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Emporion

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Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

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Introduction

An emporion, usually translated into English as a commercial settlement, trading post, or port of trade, was a location where commercial exchange took place. Archaic and classical sources name 24 Greek emporia, and Hellenistic and Roman sources mention over 100 different sites that they call emporia. The sites can be found throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Black Sea region. Ancient sources do not provide a great deal of information on what emporia were, and few known emporia have been excavated extensively. Consequently, it has been difficult to define the term “emporion.”

Definition

The most comprehensive analysis thus far compares the language ancient sources used to describe emporia with what we know about these settlements from other literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources (Hansen 2006). This interdisciplinary approach has shown that an emporion was a coastal location where commercial exchange took place in self-governing poleis(city-states). When...

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Further Reading

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Denise Demetriou

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  1. Denise Demetriou
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Correspondence to Denise Demetriou .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

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Demetriou, D. (2014). Emporion. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_932

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_932

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

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