an Ionian upris-

ing against Persian rule was crushed, and in 494 Mi-

letus was sacked and burned. In consequence, a ﬁnal

wave of Ionian colonies was established on the

Black Sea at the beginning of the ﬁfth century.

Archaeology provides the principal evidence for

Greek colonies on the Black Sea. There are a few

written sources on the establishment of Pontic

Greek cities, but they are contradictory, giving dif-

ferent dates of foundation and mixing myths with

other explanations of the colonization process. The

ﬁrst colonies appeared in the last third of the sev-

enth century, and by the end of it Berezan, Histria,

Sinope, possibly Amisus and Trapezus, Apollonia

Pontica, and the Taganrog settlement on the Sea of

Azov had been founded. All were very small, situat-

ed on peninsulas. The next wave of colonization

dates to the beginning of the sixth century and wit-

nessed the establishment of Olbia, Panticapaeum,

Nymphaeum, Theodosia, Myrmekion, Kepoi,

Patraeus, Tomis, and others. Hermonassa, on the

208

ANCIENT EUROPE

The Black Sea region with major Greek colonies and local peoples. ADAPTED FROM TSETSKHLADZE 1998.

Taman Peninsula (South Russia), was a joint foun-

dation of Miletus and Mytilene in the second quar-

ter of the sixth century.

From the middle of the sixth century, other Io-

nian Greek cities were in the business of establishing

colonies: Teos founded Phanagoria (Taman Penin-

sula), and the (non-Ionian) Megarians and Boeo-

tians founded Heraclea, on the southern shores of

the Pontus c. 556

B.C. The latter colony developed

as a major trading center for the whole Pontus and

in turn established its own colonies: Chersonesus in

the Crimea was founded in the last quarter of the

ﬁfth century (where a small Ionian settlement had

existed from the end of the sixth century) and, later,

Callatis on the western coast. The mid-sixth century

also was the period when Miletus established three

colonies on the eastern Black Sea (in the ancient

country of Colchis)—Phasis, Gyenos, and

Dioscurias. The ﬁnal Ionian colonizers arrived at

the end of the sixth/beginning of the ﬁfth century

B.C., establishing new colonies (Mesambria,

Kerkinitis, and others) and settling in existing ones.

In newly established colonies, Apollo was the major

deity, as he was in Miletus.

For their ﬁrst sixty to eighty years of existence,

the colonies looked quite “un-Greek.” There was

virtually no stone architecture; instead there were

pit houses. Nor was there regular town planning.

The only colony with fortiﬁcation walls was Histria.

A complete change of appearance took place at the

end of the sixth/ﬁrst half of the ﬁfth century. Pit

houses gave way to typical Greek stone dwellings.

It is possible to identify clearly standard features of

Greek urbanization, such as the agora, temenos,

acropolis, and craftsmen’s quarter, among others.

Temples were built in the Ionic and Doric orders.

As the result of a change in the local political situa-

tion, cities began to construct stone fortiﬁcation

walls. The exception is the region of the eastern

Black Sea, where, thanks to natural conditions (wet-

GREEK COLONIES IN THE EAST

ANCIENT EUROPE

209