Metallurgy between Myth and Production: Cognized and operational Craft in the northeastern Aegean

• Type of Material: Conference Paper
• Authors: Sandra Blakely, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2018-05-26
• Publisher: Emory University Libraries
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2022 the authors.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): https://d-nb.info/1276165706/34#page=95
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Archaeology and Economy in the Ancient World
• Conference or Event Name: 19th International Congress of Classical Archaeology
• Volume: 53
• Start Page: 79
• End Page: 88
• Keywords: Greeks; skill; economy; heuristic potential; culture; craft; iron metallurgy; Thracians; northeast Aegean shores
• Research Categories: Economics, Labor; History, European

Abstract

What are the heuristic potentials for Rappaport’s cognized and operational models when applied to craft at the intersection of cultures – specifically iron metallurgy between Greeks and Thracians on the northeastern Aegean shores? And what are their implications for rethinking the ‘economic’ aspects of metal production? The southern Thracian shore was exceptionally rich in ores and local skills. Distinctions among local ores demanded different operational approaches to production. Kostoglou has used the material evidence to demonstrate that these operational models also constructed local community identities, among which production remained at the household and workshop level, even through the Roman period. Rappaport’s models help us recover some of the complexities in indigenous frameworks for the industry whose cultural function went far beyond production and trade. The Greek economic partners of these Thracians made both cosmological and ritual use of the daimones they constructed as the nonGreek, pre-Greek inventors of metallurgical craft in this region. The integration of these uses into our understanding of the evidence for emic, Thracian uses of metal production as a second level signifier helps move us toward a more complex model of that craft’s social function as simultaneously a locus of indigenous identity, and a means of enabling interaction with their non-Thracian economic partners in the region.