Maritime Small Worlds

The use of the term small world to describe a kind of social network is now widespread in sociology, anthropology, ancient history, and archaeology (e. g., Broodbank 2000: 175—210; Pullen and Tartaron 2007; Sherratt and Sherratt 1998; Watts 1999; Watts and Strogatz 1998), but as a concept it is defined and applied in various, sometimes incompatible, ways. Explicit definition is therefore essential, and my formulation of the small world follows from the logic of the maritime cultural landscape framework as the most local-level aggregation of nodes, that is, coastscapes. Maritime small worlds are interaction spheres that form as aggregates of many neighboring coastscapes; they might also be called local worlds. Their cohesion results from, and they are in fact constituted by, habitual face-to-face interaction based on proximity and various kinds of social and economic ties. The communities that make up a small world commonly share cultural traditions, language, social networks such as kinship ties and intermarriage, mutual protection arrangements, and dense economic relations. Often they are united by economic interdependence if resources are unevenly distributed or if subsistence is precarious.

As noted above, the political and economic organization of small worlds may be characterized by the presence or absence of hierarchy; often the horizontal ties of coastscape communities are more prominent than ranking or vertical hierarchies. In Chapter 7 We shall see how a Bronze Age small world in the Saronic Gulf oscillated between cohesion and fragmentation, and it will also be possible to consider economic hegemony as distinct from political control.

Intervisibility can be an important component of the cohesion of small worlds. Lines of sight are perhaps the most powerful integrative factor in the phenomenological world of a coastal dweller or mariner (Horden and Purcell 2000: 124—26). Chains of mutual visibility among coastscapes give an experiential impetus to the coalescence of small worlds, but universal intervisibility rarely extends to an entire Aegean small world, owing to the mountainous and complex topography. Some landscapes lend themselves well to the formation of small worlds by their geography and topography, such as semi-enclosed gulfs like the Argolic and Saronic, or long facing coastlines separated by narrow straits, for example the eastern Greek mainland and the western coast of Euboea. Even under the ideal conditions of the Saronic Gulf, whereas Aigina is plainly visible from most coastal locations, parts of the gulf are always invisible from any coastal vantage point. In this case, visibility combines with the peculiar conditions of maritime travel within the confines of the gulf — in contrast to those encountered once outside — to demarcate, at least hypothetically, the outlines of a maritime small world.

Distance and travel time are also crucial variables in the definition of small worlds. Actual linear distance is relevant only in its general relationship to travel time; alone it is an insufficient measure of the effort required to maintain contact between two nodes. A more useful measure of distance is a travel time index that provides a travel path textured by the resistance of sea or land to progress, taking into account, at minimum, the effects of winds and currents. Maritime travel must take into account the common voyage that requires one day out, but four or five days return because of winds and currents. Carl Knappett and colleagues (Knappett et al. 2008: 1021) stress that actual travel times should replace physical distance as quantitative input in network models, but they were not able to quantify this variable in their first attempt (see below). David Conlin (1999: 179—84) presented a mathematical model to simulate the effects of wind and currents on travel time, and Justin Leidwanger (2011) has made a start at texturing the surface of the sea with wind and current data using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. Soon these various trajectories will surely converge so that we can systematically address observations such as that of Agouridis (1997: 19), who points out that environmental conditions can make islands in close geographic proximity “distant" in terms of potential for interaction.

Although travel time parameters are to an extent contingent on specific journeys, habitual face-to-face interaction places broad limits on scale. The geographic extent of a small world depends on the environmental configuration of the seascape (exposure to currents, waves, and weather patterns), seafaring technology, and strength of the relationships among members. These factors tend to be mutually reinforcing at the local level: the greater predictability of weather conditions for short-range journeys promotes access by sea, virtually year-round in many cases. Frequent contact facilitates the establishment of strong economic and social ties, potentially including kinship and social storage relations. As these relations develop, interaction becomes more frequent. Thus begins a history that, because of the density and strength of personal ties, may endure through the boom and bust cycles of larger-scale political and economic entities. Durable is not the same as immutable, however. Small worlds are not immune to the effects of environmental shifts or catastrophes, internal conflict and power shifts, or external developments.

The maximum daily range of a Bronze Age sailing ship of between 100 and 150 kilometers (Broodbank 2000: 345, table 12; Knappett et al. 2008: 1014, opt for the lower figure of 100, which I follow here) should set the outer limits of what we might call “local," and thus the greatest expanse of a LBA maritime small world from end to end. Beyond this, we move into the realm of open-sea or night voyaging, with their requirements of advanced skills and knowledge and the higher probability of unfamiliar seas and coasts, as well as unforeseen weather emergencies. In practice, even if we imagine short hops on long itineraries, the norm for a small world should be smaller in scale. The fishing boat, the rowboat, and the coasting vessel would be more the rule than the large sailing ship, which might operate from a major harbor (Table 6.1). By contrast, smaller boats would require only informal anchorages offering a sandy strand, or even something like the innumerable tiny docks bearing the name skala (from the Italian scala) for the few rock-cut steps used to board a vessel (Constantakopoulou 2007: 222—23). Maritime travel within the small world would thus remain primarily in the realm of the nonspecialist.

Specific to the small world are three specialized applications of social and economic connectivity that are worthy of mention as distinctive of the Mediterranean: the phenomena of the “goat island"; the porthmeutike, or short-distance ferrying of goods, people, and animals; and the peraia, here defined as a coastal region controlled by an island lying opposite (Constantakopoulou 2007: 200— 26).3 Goat islands refer somewhat more generally than the name suggests to small, offshore islands and islets (inhabited or uninhabited) that are used to expand agricultural and pastoral production. These have been a prominent feature of Aegean seascapes since antiquity: Christy Constantakopoulou (2007: 200—14) documents many Aegean examples from ancient literary and epigraphic sources, beginning with Thrinacia, where Helios' cattle and sheep were pastured in the Odyssey (12.127—30), and mentions several modern instances. Others have substantiated this practice with archaeological and ethnographic evidence, as for example, in the work of Nick Kardulias, Timothy Gregory, and colleagues in the area of the Saronic Gulf. Their teams performed architectural and surface artifact surveys on a number of offshore islands and islets, and if those were occupied, they interviewed residents. On the small, waterless island of Evraionisos in the western Saronic Gulf (dimensions 1000 x 400 meters), they found evidence of many periods of use, most prominently LBA and Late Roman (Kardulias et al. 1995). The discovery of LH IIIB and IIIC artifacts, along with the foundations of fortification walls possibly of Mycenaean date, is consistent with widespread evidence of use of near-shore islands in the LBA (Hope Simpson 1981). The presence of cisterns, fortifications, and other durable structures suggested to the researchers the exploitation of marginal niches during times of economic and demographic expansion (Kardulias et al. 1995: 17). The island, lacking water and arable land, could be used as a lookout and for grazing sheep and goats, but it could not long sustain occupation without a lifeline to the mainland. The success of productive activity on what amount to tiny rocks protruding from the sea depended on certain conditions of connectivity; specifically, the economic expansion of the Mycenaean palatial period made the exploitation of Evraionisos viable by enhancing connectivity and incorporating new nodes into an ever denser web — in this case at the level of the small world.

Ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological work directed by Kardulias on the island of Dokos off the coast of the southern Argolid examined the adaptations of modern herders (Kardulias 2000). These observations help to fill in the many gaps in our knowledge of the use of such islands in antiquity with plausible adaptation scenarios. Dokos, also waterless, is more strategically located than Evraionisos on a sealane between Cape Malea and Athens. Yet in a variety of ways, the inhabitants are equally dependent upon external connections for survival. In order to make optimal use of their scarce resources, they have adopted a mixed subsistence and settlement strategy. Kardulias learned that the 22 families living on Dokos in 1945 herded sheep and goats, grew wheat and olives, maintained domestic gardens, foraged for wild plants, and collected water in cisterns for human and animal use. Yet in spite of their risk-buffering behaviors and attempts at self-sufficiency, this economy could only function if articulated to the markets and resources of the larger island of Hydra and the mainland around Hermione. On Hydra they sold animals, cheese, and milk. In addition, many of the men worked away from Dokos for much of the year. Some were sponge divers in far-flung Aegean locations, others did wage work on Hydra, and still others rented pasture on the mainland for about half the year because grazing on Dokos was inadequate. The rent for these grazing rights was usually paid in kind with milk, cheese, and wool. Thus, even a “goat island" witnessed multifaceted economies (reminiscent of the “traditional" Mediterranean economy: Butzer 1996; Halstead 1987) closely linked to larger economic nodes and structures (Kardulias 2000: 38—39). Evraionisos and Dokos provide an intriguing glimpse at how the small parts of a maritime small world might have fit into the local-scale Bronze Age economy.

The practice of ferrying people across short expanses of sea (porthmeutike) is well attested in Greek literature and inscriptions; the routes between Attica and the Saronic islands and between the Greek mainland and Euboea seem to have been especially heavily traveled in classical times (Constantakopoulou 2007: 222—26). This sort of short-distance traffic must have been a ubiquitous feature and a fundamental mechanism of connectivity in a small world: a lifeline for inhabitants of offshore islands, and the means to maintain social ties among coastal communities. Interestingly, Kardulias' informant on Dokos used one of his own boats to transport tourists to and from the various coastal towns and islands in the vicinity (Kardulias 2000: 42).

The island—peraia relationship that Constantakopoulou describes from literary and epigraphic sources for the Classical and Hellenistic Aegean involves a powerful island state possessing coastal lands on the mainland opposite; often these territories were quite large, but susceptible to expansion or contraction with shifting political fortunes. Such relationships could have existed in the Bronze Age, but it is important to note that Constantakopoulou's peraiai are explicitly political possessions, even if a primary motivation for holding one must often have been economic (e. g., control of mines or agricultural land). Certainly there were powerful island centers in the Bronze Age Aegean,4 But control of any kind extending to the mainland, economic let alone political, is something to be demonstrated and not assumed. This question will be addressed in Chapter 7 With regard to Aigina's relationship with Saronic coastal settlements.

How and why, then, do small worlds cohere? My definition is intended to address that question. Connectivity and interaction explain how, but the question why is more complex and less amenable to resolution by archaeological means. Small worlds are not determined solely by environment or geography, although proximity is tautologically essential to their configuration. Despite the fundamental influence of environmental factors, small worlds are “culturally defined unities" (Broodbank 2000: 175) that result from conscious decisions to forge connections with nearby communities. In constructing his network analysis of EBA Cycladic interaction spheres, Broodbank (2000: 176—77) considered population growth, maritime travel ranges, and climatic variability with respect to resources as potential engines for the formation of local-scale interaction spheres, before deciding to emphasize the first of these. In Broodbank's model, population increase (simulating the rise in population from the Neolithic to the peak of complexity in EB II) altered the number, size, density, and location of small-world clusters in the Aegean; a similar outcome might be expected for an analysis tracking population rise on mainland Greece from the EH III—MH II demographic crash through the Mycenaean palatial period.

Renfrew (1993: 10—11) enumerated eleven social and economic motivations for travel to engage in various types of material - and nonmaterial-oriented interactions: to trade one's goods, to obtain others' goods, to participate in social gatherings, to seek knowledge or wisdom that will impart prestige, to visit a distant holy place as a pilgrim, to train or learn a skill, to find work or a better living situation, to serve as a mercenary, to find a spouse, to visit relatives or friends, and to serve as a sanctioned emissary. From this list we might extrapolate some more specific strategies that center on social ties that helped to bind communities into small worlds. The dispersal of kin or descent groups may originate in periods of low population density and limited mobility, when communities must look outward for intermarriage as a way to widen the gene pool and ensure reproductive viability, and for economic accommodations to counteract resource variability or unforeseen shortfalls. Along with these relationships come various social obligations that might include periodic gatherings for feasts or other kinds of rituals promoting solidarity and group identity. The maintenance of kinship ties by means of inter-island voyaging has been the topic of detailed ethnographic studies, particularly in Oceania (e. g., Hage and Harary 1996; Hage and Marck 2002). We might also imagine economic interests born not of necessity but of desire: both within and beyond small worlds, we observe in the archaeological record a widespread preference for Melian obsidian over locally available chert for stone tool manufacture, or for Aiginetan cooking and storage pottery over locally manufactured functional equivalents.

We should also consider certain proximity effects. The phenomenology of lines of sight among island and mainland coasts created an everyday visual world that invited interaction and inhibited isolation. The rough geographic limits that I have suggested for small worlds distinguish them from larger spheres of interaction because they represent a range of routine travel without the need for specialized nautical and navigational technology (given the technology of the time). To emphasize the point that small worlds should be more stable over time than larger spheres of interaction, we can observe in the historical record that favorable economic and political conditions for cross-cultural, long-distance trade wax and wane: complex networks collapse, as the great eastern Mediterranean state system did circa 1200 BC; the seas may be infested with pirates, etc. Under any conditions, small worlds may lack the capacity to participate in larger interaction spheres. Thus, small worlds would be characterized by certain kinds of economic transactions involving face-to-face trading between producers and consumers, or small-scale redistribution from key coastal nodes. In Renfrew's framework, home-base reciprocity, boundary reciprocity, central-place redistribution, central-place market exchange, and localized down-the-line trade could all exist in a small world (see Fig. 2.5). Yet any small world could contain a major harbor — even a colonial enclave or port of trade —that articulated the local area to regional or interregional networks, bringing in other forms of interaction, including cabotage or directed emissary trade. In such cases, the different spheres of interaction blend, and it may not be possible to separate them, either conceptually or in the archaeological record. For example, the Pseira (Hadjidaki and Betancourt 2005—2006, 2006) and Point Iria (Phelps et al. 1999) shipwrecks are compatible with small-world connectivity. But we cannot be sure whether the Point Iria ship was Cypriot, having traveled a very long distance to Crete and then to the Argolid; a Cretan ship moving Cypriot goods with their own; or a local boat plying the Argolic Gulf with nonlocal transport vessels that had been recycled numerous times — and still other scenarios are possible. We can speak more confidently about short-haul trade regarding the Pseira ship. The spread of material at the wreck site, along with the utilitarian function and local provenience of the MM IIB transport amphoras and hole-mouthed jars in fabrics of the Mirabello region (Hadjidaki and Betancourt 2005—2006: 84—85; P. P. Betancourt, personal communication, 2011), indicate a small ship operating in a small maritime world centered on the Gulf of Mirabello.

There are several models of local - or small-scale maritime networks in the ancient Aegean, but their logic and geographic scale do not necessarily match those presented here. As is the case for coastscapes, Horden and Purcell's microregions and “definite places" may be entirely terrestrial, and when they include coasts, they may also encompass several interior zones. The “mini island networks" of Constantakopoulou (2007: 176—227) are more in line with the scale and maritime focus of my small worlds; however, they are explicitly political clusters of islands and it is not clear how she would map economic networks for the Classical and Hellenistic Aegean. Sherratt and Sherratt (1998) include the term small world in the title of an oft-cited article, but the text has little to do with local-scale connectivity, and in fact the term itself is not repeated in the body of the article. If anything, the networks they describe are long-distance and cross-cultural. Similarly, Irad Malkin envisions Greek colonization of the eighth to sixth centuries “ . . . turning the vast Mediterranean and the Black Sea into a 'small world'" (Malkin 2011: 5).5 This radically more expansive definition follows closely the “small world networks" as imagined by social network analysts (Watts and Strogatz 1998). In social network theory, small-world networks emerge when the addition of a few key links joins smaller, neighboring clusters, creating paths and shortcuts to more distant clusters. The network proximity of these models need not equate to physical proximity (Leidwanger 2011: 89). To be sure, shortcuts and direct long-distance connections link small worlds (or coastscapes within small worlds) to regional and interregional networks, even by bypassing the members of the local small world altogether. When they do so, however, they are not operating in small-world spheres of interaction (as I understand them), either geographically or conceptually.

My small worlds find closer parallels with the “clusters" of social network analysis (Scott 1991: 129—33). Clusters are aggregates of points (or nodes) that form high-density areas in a network graph, and that separate from other clusters. Since not all points within such a cluster need be adjacent (e. g., the cluster can be elongated with many points intervening between end members; Scott 1991: 131, fig. 7.2:ii), this pattern of network proximity could be comparable to the geographic configuration of an elongated maritime small world with many coastscapes arrayed along its length. An entity that exists below the level of the cluster is the “neighborhood," which encompasses all the points to which a given point is adjacent, or connected directly by a single line or step. Thus, conceptually at least, clusters could correlate with my definition of small worlds and neighborhoods with fragments thereof consisting of neighboring coastscapes, but caution is warranted regarding the concept of distance. The Distance between two points in a network analysis is defined as the length of the shortest path connecting them, where the length of a path equals the number of lines and intervening points it takes to get from one point to the other. This may or may not approximate a realistic travel itinerary, but in any case it does not represent geographic distance and it does not address social or environmental friction to interaction.

Broodbank's small worlds seem to provide the closest fit. He repeatedly refers to small worlds as “local worlds" or “local interaction networks" (Broodbank 2000: 175—76), and by locating a number of small worlds within the Cyclades, adopts a geographical scale that is commensurate in magnitude with those I advocate, for example within the Saronic or Argolic Gulf. Many of his criteria for linking nodes into networks, mentioned above, are adopted in the chapter to follow when practicable. The most important criterion for his network analysis, population change, will be difficult to quantify for many periods in the absence of good cemetery data. Along similar lines, James Wright (2010) has proposed that social groups in the Bronze Age Aegean formed at scales he calls local, locality, and regional. For Wright, the local consists of a community and its territory, and the locality embraces several interlinked communities “among which interaction is so common as to regard them as extensions of each community" (Wright 2010: 806). In principle, local and locality correlate closely with my notions of coastscape and small world, respectively, although many of Wright's examples are drawn from internal valleys with primarily or exclusively overland interactions. In a more maritime context, Wright (2010: 808) wonders whether the island of Aigina was a single locality or rather consisted of multiple localities in the MBA. This is a question that searches beyond the coastscape to explore the internal relations of an island, analogous with examining the connections of coastal settlements with interior hinterlands. Although this is not the primary focus of the present study, fleshing out these relationships will indeed be a crucial part of the analysis of coastscapes and small worlds.

Lastly, there is the question of whether the earliest Greek literature — Homer or Hesiod — might illuminate the maritime small world. For instance, do the contingents of towns mustering ships in the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad Book 2 make up something like small worlds? Many contingents are composed primarily of men from inland locations, but if we consider the maritime regions of the northeastern Peloponnese, the organization of the realms is curious from the point of view of both network logic and archaeological evidence. Agamemnon's fleet draws men from a vast hinterland stretching north, encompassing the northern Corinthia, and west to the truly distant Achaian towns of Helike and Aigion. Such a realm makes little economic or political sense, given the difficulty of connectivity and the sheer distances over this rugged terrain. Moreover, there is little archaeological evidence to support a direct presence from Mycenae in the northern Corinthia and Achaia, but instead a great interest in the Argolic and Saronic Gulf regions (Pullen and Tartaron 2007; Tartaron 2010), which in the Iliad are controlled by other men. The Saronic Gulf itself is carved into three separate contingents: one from Athens, one from Salamis, and Diomedes' contingent of nine towns on the Saronic and Argolic Gulfs. A political division along these lines could conceivably exist, though nothing like it is known from the Bronze or Early Iron Age. It certainly does not map well onto the logic of the maritime small world in social or economic terms.

Hesiod's adventures in sea trade and his crossing from the Greek mainland to Euboea (Works and Days 619—94) are more credible, reflecting the kinds of interactions one would expect within a small world. The part-time maritime pursuits of the farmer in early Greece, operating as a local-scale merchant of his produce, exemplify the nonspecialist nature of much seafaring in a small-world context. Hesiod's crossing to Euboea to perform at funeral games was likely made on one of many ferries engaged in the kind of porthmeutike routes mentioned above. Despite the omnipresence of the gods in the Works and Days, Hesiod paints a realistic and unflinching portrait of agricultural life and the pragmatics of local politics, one which inspires more confidence in its utility for illuminating small-world activities.