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Ecology and Beyond 97
by sea. Archaeological evidence offers many other examples,
such as the recently explored case of the small port of Aperlae in
Lycia, which exported murex from which purple dye was
made. 9
Some remarks can already be appended to this presentation
of a microregional exchange. First, it should be stressed that
beyond a few miles these relatively short-distance transports by
sea required nonetheless a form of specialized activity and a
comparatively elaborate ship technology. Representations of
ships might already appear on the ‘frying pans’ of Syros.
They show ships of considerable size, with seemingly elaborate
equipment. 10 It has rightly been supposed that a division of
labour existed as early as the Bronze Age. 11 Already in that
period we must assume the existence of ‘professional sailors’,
that is of people for whom sailing was perhaps not the only
occupation, but at least an activity that occupied a large part of
their time. These people had acquired specialized know-how.
In the Aegean, for instance, they were able to sail from the
island of Melos to the continent. The Bronze Age was clearly
a period of innovation in the construction and manning of
sailing ships. 12 A counter-example might seem to be provided
in a later period by the seventh-century bc Greek poet Hesiod
(after the Bronze Age). In his Works and Days, he presented the
case of a peasant whose experience at sea was quite limited. 13
But precisely the point he makes shows that others were far
more experienced than he was: a Boeotian peasant on his small
bark could sail across the gulf to reach Corinth or Sikyon, but
he could not expect to go any further. This form of small-scale
sea-transfer may always have existed, but was nothing else than
a purely local cabotage.
And we should not lose sight of the fact that land transport
always played a very important role. From the neolithic and the
9
R. L. Hohlfelder and R. L. Vann, ‘Cabotage at Aperlae in Ancient
Lycia’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 29 (2000), 126–35.
10
J. Guilaine, La Mer partagée:LaMéditerranée avant l’écriture 7000–
2000 avant Jésus-Christ (Paris, 1994), 52–7.
11
Ibid. 61–2.
12
S. Wachsmann, Seagoing Ships and Seamanship in the Bronze Age Levant
(College Station, Tex., 1998).
13
Hesiod, Works and Days, 618–94.