10 - Archaic Greece

Summary

introduction

The Greek world of the seventh and sixth centuries differed markedly from the Greek world of the ninth and eighth centuries. Scholars have talked of a structural revolution in the eighth century. For the economic historian the dramatic changes come later and concern both structure and performance.

Some of the changes were slow, important for their cumulative impact rather than making a marked difference in the short term. Population is one case in point. Except for slaves, where there may have been a sharp increase in numbers in some cities in the sixth century, population grew at a rate of perhaps 0.5 percent a year. Such a growth rate would have more than doubled the population during the period in question, but given a high degree of population mobility, few at the time would have perceived clear change. Population growth itself entails and stimulates growth in consumption and production. Distribution of fine pottery and of quality housing suggests per capita as well as aggregate increase in consumption. And although the conditions of agricultural production did not alter significantly, with climate likely to have been more or less constant and no signs of significant advances in agrarian technology, the spread of Greeks to environments more favorable for agriculture than the Greek mainland and Aegean is likely to have increased per capita agricultural production also. Outside agriculture, too, much technological change seems to have been more a matter of degree than of kind: iron had already established itself as the dominant “working metal” by 700, ship-construction methods do not seem to have altered, technical developments in pottery are primarily linked to decoration, not to productivity.