Fishing and Greek colonisation in the Black Sea during Antiquity, International congress, Aix-en-Provence (3th-4th June 2021) - Aix-Marseille University

International audience According to Polybius (IV, 38), goods exported from the Black Sea included salted fish, suggesting that fishing played an important role in the colonisation process along the Pontic shores, possibly from a very early date (Dupont 2007). However, in addition to the question of the containers used for this trade, raised by J. Lund (2005) and V. Gabrielsen (2005), there is also the issue of eventual discrepancies between sources and archaeological data. Perhaps due to the hasardous preservation of archaeological structures, or simply to a geographic imbalance in research, studies have until now revealed evidence of fish drying and salting mainly in the northern Pontic region, during a period that came after the testimony of Polybius. Nonetheless, careful analysis of ancient sources reveals the full range of complex factors involved in fishing in a region where species were zoned and subject to seasonal migration. A dichotomy between northern and southern Black Sea coasts, in addition to the distinctive characteristics of the deltas punctuating the north and northwest shores, may have had an impact on the resources produced, as enlightened by the Franco-Romanian archaeological mission around Orgame at the settlements of the Golovita lagoon (Baralis et al. 2017). Varied local resources, such as highly migratory species, may indeed explain different fishing management strategies, which in turn would have shaped local and regional exchange networks, including those stretching over greater distances to connect Pontic colonies with the Aegean world. Some fifteen years after the very promising symposium held at the University of Aarhus (2003), it is time to re-examine this key issue for the understanding of the colonial process in the Pontic region, particularly in light of the recent synthesis by T. Bekker-Nielsen (2016) and the latest studies carried out in the northern Black Sea region and Danube delta. The goal of this symposium is to shed light on the latest data, with a special focus on ...