This article investigates the production of textiles in Thrace during the first millennium BC. It presents a functional analysis of textile-production tools from three towns in Thrace: Koprivlen, Adzhiiska Vodenitsa near Vetren, and Seuthopolis, and from Kastanas in Macedonia. The analysis shows that over the course of the Iron Age, textile production became more diversified and intensive. This process unfolded parallel to the emergence of opulent elite burials and urban communities. By examining a wider range of archaeological, iconographic, and textual data, the article contributes to our understanding of how the demand for textiles, and their consumption in different socially meaningful ways, connects to changes in production.

The coin series from sites in the Dutch River area show a break during the last three decades of the third century and the first decade of the fourth century AD. Coins minted for Aurelian and his successors to the throne up to Constantine I are very scarce for all sites. The break has been interpreted to indicate the end of occupation of castella and settlements around AD 275. When the site finds from the Dutch River area are presented in the form of an adapted histogram however, the coin series show a striking similarity to site finds from Roman Britain, where, on the whole, continuity was safeguarded during the third century. The article argues that this gap in the coin series – detectable all over the western part of the Roman Empire – is caused by the special character of coin circulation during this period in the west and does not indicate the end of activities on the site that provided the coins. Coin finds even seem to suggest continuity during this period for a number of sites in the Dutch River area.

This article traces characterizations of the Cupbearer fresco, named after the large vessel the figure holds and uncovered at the site of Knossos in 1900, in light of the research agendas about the ‘races’ of the prehistoric Aegean and traditions of racial science current in late Victorian Britain. The head of the Cupbearer was compared to Classical Greek art, modern Cretan populations, and cranial remains from prehistoric contexts. Drawing from academic publications, articles in the press, and reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the author situates the discourse surrounding the Cupbearer in the context of scholars seeking the origins of ‘European’ civilization in prehistory, and the creation of racial typologies, especially using cranial measurements and photography. The Cupbearer gained a dual status as a racial portrait comparable to past and present human populations, but also as a work of art that prefigured the later achievements of Classical Greece.