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Ecology and Beyond 99
coast, of the streams and of the winds played a crucial role. The
Black Sea provides the best example perhaps. It was a Greek
lake from archaic times down to the later Roman period. This
high degree of connectivity expressed itself for instance in the
exchange of wine and perhaps also olive-oil amphorae between
the different coasts of the Black Sea, for instance from the
southern towards the western or northern littorals (containers
of Herakleia in Callatis, of Sinope in Olbia and in other sites of
the northern Black Sea, etc.). 16 In the Tyrrhenian Sea, the
Etruscans established a wide process of exchange with Sardinia
and Carthage. 17 Later the lead was taken over by Rome, and the
famous treaties between Rome and Carthage (Polybius 3.22–5)
testify to the continuation of the same process. After comparatively
short periods of war, which in the end saw the destruction
of Carthage in 146 bc, Roman colonization in Africa led to the
development of a new and intensive exchange relationship between
Rome and its province of Africa. Along the coast of
Languedoc and Spain, in the sixth and fifth centuries bc, the
Etruscans regularly exported their wine amphorae and their
bucchero ceramics. 18 An east–west sea route from Sicily to
Iberia through the Balearic Islands existed before the Roman
conquest, attested for instance by the wreck of El-Sec in the
first part of the fourth century bc. 19 The Roman conquest of
Spain intensified these east–west relations, with massive
imports to Rome of Dressel 20 oil amphorae, salt fish, mineral
products, etc. Spain and Carthage were key provinces for imperial
Rome, as was proved when the invasion of Africa by the
Vandals in the fifth century ad. cut the supply of African grain
to the capital of the empire. This is of course history in the
Mediterranean, but set against the background of the longue
16 L. Buzoianu, ‘Types d’amphores hellénistiques découverts à Callatis’, in
Y. Garlan (ed.), Production et commerce des amphores grecques en mer Noire
(Aix-en-Provence, 1999), 201–14, and Y. Garlan, ‘Réflexions sur le commerce
des amphores grecques en mer Noire’, in the same volume, 131–42, with
bibliography, esp. 138–9.
17 M. Gras, Trafics tyrrhéniens archaïques (Rome, 1985).
18 L. Long, P. Pomey, and J.-Chr. Sourisseau, Les Étrusques en mer: Épaves
d’Antibes à Marseille (Marseilles, 2002).
19 A. Arribas, G. Trias, D. Cerdá, and J. de Hoz, ‘L’Épave d’El Sec
(Mallorca)’, Revue des Études Anciennes 89 (1987), 3–4, 13–146.