Tod und Bestattung in Mykene (original) (raw)
An Early Helladic burial—connecting the living and the dead
This paper reviews the mortuary record of the Early Bronze Age mainland Greece. The survey is based on the supposition that most of what is found in the graves and cemeteries of this period had a meaning and a practical usage within contemporary mortuary rituals. It is therefore considered how the nature of the items found within and in relation to the graves may inform us of the practices at the time of burial. Although heterogeneous in terms of their geographical and chronological distribution, the appearance of the graves, their contents and full context provide a rich diversity of information on rituals related to factors such as the physical appearances of the dead as well as that of the living participants in the mortuary ritual, the consumption of food and drink, and many regional and geographical variations on these themes. In this diversity resides a great potential for social differentiation, for the shaping and displaying of identities, for exclusion and inclusion into groups extending over whole cemeteries or limited to a few graves, for customs shared within communities, and for the visibility of individual choices.
2021
The principle aim of this thesis is to develop a better understanding of social organisation in Greece after the collapse of the palace system c.1190 BCE. This is achieved through a multi-level analysis of burial practices, focussing specifically on the post-palatial cemetery at Perati, burial practices before and after the collapse in the Argolid, and the custom of burial with weapons, from the Shaft Grave period to the post-palatial period in Greece. The main theoretical basis for focussing on burial practices is the argument that social change is reflected and enacted in burial practices, so studying changes in burial practices (including the shift from chamber tombs to simple graves, the change from collective to single burials, the introduction of cremation, and the use of high status grave goods) has the potential to inform us about the nature of social change. This basic premise is challenged in the course of the thesis, when it is shown that burial practices in Attica change...
A large body of evidence and important historical questions exist for the study of burial in the late antique Greek world. This slowly evolving field has long been influenced by trends in classical archaeology, the archaeology of Early Christianity, and folklore studies. The physical remains of funerary ritual, which have been unevenly studied and published, attest to the forms of interment, tombstones, the treatment of bodies and objects, and the topographic settings of burial. Variation in these remains reflects the expression of different identities, including status, family, profession, ethnicity, and the new Christian perspective on death. Mortuary variability can also be traced across space, both between and especially within regions, and over time from the Roman to Byzantine eras, which reveals a paradigm shift in the concepts and uses of burial in Late Antiquity.
Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean mortuary practices in the southern and western Peloponnese
2002
The aim is to set out the evidence for burial practices in the southern and western Peloponnese of Greece during the Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean periods (circa 2050/2000BC to 1445/1415BC), and to interpret the evidence in terms of human agency and in relation to wider social structures. The analytical methodology allows for examination of the evidence in terms of four main areas of human activity: grave location, grave construction, pre-mortuary rites, and rites in the tomb. Evidence from 62 sites is analysed in order to provide answers to the following questions: where were tombs situated, how were they occupied and what was their place in the encultured landscape; what was the meaning and effect of architecture; what did people do in tombs and as part of mortuary rites; how were practices and structures maintained and altered through time, and what brought about their widespread reproduction? Themes include the place of the grave in the landscape, funerary architecture, evidence for preparatory acts before funerals, and mortuary practices. The conclusions trace the inception and proliferation of different practices at different times, questioning the notion of a uniform early Mycenaean culture, and offering ways in which instances of burial practice can be understood in local and regional, rather than global, contexts.
As seen in the literature of ancient Greece, tombs and rituals of the wealthy were extravagant. Gold and jewels were essential grave offerings of respectable and honored tombs, perhaps used as a way to display wealth and status. It seems the wealthier you were the more elaborate your final resting place. The ancient Greeks had distinct methods of burial, and it was often believed if you were not provided a proper burial along with the appropriate rituals, you were destined to suffer between worlds until your rites of passage into the underworld were completed. In this essay we will see how exactly a tomb of Greece looked, the rituals followed at the time of death and also what was believed to happen if these elements were not fulfilled. Examining the tombs and rituals from the archaic period through classical Greece shows the continuity of the traditions throughout the years.
2016
Funerary Performance, Architecture and Landscape in the Aegean Places are social, lived, ideational landscapes constructed by people as they inhabit their natural and built environment. An 'archaeology of place' attempts to move beyond the understanding of the landscape as inert background or static fossil of human behaviour. From a specifically mortuary perspective, this approach entails a focus on the inherently mutable, transient and performative qualities of 'deathscapes': how they are remembered, obliterated, forgotten, reworked, or revisited over time. Despite latent interest in this line of enquiry, few studies have explored the topic explicitly in Aegean archaeology. This book aims to identify ways in which to think about the deathscape as a cross between landscapes, tombs, bodies, and identities, supplementing and expanding upon well explored themes in the field (e.g. tombs as vehicles for the legitimization of power; funerary landscapes as arenas of social and political competition). The volume recasts a wealth of knowledge about Aegean mortuary cultures against a theoretical background, bringing the field up to date with recent developments in the archaeology of place.
Archaeopress Publishing LTD, 2020
A rescue excavation at Psalidi in Kos revealed a late Hellenistic-Roman cemetery and a proto-byzantine building. The cemetery is located extra muros, close to a recently explored archaic sanctuary and near the early Christian Basilica of St. Gabriel. A Roman (1st-3rd century AD) burial monument with multiple burials furnished mainly by clay lamps stands out from the cemetery. The burial monument, rectangular in plan, was separated by an internal wall in two compartments (North, South) each accessible by four openings/entrances. Clay tubes and small inscribed stelai were placed in front of the entrances while a large deposit of approximately 450 lamps was found outside the southeast opening. In this paper the preliminary results of the monument’s on-going archaeological and anthropological study are being presented supplemented by a discussion of Roman burial customs, rituals, and funerary associations.