Black Sea Trade Project

From site:  The Black Sea Trade Project is an interdisciplinary study of trade systems in the Black Sea over the past 5,000 years and their effects on local cultures and economies. 

The project focuses on the hinterland and port of Sinop (ancient Sinope), an important Greek and Roman colony at the midpoint of the Turkish Black Sea coast.

For thousands of years the site of Sinop has been a strategic point in the cultural and trade systems of the Black Sea. The port has been host to many civilizations, including Bronze Age, Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman. Sinope was the first Black Sea colony founded by the great Greek city of Miletus on the west coast of Turkey. Archaeological evidence for Greek settlement here goes back to the seventh century B.C., although the Bronze Age remains show people lived at the "best port on the South coast of the Black Sea"  thousands of years earlier.