BMCR 2009.04.79: Kozlovskaya on Grammenos, Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2 (2 vols.). BAR International Series; 1675 (1-2)

Dimitrios V. Grammenos, Elias K. Petropoulos (ed.), Ancient Greek
Colonies in the Black Sea 2 (2 vols.). BAR International Series; 1675
(1-2).  Oxford:  Archaeopress, 2001.  Pp. viii, 1262.  ISBN
9781407301105.  140.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Valeriya Kozlovskaya, NYU ([email protected])
Word count:  3724 words
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This two-volume publication is the second--and final--part of Ancient
Greek Colonies in the Black Sea, edited by D.V. Grammenos and E.K.
Petropoulos.[[1]]  Both parts are collections of articles mostly
presenting archaeological sites from classical antiquity located on the
shores of the Black Sea.  This work is unique in terms of its scale:
there are twenty six articles in part one, published in 2003, and
thirty four in part two.  Many of the articles that discuss individual
sites are written by the archaeologists who are in charge of the
excavations at these sites.  However, while the chronological and
geographical scope of both parts is the same, the part under review
embraces a wider range of topics (authors and titles of the chapters
are listed at the end of the review).  This second installment truly
completes the project in that it provides coverage of the sites that
were missing in part one and introduces some themes that were absent
from the discussion.  Many of the articles are quite long, and all of
them are accompanied by extensive bibliographies.  Moreover, almost
every chapter contains either a short note about the author(s) or an
entire CV, including authors' e-mail addresses, which some of the
readers might find useful.

The structure of both parts of the publication is the same:  the
presentation of the sites in Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2
also starts with the territory of modern Bulgaria and then continues in
a clockwise direction around the Black Sea.  The first two articles
feature the sites of ancient Dionysopolis (by M. Damyanov, pp. 1-36)
and Bizone (by A.E. Salkin, pp. 37-50), both located in the modern
region of Dobrudzha.  Each article provides a general introduction to
the region and describes various aspects of its development, and then
features the respective sites.  The chapter on Dionysopolis, in
particular, is very detailed:  after an overview of the local geography
and a discussion of the relevant written sources, it focuses on
archaeological evidence (including epigraphical and numismatic finds)
from the site and on some controversial issues associated with it.  It
also offers a summary of the previous scholarship on ancient
Dionysopolis.  The publication of this article is well timed in view of
a recent discovery at the site:  in 2007, construction work in modern
Balchik revealed remains of a Greek temple, which was interpreted as a
temple of Cybele, or Pontic Mother.  The site is currently being
excavated by a team from the Varna Archaeological Museum, and some
preliminary reports have been published.[[2]]

The cult of Cybele, in general, is a prominent topic in this section of
Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2.  First, H. Todorova (pp.
175-238) presents a detailed account of the archaeological work at the
Durankulak Lake--the territory that in antiquity was particularly
associated with the goddess Cybele.  In addition, a part of the chapter
by Z. Gotcheva on the mythology and religion of the West-Pontic Greek
colonies (pp. 51-84, in French) is devoted to the Great Mother Goddess
in her various manifestations--Cybele, Demeter, etc. (pp. 72-6).  The
author also discusses other major deities (Apollo, Dionysus, the Great
God) and cults (including Roman imperial cults), as well as two
mythological stories relevant to the history of the region:  the first
story is that of Phineus, the blind prophet rescued by the Argonauts
from the Harpies;  the second concerns the city of Dionysopolis and the
origins of its name.  The latter part of the article, inevitably, also
deals with the controversial question of the foundation of
Dionysopolis, already addressed in the chapter by Damyanov.

The remaining two articles in this section are thematic, and each of
them focuses on a number of sites rather than on an individual site.
The chapter by I. Karayotov discusses monetary systems of Mesambria,
Apollonia Pontica, Odessos, and Dionysopolis (pp. 127-238).  The
numismatic evidence presented by the author is organized by the type of
coin, the date, and the place where it was issued.  K. Panayotova
offers an overview of funerary rites and types of burials attested in
the necropoleis of the Greek settlements in the Western Black Sea
region (pp. 85-126).  The article is very informative, but a slight
inconvenience is caused by the fact that the necropoleis discussed in
the text are sometimes associated with settlement sites not featured in
the publication:  reports on some of them can be found in part one
(Apollonia Pontica, Mesambria, and Odessos), but others are absent
altogether.

The next section of the book also contains a piece on necropoleis:  it
takes us farther north along the western Black Sea coast to sites
located in the territory of modern Romania.  In the first part of her
article, V. Lungu discusses the necropoleis of Histria, Orgame, Tomis,
and Callatis (pp. 337-82, in French).   She briefly introduces each
site and presents archaeological evidence from the necropoleis,
followed by conclusions on the demography and social composition of the
populations of the respective settlements.  In the second part of the
chapter, the author summarizes her conclusions and defines the types of
burial practices characteristic of the region as a whole.  Detailed
accounts on two of these settlement sites--Callatis (by A. Avram, pp.
239-86) and Tomis (by L. Buzoianu and M. Barbulescu, pp. 287-336)--can
be found in the same volume, whereas Histria and Orgame featured in the
2003 publication.  In general, the reports on individual sites
throughout Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2 often follow
similar patterns, with some variations.  Thus, the chapter on Callatis
starts with a presentation of the site (including the history of the
scholarship), and then proceeds to a discussion of the foundation of
the colony, its coinage, institutions, cults, epigraphical documents,
and rural territory.  The same topics are covered in the article on
Tomis, although here the authors chose a chronological approach,
discussing the development of the city stage by stage.

The prosopographical study by V. Cojocaru (pp. 383-434, in French)
serves as a transitional piece between this section and the rest of the
volume, since the author employs evidence not only from West Pontic
colonies, but also from sites in the Northwestern and Northern Black
Sea regions.  He discusses the question of ethnicity, based on his
analysis of Greek and non-Greek names, as well as toponyms and
ethnonyms, attested in epigraphical and literary sources.  It is
particularly interesting to consider his conclusions in connection with
the material from various necropoleis published in the same volume.

The last section of volume one is devoted to the northwestern Black Sea
coast:  it contains seven articles on various sites located in the
territory of modern Ukraine, some of which are virtually unknown to a
western readership.  The latter include, first of all, the sites in the
Odessa region, discussed by Y.F. Redina (pp. 507-36), and those in the
Lower Dnieper area, presented by N.A. Gavrilyuk and V.V. Krapivina (pp.
563-90).  Many of these sites were only sporadically excavated and the
results of the excavations have not always been published, not even in
Ukrainian or Russian.  Now the situation is changing for the better,
partly because of the renewed interest in these sites (as in the case
of the Odessa region, where archaeological work has been resumed at
some places), and partly because of a noticeable shift in the general
direction of local archaeological research, since more and more
scholars seem to embrace a synoptic approach to the study of the
region.  This implies, inevitably, incorporation of non-Greek sites and
closer collaboration between scholars of Classical antiquity and
Scythologists, a fine example of which is the article by Krapivina and
Gavrilyuk.  The interest in interrelations between Greek and non-Greek
populations in the area is further evident in another chapter by
Gavrilyuk in the same section of the volume, where the author considers
Greek imports in Scythia (pp. 627-76).  So, despite its title, Ancient
Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2 also includes discussions of
non-Greek populations and sites, and is thus a step forward in
comparison to the first part of the publication, since it provides a
more complete picture of the various Pontic regions.

The remaining four articles in this section focus on the four main
sites on the northwestern Black Sea coast:  Tyras (by T.L. Samoylova,
pp. 435-70), Nikonion (by N.M. Sekerskaya, pp. 471-506), Olbia (by V.V.
Krapivina, pp. 591-626), and the Island of Leuke (by S.B. Okhotnikov
and A.S. Ostroverkhov, pp. 537-62).  The chapters on Tyras and Nikonion
follow, to a great extent, the standard pattern known from the other
articles on individual sites in this volume.  The authors start with
the relevant ancient sources and the history of the scholarship, and
then proceed to questions associated with the foundation of the city,
followed by a presentation of the archaeological finds by category, and
a discussion of the development of the city, stage by stage.  The
structure of the chapter on the Island of Leuke, however, is somewhat
different, and this has to do with the nature of the site:  there was
no ancient settlement on Leuke, but it was home to a sanctuary of
Achilles.  Therefore, a large portion of the article is devoted to a
discussion of the cult of Achilles and the relevant material evidence
from the site.  The part of the article that deals with the geology of
the island is also very useful, especially in view of a recent dispute
between Romania and Ukraine about the extent of their respective
territorial waters, taken to the International Court of Justice in the
Hague:  Romania based its demands on the claim that the Island of Leuke
is, in fact, not an island at all.

The chapter on Olbia in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, although very
detailed and informative, would have been be more in place in the first
part of the publication, which also contains other accounts on Olbia
and its chora.[[3]]  The same can be said about the first two pieces of
the second volume of Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2:  the
first article is about the chora of Chersonesus in the Western Crimea
and the settlement of Kalos Limen in the Northwestern Crimea (by S.B.
Lantsov and V.B. Uzhentzev, pp. 677-728), while the second discusses
Roman Chersonesus (by V.M. Zubar, pp. 729-88).  They both rather belong
to the 2003 publication, which featured the site of Chersonesus.

The rest of the first section of volume two clearly includes articles
on sites and topics that were--for whatever reason--left out of the
corresponding section in the 2003 publication.  Geographically, it
covers the Northern Black Sea region (modern Ukraine and Russia);
thematically, it includes lesser-known sites, as is evident from the
title of one of the chapters--Small and poorly studied towns of the
ancient Kimmerian Bosporos (by A.A. Maslennikov, pp. 855-96 )--an
overview of several individual sites, some of which (such as Akra, for
example) are also the subject of separate articles in either the first
or the second part of the publication.  In particular, this section
features the settlements of Tyritake (by V.N. Zinko, pp. 827-54),
Iluraton (by V.A. Gorontcharovskiy, pp. 897-926), Akra (by A.V.
Kulikov, pp. 1023-56), Kimmerikon (by V.K. Golenko, pp. 1057-82), and
Torikos (by A.A. Malyshev, pp. 927-50), all of which lay in the
territory of the ancient Bosporan Kingdom.  In addition, this section
contains articles on non-Greek settlement and burial sites, such as
Scythian Neapolis (by Yu.P. Zaytsev, pp. 789-826) and the necropolis of
Kul Oba (by N.F. Fedosees, pp. 979-1022).  The latter, in particular,
focuses on the history of the discovery and the subsequent study of the
famous barrow of Kul Oba and other tumuli in the area, and it also
includes a detailed catalogue and illustrations of the most important
finds from Kul Oba.  Clearly, these are articles that expand the scope
of the volume beyond the Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast.  The
chapter by A.A. Malyshev (pp. 951-78) also belongs to this category:
it discusses, in a more general way, Greek presence in the North
Caucasus and the interactions between the Greeks and non-Greeks in this
region, from the Archaic period to Roman times.

This theme is also prominent in the next section of the volume, which
contains two articles on sites located in the territory of modern
Georgia.  V. Licheli (pp. 1083-142) offers an extensive overview of
Hellenistic and early Roman Colchis and Iberia, with a discussion of
the major sites, archaeological finds, and relevant scholarship.  He
also includes a catalogue of all sites in the region that yielded any
Greek (or Greek-looking) material (pp. 1118-28).  A large portion of
the chapter is devoted to the phenomenon of multilingualism in Colchis
and Iberia during the Hellenistic period and, in particular, to the
origins of Georgian writing (pp. 1104-17), which makes the article
interesting not only to scholars of Classical antiquity, but also to
linguists (although the author particularly emphasizes that his work
"does not claim the linguistic analysis") (p. 1104).

A. Kakhidze presents (pp. 1143-78) the archaeological complex at
Pichvnari that includes several individual sites dating to various
periods and attributed to various cultures.  The subject of the article
is the Greek necropolis of the Classical period, which is, according to
the author, the only Greek burial site in the Caucasus.  The settlement
associated with this necropolis remains unknown, but a contemporaneous
Colchian settlement with a necropolis was also discovered at Pichvnari.
The author provides a detailed description of the archaeological finds
from the Greek burials and draws some general conclusions on the means,
goals, and stages of Greek colonization, both in this region and
outside of it.  However, not everyone will agree with these conclusions
and the way in which the author presents them. For example, the part
where the author claims that "contrary to the so-called emporial stage,
trade was the result of the colonization, rather than determining its
content" (p. 1159) would be more convincing if it contained some
further explanation or at least references to other bibliographical
sources.  The latter also applies to the entire discussion of Athenian
colonial practices (p. 1160), which culminates in the conclusion that
the Greek settlement at Pichvnari must have been an Athenian colony.

The final section of Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2 consists
of three relatively short articles.  The first is a survey of ancient
Greek settlements in Eastern Thrace (by S. Atasoy, pp. 1179-94) and has
the format of a reference work.  The author briefly describes the
region and then introduces the settlements, site by site, starting with
the Black Sea coast, followed by the Marmara Sea and the Aegean Sea
coasts, and finishing with the inland settlements located along ancient
routes and roads in Eastern Thrace (modern Turkey).  Each entry is
accompanied by a short bibliography, and there is a slightly longer
general list of bibliographical references at the end of the article.
The second chapter covers three sites also located in the territory of
modern Turkey, but on the southern coast of the Black Sea--Cotyora,
Cerasus, and Trapezus (D.B. Erciyas, pp. 1195-1206).  All three were
colonies of Sinope and, as is evident from the article, all three are
better known from the small number of pertinent literary sources than
from archaeological remains (which are also not abundant).  This
situation is caused by a combination of factors, such as the location
and accessibility of the sites (both Cotyora and Cerasus have been
identified with more than one site, and some of these sites are
presently located in a military zone) or the long history of habitation
(as in Trapezus, where ancient layers are covered by multiple later
settlements).  The article by S,. Doenmez (pp. 1207-20) focuses on the
same part of the coastal zone and the corresponding inland area, but
discusses non-Greek population groups and their interactions with each
other and the Greeks.

The final piece of this volume--and, in fact, of the publication--is J.
Bouzek's survey of Greek fine pottery in the Black Sea region (pp.
1221-62).  The author briefly goes over the sites and areas on the
Black Sea coasts where Greek pottery was found, providing
bibliographies for ceramic finds from each site, and then describes in
detail the main types and classes of pottery attested at these sites,
period by period.  This chapter serves as an excellent conclusion to
the publication, not in the least because the author's short
introduction to the survey is so introspective:  he has devoted a large
part of his life to the study of the subject and is in a position to
share his observations about the long-term development of the field.

As mentioned earlier in this review, Ancient Greek Colonies in the
Black Sea 2 provides an extensive bibliography on the subject, and this
makes it an invaluable reference work.  Unfortunately, these
bibliographical references are not organized in the most effective way.
Each article is accompanied not only by a list of references, but also
by a list of abbreviations (and sometimes the latter and the former are
compiled together).  Some articles have bibliographical references
incorporated into the footnotes; others have more than one
bibliography--a short list after each part of the text (with references
to the same publications appearing in more than one of these lists) and
a longer one at the end of the chapter.  Different authors seem to have
followed different standards while compiling their bibliographies:
some of the titles in Cyrillic are given in the original script,
transliteration, and translation; others, in the original script and
transliteration;  still others, only in translation or only in
transliteration.  Admittedly, the bibliographies are mostly accurate,
even if somewhat unconventionally organized and not uniform.  The lists
of abbreviations, on the other hand, seem to live a life of their own.
Each individual list contains both standard abbreviations that are
universally accepted (for periodicals, corpora, works of ancient
authors, etc.) and abbreviations for major (and sometimes minor) local
publications, which are usually not known outside a particular region
or country.  The former repeat, list after list, without any alteration
and could have been omitted altogether; the latter, however, vary,
since individual authors have often used different abbreviations for
the same publications, and this can be rather confusing.  To give just
a few examples:  A stands both for the Ukrainian periodical Arkheologia
(p. 1042) and for the Bulgarian periodical under the same title (pp.
26, 111), while the latter also is to be found in its unabbreviated
form in some other lists of abbreviations (p. 82).  AGSP is used
interchangeably for two different books--Antichnye gosudarstva
Severnogo Prichernomor'ia (pp. 555, 705) and --Antichnye goroda
Severnogo Prichernomor'ia (p. 111);[[4]]  moreover, nothing indicates
that these titles stand for books and not periodicals, and in one list
of abbreviations the first title even appears paired up with the
publication year of the second title (p. 763), which makes it virtually
impossible to trace the item for a reader who has never heard of either
volume.  Such inconsistencies are too numerous to be mentioned here in
full, and they make the task of finding the listed titles more
difficult than it should be.

Despite these shortcomings, Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2
is a valuable source of information on many sites that are either not
well known or not well published (or both).  Presently, there is no
other publication in English (and probably not in any other language)
that covers almost every single site around the Black Sea to such an
extent.  Together with part one that was published in 2003, it is more
than enough to start one's research on this region.  So, do not wait
any longer--after all, you have 1262 pages and 34 articles to tackle!

V.1. Dionysopolis, its territory and neighbours in the pre-Roman times
/ Margarit Damyanov -- Bizone / Asen Emilov Salkin -- La Thrace
Pontique et la mythologie grecque / Zlatozara Gotcheva -- Burial and
post-burial rites in the necropoleis of the Greek colonies on the
Bulgarian Black Sea Littoral / Krystina Panayotova -- Le monnayage de
Messambria et les Monnayages d'Apollonia, Odessos et Dionysopolis /
Ivan Karayotov -Durankulak - a Territorium Sacrum of the Goddess Cybele
/ Henrieta Todorova -- Kallatis / Alexandru Avram -- Tomis / Livia
Buzoianu and Maria Barbulescu -- Necropoles grecques du Pont Gauche:
Istros, Orgame/, Tomis, Callatis / Vasilica Lungu -- "L'histoire par
les noms" dans les villes grecques de Scythie et Scythie Mineure aux
VIe-Ier sie\cles av. J.-C. / Victor Cojocaru -- Tyras: the Greek City
on the River Tyras / Tatyana Lvovna Samoylova -- The Ancient City of
Nikonion / Natalya Mikhaylovna Sekerskaya -- Greek Settlements on the
Shores of the Bay of Odessa and Adjacent Estuaries / Yevgeniya
Fyodorovna Redina -- Achilles on the Island of Leuke / Sergey
Borisovitch Okhotnikov and Anatoliy Stepanovitch Ostroverkhov -- Lower
Dnieper Hillforts and the Influence of Greek Culture (2nd Century BC -
2nd Century AD) / Nadezhda Avksentyevna Gavrilyuk and Valentina
Vladimirovna Krapivina -- Olbia Pontica in the 3rd-4th Centuries AD /
Valentina Vladimirovna Krapivina -- Greek Imports in Scythia / Nadezhda
Avksentyevna Gavrilyuk

V.2. Distant Chora of Taurian Chersonesus and the City of Kalos Limen /
Sergey Borisovitch Lantsov and Vladimir Borisovitch Uzhentzev -- Tauric
Chersonesus and the Roman Empire / Vitaliy Mikhalovich Zubar -- The
Scythian Neapolis and Greek Culture of the Northern Black Sea Region in
the 2nd century BC / Yuriy Pavlovitch Zaytsev -- Tyritake / Viktor
Nikolaevitch Zinko -- Small and poorly studied towns of the ancient
Kimmerian Bosporos / Alexander Alexandrovitch Maslennikov -- Iluraton:
a Fortress of the 1st - 3rd centuries AD on the European Kimmerian
Bosporos / Vladimir Anatolyevitch Gorontcharovskiy -- Torikos and the
South-Eastern Periphery of the Bosporan Kingdom (7th C. BC - 3rd C. AD)
/ Alexey Alexandrovitch Malyshev -- Greeks in the North Caucasus /
Alexey Alexandrovitch Malyshev -- The Necropolis of Kul Oba / Nikolay
Fyodorovitch Fedoseev -- Akra and its chora / Alexey Vladislavovitch
Kulikov -- Kimmerikon / Vladimir Konstantinovitch Golenko -- Hellenism
and Ancient Georgia / Vakhtang Licheli -- Greek Necropolis of Classical
Period at Pichvnari / Amiran Kakhidze -- Ancient Greek Settlements in
Eastern Thrace / Suemer Atasoy -- Cotyora, Kerasus and Trapezus: The
Three Colonies of Sinope / Deniz Burcu Erciyas -- The Central Black Sea
region, Turkey, during the Iron Age: the Local Cultures and the
Eurasian Horse-Riding Nomads / S,evket Doenmez -- Greek Fine Pottery in
the Black Sea Region / Jan Bouzek


------------------
Notes:


1.   Part one, also in two volumes, was published with a different
press:  D.V. Grammenos, E.K. Petropoulos, Ancient Greek Colonies in the
Black Sea (2 vols.). Publications of the Archaeological Institute of
Northern Greece, no. 4. Thessaloniki: Greek Ministry of Culture, 2003.
For a review of this publication, see B. Baebler, BMCR 2004.09.01.

2.   I. Lazarenko, E. Mircheva, R. Encheva, and N. Sharankov,
"Arkheologicheski razkopki v gr. Balchik, ul. 'Chaika' i ul. 'Gen.
Zaimov' (obekt 'Khram na Pontiiskata Maika na bogovete')," in
Arkheologicheski otkritiia i razkopki prez 2007 g. (Sofia 2008),
297-300;  Minerva. The International Review of Ancient Art and
Archaeology. July/August 2008 (vol. 19.4)
(http://minervamagazine.com/news.asp?min_issue=JUL_AUG2008#2/)

3.   For more information on Olbia in English (including the 3rd and
4th centuries AD), see David Braund and S.D. Kryzhitskiy, Classical
Olbia and the Scythian World (Oxford 2007)--an important collection,
which appeared too late to be included in Krapivina's bibliography in
Ancient Greek Colonies in the Black Sea 2.  For a review of this
publication, see V. Kozlovskaya, JRA 22 (2009) (forthcoming).

4.   G.A. Koshelenko, I.T. Kruglikova, and V.S. Dolgorukov (eds.),
Antichnye gosudarstva Severnogo Prichernomor'ia (Moscow 1984);  V.F.
Gaidukevich and M.I. Maksimova (eds.), Antichnye goroda Severnogo
Prichernomor'ia (Moscow-Leningrad 1955).