Discontinuing Traditions: Using Historically Informed Ethnoarchaeology in the Study of Evros...

P1: FZN/FLF/FLK P2: FMN

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory [jamt] PP009-290249 November 30, 2000 14:27 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2000

Discontinuing Traditions: Using HistoricallyInformed Ethnoarchaeology in the Studyof Evros Ceramics

Olga Kalentzidou1

Ethnoarchaeological studies of pottery primarily focus on the ethnographic pres-ent, often disregarding the role of history in the production of material culture. Thispaper integrates information from historical sources and ethnographic interviewsto better understand stylistic ceramic change. Beginning in the 1920s, undecoratedpots largely replaced decorated pottery in the region of Evros, Greece. I arguethat historically informed ethnoarchaeology provides the key to documenting andunderstanding the concomitant changes in the social context of pottery productionand consumption and the distribution of material culture.

KEY WORDS: pottery; Greece; ethnoarchaeology; historical analysis.

INTRODUCTION

Archaeology’s particular contribution to the social sciences is the study ofdiachronic change. Its focus on material culture creates a unique frame of referencefor reconstructing past lifeways. The often restrictive nature of material culturalremains has prompted archaeologists to seek alternative approaches to the studyof past cultural change. Ethnoarchaeology provides a theoretical framework tointerpret the past through the study of contemporary material culture. Despite thefact that the theoretical and methodological pitfalls of direct analogical reasoninghave been under continuous scrutiny over the last decades (Wylie, 1982), the studyof modern material culture can yield useful information on various aspects of pasthuman activity. Nevertheless, the synchronic emphasis of most ethnoarchaeologi-cal research does not provide archaeologists the temporal depth needed to addressquestions of continuity and change. A more historically informed approach can

1Department of Anthropology, Indiana University, 701 E. Kirkwood Ave, Student Building #130,Bloomington, Indiana 47405.

165

1072-5369/00/0900-0165$18.00/0C© 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation



166 Kalentzidou

initiate a dialectical relationship between the past and the present that may beoverlooked by an emphasis solely on the ethnographic present.

This paper combines the merits of historically informed research with the ad-vantages of ethnographic interviews to understand long-term as well as incrementalchanges in the patterning of material culture. The issue to which this approach isapplied is the sudden shift to undecorated ceramics by potters in northeasternGreece in the early 1900s. This change occurred during a period of socioeconomicdisruption and displacement of ethnic groups that accompanied the decline of theOttoman Empire. My first aim is to show how the combined use of ethnographyand history allows a better understanding of the factors that trigger material culturalchange. I then explore the factors that influenced local potters to begin producingundecorated pots by linking macro-history to local history, examining the impactof world and regional events and the manner in which local conditions shapedindividual responses.

Bringing History into (Ethno-)Archaeology

The degree to which history is considered in, or omitted from, archaeolog-ical explanations directly affects the interpretation of cultural change. Historicalanalysis most often is restricted to the examination of written records and appliedto those archaeological contexts for which such documents exist. This restrictivedefinition of history, although etymologically correct, limits most archaeologistsfrom exploring the usefulness of historical analysis in interpretations of the pastand often excludes people without their own written histories from the produc-tion of academic knowledge (see Spector, 1993, p. 394; Wolf, 1982). The use (ormisuse) of history in archaeology is thus quite varied, depending on the theoreticaloutlook of the archaeologist.

The ambivalent relationship between history and archaeology is rooted in theperceived antithetical goals of the two disciplines: historians expose the actions ofindividuals through textual evidence, whereas archaeologists concentrate on pastcultural groups by examining their material remains (Britton, 1997; Morris, 1997).Because culture–history emphasized description over the explanation of culturalvariability, history and its products were claimed in the 1960s to be “solely ideo-graphic, particularistic and empathic in structure and content” (see Peebles, 1991,p. 113). This approach instigated the preferential study of long-term processesover the reconstruction of specific historical events.

More recent emphasis on context and ideology has ignited a strong interestin the use of historical interpretation for the explanation of cultural change andthe importance of human agency in the production of material culture (Hodder,1982, 1986, 1987; Shanks and Tilley, 1987; Tilley, 1990). Even though archaeol-ogists have gradually realized the potential of historical analysis in their interpre-tations (Bintliff, 1991; Kelly, 1997; Kepecs, 1997; Knapp, 1992; Trigger, 1984),



Importance of Historically Informed Ethnoarchaeology in the Study of Ceramics 167

ethnoarchaeologists, for the most part, still de-emphasize historical evidence (butsee Kus, 1997; Spector, 1993), and ethnoarchaeology is only beginning to addressthe temporal dimension so important to archaeological problems (e.g., Gosselain,2000; Hardin and Mills, 2000; Longacre and Skibo, 1994; Stark, 1991).

The combination of ethnographic research and historical documentation canremedy some of the temporal limitations of ethnoarchaeological work. Here, Ifocus on understanding ceramic change in the historically specific context of thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Evros, Greece. Written historyprovides a broad window onto events that framed the responses of individual actorsin Evros. The specific context of individual action is highlighted by local factors(i.e., the actions and thoughts of potters and consumers), which exemplify theindividual experience of history. Using the wider historical context as a backdrop,I see ceramic change through the dialectic relationship of the social context ofproduction and consumption (after Dietler and Herbich, 1994). It is only throughthis lens that I can critically assess the importance of various factors on the markedchange in the ceramic tradition in the area. These factors include the economicdecline of the Ottoman empire and the consecutive formation of modern ethnicstates in the Balkans, the forced relocation of ethnic communities, as well aschanges in the social use of ceramics.

I concentrate on the pottery workshops in Evros (Figs. 1 and 2), in the townsof Metaxades and Soufli. Their establishment in the first decades of the twentiethcentury illustrates how the historical conjunctures of the Late Ottoman period andthe local response of the Evros potters to consumers’ sentiments and opinionsled to the decision to make only undecorated cooking and storage vessels. In thehistorical background, I describe the pottery workshops that flourished in and nearEvros prior to their establishment in Metaxades and Soufli. A brief introduction tothe history of the area allows the readers to become acquainted with the politicaland social turmoil in which the Evros pottery workshops were established.

Research Methods

In the field I combined historical documentation and ethnoarchaeological re-search to identify some of the complexities involved in the stylistic pottery changesamong the Evros workshops. I consulted historical treatises and official Greek cen-suses regarding the demography and ethnic composition of the area. When avail-able, I also looked at Late Ottoman and Bulgarian sources for census information. Icomplemented the historical data with local narratives through ethnographic inter-views, which clarified details of local ceramic types and identified several Ottomanand post-Ottoman pottery production sites.

Because of the diverse ethnic composition of Evros and its recent history ofethnic turmoil, I interviewed villagers from multiple ethnic and religious back-grounds to assess differences in pottery production and use. I conducted over



168 Kalentzidou

Fig. 1. Map of Greece and other place names mentioned in the text.

250 interviews in 80 villages with local consumers (dopiy: people who were inEvros prior to 1923) and refugees (prosfyges: people who came to Evros after1923) in both open-ended conversations and structured questionnaires that pro-vided information on the villagers’ ethnic origins and economic data, such aspreferred markets and potters. Interviews with 11 potters gave me information onthe historical development of the workshops, the production sequence, and dis-tribution networks. Potters also answered many questions as to pottery types andtheir decoration, or lack thereof. Finally, a trip to Bulgaria provided me with in-valuable written and oral information on the pottery workshops and kinds of potsproduced on the Bulgarian side of the border.




Fig

.2.

Evr

osin

late

Otto

man

times

and

othe

rpl

ace

nam

esm

entio

ned

inth

ete

xt(a

dapt

edfr

omLa

Thr

ace:

Dio

cese

sG

recs

,Div

isio

nsA

dmin

istr

ativ

esT

urqu

es,L

igne

Eth

nogr

aphi

que

deS

anS

tefa

no).



170 Kalentzidou

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The political instability that transformed Ottoman society during the firstdecades of the twentieth century seriously affected material culture patterning inpost-1923 Evros. The creation of new pottery workshops in Evros correspondedtemporally with ethnic unrest and population shifts, as well as an increased demandfor pottery in the area after the demise of neighboring pottery workshops (now inBulgaria and Turkey) that had flourished between the late nineteenth and the earlytwentieth centuries. A recounting of the events that framed Late Ottoman politicalturmoil is thus critical to situating ethnographic evidence in its pertinent historicalcontext.

Late Ottoman Political Events

Evros is a recent addition to the Greek state. It is part of the Department ofThrace, the southern most extension of the Balkan peninsula (Fig. 1). Prior to 1920,Thrace was part of the Ottoman Empire, under the jurisdiction of the Vilayet ofAdrianople (Fig. 2). In the mid 1800s, Thrace became one of the battlegrounds forBalkan nationalism, and territorial claims were made by Bulgaria and Greece in theareas of Thrace where their respective ethnic groups were the leading majorities.Since Ottoman law organized its people according to three main religiousmillets(entities), Orthodox Christian (Rum), Jewish, and Muslim (Sonyel, 1993), ethnicascription was equivalent to religious ascription. Linguistic affiliation and commondescent, secondary signifiers under Ottoman law, became primary emblems ofethnic identity in the latter part of the nineteenth century. As such, they were usedby Greece and Bulgaria to contest and legitimize territorial claims to OttomanThrace.

Widespread ethnic population movements and episodes of genocide in thesouthern Balkan peninsula were precipitated by the 1886 incorporation of NorthernThrace (Eastern Roumelia) into the newly founded Bulgarian State, as well as thetwo Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913) and World War I (1914–1918). During these tu-multuous decades, Greek, Turkish, and Bulgarian irredentism resulted in the forcedevacuation and destruction of many Muslim and Christian villages throughout thesouthern Balkans (Divani, 1995, pp. 54–63). During the Second Balkan War, theethnic Greek populations in Northern Thrace and along the Bulgarian Black Seacoastline were driven out of Bulgaria (Kotzageorgi-Zimari, 1997; Vakalopoulos,1993). The conclusion of the First World War signaled the end of the OttomanEmpire and accelerated the annexation of Western and Eastern Thrace by Greece(1920). The Greek presence in Eastern Thrace lasted until 1922; it was termi-nated by the defeat of Greece in the Greek–Turkish war in Asia Minor, whichresulted in the signing of the Exchange of Minorities Treaty of Lausanne (July 24,1923).




The Treaty not only finalized the current political boundaries between Greece,Turkey, and Bulgaria, but also instigated the “exchange” of religious minoritiesamong the three countries, which ultimately affected the ethnic composition ofeach country. For example, Greece received almost one million refugees after 1922(Ladas, 1932). The population exchanges were violent and created a large numberof refugees in the Balkans. Greek Orthodox Christians, regardless of language,were sent “home” to Greece, whereas most Muslims who resided in Greek andBulgarian territories were relocated involuntarily to Turkey. Under special Treatyprovisions, Evros retained its Muslim Turkish-speaking population, as did WesternThrace. Evros also received a considerable number of Orthodox Christian refugees,including Turkish-speaking Gagauz populations from inner Anatolia, Pontic peo-ple from the Black Sea region, and Christian Arvanites from Eastern Thrace. TheChristian populations of ethnic Greek descent who had occupied most of the vil-lages in Eastern Thrace prior to 1923 literally traded their houses and land withthe Muslim Turkish-speaking villagers who occupied the west bank of the Evrosriver. Soon thereafter, during World War II (1940–1944), the territorial advancesof the Bulgarian State towards Western Thrace challenged the politicalstatus quobetween Greece and Bulgaria. Finally, the Greek Civil War (1945–1949) signaledthe end to a long period of war, population movement, and atrocities in Thrace.

The continuous wars that plagued Thrace from the 1850s until 1949 had onemore important consequence. They diminished the importance of the region ofThrace from a strategic part of the Late Ottoman Empire to merely a divided andcontested Balkan region. Proximity to Istanbul had given Ottoman Thrace a strongvoice in the decision-making processes of the Ottoman Sultanate (Vakalopoulos,1993, pp. 417–491). However, as a result of the wars, by the 1910s and especiallyafter the Exchange of Populations Act of 1923, Thrace was divided geographically,and its economic importance and political clout declined precipitously. Econom-ically, Greek Thrace never recovered from the disruption of trading relationshipsin cities along the Black Sea coast or its political partition from two important re-gional cities, Edirne and Istanbul, now in the newly formed state of Turkey. By the1930s, members of the formerly powerful merchant class of Ottoman Thrace wereeither destroyed financially or had shifted their interests to other Mediterraneanregions. Evros became the northeastern-most prefecture of the Greek state andwas classified as a strategic military area, but received little economic or culturalinvestment from the Greek state.

Late Ottoman Pottery Workshops

The political instability described earlier and concomitant changes in theorganization of production and consumption have obscured documentation andunderstanding of Late Ottoman ceramic production. Pots in late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries Thrace were wheel-made by male potters, except for a few



172 Kalentzidou

isolated examples that involved transhumant groups (Efstratiou, 1992). Althoughinformation on Late Ottoman workshops is still fragmentary, there are generallytwo recognizable types: large-scale workshops which employed several potters ofthe same ethnic and/or religious group and small local workshops organized alongfamily lines.

Large-scale workshops generally were owned and operated on a family basis,but they also employed full-time professionals organized in guilds. They were char-acterized by specialization of labor and intensive production output. Productionwas determined by market demand and adhered to strict guild specifications. Someof these workshops, such as in Canakkale and Ainos, were also nucleated (afterPeacock, 1982, p. 9) by the turn of the nineteenth century. Small-scale workshopswere organized on a household level, and they often employed two or three otherfamilies. Their production was geared toward regional markets and they differedfrom larger workshops in terms of access to markets, lower production output, andseasonality in production (see also Kramer, 1997).

Large nucleated workshops during the Late Ottoman period focused primarilyon the intensive production of decorated pottery. Secondarily, large workshops alsoproduced undecorated kitchen wares. In Eastern and Western Thrace, workshopsidentified as “pottery industries” were located in Didimotiho (Bakirtzis, 1980),Ainos, and Canakkale (Fig. 2). These workshops were renowned for high-qualitydecorated ceramics and the high market value of their wares. They employedmainly Armenians and Greeks, organized in guilds (Kyriazopoulos, 1980, 1984,1991; Korre, 1995, pp. 151–172).

In northern Thrace fewer workshops are known. This may be attributableto a lack of research and limited access to Bulgarian sources, rather than a realabsence of pottery production places. Due to these limitations, I had to rely mainlyon ethnographic interviews and the personal recollections of consumers on bothsides of the Greek–Bulgarian border. Late Ottoman large workshops in northernThrace are not well documented. The pottery “schools” (the term is coined fromBulgarian Textbooks on the pottery produced in several stylistically distinct regionsof Bulgaria by Bulgarians) that are presently located in Orachek and Troyan, nearSofia, were probably established in Late Ottoman times, but flourished after 1890swhen Bulgaria became a separate state. These are all operated by ethnic Bulgarians(Bakurdjiev, 1955; Totevski, 1995).

Local, small-scale workshops organized along family lines met most of theceramic needs of the local agrarian population. Such Late Ottoman local potteryworkshops are not very well documented; ethnographic interviews provided thebest information on their location and organization. The Late Ottoman workshopthat influenced the post-Ottoman pottery workshops in Metaxades and Soufli waslocated in the village of Tsekerdekle, modern Kostalkovo, in southern Bulgaria.Tsekerdekle (Fig. 2) appears to have been a small rural pottery center that wasoperated until 1914, primarily by Greek potters. As one potter put it “olo to horioekane tsoukalia” (“everybody was making ceramics”) at this time. Other small




workshops, such as those in Kavadzik (Lefkimi), Ouzoum-Keuprou, and Kessan(Fig. 2) supplied their customers, through the local bazaars, open seasonal marketsthat continue to play an important role in the Mediterranean economic and socialsystem.

Due to the multiethnic character of the Ottoman Empire, all pottery work-shops served an ethnically diverse clientele (Kalentzidou, 2000). During the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries some of the large and small-scale work-shops declined and the potters relocated due to political and economic upheaval.As a consequence of the Exchange of Minorities Treaty in 1923, most ethnicallyGreek potters in the well-established industries of Asia Minor and Eastern Thracewere moved involuntarily to the south of Greece. Some settled in Western Thrace,where they opened new workshops in towns such as Alexandroupolis, Xanthi, andKomotini (Fig. 2). The workshops in these towns were established by Greek refugeepotters from Ainos, Kir-Kilisse, and Iznik, respectively. The Alexandroupolis andXanthi potters did not produce decorated pots, but they glazed some of their pots.The Komotini potter made decorated and glazed pots (Kyriazopoulos, 1984). Hispots, however, did not make their way to Evros because consumers in Evros andKomotini used different markets. The small local workshops in Metaxades andSoufli also were established in the first decades of the twentieth century. Despitethe movement of skilled potters to Evros and the establishment of new workshops,the pottery produced after 1923 and after the 1930s does not mirror any of thedecorative styles of pre-1923 Evros.2

POST-OTTOMAN POTTERY WORKSHOPS

The annexation of Evros by the Greek State altered the region’s pre-Ottomanethnic composition and set forth a series of important social and economic trans-formations, which ultimately affected the operation of new pottery workshopsin Evros. The observed stylistic changes in post-Ottoman Evros ceramics are il-lustrated in the workshops of Metaxades and Soufli, which monopolized potteryproduction in post-Ottoman Evros.

The Metaxades and Soufli Workshops

Metaxades and Soufli grew from small-scale local workshops to large produc-tion centers and then declined between 1970 and 1980. Brief references to theseworkshops are found in collective works on modern Greek pottery (Kyriazopoulos,1984, pp. 32, 33; Korre-Zografu, 1995, pp. 151–154). Still, little is known about

2The few decorated pots I saw during my fieldwork were concentrated in local Folklore Museums.Their provenance was unknown and at best they can be related stylistically to the ceramic traditionof pre-1920s Bulgaria and Eastern Thrace. The limited number of glazed and decorated pots in localhouseholds were recent imports (post 1970) from Marousi, Athens (Greece), or Troyan (Bulgaria).



174 Kalentzidou

Fig. 3. Local pots from Metaxades and Soufli.Bantia(back),laina (left) andtsoukali(right).

their historical development or their relationship to the markets of their time. To-day, both workshops produce only wheel-thrown “utilitarian” pots (Kalentzidou, inpress) that are characterized by minimal decoration and by a decrease or completeabsence in the use of glaze (Figs. 3 and 4). Although the potter of Soufli has usedan electric wheel since 1970s, and the potter in Metaxades continues to work on atraditional kick-wheel, the variation in the shapes, sizes, and decoration of the potsis negligible between the two workshops (Figs. 3 and 4). Despite their commercialsuccess, these workshops remain family operated businesses and cater exclusivelyto local consumers. Although they sell their ceramics to middlemen and local mer-chants, the potters in both workshops are still the makers and the main distributorsof their products. Occasional help in collecting and drying the clay is provided bytheir wives and other members of the household (Kalentzidou, in press).

Oral interviews have allowed me to place the beginning of the pottery-makingtradition in Metaxades to shortly after 1914. This date corresponds with the end ofthe Second Balkan War and it is directly related to the abandonment of the small-scale pottery workshops in Tsekerdekle.3 Almost all Tsekerdekle villagers were

3Presently, Tsekerdekle (Kostalkovo on Bulgarian maps) is occupied only by an elderly couple. Anattempt to visit them in July 1998 was unsuccessful because Kostalkovo is located in a 10 km militaryarea along the Greek–Bulgarian border. The zone is inaccessible to foreign nationals, except if aspecial permit is issued by the nearby town of Ivailovgrad.




Fig. 4. Severaltsoukaliafrom Soufli.

potters because of economic necessity; the area is mountainous and not suitable forlarge-scale agriculture. Prior to their relocation to Greece, the Tsekerdekle pottersmainly made undecorated cooking and storage pots for a rural clientele. They didglaze some of their pots, but they did not apply decoration to their ceramics. Theydistributed their products across Evros as far south as Soufli, an important regionalmarket of the time.

According to an oral interview with Dimirtis Tsironidis, the last remainingTsekerdekle potter residing in Greece, the Greek potters of Tsekerdekle left thevillage in 1914 and settled in Tholos, in Greek Macedonia (Fig. 1). After crossingthe Greek border, they stayed in Metaxades for a few months, built the first kiln,and taught their trade to local people. However, local Metaxades intervieweesindicated that even before 1914 one person from Metaxades went to Tsekerdekleand learned the art of pottery making through an affinal relationship; he officiallymarried into his wife’s pottery-making family and returned to Metaxades, wherehe practiced his new trade. In fact, the people of Metaxades and Tsekerdeklebelonged to a network of Greek-speaking villages that were 5 to 10 km from eachother, they shared descent stories, customs, and dress forms, and their residentshad intermarried often.

The potters in Metaxades recall that after the introduction of pottery makingto their village, “o enas emathe apo ton allo” (“one learned from the other”),



176 Kalentzidou

and local pottery industry expanded. Pottery production was vigorous betweenthe late 1910s and the early 1960s, with an estimated 70 potters practicing thetrade in approximately 15 workshops between 1940 and 1960. This compriseda substantial portion of the population of Metaxades, which was 800 to 1000people during that time. Pottery production decreased considerably after 1965,when many people, including a large number of potters, emigrated to Germany as“guestworkers.” Presently, Kostas Voivodudis is the only potter in Metaxades whostill makes pottery, although only once a year. Nine older, retired potters remainin Metaxades, but they no longer practice the trade.

The pottery workshop in Soufli was founded in the 1940s by IoannisPapavlasakoudis, an ethnic Greek. By that time, the pottery workshops in East-ern Thrace (Kessan and Ouzoum-Keuprou) that traditionally had served Souflikaza (county) customers were no longer accessible to Greek consumers, andMetaxades was the main pottery producing area in Evros. According to his son,Mr. Ioannis’s first attempt to learn pottery making must have been made in theearly 1910s. He originally went to Tsekerdekle and brought a person from thereto Soufli to teach him pottery. It was usual among Greek tradespeople to havethis arrangement; it usually involved bartering, in this case technical knowl-edge in exchange for food and shelter and possibly some payment in agriculturalgoods.

The person invited by Mr. Ioannis, was soon forced to leave by the pottersfrom Tsekerdekle, however, because “they had an understanding among them notto show anything to anyone.” “Tote den edeihnan tipota giati fovotan” (“they didnot show us anything then as they were afraid”). Subsequently, Mr. Ioannis broughta man from Tholos (Fig. 1) named Vaitsis, to teach him. Vaitsis was probably fromTsekerdekle originally, as there are no documented pottery workshops in Tholosbefore 1914. Dimitris Papavlasakoudis, now in his mid-70s, learned the trade fromhis father at the age of 20 and operated a workshop with his two older brothersuntil the 1970s. After his brothers resigned from pottery making, he opened hisown workshop, which he kept until the late 1980s. Mr. Dimitris still possesses afairly extensive inventory of pots.

The narratives that document the establishment of the new pottery work-shops indicate that linguistic affiliation was critical to the transmission of pottery-making knowledge; that is the linguistic affiliation of the potter generally co-incided with that of the apprentice (see also Gosselain, 1998, p. 94). In thecase of Evros, linguistic affiliation was also religious. However, linguistic af-filiation does not adequately explain why the Evros potters produced mainlyundecorated wares. Rather, we need to consider how the potters’ learning net-works and consumers’ needs contributed to the pronounced shift towards theproduction and consumption of undecorated pots. Thus, consideration of thechanging social context of production and consumption proves extremely im-portant in the broadening of explanations for the observed ceramic change inEvros.




THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION

Late Ottoman Monopolies: Guilds

Within the Ottoman Empire, economic relations were regulated throughguilds (esnafi in Turkish, sintehniesin Greek), professional organizations thatprotected the labor of their members (Inalcik, 1994, pp. 586–598, 890–898). Al-though political reforms in nineteenth century Ottoman bureaucracy restricted theeconomic power of the guilds, the organizations persisted until the decline of theOttoman Empire. Guilds were an integral part of the Ottoman government’s regu-lation of market and were monitored by the official bureaucracy (Baer, 1979a,b).Guilds controlled the dissemination of technical knowledge, and state regulationscontrolled product output. The Ottoman state supplied raw materials to the guildsand set production limits. Special materials, such as European glazes, were madeavailable by the state only to the most prestigious pottery guilds. Guild supervisors(kethuda) were responsible for paying the required taxes to the Ottoman state andmaintaining the social structure of the guild. In return, guild members were grantedsocial and economic privileges, such as life-long employment, protection againstcompetition, and access to raw materials.

The monopolistic nature of the Ottoman economy and the lack of competitionfrom European merchants allowed guilds to flourish between the sixteenth andeighteenth centuries. During the nineteenth century, however, the pressures ofthe European capitalist market contributed to the decline of the feudal Ottomaneconomic system and the demise of many important guilds, such as silversmiths,textile makers, and weavers (Papageorgiu, 1988). Pottery guilds, however, seemto have been unaffected by such trends and continued to flourish through theearly twentieth century (Vurazeli-Marinakou, 1950). In Ainos, for example, aninscription dated May 29, 1839 commemorates the contribution of the potteryguild to the building of the Saint Nicholas Church (Papathanasi-Mousiopoulou,1985, p. 205).

As mentioned earlier, pottery workshops in late Ottoman times were dividedbetween those that were local in scale and operated along family lines and thosethat operated on an industrial level, regulated closely by the guilds. Industries,especially ones that produced decorated wares, depended on the Ottoman marketfor material provisions, such as glazes and borax (Korre-Zografu, 1995, p. 63).These workshops supplied religious organizations and the Ottoman palace withlarge pottery orders that included tiles and fine decorated pots. In Eastern Thraceand Asia Minor, the pottery industries of Kutahya, Iznik, and Canakkale continuedinto the first two decades of the twentieth century (Korre-Zografu, 1995; Glassie,1993).

The importance of guilds lies not only in their administrative jurisdictionsbut also in their organization. All were organized along ethnic lines and employedmembers of the same ethnic group or related religious groups. This is evident in



178 Kalentzidou

the spatial distribution of the guilds; most were located within their respectiveethnic or religious neighborhoods in Ottoman cities and villages. For example, theguilds in Canakkale and Ainos were located among Greek villages and employedChristian potters of Armenian and Greek descent (Kyriazopoulos, 1980, 1991).Pottery guilds manufactured both for specialized markets, gearing their productionto meet specific client demands, and for more generalized local market places,catering to everyone in the community or the region regardless of their ethnic orreligious affiliation. The most profitable and successful workshops were locatedin urban centers and catered mainly to urban clients.

The rural demand for plain kitchen wares was met mainly by the numeroussmall workshops scattered throughout the countryside. These rural workshopsproduced the mainly undecorated, often coarsely made cooking and storage potsthat were used by every sector of Ottoman society. Their distance from importantmarkets in urban centers generally discouraged the manufacture of elaboratelydecorated pots. Limited access to expensive glazes was also an impediment to theproduction of finer wares by local workshops. Although it is not explicit that ruralworkshops were organized in guilds, the comment by Tsironidis that “in the olddays, people of Tsekerdekle had such an agreement amongst them, but not whenI started practicing pottery” indicates that some kind of organization and controlin the dissemination of technical knowledge existed among the local potters. Dueto their rural location and seasonally intermittent, relatively low volume, and lesslucrative production, they probably did not have the same obligations to followtowards official Ottoman guild policy as strictly as urban potters. Furthermore,specialized knowledge of many decorative techniques was not available to thembecause it was controlled by more powerful guilds in the larger towns and citiesof the empire.

Post-Ottoman Ceramic Production

The destruction of the Ottoman social system and the establishment of newpolitical boundaries had immediate consequences for the production and consump-tion of material culture, including decorated pottery. When the Ottoman Empirecollapsed, the potters who were ethnically tied to specific Greek and Armenian-speaking guilds had to relocate and took with them the accumulated technicalknowledge of the guild to which they belonged. However, historical informationon guild organization links pottery making, but not pottery use, to ethnicity. Thus,ethnic displacement cannot sufficiently explain the observed changes in the pro-duction and distribution of different pottery styles (Kalentzidou, 1996, in press).According to several testimonies, the ethnic background of the potter was not arestricting factor to the type of pots he produced, nor were the potters engaged insales only to members of their own group. “Se olus diname. . . ke se Ellines ke seTurkus” (“we gave to everyone. . . to Greeks and Turks alike”), as several pottersvividly described their post 1923-multiethnic Evros consumers.




The elites who had supported the production of decorated pottery were dev-astated economically, whereas repetitive wars and human relocations on a massivescale drastically disrupted local economies. Pottery still was needed for cookingand storage in Evros, but the consumer base narrowed to farming communities thatwere struggling to survive and had no need for elaborate pottery styles. Duringinterviews, when I asked why they did not have or make decorated pottery, bothpotters and consumers gave me the same answer: “We did not have any money,”“There was a lot of poverty,” or, according to one potter in Metaxades, “Theyneeded simpler ceramics then.” This rural clientele to a large extent created andsupported the need for the establishment of the new pottery centers in Metaxadesand Soufli. The potters in these centers were truly part-time specialists who tookup pottery making to subsidize their meager annual farming incomes.

Under these circumstances, fine wares were a luxury and not an economicallyviable option for the Evros potters. The production of mostly undecorated unglazedpots in Metaxades and Soufli was closely related to consumer demands. Somepotters in the early 1930s reportedly experimented with glaze, which producedmore durable pots. However, the cost of the glaze and the poor marketability ofthe glazed pottery, given local consumer demand for low-priced unglazed pots,ultimately discouraged these potters from continuing the production of glazedpottery.

Within Ottoman society, the acquisition and display of finer goods signaledindividual or collective status. This is verified partially by the presence of well-known guilds in the urban centers of the Empire. Moreover, the wall display ofpottery, such as elaborately decorated plates, implicitly announced the family’seconomic and social status among Greeks from Asia Minor and several Aegean is-lands. This social consumption of decorated pots continued even after the collapseof the Ottoman Empire in the southern part of Greece and the Aegean islands ofRhodes and Mitilini, where the clientele was urban and demanded finer wares. InEvros, however, the consumption of decorated and glazed pots declined consider-ably, even though decorated pottery retained its pre-1923 social significance. Thisis indicated by the small number of imported glazed pots from Athens, Serres, andThasos, found in Evros homes today (Figs. 1 and 5). Although it cost more and thuswas bought less frequently, glazed pottery was preferred over the non-glazed localvarieties for specific household functions. When I asked how they chose betweenbuying glazed and nonglazed pots, people of different ethnic and religious back-grounds in Evros suggested that foods, such asgiuvetsi(bulgur cooked in red saucewith meat and beans) andaltsiaki, required unglazed pots, whereas other foods,such as stored pickled foods, demanded a glazed interior surface. “[A glazed pot]is cleaner,” the centenarian Maria Untzidu told me.

Consumers also wanted decorated pots for special social occasions. BecauseEvros consumers had cultural ties with neighboring regions in Turkey and Bulgaria,having fled as refugees from these areas, they were familiar with and preferredthe types of decorated pottery produced in workshops there. Their demand for



180 Kalentzidou

Fig. 5. Imported pots from Southern Greece; from left to right,g’douli andlaina.

decorated pots was thus satisfied by imports from Bulgaria (Fig. 6) and Turkey,illegally smuggled through customs due to the borders being closed as a con-sequence of the Greek Civil War and the Bulgarian socialist regime. Such potsquickly became a marker of social status, and their use was restricted to certainsocial events and religious ceremonies such as weddings and christenings.

The transformation of the region of Evros after 1923 from a strategic part ofthe Ottoman Empire to merely a border area within the confines of the modernGreek State truncated many long standing economic relationships. By the early1930s most of the well-known urban markets around Evros, such as Adrianople(Edirne), Istanbul (Constantinople), Ouzoum-Keuprou, Ortakieuy (Ivailovgrad),and cities along the Black Sea became inaccessible to the people of Evros becauseof the changes in the borders. Other markets had to be opened and operated toserve the area, and this was done in Didimotiho, Orestiada, and Soufli (Fig. 2). Cutoff from its traditional centers of commerce, Evros assumed the role of a strategicmilitary area, stripped of economic and political power. The region’s economicimpoverishment and subsequent lack of commercial development took its toll onthe production and consumption of finer pots.

The potters in Metaxades and Soufli responded accordingly and producedmainly undecorated pottery. The decrease in the production of glazed pots in Evros




Fig. 6. Imported pre-1930 decorated drinking pot (golgota) from Troyan, Bulgaria.



182 Kalentzidou

after the 1940s by these potters was based on the actual cost of the acquisition ofmaterial and the subsequent increase in the cost of the pots, which consumerscould not afford. Furthermore, the emergence of the new Greek urban class in themid-1950s did little to boost an interest in the production of decorated pottery. Infact, modernization processes, especially the introduction of plastic containers andrefrigeration, contributed to the gradual decline of both decorated and undecoratedpottery making in the countryside.

The marginalization of Evros and the conspicuous absence of activities toenrich the area culturally, such as art education, museum collections, and ceramicexhibits, hindered any revival of decorated pottery styles. Moreover, the traumaticexperience of the refugees’ movement from their place of origin left them little tobe proud. The majority were struggling for a better life with the few belongingsthey were left. Their group identity has been maintained primarily through theirlanguage idioms and clothing styles and less so through material items such asartfully displayed decorated pottery. The loss of a more elaborate pottery-makingtradition has not been mitigated even through the miniaturization of pottery, a factorwhich has revived many of the pottery traditions in southern Greece, especiallyin the Aegean islands. There most of the Asia Minor potters settled after theirinvoluntary relocation, and miniature decorated pottery has been produced sincethe late 1960s to satisfy a growing tourist market. Such a market never developedin Evros.

In Late Ottoman Evros, the economically powerful elite Greek merchants andTurkish land holders relocated to southern Greece or moved back to Turkey afterselling their property to local landless farmers. This process of land redistribu-tion and concomitant economic changes were not unique to Evros (Divani, 1995,pp. 68–81; Pentzopoulos, 1968, pp. 75–78). Greek Macedonia also was incorpo-rated by Greece in the 1910s and underwent a similar process of land redistributionand impoverishment (Karakasidou, 1997, pp. 162–189). The resettlement of largenumbers of refugees to Evros aggravated the already bleak economic reality of thetime (Refugee Census, 1923). The demand for land was alleviated by the Greekstate through the redistribution of the older Turkishchiftliks(farms) among refugeeand local peasantry. Impoverishment until the 1960s was a common complaint thatwas voiced repeatedly in my interviews with both local and refugee villagers.

CONCLUSIONS

In their 1988 article, Nicholas David and his colleagues asked a deceptivelysimple question: “Why are pots decorated?” (David,et al., 1988). Their symbolicanalysis situated ceramic decoration in the larger context of cultural meaningbased on extensive ethnographic fieldwork. Here that question has been askeddifferently—“Why are pots not decorated?”—and considered in its historical




context to address issues of ceramic continuity and change. To understand thetransition from decorated to undecorated ceramics in Evros, I relied on historicalsources and extensive ethnographic fieldwork with the potters and customers whoproduced and used the pots. My intention was to understand the changes in ma-terial culture both at the synchronic (ethnographic) and the diachronic (historical)levels and to integrate into my analysis the people who actively participated in theevents. My ultimate goal was to challenge archaeological and ethnoarchaeologicalmodels that interpret ceramic change ahistorically.

The merits of historical methodology in archaeological explanation have beenaddressed in a number of studies that take into consideration theAnnalesSchoolperspective (Bintliff, 1991; Kepecs, 1997; Knapp, 1992).Annalesstructural histo-rians are concerned with how long-term historical processes (thelong duree) whenlinked with medium length economic and socio-political changes (conjonctures)can effectively explain the consequences of human actions (evenements) (Bintliff,1991, p. 7). However, the application of historical analysis to ethnoarchaeolog-ical questions has only been recently explored (see Kus, 1997, p. 200). Withinan ethnoarchaeological context, the absence of written records often inhibits theextensive use of historical analysis. Nevertheless, written records comprise onlya part of history. Artifacts evoke memories and these can be powerful, historicalmemories. Oral narratives, particularly personal and family histories, also are partof the historical memory of communities (Karakasidou, 1997, p. 232). The juxtapo-sition of recollections of personal experience to written narratives can bring forth“short, periodic and discontinuous variations within long-term trends” (Knapp,1992, p. 3) that are meaningful in the explanation of cultural change. An histori-cally informed ethnoarchaeology can effectively capture the time when long-termtrends are interrupted by significant events, by incorporating narrated stories thatpeople repeat in order to link their memories of their lives to the official historicalconjunctures of their time.

In the case of Evros, documented history provides the general framework fora diachronic analysis of changes in material cultural patterns. Additionally, oralhistory provides the conjunctures to link the general—a set of wars amidst the finaldecline of the Ottoman Empire—to the particular and unique events—populationrelocation and the decreasing importance of guilds—that marked peoples’ livesand molded their decisions. In a solely archaeological context, material culturaltransitions would seem to be the simple result of economic and/or political insta-bility. Within an historically and ethnographically informed context, the absenceof decoration on pots in Evros can be understood more precisely and fully as theresult of interlocking events.

The emphasis in post-Ottoman Evros on undecorated wares at the expenseof decorated types was triggered by changing political and economic factors thattransformed the social context of production and consumption. The tight politicalorganization of the Late Ottoman Empire controlled ceramic productionvis a vis



184 Kalentzidou

powerful guilds. These guilds controlled the dissemination of technical knowl-edge and gained preferential access to raw materials and markets, while enforcingOttoman production quotas and systems of taxation. Post-Ottoman turmoil led tothe decline of the guilds and reduced the number of workshops making decoratedpottery, which resulted in significant changes in the organization of production.As a result of population movements, potters who had never developed decoratedtraditions trained new potters in Evros, where decorated wares once had been pro-duced, but workshops producing decorated pottery were not reestablished. Newinternational boundaries posed obstacles to the importation of fine pottery preferredby the people of Evros. Furthermore, economic decline contributed to consumerpreferences for low-cost, undecorated pottery. All these factors contributed to thestylistic shift toward undecorated ceramics and spurred individual local responsesto the political and social changes of the time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A short version of this paper was presented at the 1998 Annual Meetingsof the Society for American Archaeology in Seattle, WA. I would like to thankBrenda Bowser for including me in the Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology Symposiumshe organized and for her valuable help and advice throughout the preparation ofthis paper. My fieldwork was supported by a Schrader Dissertation Grant from theProgram in Classical Archaeology at Indiana University, a RUGS Grant-in-Aidof Research from IU, a Sigma-Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research, and a grant fromthe Gerondelis Foundation. This paper directly or indirectly benefited from theinsightful comments of Nicholas David, Elizabeth Pennefather-O’Brien, MaryPirkl, Michael Schiffer, Anna Stroulia, Carla Sinopoli, Karen Vitelli, and threeanonymous reviewers. My most sincere thanks to Stephen Ball for his continuouseditorial and emotional support during the preparation of successive drafts of thispaper. My deepest gratitude goes to the potters and people of Evros who answeredmy questions about the many uses and meanings of pots with tolerance and goodhumor. Any errors or omissions are my own. The map “La Thrace: Dioceses Grecs,Divisions Administratives Turques, Ligne Ethnographique de San Stefano” wasphotocopied atELIA (Ethnological, Fokloric and Historic Archives).

REFERENCES CITED

Baer, G. (1979a). Monopolistic and restrictive practices of Turkish guilds. In Asdrahas, S. (ed.),TheEconomic Structure of the Balkans during Ottoman Rule (15th–18th centuries), Melissa, Athens,pp. 596–612 (in Greek).

Baer, G. (1979b). Administrative, economic and social functions of Turkish guilds. In Asdrahas, S.(ed.),The Economic Structure of the Balkans during Ottoman Rule (15th–18th centuries), Melissa,Athens, pp. 577–595 (in Greek).

Bakirtzis, Ch. (1980). Didymoteichon: Un Centre de Ceramique Post Byzantine.Balkan Studies21(1):147–153.




Bakurdjiev, G. (1955).Bulgarian Ceramics, Bulgarski Hudozhnik, Sofia.Bintliff, J. (1991). The contribution of anAnnalistestructural history approach to archaeology. In

Bintliff, J. (ed.),The Annales School and Archaeology, York University Press, New York, pp. 1–33.

Britton, R. (1997). Stuck in the past: Historically oriented archaeology.Archaeological Review fromCambridge14(1): 17–27.

David, N., Sterner, J., and Gavua, K. (1988). Why pots are decorated.Current Anthropology29(3):365–389.

Dietler, M., and Herbich, I. (1994). Ceramics and Ethnic Identity: Ethnoarchaeological observationson the distribution of pottery styles and the relationship between the social contexts of productionand consumption. In Binder, D., and Audouze, F. (eds.),Terre cuite et societe: La ceramique,document techique, economique, culturel. XIVe Recontre Internationale d’archeologie et d’histoired’Antibes, Editions APDCA, Juan-les-Pins, pp. 459–472.

Divani, L. (1995).Greece and Minorities, Nefeli, Athens (in Greek).Efstratiou, N. (1992). Production and distribution of a ceramic type in highland Rhodope.Origini XVI:

311–327.Glassie, H. (1993).Turkish Traditional Art Today, Indiana University Press, Bloomington &

Indianapolis.Gosselain, O. P. (1998). Social and technical identity in a clay crystal ball. In Stark, M. T.

(ed.),The Archaeology of Social Boundaries, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC,pp. 78–106.

Gosselain, O. P. (2000). Materializing identities: An African perspective.Journal of ArchaeologicalMethod and Theory7(3): 187–217.

Hardin, M. A., and Mills, B. J. (2000). The social and historical context of short-term stylistic replace-ment: A Zuni case study.Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory7(3): 139–163.

Hodder, I. (1982). Theoretical archaeology: A reactionary view. In Hodder, I. (ed.),Symbolic andStructural Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–16.

Hodder, I. (1986).Reading the Past, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Hodder, I. (1987). The contribution of the long term. In Hodder, I. (ed.),Archaeology as Long-Term

History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–8.Inalcik, H. (ed.) (with the contribution of Donald Quataert). (1994).An Economic and Social History

of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, Cambridge University Press, New York.Kalentzidou, O. (1996). Ethnicity and material culture: The consumption of utilitarian kitchen-ware

in Evros, Greece. Paper presented at the 61st Annual Meetings of the Society for AmericanArchaeology, New Orleans, April 13.

Kalentzidou, O. (in press). Pots crossing borders: Ethnic identity and ceramics in Evros.Near EasternArchaeology.

Karakasidou, A. N. (1997).Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood. Passages to Nationhood in GreekMacedonia 1870–1990, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Kelly, K. G. (1997). Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth and eighteenth centuryHueda/European interaction on the coast of Benin.Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory4: 353–366.

Kepecs, S. (1997). Introduction to new approaches to combining the archaeological and historicalrecords.Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory4(3/4): 193–198.

Knapp, B. A. (1992). Archaeology and annales: Time, space and change. In Knapp, B. A. (ed.),Archaeology, Annales and Ethnohistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–21.

Korre-Zografu, K. (1995).Greek Ceramics, Melissa, Athens (in Greek).Kotzageorgi-Zimari, X. (1997). The human geography and the ethnic character of the Greeks in Bulgaria

1888–1934. Bulgarian census records and their evaluation.Balkanika Simikta9: 119–183 (inGreek).

Kramer, C. (1997).Pottery in Rajastan. Ethnoarchaeology in Two Indian Cities, Smithsonian InstitutionPress, Washington, DC.

Kus, S. (1997). Archaeologist as anthropologist: Much ado about something after all?Journal ofArchaeological Method and Theory4(3/4): 199–213.

Kyriazopoulos, V. D. (1980). The contribution of Greek and Armenian potters in Asia Minor potterymaking traditions.Mikrasiatika HronikaIZ (8): 170–201 (in Greek).

Kyriazopoulos, V. D. (1984).Greek Traditional Ceramics, Eomex, Athens (in Greek).



186 Kalentzidou

Kyriazopoulos, V. (1991). Contribution to the Study of Traditional Pottery Workshops in Thrace andEllispontos. InSt Simposio Laografias tu Vorioelladiku Horu, Komotini-Alexandroupoli, 7–10Maiu 1989. Praktika, Idrima Meleton Hersonisu tu Emu 228, Thessaloniki, pp. 203–228 (inGreek).

Ladas, S. P. (1932).The Exchange of Minorities, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, McMillan, New York.Longacre, W. A., and Skibo, J. M. (eds.). (1994).Kalinga Ethnoarchaeology. Expanding Archaeological

Method and Theory, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.Morris, I. (1997). Archaeology as Cultural History.Archaeological Review from Cambridge14(1):

3–16.Papageorgiu, Y. (1988).Guilds in Yannena during 19th and the beginning of 20th century, IMIAX,

Ioannina (in Greek).Papathanasi-Mousiopoulou, K. (1985).Guilds and Professions in Thrace 1685–1920.Pitsilos, Athens

(in Greek).Peacock, D. P. S. (1982).Pottery in the Roman World: An Ethnoarchaeological Approach, Longman,

London and New York.Peebles, C. S. (1991).Annalistes, hermeneutics and positivists: Squaring circles or dissolving problems.

In Bintliff, J. (ed.),The Annales School and Archaeology, New York University Press, New York,pp. 108–124.

Pentzopoulos, D. (1968).The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact upon Greece, Mouton,Paris.

Refugee Census (1923). Refugee census during April 1923, Ethniko Tipografion, Athens (in Greek).Shanks, M., and Tilley, C. (1987).Reconstructing Archaeology. Theory and Practice, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge.Sonyel, S. R. (1993).Minorities and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire.Publications of Turkish

Historical Society Serial VII, No. 129, Turkish Historical Society Printing House, Ankara.Spector, J. D. (1993).What this Awl Means. Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village,

Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul.Stark, M. (1991). Ceramic change in ethnoarchaeological perspective: A Kalinga case study.Asian

Perspectives30(2): 193–216.Tilley, C. (ed.). (1990).Reading Material Culture. Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism,

Basil Blackwell.Totevski, T. (1995). The historic evolution of the ceramics in Troyan district. InFolk Arts on Balkan

Peninsula—Tradition and Today Representation, Troyan, Bulgaria, pp. 44–53.Trigger, B. (1984). Alternative archaeologies: Nationalist, colonialist, imperialist.Man19: 955–970.Vakalopoulos, K. (1993).History of Northern Greece: Thrace, Kiriakidis, Thessaloniki (in Greek).Vurazeli-Marinaku, E. (1950).Greek Guilds in Ottoman Thrace, Eteria Makedonikon Spudon, Thes-

saloniki (in Greek).Wolf, E. R. (1982).Europe and the People without History, University of California Press, Berkeley.Wylie, A. (1982). An analogy by any other name is just as analogical. A commentary on the Gould–

Watson dialogue.Journal of Anthropological Archaeology1: 382–401.

Discontinuing Traditions: Using Historically Informed Ethnoarchaeology in the Study of Evros...

Documents

Transcript of Discontinuing Traditions: Using Historically Informed Ethnoarchaeology in the Study of Evros...