D'Olbia à Tanaïs : territoires et réseaux d'échanges dans la mer Noire septentrionnale aux époques classique et hellénistique

The pioneering works of E. Minns and M. I. Rostovcev did much to shape our view of the shores of the Northern Black Sea. However, for a long time, this region has remained for many western scholars a world of semi-barbarians, removed from Hellenic culture. But for the last twenty years, engagement with Soviet historiography and the progressive recovery of rich documentary sources have allowed us to move beyond these topoi towards a more considered reflection on the region. This book aims to show how the Black Sea, during the classical and Hellenistic periods, though far from the Aegean, was a world both open and dynamic. The central theme, the analysis of territories, avoiding the restrictions of a city-based model, helps demonstrate the progressive development of these expansive States and their spatial representation and perception. Under particular scrutiny are the key moments of expansion and the efforts to rationalise the expansion of the chôra. Finally, the book, playing with different scales of operation, is concerned with exchange networks established by these States and their inhabitants with their hinterland, as well as the rest of the Pontic world, and further afield Thrace, and the Mediterranean. The interweaving threads are subtle enough in both human and geographic terms to allow one to move away from a classic centre-periphery model and so unlock intellectually the confines in which the Northern Black Sea has been previously bound.