Classical Greek Ethnography and the Slave Trade

Harrison, Thomas

doi:10.1525/ca.2019.38.1.36

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Even authors who believe that ancient Greek slavery had been sporadic and had involved smaller numbers of enslaved individuals, see the capture and commodification of non-Greek captives as a significant factor driving colonial settlement (Braund 2011). In antiquity, the northwestern Black Sea was considered a slave coast by Mediterranean authors (Gavriljuk 2003;Parmenter 2020, p. 61;Harrison 2019) and the transshipment centre for Scythian captives. Since Moses Finley's seminal survey (Finley 1962), there has been a significant increase in evidence attesting to the ubiquity of slaves in the Milesian colonial complex Berezan/Boresthenes and Olbia.…”

Section: Slaving Raiding Diplomatic Gifts the Hoard's Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thomas Harrison (2019) drew heavily on close parallels between ancient and early modern slaving practices to explain ancient descriptions of enslaved peoples. It is equally striking how closely the impact of Scythian incursions into Central Europe in the late sixth century BCE corresponded to the effect that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade had on 16th-to-18th-century West Africa, adding both credence and coherence to the slaving model proposed in this article.…”

Section: Understanding the Effect Of Scythian Raiding In The Comparat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Violent Raiding, Systematic Slaving, and Sweeping Depopulation? Re-Evaluating the Scythian Impact on Central Europe through the Lens of the Witaszkowo/Vettersfelde Hoard

Nebelsick

2024

Arts

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In 1882, the lavishly decorated golden regalia of a steppe nomad warrior prince, which was crafted in the late sixth century BCE in a “bilingual” Scythian–Milesian workshop on the Black Sea coast, was found on the edge of a Lusatian swamp 120 km southeast of Berlin. Its discovery and the ongoing findings of steppe nomad armaments—arrows, battle axes, and swords—in central Europe have led to a lively debate about the nature of Scythian–Indigenous interaction in the Early Iron Age, ranging from benign visions of long-term acculturation to violent scenarios of short-term raiding. In this article, I argue that an analysis of the iconography of the Witaszkowo hoard and new information from excavations at its find spot make it likely that it was sent as a diplomatic gift by Scythian elites to an indigenous leader and deposited by the local community as a votive hoard. An affirmation of the compact chronological range of Scythian artefacts found in the west, growing evidence for the destruction of indigenous strongholds by horse-borne archers, and concurrent evidence for the drastic depopulation of vast landscapes in the second half of the sixth century BCE allow us to envisage the gifting of this hoard as an episode of a fierce and destructive altercation. It is posited that this onslaught was a facet of the western thrust of the Lydian and Persian Empires, and that its extirpative impact was the result of systematic, commercially driven slaving triggered by the concurrent monetisation of the economies of the Black Sea coast. The effects of these raids on Eastern Central Europe’s later prehistoric communities are made manifest by analogies to the disastrous ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade on societies of 16th-to-18th-century West Africa.

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Section: Slaving Raiding Diplomatic Gifts the Hoard's Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Understanding the Effect Of Scythian Raiding In The Comparat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Violent Raiding, Systematic Slaving, and Sweeping Depopulation? Re-Evaluating the Scythian Impact on Central Europe through the Lens of the Witaszkowo/Vettersfelde Hoard

Nebelsick

2024

Arts

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“…4Cartledge (2006) reviews modern literature on the prevalence of slavery and the concurrent emergence of an ideology of freedom in Ancient Greece. 5 SeeRihll (1993) andBraund (2011) for the supply of foreign-born slaves Harrison (2019). argues that holding foreigners as slaves influenced how the Greeks perceived foreigners, which in turn might have implicitly offered justifications of slavery (e.g., those easily deceived or morally lax are suitable for slavery and may even benefit from enslavement).Journal of Institutional Economics…”

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confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Choice of slavery institutions in Ancient Greece: Athenian chattels and Spartan helots

Tridimas

2023

Journal of Institutional Economics

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The ancient Greek city-states were slave societies, but the institutions of slavery differed across them. The slaves of democratic Athens were foreigners bought as chattels labouring in agriculture, craftsmanship, banking, mining, and domestic services and were often given some limited freedoms and extra pay. On the contrary, the helots, the slaves of oligarchic Sparta, were indigenous of the lands they cultivated for their masters and were treated harshly. The study offers an economic explanation of the different slavery systems. Modelling the slaveholder as a profit maximiser, it attributes the different systems to differences in the probabilities of the slaves running away or revolting, the dependence of output on effort-intensive or care-intensive production technology, which depends on the fertility of the soil and affects whether the slave is treated kindly instead of harshly, and the cost of guarding slaves under different regimes.

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“…A valid notion considering the recent perspective on the role the foreign slaves had in the Greek prejudiced views and the construction of ethnic stereotypes about 'barbarians'(Harrison 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Ancient Slavery in the Central Balkans: Some Starting Points on pre-Roman Period

Mihajlović

2022

EAP / IEA

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The paper considers the issues related to slavery in the Central Balkans in the proto-historic i.e. Late Iron Age period. It is conceived as a first step towards more profound future study, and deals with the history of research and theoretical-methodological approaches to the problem of slavery among the Late Iron Age communities. The text revisits earlier interpretations of slavery derived from ancient written accounts and archaeological evidence, and then offers insights that rely on recent research of slavery in general, and in prehistoric period in particular. Finally, it is argued that it is necessary to consider the possibility of ‘societies with slaves’ when researching the Central Balkan Iron Age communities, even though they are often regarded as ‘small-scale societies’ that profoundly differed from the Mediterranean ‘slave societies’.

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Classical Greek Ethnography and the Slave Trade

Cited by 8 publications

References 2 publications

Violent Raiding, Systematic Slaving, and Sweeping Depopulation? Re-Evaluating the Scythian Impact on Central Europe through the Lens of the Witaszkowo/Vettersfelde Hoard

Violent Raiding, Systematic Slaving, and Sweeping Depopulation? Re-Evaluating the Scythian Impact on Central Europe through the Lens of the Witaszkowo/Vettersfelde Hoard

Choice of slavery institutions in Ancient Greece: Athenian chattels and Spartan helots

Ancient Slavery in the Central Balkans: Some Starting Points on pre-Roman Period

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