Documentary Contexts for the ‘Pistiros Inscription’

Summary

Abstract: This preliminary study of the so-called ‘Pistiros Inscription’ challenges the dominant interpretation of the document that has crystallized in the years since its preliminary publication, namely, that the inscription somehow guarantees the rights of traders operating within Pistiros. A reexamination of the rhetorical structure of the inscription and a reconstruction of the inscription's relationship with preexisting documents on this subject, which are not extant, raises the possibility that the function of the inscription was somewhat different than the communis opinio: the ‘Pistiros Inscription’ appears to have supplemented earlier regulation concerning Pistiros and to have attempted to limit the authority of an official, possibly a Thracian royal, who exercised dramatic power within Pistiros.

Keywords: Pistiros, the ‘Pistiros Inscription’, the Odrysian kings, Kotys.

Introduction

In 1988 a program of systematic archaeological research began at a Classical and early Hellenistic site located at Adzhiyska Vodenitsa, near Vetren, Bulgaria, in the upper Maritsa (anc. Evros) valley, close to the western edge of the Thracian plain. This project, initially led by Mieczysław Domaradzki, the great Polish archaeologist and historian of ancient Thrace, brought together an international team of scholars. Their excavations revealed a Classical and Hellenistic settlement that complicates traditional assumptions about the urban development of this area of the eastern Balkans and its associated economies. In 1990, soon after the excavations at Adzhiyiska Vodenitsa began, there was discovered a large, granite block with a lengthy, partially preserved inscription from the nearby site of Assar Dere, located some 2 km to the northeast of Adzhiyiska Vodenitsa.