Ancient Slavery in the Central Balkans: Some Starting Points on pre-Roman Period

Abstract

The paper considers the issues related to slavery in the Central Balkans in the proto-historic i.e. Late Iron Age period. It is conceived as a first step towards more profound future study, and deals with the history of research and theoretical-methodological approaches to the problem of slavery among the Late Iron Age communities. The text revisits earlier interpretations of slavery derived from ancient written accounts and archaeological evidence, and then offers insights that rely on recent research of slavery in general, and in prehistoric period in particular. Finally, it is argued that it is necessary to consider the possibility of ‘societies with slaves’ when researching the Central Balkan Iron Age communities, even though they are often regarded as ‘small-scale societies’ that profoundly differed from the Mediterranean ‘slave societies’.

Keywords

• slavery
• Central Balkan ‘tribes’
• Late Iron Age
• ancient written accounts
• archaeological evidence
• ‘small-scale societies’