Maritime trade in the Gulf: The 11th and 12th centuries
Abstract In the eleventh century, the great port of Siraf collapsed, and was replaced by Kish. The latter, however, never attained the size or wealth of Siraf. The ‘failure’ of Kish is a symptom of a depression in the maritime trade of the Gulf, caused by a decline in demand for imported goods in Iran and Iraq. This decline, attributed to political fragmentation following the fall of the Buyids, was aggravated by the diversion of trade to the Red Sea. The historical and the archaeological data on these events point to fundamentally similar conclusions.
The sea of Venice: new cities and the Adriatic Mediterranean Economy
settlement with very similar characteristics developed slightly earlier: Comacchio. While the archaeology of Venice’s earliest times is still elusive, Comacchio is well known archaeolo gically and can serve for comparison. Recent excavations at Comacchio have shown that a settlement on small islands had suddenly developed between the 6th and 7th centuries. Archaeological finds show that it was economically oriented and crafts were a mainstay. At the beginning of the 8th century, Comacchio was stable enough to deal directly with the Lombard Kingdom in northern Italy for trading on the Po River and its tributaries. This is attested by an exceptional Before Venice The Byzantine patrikios Theodosios Baboutzikos arrived in Venice from Constantinople in 840 ce and, according to the written sources, remained there a year. Venice was a new city that had not existed in classical antiquity. It had surprisingly sprung up in the midst of a lagoon in the upper part of the Adriatic Sea – an unlikely spot for a traditional city, but a characteristic location for a newly developing maritime society. At a time interpreted by modern scholars as a general decline of established Mediterranean towns, the northern Adriatic appears instead to have been experiencing unusual ‘ferment’. This phenomenon was not generally connected with the ancient urban centres, but seemed to favour new spaces, once uninhabited (or sparsely populated): often marginal sites, such as lagoons, but in excellent locations for commerce (inland and along the coast) and far enough away from the existing centres of strong political powers. These ‘grey zones’ favoured the emergence of new communities and new aristocracies, oriented in the construction of new opportunities related to transport and navigation, but they were not yet totally disconnected from land ownership. Venice was not an isolated incident. To the south 160 km, another lagoonal sauro gelichi
A Hopewellian Burial Site in the Lower Republican Valley, Kansas
The senior author has for a number of years worked on the problem of the numerous and virtually unknown burial sites on the bluffs bordering the valley of the Republican River in Geary and Clay Counties, Kansas. This work has been a matter of some urgency, owing to the prevalence of unsystematic amateur excavation on the more prominent stone cairns found in the area. Fortunately, the complete excavation of the larger cairns involves too much labor for the merely curious, and it has often been possible to salvage material and information despite disturbance.