John Bintliff (Leiden University)

This paper will address the archaeological evidence for changing settlement patterns in Southern Mainland Greece in the longue durée, in the light of our need to understand the relationships of dependency that occurred in rural agriculture and urban economies and how these altered over time. Transformations in the dominant social structures were closely tied with modes of production in town and country, and landscape archaeologists need to view changes in settlement systems through the lens of larger issues, such as the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies relying on different forms of dependent workforce, and the degree to which economies were largely regional or interregional. It will be argued that archaeology and history offer complementary insights into such questions for the ancient Aegean, which can in turn shed light on the wider history of slavery and other forms of institutionalised dependency in the pre-Modern world.