Early Stages of Greek Colonization of the Black Sea Basin: Problemous Issues and Historiographical Discussions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2025.06.123Keywords:
colonization, historiography, Ancient Greece, Black Sea region, Sinope, Olbia.Abstract
The purpose is to analyze modern concepts of the process of the Greek colonization of the shores of the Black Sea in the general context of the history of the “overseas” Greeks of the 8th — early 6th centuries B C. In recent decades, two opposing trends have been observed in the historiography of the Great Greek colonization. On the one hand, ancient concepts are actively denied, which, according to modern theorists, are based on fundamentally false positions. A striking example here is the so-called trade theory of colonization, formulated by British researchers a century ago. It is argued that its creators were based on a false analogy between ancient Greek and modern British colonization, and therefore, it is fundamentally incorrect. On the other hand, practicing archaeologists, analyzing the latest data, turn to the concept of trade before the flag as a completely working hypothesis, albeit in a modernized version. The article uses methods of modern historiographic analysis. Scientific novelty. For the first time in domestic historiography, the Greek colonization of the Black Sea basin is considered in the general context of Hellenic colonization. A comparative analysis of the processes of early colonization of the North-Western Black Sea region and Central Italy is conducted, and typological similarities between them are shown. Both the modern historiography of the concept of trade colonization and the works of the creators of this concept and its critics are analyzed. Conclusions. The results of archaeological research in recent decades force antiquarians to return to the concept of trade before the flag when studying the early stages of colonization of the Black Sea basin, especially its northern and north-western coasts. Materials from the Lower Buh-Dnipro and Lower Danube regions suggest that the emergence of full-fledged apoikia was preceded by the stage of existence of (seasonal?) emporium settlements. This sequence finds direct analogies in the process of Greek colonization of Central Italy, which demonstrates the potential of a comparative analysis of the development of different regions of the Mediterranean, Marmara, and Black Sea basins by Hellenic settlers.
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