June 2014
·
112 Reads
·
4 Citations
The Black Sea indeed offers a rich tapestry of different ethnicities and cultural groups and their interrelationships. Moreover, this is an area that clearly demonstrates how misleading and mistaken it can often be to impose modern ideas of ethnicity and nationality upon the ancient world. Even ancient authors were confused by the “ethnic” identification of the locals they encountered around the Black Sea, often coining unhelpful, systematizing identities with which multifarious tribes have been burdened ever since; and archaeology can seldom answer many of the questions of the ethnic origin and attribution of those whose material culture it excavates.