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Maps and borders notwithstanding, some places are best described as \"gaps\"--places with repeatedly contested boundaries that are wedged in between other places that have clear boundaries. This book explores an iconic example of this in the contemporary Western imagination: the Balkans. Drawing on richly detailed ethnographic research around the Greek-Albanian border, Sarah Green focuses her groundbreaking analysis on the ambiguities of never quite resolving where or what places are. One consequence for some Greek peoples in this border area is a seeming lack of distinction--but in a distinctly \"Balkan\" way. In gaps (which are never empty), marginality is, in contrast with conventional understandings, not a matter of difference and separation--it is a lack thereof. Notes from the Balkans represents the first ethnographic approach to exploring \"the Balkans\" as an ideological concept. Green argues that, rather than representing a tension between \"West\" and \"East,\" the Balkans makes such oppositions ambiguous. This kind of marginality means that such places and peoples can hardly engage with \"multiculturalism.\" Moreover, the region's ambiguity threatens clear, modernist distinctions. The violence so closely associated with the region can therefore be seen as part of continual attempts to resolve the ambiguities by imposing fixed separations. And every time this fails, the region is once again defined as a place that will continually proliferate such dangerous ambiguity, and could spread it somewhere else.

This article presents the geomorphological mapping of the Kalamas river delta in Thesprotia (Epirus, north-western Greece). The Kalamas (also known as Thyamis) is one of the three main deltas of this region. Detailed mapping was performed through analysis of field geomorphological surveys and interpretation of old maps, satellite images, aerial photos, and DEM. The evolution of the delta as well as its current morphology derives from complex interactions between alluvial, marine dynamics and human activities. Several palaeo-channels have been identified, and the recent morphology of the delta has been altered by the construction of a dam and the canalization of the river during the second half of the twentieth century. The coastline is complex, and mainly consists of lagoons, sandy barriers and sand spits. Since part of the delta has been prograding for about fifty years, the current dynamics indicate erosion as well as progressive submersion of these low coasts.

Thesprotia, one of the most remote regions in Greece, was inhabited from as early as the Palaeolithic period. The particular geomorphological terrain, with the mountainous and fragmented landscape, has been determinant in the formation of economic and social institutions throughout antiquity. Thesprotia was gradually developed into an important node of communication and transport of goods to the West and the mountainous hinterland of Epirus. During the second half of fourth century BC, socioeconomic changes occurred in the region and small villages were joined to form the first organised settlements. Elea, Gitana and Dymokastro were founded within a few years from one another, during the fourth century BC. Built at geographically crucial locations that ensured the control of the valleys or the riverside crossings and sea routes, they evolved gradually into political, economic and administrative centres for the surrounding areas. In the present study, 56 samples of glass, excavated from these three sites in Thesprotia, are investigated using analytical techniques (SEM-EDX and LA-ICP-MS). The chemical compositions of the samples show significant differences in raw materials used and provide evidence for provenance for the artefacts. This is the first study to examine Hellenistic glass from within a region of northern Greece. The results are compared with other published compositional data for Hellenistic glass. The analytical results for the majority of glass samples from the three sites in Thesprotia show with high probability a Levantine origin and therefore also possibly for the artefacts themselves. This confirms the archaeological record of trade in other materials/objects, while a small group of glasses from Gitana in Thesprotia were made in Egypt.