The Hellenistic cultural koinê is a notion in disfavor. William Tarn’s romantic definition of this world as “an oikumenê, the common possession of civilised men, where nationality falls into the background,” evokes a colonialist ethos. We now understand the Hellenistic east as an intricate mosaic, best seen and studied piece by piece.

Yet throughout this wide expanse there is abundant evidence for a very real material koine, one inspired by Greek, specifically Attic, models. The evidence consists of locally produced ceramics: new shapes for eating, drinking, serving, and cooking, all versions of fourth century BCE Attic vessels. Two important aspects stand out. First, fabrics reveal that these are local productions. This is in contrast to the situation in preceding and succeeding centuries, during which people acquired items directly from Athens or Italy. Second, the change is sudden and everywhere. For generations prior, the shapes of pots for cooking, serving, and setting the table changed slowly and subtly, such that fourth century household inventories closely resembled earlier ones. In the later fourth and early third centuries BCE, over a wide swath of the area conquered by Alexander and held by his successors, peoples’ standard household inventories suddenly look different: they look Greek.

The sudden, widespread demand for Attic-inspired ceramic forms is its own kind of evidence, testimonies of a new cultural trend. I believe that the impetus was the charismatic force of Alexander himself and his lightning-quick, glamorous conquests. These remains, humble yet eloquent, reveal what I call “the Alexander effect” in the early Hellenistic east.

Professor Andrea M. Berlin is the James R. Wiseman Chair in Classical Archaeology at Boston University. She has been excavating in the eastern Mediterranean for over thirty years, working on projects from Troy in Turkey to Coptos in southern Egypt to Paestum, in Italy. Her specialty is the Near East from the time of Alexander the Great through the Roman era. She is especially interested in studying the realities of daily life, and in exploring the intersection of politics and cultural change in antiquity.