| This dissertation examines the development and distribution of emporia in various regions of western Eurasia from the Ancient world to the Early Medieval period and seeks to clarify the ways in which the term emporium may be used in modern scholarship to categorize certain types of settlements that are involved in long-distance trade. Emporia have long been the subject of research for scholars of the ancient Mediterranean, and the term has, more recently, become standard in studies of early medieval trading sites in the North Sea and Baltic Sea regions. When viewed in a broadly comparative manner, certain commonalities in the siting and function of emporia in various times and places can be brought into sharper focus, which in turn helps to understand the development and diffusion of long-distance trading networks.;Sites with emporia-like functions appeared on the northern coasts of Francia, England, and Denmark in the seventh and eighth centuries AD, which facilitated long distance trade in the North Sea region and greatly stimulated craft production. By the ninth century, sites of the same model had diffused into the Baltic Sea region as well. Finally, examination of the archaeological record at Staraia Ladoga, the earliest urban site in northwestern Russia, in light of the characteristics expected in an emporium site suggested that Ladoga was not an emporium from its inception in the mid-eighth century, but acquired those functions in the later ninth and tenth centuries.;The Greek emporion referred both to port districts attached to poleis in the Aegean heartland and to Greek commercial outposts in foreign lands. In both cases, the primary function of the emporion was to mediate trade and exchange between "stranger traders" and the local population. Generally, the Romans adapted the emporium to specific geopolitical contexts that ranged across the empire. Emporia of the highly commercialized eastern empire, whose trade networks extended also into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean regions, tended to mirror more closely those developed earlier by the Greeks, whereas emporia on the frontiers of the western empire played a secondary role to the military needs of the Roman army. |
