Transport Vessels from the Archaeological Museum of Sinop
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GERGELY CSIKY THE TRANSFORMATION OF PONTIC TRADE FROM LATE ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES Transport vessels from the Archaeological Museum of Sinop Sinope was one of the major harbours of the southern Black Sea coast during antiquity and the Middle Ages, located at the northernmost point of Anatolia, some 200 km from the Crimea across the sea. Due to its location, the city was an important node in trans-Pontic communication throughout its history. The study of early medieval trade is constrained by certain chronological problems of the so-called Byzantine “Dark Ages”; for example, with few exceptions, Anatolian pottery from the eighth–ninth centuries is not particularly well dated. One potential solution to this problem is a comparison of the transport vessels stored in the Sinop Archaeological Museum with the amphorae and transport jugs from the northern Black Sea coast, where vessels of this type are often recovered from closed archaeological contexts and even the kilns of the workshops of these eighth–ninth-century amphorae have been discovered. The study of the late antique and early medieval amphorae in the collection of the Sinop Archaeological Museum shed new light on the long-term trends in the sea trade of the Black Sea. The types, origin and distribution of the amphorae presented in this volume reveal a declining tendency in trans-maritime trade together with a decreasing distribution and an increasing centralisation in amphora production. Crimean amphorae and Tmutarakan jugs refl ect the connectivity of the Byzantine cities such as Sinope on the southern shore of the Black Sea with the Khazar and THE TRANSFORMATION OF PONTIC TRADE FROM LATE ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES THE MIDDLE TO ANTIQUITY TRADE FROM LATE PONTIC OF TRANSFORMATION THE later Rus territories. This would suggest that the late antique maritime network of • the Black Sea did not vanish without a trace – it quite certainly survived, although on a much smaller scale and with a smaller volume. Gergely Csiky INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY, RESEARCH CENTRE FOR THE HUMANITIES OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ARCHAEOLINGUA Edited by ERZSÉBET JEREM and WOLFGANG MEID Series Minor 40 GERGELY CSIKY THE TRANSFORMATION OF PONTIC TRADE FROM LATE ANTIQUITY TO THE MIDDLE AGES Transport vessels from the Archaeological Museum of Sinop Institute of Archaeology, RCH Archaeolingua Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences BUDAPEST 2017 The publication of this book was generously supported by OTKA/NKFI grant no. PD 100177, “The Black Sea Trade in the Early Middle Ages – Investigation of a Byzantine Harbour – Sinope/Sinop”. Front Cover Aerial view of Sinop with amphorae in the foreground. Photographs by Gergely Csiky (Sinop) and Ádám Bíró (amphorae), photo editing: Zsolt Réti Back Cover The city walls of Sinope ISBN 978-963-9911-96-3 HU-ISSN 1216-6847 © Gergely Csiky and Archaeolingua Foundation, 2017 © English translation Magdaléna Seleanu, 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digitised, photo copying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. 2017 ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY H-1067 Budapest, Teréz krt. 13. Desktop editing and layout by Rita Kovács Printed in Hungary by Prime Rate Kft. Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... 7 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 9 The archaeology of trade in the Sinop area ..................................................... 15 Late antique amphorae ..................................................................................... 17 LR 1 amphorae ....................................................................................... 17 Catalogue Nos 1–10 ........................................................................... 21 LR 2 amphorae ....................................................................................... 26 Catalogue Nos 11–14 .......................................................................... 32 Early medieval amphorae (seventh–ninth centuries) ....................................... 35 Late LR 2 amphorae (LR 2C) ................................................................. 35 Catalogue Nos 15–21 ......................................................................... 40 Crimean (Black Sea) amphorae .............................................................. 43 Catalogue Nos 22–32 ......................................................................... 49 Medieval transport vessels ............................................................................... 55 Günsenin 1 (Ganos) amphorae ............................................................... 55 Catalogue Nos 33–50 ......................................................................... 63 Tmutarakan jugs ..................................................................................... 72 Catalogue Nos 51–63 ......................................................................... 80 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 87 Abbreviations ................................................................................................... 92 References ........................................................................................................ 93 Maps ................................................................................................................ 113 Plates ............................................................................................................... 117 Acknowledgements This volume is the outcome of museum research in Sinop. I fi rst came into contact with Sinop through my Turkish friend, Halil Evren Sünnetçioğlu, whom I can never thank enough for introducing me to this wonderful town. Owen P. Doonan and Alexander Bauer welcomed me to their highly interesting project, the “Sinop Regional Archaeological Project” (SRAP), whereby I became familiar with the landscape around Sinop during our fi eld surveys, which acted as a major source of inspiration for further research. While working in Sinop, the museum staff was most generous with help in all questions regarding the region’s history and archaeology. With his expertise, deep knowledge and understanding of the archaeological heritage around Sinop, Fuat Dereli was an inexhaustible source of information. Hüseyin Vural, Director of the Sinop Archaeological Museum, was very supportive and helped in solving all kinds of problems, ranging from museum research to organising our accommodation. Erdal Acar and Mehmet Çöndür, the museum’s archaeologists, supervised our work in the building’s basement in a very kind and agreeable way. The museum research and my research trips to Sinop were generously funded by a grant from the Hungarian Scientifi c Research Fund (OTKA PD 100177; Nati- onal Research, Development and Innovation Fund/NKFIH from 2014), without which an international project of this type would have been inconceivable. Ádám Bíró and Dávid Schwarcz, my colleagues in this project, were invaluable during the museum research in the Sinop Museum. Ádám took professional photographs of the artefacts from every possible angle, while Dávid helped with the description and evaluation of the metal artefacts. The three of us had a wonderful time in Sinop and working with them was not only a useful, but also a most pleasant experience. Our research did not end in the Sinop museum. After completing the report and publishing preliminary studies as well as offering presentations at various conferences, the classifi cation and assessment proper of the material was undertaken at the Institute of Archaeology of the Research Centre for Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which provided a wonderful research environment. I am greatly indebted to Professor Csanád Bálint for encouraging me to study Byzantine archaeology and to Professor Elek Benkő, our Director, for his constant support in the publication of this volume. During my work on the present book, I received technical support both from staff of our Institute and from the staff of Archaeolingua Publishers. All the plates in this volume were 8 compiled and edited by Zsolt Réti, our institute’s graphic artist. The text was translated into English by Magdaléna Seleanu. Rita Kovács of the Archaeolingua Publisher undertook the desktop editing of the manuscript. I am deeply grateful to Erzsébet Jerem of Archaeolingua Publisher for accepting the manuscript for publication in their series and for guiding it through the editing process. Introduction Sinope was one of the major harbours of the southern Black Sea coast during antiquity and the Middle Ages. Harbours are nodes in the network of maritime interactions, principally of seaborne trade. Maritime commerce offered a large variety of goods, from the supply of food staples to early metropolises such as Rome and Constantinople1 to exotic, often luxurious commodities. As a result, harbours can be regarded as gates opening onto the outside world, as meeting points of peoples of various social, ethnic, religious and regional backgrounds, and as huge warehouses offering a wide range of commodities for the population. Thus, the signifi cance of harbour cities should hardly be und erestimated, especially in view of the fact that most of the antique and medieval