Following the early maritime routes from the Adriatic to Greece

Summary

During Late Bronze Age it was not unusual to find objects of Mycenaean origin at any part of eastern and central Mediterranean. The only area that seems to have been omitted from Mycenaean naval routes was the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland. However, during earlier times that coast was not as marginal to the Aegean world. The period in question was Early Bronze Age when Cetina Culture saw its birth in the valley of the eponymous river in the hinterland of the eastern Adriatic coast. The pottery typical of the Cetina Culture subsequently spread to the Italian and northern Adriatic coasts, central Balkan Peninsula, Albania, and the Aegean. It is fairly safe to suggest that such a wide radius of pottery dissemination was a product of an economic exchange. Bronze objects discovered in the Cetina tumuli leads us to conclude that metal was obtained through trade, and that the Cetina people obviously traded their pottery (or its contents) for metal. The distribution of the Aegean sites with imported Cetina pottery suggests that they lay along a route by which the Cetina people travelled towards Aegean sources of raw materials, perhaps even towards the Laurion mine itself.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

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