[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
This attractively produced volume contains an introduction, conclusion and 18 papers, all in English. Colour is used throughout the volume, and the high quality of the printed paper makes the photographs very clear. The editors, directors of the Transformation of the Pergamon Micro-Region Project focusing on the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods of the city and its territory, organised a 2022 workshop in Istanbul. The resulting volume sets out to combine the study of text and material culture within a micro-regional framework inspired by Horden and Purcell’s Corrupting Sea (2000). This interest in the environment represents a timely approach to problems now faced by many of us as we write about the past, i.e., how to find the right balance between environmental determinism at one extreme and a history focussed on elite male culture at the other. In telling the stories of Pergamon, art, architecture, and the Attalid dynasty have often been important, but as this volume shows, there are so many other ways that one could tell this story.
The volume begins with some theory, follows by discussing textual sources, and then closes in three sets of case studies about the Western Mediterranean, Anatolia and the Levant, and finally the Pergamon Micro-Region. In the theory section, papers by Bintliff and by Daems discuss theoretical approaches to ancient population in the Hellenistic to Roman Eastern Mediterranean, leaving an impression of village communities of a few hundred actively engaged in exploiting the landscape, centred on agro-towns with populations of a few thousand acting as foci of economics and politics. The third theoretical paper, by Laabs and Knitter, turns to the Pergamon Micro-Region and a very cautious discussion of input-output analysis. While tentative, and always likely to be so, such thinking about the flows of raw materials and labour is very different from describing economic activity using ancient anecdotes along the lines of “Pergamon produced wine”, an approach that usually results in an ancient world in which, to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, “all the sites are above average”. These theoretical papers are followed by a discussion of the textual sources and their limits for the micro-region by Walser and Kunnert, in particular Galen’s often-quoted figure for the Pergamene population. Zuiderhoek’s examination of politics within cities in Roman Anatolia brings out well potential tensions within cities and how these might lead to unwanted attention from the imperial administration. Both of these chapters remind us of the complexity that was always present in past societies—even if we can’t see it—but also of the limits of modelling.
The first of three sets of case studies focusses on the western Mediterranean. Attema et al. look at resources, especially salt, on the Iron Age Italian Tyrrhenian coast, and Bergemann looks at the same period in Sicily. These short papers are of more use to Italian specialists than to those interested in Pergamon.
The second set of case studies concerns Anatolia and the Levant. Koparal and Demirciler discuss terracing on the Urla-Çeşme peninsula. Vandam and Poblome analyse the relationship between Sagalassos and its villages, using archaeology, but writing in a way amenable to modelling. Then for the early Roman imperial period Quatember looks at stone resources and building at Aphrodisias and Kennedy at the countryside around Petra in Jordan.
The third and most substantial set of case studies examines Pergamon and its environs. Becker et al. focus on the problem of how to incorporate geomorphology, work that is so often conducted after a project’s research aims have been determined and simply bolted on to the front of many survey reports. At Pergamon an urban and rural population is thought to have exceeded a base local carrying capacity (139), but terracing allowed for greater productivity (and erosion protection) (142). Problems in dating, with the different degrees of precision inherent in archaeology and geomorphology, are also mentioned. Teegen looks at Pergamene city demography and living conditions with a detailed examination of around 150 Hellenistic- to Ottoman-period skeletons excavated in the city in 2014–2017, though once subdivided by periods, gender, and age groups the results are currently based on very small samples; this will improve as more work is done on the south necropolis. A short but useful section (153) nicely connects the dusty and smoky urban environment with health. Pirson et al. discuss the survey results for the area around Pergamon, with a pleasing narrative approach which reveals the presence of luxurious rural estates (167–168) that were less common elsewhere in Anatolia (95, 235–236), and suggestive of greater wealth on the Ionian coast than in the mountains and plateaux further east. There is also good integration of the textual evidence from Galen’s abundant writings. In an excellent chapter, Mania discusses construction, moving from stone, bricks, and mortar to the use of wood, and from here proceeding smoothly to pollen cores and then stone supply from local and imported sources. Though as yet inconclusive, like many of the chapters, this examination outlines questions to be investigated by modelling and by new data collection, questions that could usefully be asked by other projects. Shulz et al. look at the volumetrics of the amphitheatre, lower theatre, and a probable bath, making the useful point that for much of the second century CE many sites in the city would have been under construction (200), which adds useful nuance to the frequent focus on the elite monuments at the top of the city. Völkel discusses the increasing economic activity as the city grew. Bes and Keweloh-Kaletta use intensive survey to analyse forms and production of Pergamene red-slipped tablewares (Eastern TS C, Çandarlı, and LR C), also looking at clay sources which allow for the macroscopic distinction of Pitane and Phokaia as production sites, as well as the tendency for ceramic production sites to be located close to the coast; the methodology of “correcting” sherd counts by visibility percentage (214, 217), however, deserves further discussion.
In the conclusion, Pirson relates the papers to the Pergamon Micro-Region Project, highlighting the frequent mention by contributors of the issues of defining a micro-region, what it means when we talk about landscape, opportunities for modelling, the integration of written sources into archaeologically driven narratives, and how to handle the multidisciplinary demands of carrying out a modern environment-based investigation of a space over time. This is followed by a brief summary of the papers, relating their conclusions to the Pergamon Micro-Region Project. There is a consolidated bibliography. Most readers of this volume, like most readers of journals, will be cherry-picking papers that will often float through the internet autonomously, so chapter bibliographies would have been more helpful, though in this case is eased by Open Access. As a discipline, we are still learning how to publish electronically, and this volume gets a lot right. And, of course, there is considerable benefit in reading a volume like this cover to cover.
Thinking about readers does pose the question of the target audience for this volume. For the organisers of the Pergamon Micro-Region Project, it provides a useful baseline and a good way to introduce new colleagues to the project’s current thinking. For those interested in Pergamon as a city, it may be less satisfying. In a volume like this, it’s impossible to cover everything, so that the occasional mentions of water supply and fortifications draw attention to the lack of detailed discussion, while much of the energetics discussion focusses on buildings away from the upper city, making me wonder too about Attalid Pergamon and its environment, which is more sketchily covered than the period from 133 BCE onwards. But in compensation, the volume catches very well the complexities of writing about the past while discussing the environment. For anyone thinking of starting a new fieldwork project, this would be a very useful volume to read, demonstrating clearly that survey archaeology is not just about collecting and identifying artefacts. Moreover, this volume shows the work of a team of specialists collaborating to understand a complicated micro-region and its changes over time while grappling with the issues of how to incorporate the environment in their analyses. It is very encouraging that the organisers are prepared to share working materials at a relatively early stage, an approach that allows for diversity, complexity, and disagreement in how they see the changing pasts of this region. I look forward to reading more from them as the project develops.
Authors and Titles
Foreword by the Editors (Felix Pirson, Brigitta Schütt, Thekla Schulz)
Introduction: Micro-Region and Social Ecology (Güler Ateş, Daniel Knitter, Ulrich Mania, Felix Pirson, Brigitta Schütt, Thekla Schulz)
Theory, Terminology, and Methodological Approaches
From Micro- to Macro-Region: Theory and Case-Studies from the Greco-Roman Mediterranean (John Bintliff)
Modelling Socio-Ecological Systems in Archaeology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Concept of ‘Micro-Region’ (Dries Daems)
How much was needed? Modelling Small Scale Economic Flows of Resources and Labor in the Pergamon Micro-Region (Julian Laabs, Daniel Knitter)
The Ancient History Perspective
‘Known Unknowns’: The Micro-Region Pergamon and the Written Sources (Ursula Kunnert, Andreas Victor Walser)
Internal Conflicts in Roman-Era Greek Cities (Arjan Zuiderhoek)
Case Studies I: The Western Mediterranean
Studying Coastal Resources and Resource Control in the Context of Early State Formation on the Tyrrhenian Coast (Italy) (Luca Alessandri, Peter Attema, Francesca Bulian, Jan Sevink)
Micro-Regions in the Central Mediterranean: Settlement Systems, Nature and Environment in Greco-Roman Sicily (Johannes Bergemann)
Case Studies II: Anatolia and the Levant
Resilience of Rural Cultural Landscapes in the Urla–Çeşme Peninsula (Elif Koparal, Volkan Demirciler)
The World, My Village: Structuring Thoughts on Agriculture and Pastoralism in Southwest Anatolia in Roman Imperial Times (Jeroen Poblome, Ralf Vandam)
Quarries, Monuments and Benefactors: The Connectivity of Natural Resources, Building Activities and Society in Roman Aphrodisias (Ursula Quatember)
How Many Micro-Regions in Rural Petra? Current Approaches to Researching Social Landscapes in the Hinterland of Petra, Jordan (Will Kennedy)
Case Studies III: The Transformation of the Pergamon Micro-Region
The Socio-Ecological Model of the Pergamon Micro-Region from a Geoarchaeological Perspective: How to integrate geomorphodynamics? (Fabian Becker, Mehmet Doğan, Brigitta Schütt, Xun Yang)
Demography and Living Conditions in the Lower City of Roman Pergamon: A Survey of Socio-Ecological Interaction in the Pergamon Micro-Region (Turhan Doğan, Wolf-Rüdiger Teegen)
The Rural Landscape of the Pergamon Micro-Region as Space of Socio-Ecological Interaction: The Archaeological Perspective (Zeki Mete Aksan, Güler Ateş, Bernhard Ludwig, Felix Pirson)
Construction in Imperial Asia Minor and in Pergamon: Building as a Source of Understanding Economy, Society, Technology and Ecology (Ulrich Mania)
Large-scale Buildings of the Imperial Period in Pergamon: Land and Material Consumption (Léa Geisler, Thekla Schulz, İhsan Yeneroğlu)
Urban Economic Spaces in the Pergamon Micro-Region: Economic Activities and Functions in the Context of Socio-Ecological Developments (Sandra Völkel)
The Pitane Survey (2019–2021): The Manufacture of Terra Sigillata/Red Slip Ware within a Regional Socio-Ecological Context (Philip Bes, Anneke Keweloh-Kaletta)
Conclusions and Perspectives (Felix Pirson)