Tios/Tieion on the Southern Black Sea in the Broader Context of Pontic Archaeology

Tios/Tieion was intended to be a publication of the proceedings of a conference held at Filyos (ancient Tios/Tieion) in 2020. The conference had to be cancelled in common with other events due to Covid 19, though with the hope that it might take place eventually, a hope undermined by the sudden and premature death of Gocha Tsetskhladze, the co-organiser. Instead, we have a volume of ‘Precedings’, written when thoughts of the conference had not yet been abandoned. Several of the papers focus on aspects of Tios itself (the Acropolis, the Lower City and Coin Finds, written by scholars involved in the excavation). Its place in ancient geography and cartography is considered before we move on to the indigenous inhabitants of the surrounding area, the immediate and greater region (Paphlagonian Hadrianopolis, Hadrian’s visit to the region, the nature of the Phrygian kingdom), then the Turkish Black Sea region (rock-cut tunnels, Roman Heraclea Pontica, St John Chrysostom’s Monastery), and outwards to the western, northern and eastern shores of the Black Sea, their inhabitants and hinterlands (monumental architecture in the temenos of Apollonia Pontica; Archaic Greek transport amphorae in the Getic hinterland; early Greek pottery in settlements and burials of the northern Black Sea region; the house of Pythes at Berezan; the Sindoi; religious customs at Tarasova Balka; the Mordvinovskii Barrow; and finally Greeks and locals in Pichvnari in Colchis). Overall, there are 21 chapters and 27 authors, drawn from Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria and beyond.