Re: France's earliest winery found


"Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthicum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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On Jul 17, 9:22 am, "Uwe Müller" <uwemuel...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Jack Linthicum" <jacklinthi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im
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On Jul 15, 3:26 am, "Uwe Müller" <uwemuel...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:>
"Hayabusa" <peregr...@xxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im

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On Fri, 13 Jul 2007 14:53:34 +0200, "Uwe Müller"
<uwemuel...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip >

The Laubenheimer papers are not as accurate?


http://books.google.com/books?>>id=aXX2UcT_yw8C&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=roman+
wi


ne+marseilles+katz&source=web&ots=eqlbJjpYx6&sig=QneH_CB6PezOYJhp00WVvijH9I
A

"a virtual monopoly of the French wine trade was achieved by
Marseilles during the 5th and 4th Century BC."

The term 'virtual monopoly' is nice. We know there was an exchange of
goods,
but many, including me, would demand convincing evidence before accepting
'trade' as the way they managed the exchange.

If trade was accepted, it would still be the question, if it took the
form
of neighbourhood trade or of a long distance trade controlled by one end
of
the connection, or anything inbeween the two.

Nothing I have seen suggests any kind of central control reaching across
France to sustain a monopoly. I'd doubt any kind of monopoly for that
time.
The case for wine being traded is, afaik, without real evidence. We only
know about containers, metall and ceramics, being passed up North.

Added to that is the question of dating, they seem to address the period
from the defeat of the karthaginian-etruscan fleet till the end of the
early
Latène burials.

So how would the evidence for a 'monopoly in the French wine trade ...
during the 5th and 4th c. BC' look like? A handfull of amphorae likely
from
Marseille. No point of origin for most of the other non-local ceramics,
some
Corinthian and some Athenian black-figure ware. Not very convincing. And
wouldn't we have to assume one trade monopoly for wine, and other
connections for ceramics, metal goods, jewellery, furniture etc. ? That
is
just the stuff we know about, what about organic materials, especially
raw
silk?

It's a nice assertion, but it omits much of the evidence. It may even
have
been copied accurately from other scholarly works. But without evidence I
would not believe it.

have fun

Uwe Mueller

How does 2 million gallons sound like, a local trade? The evidence is
tied into JSTOR and similar publication sources which I will not pay
for. Here is a review of what is considered the most important article
on the subject:

It is estimated that 2.2 million gallons of Greek wine were shipped to
France each year through the port that is now Marseilles.
http://www.answers.com/topic/wine-from-classical-times-to-the-nineteenth-ce
ntury

There is no evidence nor a date given for that figure. Two paragraphs above
it is said "by the third century B.C.E. there was a veritable wine industry
in the region; talking about Greece." Let's give it the benefit of doubt and
say that after the 3rd c. BCE the wine trade through Marseille was huge.


"In an article published in the Journal of Anthropological
Archaeology, "Driven by Drink," Michael Dietler, Associate Professor
in Anthropology, argues that the introduction of wine into the
societies of southern France in the seventh century B.C. significantly
changed social and power relations.

link inserted from below http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/960215/dietler.shtml


So important was the trade in wine to the region that it provided an
impetus for development of the area surrounding the Mediterranean port
of Marseilles, which was founded as a Greek colony about 600 B.C.

Dietler argues that wine became a driving force in the development of
the region because it could be used as a reward for men engaged in
community labor projects and in political rituals of hospitality.

Other scholars have contended that the introduction of wine to the
region was just one facet of a more general process of Hellenization
-- societies throughout the Mediterranean region adopted wine
drinking, along with other aspects of Greek culture, based on their
admiration for the achievements of classical Greek civilization.

That omits the common European Bronze Age background.
And it omits, that Etruria had provided goods from Greek and the far more
sophisticated Punic traders before that. But while southern France was
pretty much at the end of the world for Etruscan trade, with Marseille they
had a first rate connection to the Greek trade.


In Dietler's view, however, the pleasure and social role of drinking
took precedence over any respect for Greek ways of life when a society
adopted elements of the Greek culture of wine drinking.

Dietler's work on the role of alcoholic beverages in ancient society
has helped establish a new model for the study of prehistoric cultures
that used wine as a form of exchange, and he has shown how this
exchange can help explain the contours of ancient political
structures.

Wine consumption may be used as an indicator, but it is in no way the sole
or central agens of change. The introduction of horse riding, the heavily
armed phalanx and iron technology undermined the structure of Bronze Age
societies.


Drinking in ancient France

Dietler's fieldwork is centered in southern France, where he excavates
sites associated with the wine trade in pre-Roman times. Evidence for
the importance of wine shipping is abundant throughout France, where
contemporary farm plows often uncover shards of ancient amphorae used
to transport wine.

Before the arrival of the Greek traders, the people living in the
region around Marseilles drank brews made of fermented grain and
honey. But imported wine from the Etruscans of Italy soon became
popular about a generation before the founding of Marseilles.

I wonder about the archaeologic reasoning and dating for the last sentence.


"Imported Mediterranean wine was then incorporated into traditional
patterns of feasting and hospitality and used, along with native forms
of drink, to mobilize labor and build prestige," said Dietler.

That does not sound like a trade monopoly.


People did not adopt the Greek methods of drinking wine, however,
which included mixing wine with water. The early people of southern
France preferred to drink their wine unadulterated, and they also
chose to forego the elaborate rituals associated with wine drinking in
Greece.

Is there any archaeologic evidence for the unmixed drinking thing? Or is he
just following ethnic topoi of roman literature?


Imported wine apparently had special appeal because it was less
perishable than the native grain- or honey-based drinks,

One of the most common complains about wine before modern hygienic
production was that it had turned sour.

and it could
be stored and transported easily. As an imported good, it also
conveyed more status than did the indigenous drink. And unlike gold
and other precious metals, which retained value without being
consumed, wine was valuable only when used.

"A ruler could thus augment his prestige, assure the support of a
larger group of warriors or followers, or step up production for trade
or public projects through drink-rewarded [recruited] labor," Dietler
writes in "Driven by Drink."

If I look at the distribution of imported raw materials, worked in the
region, I prefer the prestige goods economy model. Where wine is one among
many other prestigeous objects dsitributed through a central authority.


Wine and systems of power

Dietler also contends that the use of wine reveals the distribution of
power throughout the region. Wine was used in the Marseilles region in
ways that differed markedly from the ways it was used in the north,
for example, in the Hallstatt region, a Celtic area in and around
Burgundy that had a better-defined system of social hierarchy.

Just what I said.


Imported drinking vessels used in the northern area were more
elaborate than those used in the south, according to Dietler.

If you think of the golden drinking bowls made in the Nordic Area, the idea
seems well beside the point. The question is rather, which part of the
contemporary vessels do we know. The Hellenized world did not furnish
burials with elaborate drinking equipment, the Barbarians did. Is that
enough to say, the Hellenized world did not have any elaborate drinking
vessels?

Indeed,
one of the most elaborate wine vessels ever discovered from antiquity,
a bronze wine vessel more than five feet tall, was unearthed in the
Burgundy region.

Yes, there is not one comparable krater in the whole hellenistic world.
Their metal value had caused them to be resmelted. We don't even know if
there were kraters as big as that from Vix in the Hellenized world. The Vix
piece was probably made to order and transported in pieces to be put
together in Burgundy. It carried greek markings showing how to connect the
parts. The burial containing the Vix krater, and many other valuable goods,
was btw. one of a woman.


"In hierarchical systems, ritual drinking practices would be valued
mainly for their symbolic functions, and imported drinking gear could
be extremely useful in differentiating elite drinking even where the
supply of exotic drink was meager or irregular," said Dietler.

In less hierarchical societies, such as those around Marseilles,
"exotic drink would be valued more for its use in fulfilling status
obligations of political authority through transfers in the form of
hospitality," he said. For example, wine might be used to reward
laborers in work-party feasts.

The verdict of 'less hierarchical society' seems to rest solely on burial
data. As does the 'more hierarchical society' judgement about the Burgundy
and Champagne regions. I doubt both.

The less hierarchical societies thus required a greater abundance of
wine than did societies in which wine use was reserved for the elite.

If a product is abundant, it is not prestigeous. If a good is prestigeous,
it is not abundant.
In short, wine did not play the same role in areas where it was frequent as
it did in areas where it was scarce. Who would have thought of that? :-)


Conveniently, Marseilles was much easier to reach through the sea
trade routes than was the Hallstatt region, which required a trip up
the Rhone Valley.

Unconveniently, the Alpine region (what is termed the Hallstatt region in
archaeologic lingo) provides an indigenous branch of art, the art of the
situla, depicting symposia, wine drinking etc. And that is even farther away
from Marseille.

A model for prehistoric development

The use of wine in these two contrasting cultures of ancient France,
one more egalitarian than the other, demonstrates how the introduction
of wine transformed the economic and political dynamics of prehistoric
societies, Dietler suggests.

Wine consumption, or rather the presence of drinking vessels connected with
wine consumption, has long been declared one marker for a more hierarchical
system. The idea behind that was, that together with the wine equipment
political, economical and technological changes were introduced into the
receiving communities. If I understand Dietler correct, he proposes, that
the demand for wine in the hinterland forced the egalitarian coastal people
into adopting all these changes from the north. But in that case wine
vessels imported from the south would not be indicators of social change in
the north anymore.

I think this argument is not correct.


In hierarchical societies, wine became a vehicle to reinforce the
power structure. "There might well be competition among individual
members of the elite group in a community or among leaders of
neighboring groups, in terms of access to trade sources and
manipulation of status display and hospitality," said Dietler. "But
the fundamental internal power arrangements would remain unchanged."

The archaeologic picture shows a multitude of late Bronze 'central' sites
with long distance connections. Only a few of those devolve into early iron
age centres of exchange, most of those are situated at places where modes of
transportation would have been changed, for instance from boat to pack
animal. And the late Bronze age graves show only a few indicators of
differences in status.

One theory is, that the Late Bronze age leaders led their communities in
rituals resembling the potlatch, burrying sometimes enourmous hoards of
metal goods. They then managed to transfer that communal wealth into the
wealth of families that buried a deceased member with rich burial goods. And
than some of those families were more succesfull than others in replenishing
their family wealth. This would call for a basic change in internal power
arrangements.

In less centralized societies, the importation of wine could initially
increase the power of men who were already leaders in the community.
However, others could also benefit, and access to wine would then lead
to social competition in which those who could acquire wine could then
mobilize labor for their economic benefit.

Why would the evidence for wine-drinking-vessels than be far away from
communal labour projects and be concentrated at the 'central' or 'princely'
sites?

I don't buy that argument.


It was just this sort of competition for prestige and power among the
people of the lower Rhone Valley that made imported wine such a
socially volatile item. The new entrepreneurs in the prehistoric
society "would be able to host feasts with imported wine and mobilize
labor for production, trade or personal projects without first
building up a resource base in the traditional way," said Dietler.

Wouldn't that contradict what he said about wine being abundant in less
hierarchical societies?

Dietler observes that this new wealth enabled the entrepreneurs to
trade with other indigenous societies, establish other trade links and
secure the resources needed to engage in the importation of metal
goods and other valuable items that were important in local systems of
prestige and politics.

Wholehearted agreement. Wine as one of many prestigeous goods, imported,
worked, and distributed further, to ensure a political following and a
supply of goods wanted by the Greeks or their middlemen in return.

"Drinking is, obviously, not the only social practice through which
relations of economic and political power in a society are reflected
and manipulated," said Dietler. "However, it is very often an
important element in this domain, and it deserves the serious
consideration in prehistoric contexts that it has won in ethnographic
ones."

That is a very good paragraph.


But I found nothing about a monopoly for wine trade. Dietler even proposes
Massilia to be on the receiving end for Greek trade, and of little or no
influence to central and northern French societies, Burgundy and the
Champagne.

For some insights on social and political changes in that time, and what
archaeology can and can not tell about them, you'd best compare the (rather
aged) articles by Frankenstein & Rowlands, The internal structure and
regional context of the early Iron Age society in South-Western Germany. In:
Bull. Inst. Arch. 15, 1978, 73-113 (on burial data), with Haerke, Settlement
Types and Settlement Patterns in the West Hallstatt Province: An Evaluation
of Evidence from Excavated Sites. BAR Intern. Ser. 1979

And your source about the size of the wine trade does not specify the
period. It seems to mean the 3rd c. not the 5th to 4th c.

A 'virtual' monopoly.

have fun

Uwe Mueller



.

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