The Black Sea is geographically unique. Greek harbour and trade installations transformed its shores into a centre of culture about which however, the information available is too scarce to provide an overall, complete picture. What is really needed is a major international interdisciplinary program that would produce a substantial body of research, something at present glaringly absent from international bibliography. Most scholars of the ancient and mediaeval period state ignorance on the subject; the association of the black colour of the sea with their dim, barely lit knowledge is a common joke in scientific circles. So long as crucial knowledge is missing, the history of the Greeks in the Black Sea will remain limited. Local excavational archaeology has not so far succeeded in bringing necessary data to the other historic sciences. Long lasting excavations of ancient Greek, Early Christian and Byzantine towns cover only a part of the famous Ionian and Byzantine “lake”, as the Euxine Pontus was called from the seventh BC to the thirteenth century AD. It is hard to find translations of any relevant scientific articles.
The Greeks in the Black Sea
08 Aug 2012
by Archaeology Newsroom
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