Staging Death: Funerary Performance, Architecture and Landscape in the Aegean 9783110480573, 9783110475784

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Staging Death

Staging Death

Funerary Performance, Architecture and Landscape in the Aegean Edited by Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and Michael J. Boyd

Undertaken with the assistance of McIntire Department of Art and the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia

ISBN 978-3-11-047578-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-048057-3 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-047919-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at: http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen. Typesetting: jürgen ullrich typosatz, Nördlingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Contents Michael J. Boyd and Anastasia Dakouri-Hild Staging Death: an Introduction 1 Anastasia Dakouri-Hild Getting to Funerary Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Death and Performance in the Prehistoric Aegean 11

Performative Places: Movement and Theatricality Maria Chountasi Funerary Ritual-Architectural Events in the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Knossos 33 Michael J. Boyd Fields of Action in Mycenaean Funerary Practices

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Aleydis Van de Moortel Politics of Death at Mitrou: Two Prepalatial Elite Tombs in a Landscape of Power 89

Familial Places: Deathscapes and Townscapes Kalliope Sarri Intra, Extra, Inferus and Supra Mural Burials of the Middle Helladic Period: Spatial Diversity in Practice 117 Kate Harrell The Practice of Funerary Destruction in the Southwest Peloponnese Yannis Galanakis A Roof for the Dead: Tomb Design and the ‘Domestication of Death’ in Mycenaean Funerary Architecture 155

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Placing Bodies, Embodying Places Anna Lagia, Ioanna Moutafi, Raphaël Orgeolet, Despoina Skorda and Julien Zurbach Revisiting the Tomb: Mortuary Practices in Habitation Areas in the Transition to the Late Bronze Age at Kirrha, Phocis 181 Bill Cavanagh, Anna Lagia and Chris Mee † Mortuary Practices in the Middle Bronze Age at Kouphovouno: Vernacular Dimensions of the Mortuary Ritual 207 Ilse Schoep and Peter Tomkins ‘Death Is Not the End’: Tracing the Manipulation of Bodies and Other Materials in the Early and Middle Minoan Cemetery at Sissi 227

Biographies and Memories of Place Giorgos Vavouranakis A Posthumanocentric Approach to Funerary Ritual and its Sociohistorical Significance: the Early and Middle Bronze Age Tholos Tombs at Apesokari, Crete 253 Emily Miller Bonney From Performing Death to Venerating the Ancestors at Lebena Yerokambos, Crete 275 Angélique Labrude Aegean Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Burials in the Ruins of Rulers’ Dwellings: a Legitimisation of Power? 297

From Deathscapes to Beliefscapes Oliver Dickinson Continuities and Discontinuities in Helladic Burial Customs During the Bronze Age 317 Nikolas Papadimitriou Structuring Space, Performing Rituals, Creating Memories: Towards a Cognitive Map of Early Mycenaean Funerary Behaviour 335

Contents

Sam Farnham Pollution and Purity in the Argolid and Corinthia During the Early Iron Age: the Burials 361

BIOS

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Index

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Acknowledgments We would like to sincerely thank our contributors for participating in this project; the acquisitions editor of the Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at DeGruyter, Mirko Vonderstein, as well as Katja Brockmann, Kerstin Haensch, and Elisabeth Kempf for helping bring this volume to fruition; Matthias Hild and Evi Margaritis for their help and encouragement in various stages of the project; and the McIntire Department of Art and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia (especially Francesca Fiorani, Larry Goedde, and Tyler Jo Smith) for advice and financial support both in the direction of the colloquium upon which this volume is based and during the editorial process.

Michael J. Boyd and Anastasia Dakouri-Hild

Staging Death: an Introduction The theme of this volume is situated human action, specifically as part of the funerary cycle. As the title makes clear, we use the notion of performance and its stage (the wider human landscape and the sepulchral architectural nodes within it) in order to think about the rich evidence for death and burial in the prehistoric Aegean in entirely new ways. The history of thought on this topic is long and has greatly influenced how prehistoric Aegean periods, ‘cultures’ or even ‘civilisations’ have been interpreted, synthesised and indeed projected to the wider worlds of archaeology, and scientific and popular thought. The influence of Schliemann’s discoveries is too well-known to be worth repeating here; details of many subsequent excavations were presented as fulfilling a heroic and aristocratic norm established in the early days of Aegean archaeology, and as broadening the geographical base in a way seemingly satisfyingly predicted by Homer. In contrast in earlier prehistory, and away from the mainland, especially on Crete, with burial practices often more communal and less grand in nature, funerary archaeology has been less influential in overall narratives. Much of this can be seen as resulting from an archaeology that understood its role in recording and reflecting the glory that was prehellenic Greece; great men, spectacular burial monuments and famous landscapes were ideal ingredients in this. The evidence was read as already understood: evidential details that undermined the prevailing narrative were underplayed or misunderstood. Advances in thought have been late in coming: new archaeological approaches of the 1970s and 1980s emphasised the search for rank and status, thus adding a progressive veneer to what was simply the continuation of business as usual. More recent movements in archaeological thought, beginning in the post processual approaches of northern Europe in the late 1980s, have taken a long time to make inroads in the Aegean. Many of these approaches require renewed emphasis on context: concepts such as agency or the role of material culture can hardly be applied without detailed contextual analysis. The role of innovative scientific approaches in refocusing fieldwork on context in recent times has contributed to the creation of the conditions where it may become possible to imagine an evidence-based archaeology of funerary practice, and many of the papers in this volume forge the way in this manner. With a number of innovative approaches now being applied to Aegean funerary material, amid a revitalised approach to methodology, the time seemed right to reexamine what there is to be learned from Aegean funerary practices. A recent colloquium (113th Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, January 2012, organised by Dakouri-Hild) explored the notion of funerary place in the prehistoric Aegean, aiming to identify more intuitive ways in which to think about landscapes, buildings, bodies, societies and identities. In the keynote address it was

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argued that, in the last decade, even ‘traditional’ studies of funerary architecture, landscape, and burial practices bound by the spatial domains of death, reveal a strong undercurrent of ideas connected to performance theory and phenomenology, while a few scholars have developed explicitly phenomenological programmes of research in this direction. For example, there is a tendency to blend perceived divides such as nature and culture, object and subject, body and mind; an emphasis on the multi sensorial, somatic, intersubjective understanding of mortuary place; the tempering of space and behaviour with a sense of place and experience; and a growing interest in landscape as a metaphor of being, rather than a passive backdrop of human activity or specular representation. In this espoused ‘archaeology of funerary place’ monuments are regarded as an intrinsic part of a thoroughly humanised landscape: the built and unbuilt environment together forms a social, lived, ideational landscape inhabited by people. Funerary place is not the outcome of behaviour frozen in time, the mere fossil of construction activity and the deposition of bodies, but is inherently mutable and performative: ‘place’ was continuously reworked, revamped, rebuilt, remembered, or turned to ruins, obliterated, abandoned, forgotten, and rediscovered. The twofold aim of this book is to identify directions for further research along these lines of inquiry, and to move beyond the already well-explored themes in the archaeology of death in the Aegean (e.g. tombs as vehicles for the legitimisation of power and the proclamation or contestation of social status; funerary landscapes as instruments for the establishment of ancestral rights and as arenas of social and political competition). Seven papers were presented at the Philadelphia colloquium, supplemented by invited discussion. In the aftermath, Boyd joined with Dakouri-Hild to edit the subsequent volume. Some of the original papers have been revised and much expanded to be presented here; others are being published elsewhere. Meanwhile a second tranche of authors was approached in order much to expand the scope of the volume, ensuring thematic as well as chronological and geographical range. The resulting 16 chapters have been arranged in four sections, introduced below. They touch on several major themes, and their relevance is certainly not limited to the section heading under which they appear. The thematic contributions are preceded by a concept paper by Dakouri-Hild, which summarises general theoretical thinking on performance and death and the phenomenology of place. This chapter also presents a survey of scholarship on performance, architecture and landscape in Aegean archaeology from a combined funerary and non-funerary perspective. The main argument is that the language of performance and phenomenology thinking is inherent in the body of Aegean scholarship (even in the absence of an explicitly theoretical framework). Several areas of future research are identified, for example the study of interplaces, the development of non-specular approaches to architecture, and approaching cultured landscapes (buildings included) as ontological proxies of humans.

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Performative places: movement and theatricality The papers in this section focus on mortuary times and places: the tempo of the funerary cycle. The notions of performance and theatricality are central to Chountasi’s analysis of two funerary structures at Late Minoan Knossos, the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Isopata. Through a detailed study of their landscape locale and architectural affordances, she demonstrates the central role of performative practice in creating ritual or liminal space transiently, and how the affordances of architecture were used creatively in performance. She emphasises the importance of experience in creating a ‘heterotopic ambience’ within which performances were set and understood, and monumentality as constituted and interpreted in practice, and as integral in the improvisation of performance, rather than as static manifestation of status. Boyd sets out to understand the Mycenaean funerary cycle and how mortuary practice inhabits landscape locales and burial monuments. Viewing different moments in the funerary cycle as fields of action, he examines their affordances as arenas for funerary ritual, evidenced in material, architectural and landscape traces, and emphasises the importance of the procession as an essential structuring element of Mycenaean funerals. The fields of action include the preparation of the corpse, the readying (opening or construction) of the tomb, the procession to, and then into, the tomb, and the performance of burial within the tomb. In each case he emphasises the diversity of participation and the inevitability of variation in practice. He concludes by examining the long-term of the funerary cycle, and the cumulative role of tomb contents and growing cemeteries in adapted and expanded ritual narratives. Van de Moortel’s chapter focuses on Mitrou in Lokris, in particular its changing landscape and architectural backdrop during the early Mycenaean period. She argues that new ‘stages’, including elite graves, were designed to facilitate certain modes of performance tending to reinforce elite status. These were set in a reorganised settlement, which included long streets used, and perhaps reserved, for processions and ceremonial activity. She describes in detail the history of one grave, exceptionally located outside the cemetery and within a building, accessed from the road. This history shows how this unique setting was utilised and reimagined over the whole Mycenaean period at Mitrou: local traditions were merged creatively with wider Mycenaean influence over time.

Familial places: deathscapes and townscapes This section considers the acts of the funerary cycle in relation to landscape and settlement. The chapter by Sarri discusses the so-called intramural burials of Middle Helladic Greece. Sarri offers a wide-ranging review of the evidence for such burials in this period, noting the diversity of practices attested and the exceptional character of

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the ‘intramural’ cases against this broader framework. She also casts doubt on the chronology of many burials, in particular the notion of the simultaneity of graves and houses. She suggests more burials occurred outside settlements than has hitherto been recognised. Nevertheless, she accepts the notion of burial in disused parts of settlements, acknowledging that the use of former living spaces signals an intention to forge collective memories based on a physical/spatial and perhaps emotional connection with the past. Such burial sites can be seen, she argues, as possible loci of cross-generational encounters where the living and the dead ‘met’. Moreover, she proposes that child burials may be a different case entirely, with their prevalence in domestic contexts explained by a combination of factors including special social roles ascribed to children. Harrell explores the connection between artefact consumption and the construction of space, specifically the destruction of swords as a manifestation of the social ascendency of the Pylos palace in the southwest Peloponnese. Detecting possible differences in the meaning of this practice as it evolved through the Shaft Grave era (relegating objects to the realm of the dead), to the Late Helladic IIA period (aiding the transition to ancestor status) and to the Late Helladic IIIA2 period (appropriation in the context of the palatial feast), she shows the role of these weapons in creating place and identity across the funerary/non-funerary divide. Charting the evidence for their intentional deformation, she demonstrates their antiquity in tomb contexts and proposes that bending swords permanently turned them into funerary things, rendering them part of the ‘tombscape’. In the later era, this practice can be regarded as analogous to the purposeful obliteration of Tholoi III and IV at Pylos: it points to a common ‘aesthetic of making versus unmaking’ and the decommissioning of something old in order to create something new. Galanakis examines domestic architectural vocabulary incorporated into the funerary ambit on the Mycenaean mainland, using roof shape as an example. He demonstrates that pitched roofs are present (although not necessarily prevalent) in domestic contexts, and argues that the emulation of this feature in the funerary realm was brought about not just by practical or ritual considerations, but also changing sociopolitical conditions and a radical shift from lineage to family. At the same time, he suggests that such verisimilitude was only one of many competing choices allowing for social differentiation and display in the crucial earlier phases of the Mycenaean era, when palatial ideology was in still in flux. Furthermore, he proposes that ‘going domestic’ was the outcome of a highly selective process, in which only certain domestic features were drawn upon and evoked in the context of the tomb.

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Placing bodies, embodying places The three papers in this section take up many of the points raised in relation to the placement of the dead and the materiality of the corpse. The chapter by Lagia, Moutafi, Orgeolet, Skorda and Zurbach, and Skorda discusses the curation of human remains as a means of constructing funerary place and ‘mnemoscapes’ at a time of critical identity transitions in Middle Helladic/early Late Helladic Kirrha in Phokis. The perennial debate concerning the burial of the dead amidst recently or long disused settlement (considered at length in this volume also by Van de Moortel, Labrude, Papadimitriou, Cavanagh, Lagia and Mee, and Sarri) is refocused on the actions of the living upon the dead in these contexts. Their work, and that of Cavanagh et al. discussed further below, is important in demonstrating a tradition of secondary manipulation of burial contexts from the late Middle Helladic period in a variety of contexts, reemphasising the importance of the Middle Helladic in the inception of Mycenaean burial practices. The sophistication and variety of practices evidenced is surprising and throws an entirely new light on subsequent developments. Cavanagh et al. also look at osteological material as an intrinsic part of the cultured, human landscape, with specific reference to Middle Helladic Kouphovouno in Lakonia. Similarly to Lagia et al., the authors examine ‘second’ (rather than ‘secondary’) action upon Middle Helladic burials, in order to catch a glimpse of motivating beliefs or emic concepts regarding ‘proper treatment’ of the deceased. One such belief possibly hinted at through their analysis is a preoccupation with the wholeness of the body. By no means does ‘second’ treatment of the dead emerge as mandatory or consistent, implying an element of choice or a more open set of beliefs compared to the more formalised and instrumentalised rites of the Late Bronze Age, although it is the very familiarity with these acts that sets the scene for the latter. Ultimately, ritual activities involving human remains are not only seen as the material correlates of socioeconomic and political relations, but also as a primary means of imagining and remembering the deathscape. Schoep and Tomkins suggest that cemeteries and tombs are arenas for enacting the social, the investigation of which requires the adoption of methodologies competent to distinguish multiple modes of action in complex contexts. They emphasise, in common with Boyd, Lagia et al., and Cavanagh et al., the materiality of human remains and engagement with them in the funerary process. Their ‘archaeothanatology’ approach, modelled after the chaînes operatoires concept, allows for differentiation between disturbed and undisturbed contexts, and the reconstruction of human action in grave contexts at Middle Minoan Sissi in Crete. They conclude that different forms of action might lead to superficially similar results, but that careful study can result in the recognition of specific, and diverse, chains of events. Such diversity is regarded as linked to the histories of specific groups of people and their engagement with the architectonised mortuary landscape.

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Biographies and memories of place The papers in this section consider the long-term engagement with and transmutations of mortuary landscapes. Vavouranakis situates his study of the Apesokari tholoi in the question of how society as a whole may have participated in the changes apparent in the transition from the Prepalatial to Protopalatial period in Crete, looking at how regional communities received the emergence of palatial society. Using a ‘posthumanocentric’ approach, which espouses that landscape offers affordances selectively capitalised upon by people to meet their social goals, he contrasts the early Prepalatial Apesokari B tholos, a central focal point in the landscape with an enduring quality that transcended the ephemeral events it hosted, with the late Prepalatial/ Protopalatial Apesokari A. In the earlier phase there was an effort to dematerialise individual people and rematerialise them as part of collective memory at the tomb, seen as the melting pot for such transformation. In the later phase, however, a tendency to monumentalise and ‘prune’ the site affordances is observed. This shift was accompanied by the objectification and instrumentalisation of the funerary landscape, processes which were themselves the product of novel structures of feasting, communal and palatial activity. In a similar vein, Bonney considers the ‘biography’ of a Minoan tholos tomb, Lebena Yerokambos, from the early through the late Prepalatial era, recognising that architecture is one of many ‘technologies of remembrance’ forging the distinctive relationship between landscape and community. Like Vavouranakis, she construes funerary place as a cognised, multisensory resource for the construction of identities, presenting a series of affordances that can be selectively drawn upon to performatively bring about collective memories. Not only are burial and subsequent veneration rites seen as performative, however. Tomb construction is regarded as a performance of community as well, requiring the transformation of a natural resource (stone) into a monument through collaborative human action. She notes that, while originally the tholos occupied a prominent position in the landscape and formed the focus of funerary activities, a series of later modifications and extensions downplayed its centrality, physically distanced ancestral remains, and brought about a bounded, more formalised and less ‘natural’ deathscape. Labrude’s analysis of ancestral places crosses the Bronze-Iron Age divide in scholarship to examine the ongoing use of sites in ruins as places of burial and memory, and the strategic redeployment of ruinous landscapes during transitional or sociopolitically unstable times. Her regional overview demonstrates local variations in how formerly elite buildings and complexes were reimagined in changed circumstances. In Crete, during the later Bronze Age former Neopalatial buildings were reused, often as places of burial, whereas during the Iron Age sanctuaries were often built amid the ruins. On the mainland, at both Mycenae and Tiryns, reoccupation in the Submycenaean period and later included house construction, areas of ritual use, and funerary spaces. At a time when Mycenaean tombs might be reused for cultic

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purposes, the ‘exceptional architectural context of the ruined citadels’ made them a choice location for burial. Later in the Iron Age, the deliberate destruction of the Lefkandi ‘heroon’ and the Geometric house at Eleusis provide examples of the conscious creation of ancestral places.

From deathscapes to beliefscapes Dickinson charts an overview of the development of mainland funerary practices from the Early Helladic to the Mycenaean period. New evidence on continuity of some mortuary practices between the Neolithic and the Early Helladic I period suggests cultural memories ran deeper than previously suspected, bridging the conventional Stone/Bronze Age divide. He demonstrates that the Early Helladic I-II period is marked by striking diversity in practices, indicating a degree of choice and perhaps loyalty to local (family or group) traditions. Funerary forms such as formal cemeteries are regarded as means of social differentiation or distinction. Commemorative ceremonies at grave sites, such as the consumption of food and drink and the deliberate destruction of pottery, betray an interest in long-term involvement with the funerary landscape. Likewise the disappearance of cemeteries in the ensuing phase (Early Helladic III) is interpreted in part as the outcome of a systemic shift in the belief system. While the introduction of the tumulus in this late phase is mooted, this funerary form is seen to stand out amidst the general homogeneity of the Middle Helladic record. However, exceptional treatment reserved for some burials, grave reuse, special furnishings, as well as adult burials within settlements may have been socially assertive and imply subtle differentiation. In the Late Bronze Age, multiple burials and distinctive local traditions (especially in regards to architectural choices) arise out of traditions of practice traceable back to the earliest Helladic period. Papadimitriou explores the new mortuary landscapes of the early Mycenaean period as a paradigm shift in the conceptualisation of time: the separation of the past from ‘living time’ and the association of the past with tombs. Tracing the gradual transition from burials in (the ruins of) settlements to the use of tumuli or extramural cemeteries, he argues that the development of later tomb forms facilitated repetitive iterations of the deathscape through the medium of processional movement. These new funerary forms may have developed in part to symbolise social structures and lineages previously made manifest through burial within the settlement. The dromos, an entry feature associated with these new tombs, reproduced ritual practice within the funerary landscape and was a means through which the past was conceptualised and social structures were communicated. The final chapter, by Farnham, tackles the ideational funerary landscapes of Early Iron Age Argolid and Corinthia from the perspective of purity and pollution. He demonstrates stark differences between these two regions both in placement of the dead in the landscape, the choice of which may have been impacted by movement

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potential (‘processional dynamic’), as well as in the material culture deposited at the site of tombs. These differences seem to hold good through time and might be related to differential notions of appropriate practice in relation to the question of pollution and death. As he suggests, approaching the cognised landscape in terms of the pure/ impure conceptual framework entails a deeper understanding of social engagements and interactions performed within the immediately local level, i.e. not only the communal but also the familial setting.

Emerging themes in Aegean funerary research Several new themes and approaches emerge from this overview. Many of these are considered in detail in the next chapter, but it is useful to summarise the state of Aegean funerary research as it emerges from the papers in this volume. One overarching approach that is clear from the above is that researchers now have fully embraced the notion that they are investigating human action in the past, rather than describing a static record. All of the chapters in this book attempt to take an action-centred approach, with multiple theoretical emphases. Boyd takes an explicit theoretical approach in adopting the concept of ‘fields of action’ as a way of describing situated human agency; Vavouranakis similarly adopts a ‘posthumanocentric’ approach which enmeshes humans and their environment in action. Papadimitriou also adopts a particular approach to human action and the perception of space. Other papers adopt explicit theoretical approaches, but in all papers the emphasis on human action is implicit, and none seek to intuit past social structures and hierarchies on the basis of ordered representative categories, as might have been expected in the past. It is a remarkable advance to have fifteen papers approach the evidence in this way. Several more specific themes are also apparent. One is the long-term of the tomb and the cemetery, as well as other locales: the ongoing reimagining of place and how this can be understood in terms of human action. As already noted, the issue of the reuse of settlement areas for burial is widely discussed, with several innovative suggestions. However, the long term use of tombs and the development of cemeteries is also carefully considered in several papers. In part connected to this theme are two further issues that are currently central to research. One is how people acted on the material remnant of previous funerary acts—often referred to as ‘second burial’ or more generally as secondary (ritual) action. The collective nature of many Aegean practices has long been recognised but only recently has a serious attempt been made to understand these practices as meaningful, positive and intended, as opposed to unimportant or negative (e.g. looting). Several papers in this volume contribute to this debate from both methodological and interpretative points of view. Related is the question of the use of material culture in the tomb, and the materiality of the corpse, and of skeletal material. The materiality of the dead is widely discussed among the

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papers and it is hoped that additional, new approaches in treating material culture will be developed in the future. Several papers make methodological points, and the need for methodological change is apparent from all the papers in this volume. The approaches espoused here can only be successful if excavation is conducted in such a manner as to recover detailed contextual information, and with some recent exceptions this happens depressingly rarely. The involvement of human bone specialists in excavation must now be regarded as mandatory, and an approach designed to recover maximum contextual information is essential if we are ever to offer satisfactory interpretations of the very complex contexts often found particularly in collective tombs. It is the hope of all the authors of this volume that the results, discussion and approaches presented here make a compelling case for the transformation of excavation and recording practices in the Aegean.

Anastasia Dakouri-Hild

Getting to Funerary Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Death and Performance in the Prehistoric Aegean “It is an odd thing to sing in a tomb, but the Tomb of Clytemnestra is a perfect place to do so […]. The hive-shaped tholos has wonderful acoustics for amplifying and reverberating an untrained voice […]. And so a place built for quiet entombment and sealed by ritual and material is also, within a short span of cosmic time, a place of spontaneous, passionate song.” (Barrie 2010: 228)

The title of this paper is a nod to Edward Casey’s (1996) article “How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: phenomenological prolegomena”, in which he questions the universality of space as an abstract, disembodied, neutral tabula rasa, and advocates for place as a more fundamental and intuitive concept with which to approach landscapes, buildings, bodies, societies and identities. An archaeology of place would entail an understanding of monuments as an intrinsic part of the human landscape; looking at the interplay and mutual moulding of natural topographies and architectural designs, and the effect of one on the other. Thus queried, places are not simply dots on a map. They are constituted in relation and contribute actively to the construction of humanised, sensuous, embodied landscapes. Although buildings do not exclusively define place, they are inextricable from it; the built and unbuilt environment together form social, lived, ideational landscapes inhabited by people. The twofold aim of this paper is: a) to explore this line of thinking about funerary architecture and landscape in the prehistoric Aegean; as I argue below, experiential and performative considerations of the built and natural environment have been present in Aegean scholarship for some time without specific reference to phenomenological theory; b) to identify directions for further research, expanding upon themes such as the materialisation of resources in the form of tombs, their use as vehicles for social and political competition, their role in the proclamation or contestation of status, the contestation or control of territory, and the legitimisation of power on the basis of ancestral rights. The mortuary ambit is a particularly suitable arena for the construction and maintenance of intersubjectivities: tombs, cemeteries, rites and things deposited with the dead revive social memories, assert links with an ancestral past, and serve to reinforce a sense of self and community. It is here that the notion of performance becomes relevant to archaeologies of place. In the ensuing section I discuss the intricate dynamic between competence and performance, convention and innovation, and the key parameters of performative discourse, since performance bears directly on the notion of funerary place as deeply humanised, dynamic, and contested. Subsequently, I identify salient motifs in theoretical approaches to space, place, and

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landscape. I then survey scholarship relevant to performance, architecture and landscape in the Aegean, including a brief account of the non-funerary realm.

Performance and the dead Competence is the explicit or implicit knowledge of the rules in a system of signification, such as language or culture. Performance, on the other hand, is the particular way (parole) in which knowledge is put to use, the implication being that it may differ substantially from competence and deviate from, even reformulate, the rules. Performance can be acted out by virtuosos upon official stages (Geertz 1980: 104; Debord 1994), but this is not to say that it the opposite of the quotidian (Pearson 1998: 33). Performance provides contexts in which people articulate the world and their place in it: “to look at itself a society must cut out a piece of itself for inspection. To do this it must set up a frame within which images and symbols […] can be scrutinised, assessed […] and rearranged” (Turner 1979: 96). Performance should not be perceived as a flawed project straying from competence. It puts forth cued interpretations and particular readings, classifications and understandings of things, by anchoring them in a suggestive frame. Heavily invested in materiality and sociality, it is not just artefact-laden (Schiffer 1999: 31), but entangles and intercalibrates things and people. Through performance, ambiguous potentialities are temporarily settled and surpluses of signification are sorted out: “new cultural materials (symbols, metaphors, orientations, styles, values, even paradigms) […] novel patternings of social relationships with traditional cultural instruments (can be brought about)” (Turner 1975: 150). Performance does not simply express particular cultural configurations. Although it does follow cultural scripts, it is not just the acting out of rules. Performance is characterised by an inherent tension between convention and innovation, creativity and critique (Gore 1998: 78). It can exaggerate, invert, reinvent, falsify or even mock a given reality. As a result, it can both legitimise and support or question extant classifications. The relationship between the structure and performance is therefore dialectic and reflexive, rather than reflective. Performance raises consciousness to the perceived self and the other, as well as to discrepancies between the subjective ideal and the real (Turner 1986: 22, 42). Notably, if performance is characterised by theatricity in a Western sense, it is not an art of deceit, a matter of rational calculation and conscious manipulation (Schieffelin 1998). Performance requires an event first and foremost. While many aspects of human action can be seen as performative, whether public or private (personal rituals etc., Goffman 1959), public performance is more amenable to archaeological study. Public performance requires participants: those who perform and those who attend. Yet, those who attend are not necessarily passive, as opposed to active performers: the relationship between participants itself may be addressed during the performance

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(Turner 1986: 84). Another constituent of public performance is a demarcated space. Performance needs to occur in a heterotopia, a space somehow distanced and segregated from ordinary space (such as a sanctuary, a burial site, a market square) (Turner 1979: 97). The delineation of time, moreover, is necessary: performative events tend to be calendrical, following the rhythms of natural and social phenomena and crises. They are also inherently temporal in that they are segmented into a beginning or separation from ordinary life, a liminal middle or ambiguous transition and an end where incorporation in a new life has been achieved (Turner 1979: 95; Hastrup 1998; cf. Van Gennep 1960). Liminality and a sense of transformation, then, is another crucial parameter of performance. Mortuary practice is one of many forms of performance in society. Funerary preparations and rituals tend to be highly formalised and acted out in specific times and places which set them apart from everyday life. They entail transitive actions and spaces, special paraphernalia, bodily presentations, gestures, sensations, sounds, smells. Funerary performance requires a stage (such as the cemetery and the site of a grave), performers (e.g. officiates, mourners) and an audience (e.g. the attending members of a funeral, ancestors, other spiritual entities). It is a type of behaviour that is communicative, reflexive, non-routine and consciously monitored, an awakened ‘being-in-place’ (Richardson 1984). An archaeology of performance may provide glimpses of how social relations and mortuary beliefs were conceived and communicated within a group of people on the occasion of a particular event.

Placing landscape With the advent of non-Cartesian epistemologies, the notion of landscape as an abstract, objective instrument for scientific analysis has been problematised extensively in the last two decades. The cartographic and deterministic paradigms of landscape studies, regarding the environment either as an inert, passive backdrop of human activity or, inversely, as the main determinant of behaviour and society, have been criticised as primarily European constructions not applicable cross-culturally. From a Cartesian point of view, landscape is something to be looked at, a specular representation of the world from an outsider’s perspective (Thomas 1993; Ingold 1993). A Cartesian landscape presupposes sharp, insuperable divisions between mind and body, nature and culture, object and subject (Hirsch 1995; Ingold 2000: 17), which does not necessarily line up with emic, lived-in understandings of land. Similar criticisms have been voiced about space conceptualised as a purely representational entity and a container of human activity consisting of empty geometries (Agnew 1993; Casey 1996). Other spatial domains of human existence include: somatic space, inhabited by body-centred, multisensorial, habitual action; existential or symbolic space, associated with architecture and the landscape by a group of people (Tilley 1994: 167);

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use-space as an immediate, personal area around the body, reserved for apparent instrumental needs; owned territory, marked by things identified with and situated in close proximity to the self; space signposted visibly as the preserve of a putative possessor on behalf of a group by means of markers, which may include the body itself (Goffman 1971: 345, 38, 423). Such ‘territories of the self’ are not merely contained by inert physical space, rather they define and are defined by it, and straddle the nature-culture and subject-object divide. Although the given world and human projects are certainly distinguishable experientially, nature is not humanless and value-free geography and topography: the landscape is both a source and a destination for signification, symbolically and socially affordant, and therefore highly cultural as well (Barrett 1999). This human landscape is a quasi-artefact that is both material and cognised (Tilley 2010: 26, 36), i.e. physical and phenomenal but also charged with imaginative, emotional, symbolic meaning mediated by people’s ideas (Knapp & Ashmore 1999). It is embodied, multisensory, specific, subjective, relational (Tilley 1994: 8; Feld & Basso 1996), and fully integrated with social lives and processes. Bound up with the latter in a never ending process of interanimation (Agnew 1993; Tilley 2010: 25), the human landscape is dynamic, mutable, inherently unstable. At the juncture of environment and society, nature and culture, objectivity and subjectivity, materiality and cognition, lies place. Place is to be distinguished from abstract space, the archaeology-specific term site, or cartographic ones such as location, point, area (Agnew 1993): it is a social, ideological, experiential understanding of a particular setting, a repository of memory, tradition and collective knowledge. Place anchors and cues human experience and knowledge (Zedeño & Bowser 2009). But place also presupposes human emplacement: it is the flow of people’s experiences and actions that makes it ‘known’, i.e. sacred, a homeland, a wasteland, taboo, a heterotopia. Through inhabitation, place is imagined, mythologised, remembered, desired. It becomes an arena for the construction or negotiation of power relations, and a stage for reflecting upon, claiming and contesting identities (Thomas 1993; Feld & Basso 1996). Place consists of a physical setting (locality); the locality as constituted by social relations (locale; imagined, ideological etc.); and the experiential, subjective feel of locale at a particular time (sense of place) (Giddens 1986: 119). Therefore, place is both material and ideational, individualistic and relational/social. Notably, while its locality anchors experience, it does not necessarily constrain it there since associations generated at a particular place may well project onto much broader terrains (Agnew 1993; e.g. ‘our’/‘their’ land; ancestral, royal, divine land, the nation etc.). An important dimension of place is the built environment. Architecture makes locality more readily perceptible and sensible (Tilley 1994: 17). Its power is to a great extent visual, with approach, shifting views, scale, position, contrasts of light and darkness, material qualities, all working together towards an ‘ever changing panoply of images to engage us’. At the same time, according to Thomas Barrie, the visual allure of architecture has blinded us to a wealth of multisensory cues afforded by buildings. Mitigating against a purely specular, detached approach he argues for a

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more holistic one, that takes into account the other senses and the complex ways in which they mediate the experience of architecture (cf. Tuan 1984): for instance, soundscapes (echoes, voices, music); olfactory and gustatory associations (the smell of home, a church, a tomb; the taste of water gushing from a courtyard fountain, food and drink prepared or consumed in a room); the tactile and cutaneous feel of materials and textures (the feel of cold marble of a floor, a rough prison wall). Architecture is seen as a reconciliation between the self and the world, mediated through the senses, memory and the emotions: indeed, some architecture does not just impress us, it ‘touches’ us profoundly (Barrie 2010: 169, 24). Richard Bradley (2000) asks what architecture does to the places it inhabits. It necessitates, at least initially, an ongoing commitment to its maintenance. While a built structure may carry symbolic meaning in itself through its design, it also acts as a medium for additional symbolism conveyed through iconography, special building materials etc. Paradoxically, while buildings tend to make places more visible, the series of transformations which bring them about are restrictive. The dialectics of open/closed have ‘the sharpness of yes and no, which decides everything’: architecture marks the boundary between this side and beyond, here and there (Bachelard 1994: 2112). Buildings strive to demarcate, to generate an inside and an outside, to create boundaries that may be crossed at certain times by certain people. Not only do they enable zones of separation and structure experience, they prescribe a specific order and routes of visitation towards and around them (Bradley 2000: 1045; cf. Tilley 1994: 17). Entrances, and thresholds in particular, are highly relevant in this regard. The threshold is a transactional, open-ended space, a boundary between the explicit and the implicit, the external and the internal, the familial and the alien. It is a potentially threatening and dangerous place where incompatibilities struggle for dominance and everything is potentially undermined; it is a discrete category of experience that is neither here nor there (Genette 1987; Mukherji 2011). Because of this hermeneutic overflow, entrances are commonly used as forms of special attention, signposting perceived boundaries between public and private, reality and the world beyond, ‘inside’ (the seen, perceived) and ‘outside/beyond’ (the imagined, conceived, diegetic). Bachelard’s (1994: 218–23) doors of hesitation are an ‘entire cosmos of the halfopen’ and conflicting possibilities: now bolted, now wide open; they mark a ‘sensitised space painful on both sides’. From a dramaturgic point of view, the entrance offers an expanded reality beyond that which is immediately perceived, a different dimension of time and/or place (Chothia 2011): in theater, it extends the stage immaterially and delivers a certain verisimilitude that is crucial to setting up the working environment and materials of performance (Pearson 2006: 220). Entrances and thresholds draw attention to human form as it transitions from one side to the other. They bring into play the tantalising and ludic dynamics of presence versus absence, welcome versus exclusion or violation, familiarity versus risk. Capitalising on an aesthetics of hidden things (Bachelard 1994: xxxvi), entrances dramatise

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concealment versus revelation, knowledge of what is to come versus ignorance-onthe-brink; for this reason, entrances may be regarded as instruments for the management of knowledge (Mukherji 2011) and a potential source of power. The materiality of architecture promotes its permanence: monumental architectural forms, in particular, are designed to withstand the test of time and to be remembered, even to proclaim intranscience. Buildings have biographies intermingled with human ones, yet they transcend the individual life-spans of those who designed, built, used or commissioned them. They may be regarded as super-generational metaphors of being, proxies of humans, that ‘inhabit’ the landscape as well. They are also the abodes of a collective, unforgettable past (Bachelard 1994: xxxvi). It is no surprise, then, that some buildings are ‘persistent places’ (Zedeño & Bowser 2009) with complex trajectories and modifications. Their afterlives may persist long after their fabric is forsaken, deteriorated, burnt down (cf. Knapp & Ashmore 1999; Tilley 2010: 389). Even in their ruinous state, buildings provide sensual affordances of a particular flavour, violating expectations of boundaries (e.g. inside versus outside) and creating a complex sense of time (Edensor 2008). Buildings may be designed to recast the past into the present (time of construction, destruction, of ancestors) or materialise atemporal, mythical or cosmogonical time. They can appropriate and freeze time, or create utopian, blended time (cf. Tilley 1994: 204; Barrett 1999). Multiburial tombs, in particular, have the ability to transform human remains into a perpetually accessible resource for the living that can be “visited, inspected, augmented or rearranged […] taken away and circulated over a wider area”. They establish continuity between the past and the present, presence ancestors and, in the process, construct time (Bradley 1998: 626). Architecture is a relatively small, but intrinsic part of the human landscape: an archaeology of place must address both. Despite the fact that unmodified landscapes are not altered by human activity, they are also cultural and distinctly human by virtue of the notional significance endowed to them by people’s beliefs (Ingold 1993; Bradley 2000: 289, 345). Landmarks and prominent features may be regarded as ‘nature’s architecture’, i.e. as forms of special attention that lend themselves to associative inscription, symbolic attribution, memorialisation and naming (Tilley 1994: 18; Casey 1996). But they also inform social practices. For instance, mountains, hills, caves, chasms, outcrops, ridges, promontories, rivers, streams, lakes, springs, waterfalls, coastlines etc. affect the placement and design of buildings. Landscape features, when emically viewed as boundaries (Ingold 1993), demarcate difference and establish the liminal locus where opposites meet, communicate and transact (Tilley 1994: 17; Bradley 2000: 279). Landscape affects the arrangement, orientation and clustering of buildings; it demands attention through architectural mimicry, emulation, incorporation, substitution/competition, and the usage of materials as architectonised bits of landscape (Tilley 1994: 202–3; 2010: 38–9; Bradley 2000: 104–5). The specificities of architecture and landscape combined construct an ‘autotopography’ within the framework of site-specific, unending performance (Pearson 2010:

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8, 10–11). But these specificities would be empty without taking into account the bodies and kinetic habits of people and their ‘taskscapes’ (Ingold 1993; Olwig 2008). Places are porous and relational, i.e. they are parts of larger geopolitical, symbolic and social landscapes from which they derive their meaning: the interplaces visited or traversed en route to a locale informs the journey (Zedeño & Bowser 2009). The mutual feedback between human experience and movement toward, in, around and through places is of special interest here. Directional movement, whether ceremonial or not, is a form of corporeal intentionality and situated perspective that embeds bodies in place (Casey 1996). It constructs a sequential ‘flow of the mind’ (Tilley 1994: 28, 202; 2010: 29), a continuously unravelling event and spatial narrative that accentuates or supresses certain sensory affordances of the environment. Movement is also epistemic and social: approaching places and buildings the ‘right way’ requires knowledge and is to a large extent dependent on previous iterations. Following in the footsteps of others is a symbolic and normative act: the path is a metaphor for social embeddedness (Ingold & Vergunst 2008; Olwig 2008). However, paths may be questioned, resisted and deviated from, since the meanings of buildings, landscapes and places that they connect are contestable. Thus, eulogised places can become hostile ones (Bachelard 1994: xxxv-xxxvi). Topophilias can be replaced by topophobias or misotopies; topognosia and remembering can become topagnosia and forgetting.

Performance, architecture and landscape in Aegean archaeology: a review The non-funerary realm In Aegean archaeology, the significance of ‘natural’ features (mountains, caves, springs etc.) is frequently discussed in the context of cult places and ritual iconography (e.g. Warren 1988; Peatfield 2001; Goodison 2001; Berg 2004). While some scholars see the ‘natural’ landscape as integral to cultic practice (Krzyszkowska 2010), providing the symbolically loaded ‘coordinates’ that structure ritual (Sourvinou-Inwood 1988), others regard ritual behaviour as a response to or culturalisation of nature (e.g. Warren 1988): cult places arrest divinity manifested in nature and materialise it in a locus of human activity (Lonsdale 1995; Cain 2001). More specifically in the direction of architecture, architectural elements such as courts, monumental facades, windows of appearances, processional pathways and theatral areas (Marinatos 1987; Hägg 1987; Vansteenhuyse 2002), throne rooms and adyta (Niemeier 1987; Goodison 2001; Immerwahr 2000; Wright 2004; Nordquist 2008) establish ‘dominant locales’ necessary for the enactment of epiphanic rituals, ceremonial processions, dances, bull-leaping spectacles, initiations, sacrifices, feasts. Architectural configurations, such as altars, pavements, benches, platforms, hearths,

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columns, periboloi, are material correlates of cultural habits and beliefs; they are also attention-focusing devices that provide the architecturally specific contexts for performative activities (e.g. Renfrew 1985: 17–9; Warren 1988; Wright 1994; Lonsdale 1995). Palaces and even entire citadels can be construed as stages for the performance of craft, elite ideology and palatial ‘brand’ (Carter 2004; Maran 2006; Dakouri-Hild 2012). The performative careers of ancient buildings may persist into the recent past and the present: they can become both props and media for the performance of modern and contemporary identities (e.g. Hitchcock & Koudounaris 2002). Some dromena attested through the material culture of the prehistoric Aegean are public, ludic, agonistic, prescriptive, promoting social cohesion while at the same time serving as instruments for social control, the mass propagation of ideology and the maintenance of power (Marinatos 1987; Hägg 1987; Vansteenhuyse 2002; German 2005: 86). Other types of events would have been restricted to smaller groups of participants (Immerwahr 2000; Goodison 2001), capitalising on the ‘aesthetics of the hidden’, secret or restricted knowledge, the dynamics of purity versus pollution, solemn transformation or the politics of exclusion (Renfrew 1985: 17–9; Berg 2004; Wright 2004; Borgna 2004; Nordquist 2008). The liminal nature of architectural features associated with such performances has been pinpointed frequently (e.g. Renfrew 1985: fig. 1.1; Marinatos 1987; Wright 1994; Letesson & Driessen 2008). ‘Dramatic’ vistas, the intervisibility of built features and landmarks, issues of scale, ‘theatrical’ light conditions, sitting of built features in architectural space (Goodison 2001; Vansteenhuyse 2002), the presence or absence of boundaries, the design of entrances and access pathways, together constitute an ‘architectonic language’ that specifies heterotopic location and the event itself (Borgna 2004; Hitchcock 2008). Religious symbols, flowers, rhyta, sacrificial animals, figurines, ceramic vessels are some other tactile, audible, visual manipulables of performative action (Peatfield 2001; Wright 2004). Sometimes performance is examined through the perspective of sport and spectacle emphasising, for instance, the specular, the ludic and the agonistic (Lonsdale 1995; Loughlin 2004). In other cases, it is disassociated from ‘theatricality’ and looked at more abstractly, i.e. as a tool for the constitution and maintenance of social realities, the construction of social roles, and as a form of enquiry about the world that helps formulate cultural knowledge (Warren 1988; German 2005: 15–6). The priority of seeing and spectacle in the study of performance notwithstanding, it is important to recognise the contribution of the other senses (Renfrew 1985: 17–9), as well as of kinesthesia, memory and the emotions. Of interest in this area have been ostention and gestural aspects of ritual activities (deiktymena; Warren 1988; Morris 2001; Renfrew 1985: 17–9); posture and corporeality as a means to shape experience and induce particular mental or emotional states (Morris 2001; Peatfield 2001; Morris & Peatfield 2002); kineticism and the inherent narrativity of corporeal form (Cain 2001); the body as locus of performance (Simandiraki-Grimshaw 2010); embodied politics and memory (Hamilakis & Konsolaki 2004); and modes of bodily disposition, containment and co-presence in place (Davis 1987; Letesson & Driessen 2008). The

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nature and meaning of contemporary somatic emplacement in ancient performative locales has also been pondered upon (Hitchcock 2008).

The mortuary realm In terms of the interrelationship of tombs and landscape, location in Aegean archaeology is seen as mostly affected by practical, ad hoc considerations, such as terrain configuration, convenience, geological composition and internal cemetery organisation (Wells 1990; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 42–3; Branigan 1998; Papadimitriou 2001: 152). Additional factors, such as marginality, prominence, routes (Boyd 2002: 92), ‘religious beliefs’ (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 42–3), and the ‘ritualised expression of social structure’ (Cultraro 2007) are entertained. More noticeable patterns in alignment and entrance orientation have been discussed in the context of proximity and intervisibility of cemeteries and settlements: ‘eye contact’ between tomb entrances and settlements was both sought after and avoided depending on cultural context (Wells 1990; Branigan 1998; Maggidis 1998; Murphy 1998). Possible symbolic (e.g. solar, seasonal) meanings of tomb orientation have also been proposed (Van Leuven 1989; Goodison 2001). Whilst the ‘natural’ landscape tends to be regarded as an exploitable resource and a setting for tomb placement, the understanding of funerary places as networks ‘where people perform, act, interact’ (Gallou 2005: 60) or as ‘fluid topographies of action that encompass routes as routinised locales themselves’ (Boyd 2002: 18) point more decisively in the direction of humanised landscapes. Michael Boyd’s study, more specifically, examines mainland tombs in their various complex, nested hierarchies and nodal interrelationships (grave, cemetery, landscape; places and paths). He makes a useful distinction between cemeteries as occasional locales, i. e. restricted places maintained and reproduced through the discourse of memory and twice-behaved behaviour (performance), and routinised, generally uncontroversial locales brought about through non-discursive action (Boyd 2002: 16–7, 23), noting that a single location may act as either type of locale at different times. Funerary architectural forms have been examined systematically in the Aegean paying close attention, for example, to construction materials, design principles and processes, typological evolution, culture-historical connections, affiliation with particular social groups, functional and ritual uses, ideological and political roles. Built features or installations, such as altars, kernoi, benches, semata, stelae, enclosures, stone rings, paved areas, platforms, specially prepared surfaces, are interpreted as devices for locating, visiting and remembering the dead (Doumas 1987; Protonotariou-Deilaki 1990; Papadimitiou 2001: 185; Fitzsimons 2011). They are also regarded as critical in defining and maintaining family ties (Nordquist 1990; Lewartowski 2000: 18) and corporate identities (Wright 1987; Gallou 2005: 29). They are also frequently interpreted as attention-getting devices that are part of a site’s ‘spatialities of performance’ (Hamilakis 1998; Papadimitriou 2001: 184; Gallou 2005: 31); material vehicles  

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for the figurative disembodiment of the deceased (Soles 2001) or their purification (Branigan 1993); interfaces between the living and the dead (Soles 2010); or a means to mould and extend the world of ancestors into that of the living (Branigan 1998). The affordances of certain construction techniques and materials are occasionally considered (Fitzsimons 2011), while the process of labour-intensive, prolonged construction may be seen as performative in itself, involving builders, commisioners, onlookers and those who are simply aware of a building project (cf. Wright 1987; French 1989; Boyd 2002: 20). Funerary places (especially multiburial ones) constitute a perpetually unfinished and costly resource, the maintenance of which involves repeated destruction, reconstruction, opening and closing of paths and entrances (Boyd 1994). Architectural design is adaptable to accessibility or restriction needs and is, more generally, a material vector of changing ritual and attitudes towards death (Branigan 1993: 63; Hamilakis 1998; Soles 2001). It may also incorporate and reveal cross-generational planning and expectations of the future (Mee & Cavanagh 1984; cf. Wright 1987). Aspects of human movement, corporeal dimensions and relative human/monumental scale are discussed rather infrequently (Boyd 2002: 17, 20). The few examples of funerary iconography known in the Aegean betray some preoccupation with architectural settings (cf. Immerwahr 1995; Burke 2005), which in turn suggests an emic significance of the built environment in the constitution of mortuary place. Tombs are the par excellence liminal places: they form the boundary between the sacred and the profane, light and darkness, terrestrial life and the underworld, the present and the past, the living and the dead. Physical setting (Soles 2010) and natural illumination of entrances (Goodison 1989; 2001) may relate to metaphysical beliefs about transitions to the sphere of ancestors or the territory of shadows (Immerwahr 1995; Gallou 2005: 65–7). The transitional nature of certain architectural features of Aegean tombs has been frequently commented upon: carefully formed dromoi and elaborate façades (Gallou 2005: 26; cf. Burke 2005), skeuomorphic dromoi (Cavanagh 1987), tomb vestibules (Papadimitriou 2001: 160, 184–5); tripartite stomia of varying dimensions (Cavanagh 1987; Branigan 1998; 1993: 120; Gallou 2005: 31, 64), symbolic prothyra and side entrances (Cavanagh 1987; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 16), carefully constructed lintels, jambs and thresholds (Sampson 1987; Doumas 1987; Branigan 1993: 59–60), sometimes associated with wall paintings (Gallou 2005: 68–9); threshold grooves as a locus of communication with the dead (Wells 1990; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 46–9; Gallou 2005: 65–7); pillars and columns as loci of special encounters (Immerwahr 1995); chambers illuminated naturally or artificially and the play of light and darkness (Gallou 2005: 71, 130); ways of blocking entrances (Sampson 1987; Protonotariou-Deilaki 1990; Papadimitriou 2001: 159). Activities associated with the above features are both cued and enabled by the built environment, and accentuate the liminality of burial practices. Libations, toasting, feasting, pottery smashing, artifact killing, removal and dispersal of human remains (Cavanagh 1998; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 15; Lewartowski 2000: 56) are separation rites in Van Gennep’s terms: they dismantle the materiality of one state of

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being to construct the steps of passage into another. The opening up of a grave creates a ‘sensitised place of hesitation’: it temporarily disassociates the funerary locale from its routinised, everyday form, exposing oneself to the other (Boyd 2002: 30–1). It uses time, but also blends it (past/present). Every episode of rebuilding, reclosing and reopening dismantles the previous state of the locale, turning it to something new (Boyd 1994; cf. Wolpert 2004) and a rite of separation in itself. The most potent dynamic in the performance of death is that of the self versus the other; it is abundantly manifest in the arrangement of tombs and cemeteries. ‘Domestic’ elements in tombs mirror the world of the living: doors, well-prepared floors, gabled roofs, benches, table-like installations, niches, wall paintings and other forms of ‘interior decorating’ situate the dead in an environment reminiscent of life (Wells 1990; Gallou 2005: 71–2); stone pillows (Doumas 1987) and a sleeping presentation of the dead are employed ‘to soften the break’ (Nordquist 1990). The ‘homes of the dead’ undergo additions and expansions (Wells 1990; Protonotariou-Deilaki 1990), in part due to this metaphorical and isomorphic connection to household and family life. The juxtaposition of monumental and spatial forms and the striking isomorphism of palatial architecture and certain types of tombs (‘gates’, columns, iconographised elements, conglomerate, ashlar blocks, Wright 1987; Fitzsimons 2011) could be explained in part through an oikos ideology extended to the elite mortuary ambit. Tombs can also comprise parts of larger social units transposed to the funerary ambit, such as burial plots and precincts of nuclear families, clans (Sampson 1987; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–6, 34) or entire necropoleis (Sampson 1987; Maggidis 1998) that emulate urban design and make landscapes of the dead an organic part of the world of the living (Branigan 1998; Gallou 2005: 30). At the same time, the landscapes of the dead are distinctly heterotopic (Hamilakis 1998), especially extramural ones. The location of tombs tends to emphasise otherness through physical and notional distance and a requirement for movement (Boyd 2002: 22). Cemeteries inhabit specific areas in close proximity to settlements, the revisitation of which require the mobilisation of memory (Doumas 1987; Protonotariou-Deilaki 1990). When death is ‘nearly on the doorstep’, as in the case of Minoan tholoi, the intervisibility of tomb entrances and settlements is avoided, although the tombs themselves are visible from the vantage point of the living (Branigan 1998). Other forms of containment of the dead may include binding, stones placed on the deceased, careful walling up of tomb entrances etc. (Sampson 1987; Nordquist 1990; Wells 1990; Lewartowski 2000). Practices of this kind may relate to practical considerations, but some reveal contradicting, ambiguous approaches towards death resulting from metaphysical angst (Sampson 1987; Branigan 1993: 121; Maggidis 1998) and/ or can be interpreted as forms of curatorship of the dead (e.g. prevention of errand souls, violation, improper interference, appeasement of the ‘thirsty ones’ etc; Lewartowski 2000: 54; Wells 1990; Gallou 2005: 83). The deceased are incorporated in the social arenas of the living through ritual, but they are also partially excluded from them (Branigan 1998; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 43). The admittance of the dead in social

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life is highly qualified and circumscribed, permitted in specific times and at specific places. The language of performance is prevalent in mortuary archaeologies of the Aegean: death is ‘the final act of human drama’ (Wright 1987); mourning is ‘very dramatic’ (Lewartowski 2000: 56–7).‘Sets of linked activities’ (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 76–7) are examined in detail, and may or may not be referred to explicitly as performance: e.g. preparation of the body, prothesis, lamentation, procession, internment, toasting, libation, offerings, display of icons such as figurines, feasting, destruction, sacrifice, lifting of bones and furnishings, placement in dromoi or niches (Nordquist 1990; Protonotariou-Deilaki 1990; Cavanagh 1998; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 76–7, 107–20). Among the many forms of performance discussed are gestures and postures of grief, salutations, the extraordinary presentation of dead and participant bodies, scents, flavours, elevated speech, noise- and music-making, chanting (Cavanagh 1998; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 104–5; Hamilakis 1998; Immerwahr 1995; Lewartowski 2000: 56–7; Gallou 2005: 130). ‘Theatrical’ forms are sometimes understood as devices for ritualising reality and purging emotion (Cavanagh 1998; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 104–5). Others maintain that they do not preclude real emotional engagement on behalf of the participants (Lewartowski 2000: 56–7). Far from being simple ‘pretend’, these twice-behaved, self-conscious behaviours offer a type of katharsis by mobilising and managing the emotions in a controlled environment. Like any performance, they require an audience that can be found in an immediate peer group, the local community or broader social territories alike (Fitzsimons 2011). There has been some interest in the spatial facilitation of gatherings, differential modes and roles of participation, and the control of center-stage activities by the entrance (Gallou 2005: 65–7, 130; Boyd 2002: 29–30). What does funerary performance broadly construed (monuments, artifacts, bodies, places tied together in action) ultimately do for the living? It maintains the integrity of a group upon the passing of a member by making space for new relationships to arise (Branigan 1993: 119, 129–30; Hamilakis 1998; Gallou 2005: 124–5), though it may not be the only mechanism for repairing the fabric of society (Boyd 2002: 19). The maintenance and reproduction of funerary places through performance facilitates social cohesion, helps resolve cognitive and emotional dissonance, and makes death more manageable (Doumas 1987; Nordquist 1990; Branigan 1998). It may also work towards moral or cosmological reproduction (Voutsaki 1999; Goodison 2001). From a political standpoint, funerary performance materially presences ancestors in the present human landscape, laying claims to ancestral time and place through processes of appropriation, symbolic continuation (Mee & Cavanagh 1984; Dabney & Wright 1990; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 42–43; Soles 2001; 2010) or territorial marking (Wright 1987; French 1989; Wells 1990; Murphy 1998). Notably, marking can persist in mnemoscapes and does not require constant visual presence (contra Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 124). Engaging in the politics of the past and harnessing the power of the dead helps construct territories of the collective self at various levels (e.g.

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family, kin, clan, chiefdom, state, elite faction, palace), attempts to legitimise them in the eyes of others (French 1989; Murphy 1998; Maggidis 1998; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–6, 116), and consolidates or contests identities and authority (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 56, 114; Hamilakis 1998). From this outlook, funerary places serve the dead and the living equally well (cf. Boyd 1994).

Discussion and possible directions for future research Most field archaeologists enjoy and cultivate their own peripatetic experiences of Aegean landscapes. Such varied, somatic explorations and personal, perhaps even emotional, connections to particular places are not divorced from the formal tasks of our profession, such as survey, excavation, conservation, recordation and representation (in the form of maps, grids, photographs, drawings), the collection, quantification, analysis, interpretation and publishing of data, and the exhibition of artefacts and maintenance of archaeological sites. We are naturally attuned towards the experiential, and our professional and personal selves seamlessly blend with the object of study, whether or not we consciously or willingly employ phenomenological theory: archaeology is in itself a form of being-in-the-world. In Aegean archaeology, discussions of landscape and architecture in the context of performance abound even though they are rarely theoretically explicit. The ‘natural’ landscape and the ‘cultured’ built environment tend to be regarded as related but separate facets of human existence. Performance, approaches to which may vary, is sometimes treated as means to make sense of an external reality ‘out there’. However, Aegean scholarship is already tempering the study of funerary landscape and architecture as abstract behaviour and space, with experience and a sense of place. Indeed, recent scholarship attempts to explicitly straddle the divide between nature and culture, object and subject, body and mind, by focusing on the multisensorial, somatic, social/intersubjective experience of performed mortuary place. There is growing interest in interpreting landscape as something other than a passive backdrop or container of human activities, or as a specular representation. Performance is not a behaviour that simply utilises implements, corporeal forms and architectural settings with predetermined and fixed meanings to express society, but a form of dwelling and an arena for the continuous intercalibration, interdefinition and contestation of things, people, and places that constructs society. The trajectories of funerary places in the human landscape do not end with construction and the deposition of bodies, but are continuously reworked, revamped, rebuilt, remembered, or turned to ruins, obliterated, abandoned, and forgotten. Additional areas of future research in this direction in Aegean archaeology might include:

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Nature versus culture Does this division apply to ancient landscapes? Can we conceptualise landscapes of the past in ways that more closely approximate their emic understandings? Non-specular approaches to ancient places Can we do more than just ‘look at’ buildings, and sense them as well by incorporating soundscapes, smellscapes, feelscapes etc.? How can we augment the specular paradigm of architectural study? The choice of locale What are some affordances and potentialities of particular landscapes? How do landscape configurations create distance and difference? Might some of these affordances and their perception be cross-cultural and universal, or are they entirely particularistic? Interplaces How can we better understand connections and pathways between settlements and cemeteries, different cemeteries, different tombs within cemeteries, and the various spatialities and features of a single tomb? The connection between landscape and architecture What do inherent, sensible qualities of the landscape (e.g. forms, colour and texture) impart on experience? To the extent that the environment is also a source of building materials, what can we say about the qualities of the latter as architectonised pars pro toto of landscape? How do buildings mimic, incorporate, substitute, subvert landscape? How does landscape affect and structure, the design, grouping of buildings or compete with them? How does light and the seasons influence design and how does the latter help invest cyclical phenomena with culture-specific meaning? Ontological boundaries between place and people In what ways are buildings surrogates of people and bodies? What might some anthropomorphic and human-metaphoric qualities of buildings and landscapes be? Can we regard ‘monumentality’, permanence and quality of construction from a perspective other than conspicuous consumption and the display of power? The semantic mutability of ancient places What is the relationship between convention and innovation, contestation and critique? If places are maintained, when and why are they questioned? What alternate meanings might arise from the point of view of exclusion? What do the landscapes and places of resistance look and feel like?

Ultimately, we should be aware that performance is neither a means to decipher entire cultures nor reconstruct ‘correct’, faithful scripts of the past (Wells 1990; Boyd 1994; 2005: 98). Although to be human is to have a particular kind of body and think in metaphoric ways, an archaeology of performed place is not an exercise in ancient mind reading (Tilley 2010: 483–7), but a performance in the present. We must be cognizant of the polyphonicity of our voices, the ways in which we gaze upon the places of others and our own sets of experiences coming into play through training, methodology, textual traditions and personal background (Appadurai 1988; Ingold 1993). But such polyphonicity is not only unavoidable; it is fundamental to construct-

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ing a ‘thick description’ of place that samples and engenders its richness and patina (Pearson & Shanks 2001: 64–6; Pearson 2006: 32). The recognition of multiple interpretations may lead to hybrid, integrated understandings between subjects (Barrie 2010: 25). A hybrid approach is not exclusively phenomenological, hermeunetic or empirical but a middle way “that includes but goes beyond formal and historical analysis, while setting limits on relative subjectivity by establishing intersubjective connections between place, embodied experience, historical, cultural, environmental, political and religious contexts and shared aspects of the human condition” (Barrie 2010: 28; cf. Bradley 2000: 42). From this perspective, the human landscape that encompasses the built environment and nature as inhabited by people can be an invaluable resource in the interpretation of cultural form. It can help us understand how people imparted meaning to their surroundings and ways of thinking even as content is forever lost (Ingold 1993; Knapp & Ashmore 1999; Zedeño & Bowser 2009).

References Agnew, J., 1993. Representing space: space, scale and culture in social science. In Place/Culture/ Representation, eds. Duncan, J. & D. Ley. New York: Routledge. Appadurai, A., 1988. Introduction: place and voice in anthropological theory. Cultural Anthropology 3 (1): 16–20. Bachelard, G., 1994. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press. Barrett, J. C., 1999. The mythical landscapes of the British Iron Age. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Knapp, A. B. & W. Ashmore. Blackwell: London, 253–65. Barrie, T., 2010. The Sacred In-Between: the Mediating Roles of Architecture. Routledge: London. Berg, I., 2004. Performing religion: practitioners and cult places in Minoan Crete. In Belief in the Past, ed. Insoll, T. Oxford: Archaeopress, 27–36. Borgna, E., 2004. Aegean feasting: a Minoan perspective. Hesperia 73 (2), 127–59. Boyd, M. J., 1994. Mortuary archaeology: performance, architecture, time, and memory. Archaeo 2, 85–96. Boyd, M. J., 2002. Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean Mortuary Practices in the Southern and Western Peloponnese, British Archaeological Reports International Series S1009. Oxford: Archaeopress. Bradley, R., 1998. The Significance of Monuments: On the Shaping of Human Experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. London: Routledge. Bradley, R., 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places. Routledge: London. Branigan, K., 1993. Dancing with Death: Life and Death in Southern Crete, c. 3000–2000 BC. London: Hakkert. Branigan, K., 1998. The nearness of you: proximity and distance in Early Minoan funerary landscapes. In Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Branigan, K. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 13–26. Burke, B., 2005. Materialization of Mycenaean ideology and the Ayia Triada sarcophagus. American Journal of Archaeology 109, 403–22. Cain, C. D., 2001. Dancing in the dark: deconstructing a narrative of epiphany on the Isopata ring. American Journal of Archaeology 195, 27–49.

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Carter, T., 2004. Transformative processes in liminal spaces: craft as ritual action in the Throne Room area. In Knossos: Palace, City, State, ed. Cadogan, G., E. Hatzaki & A. Vasilakis, British School at Athens Studies 12. London: British School at Athens, 273–82. Casey, E. S., 1996. How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: phenomenological prolegomena. In Senses of Place, eds. Feld, S. & K. H Basso. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 13–52. Cavanagh, W., 1987. Cluster analysis of Mycenaean chamber tombs. In Thanatos: Les coutûmes funéraires en Égée à l’âge du Bronze, ed. Laffineur, R., Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de Liège, 161–9. Cavanagh, W., 1998. Innovation, conservatism and variation in Mycenaean funerary ritual. In Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Branigan, K. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 103–14. Cavanagh, W. & C. Mee, 1998. A Private Place: Death in Prehistoric Greece, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 125. Jonsered: Paul Åströms Förlag. Chothia, J., 2011. Zero…zero…and zero: permeable walls and off-stage spaces. In Thinking on Thresholds: The Poetics of Transitive Spaces, ed. Mukherji, S. London: Anthem Press, 17–28. Cultraro, M., 2007. Combined efforts till death: funerary ritual and social statements in the Aegean Early Bronze Age. In Performing Death. Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Laneri, N., Oriental Institute Seminars 3. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 81–108. Dabney, M. & J. Wright, 1990. Mortuary customs, palatial society and state formation in the Aegean area: a comparative study. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid, eds. Hägg, R. & G. C. Nordquist. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 45–53. Dakouri-Hild, A., 2012. Making a difference: production and consumption of prestige artifacts in Late Bronze Age Boeotia. In Jewellery, Adornment and Textiles in the Aegean Bronze Age, eds. Nosch, M. L. & R. Laffineur, Aegaeum 33. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège. Davis, E., 1987. The Knossos miniature frescoes and the function of the central courts. In The Function of the Minoan Palaces, eds. Hägg, R. & N. Marinatos. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 157–61. Debord, G., 1994. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Doumas, C., 1987. Early Cycladic society: the evidence from the graves. In Thanatos: Les coutûmes funéraires en Égée à l’âge du Bronze, ed. Laffineur, R., Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de Liège, 15–18. Edensor, T., 2008. Walking through ruins. In Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, eds. Ingold, T. & J. L. Vergunst. Burlington: Ashgate, 123–41. Fitzsimons, R., 2011. Monumental architecture and the construction of the Mycenaean state. In State Formation in Italy and Greece: Questioning the Neoevolutionist Paradigm, eds. Terrenato, N. & D. C. Haggis. Oxford: Oxbow, 75–118. Feld, S. & K. H. Basso, 1996. Introduction. In Senses of Place, eds. Feld, S. & K. H. Basso. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 3–11. French, E., 1989. Dynamis in the archaeological record at Mycenae. In Images of Authority: Papers Presented to Joyce Reynolds on the Occasion of her Seventieth Birthday, eds. Mackenzie, M. M. & C. Roueché. Cambridge: Cambridge Philological Society, 122–30. Geertz, C., 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gallou, C., 2005. The Mycenaean Cult of the Dead, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1372. Oxford: Archaeopress. Genette, G., 1987. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. German, S. C., 2005. Performance, Power and the Art of the Aegean Bronze Age, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1347. Oxford: Archaeopress.

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Giddens, A., 1986. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Malden: Polity. Goffman, E., 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Goffman, E. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books. Goodison, L., 1989. Death, Women and the Sun: Symbolism of Regeneration in Early Aegean Religion, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 53. London: Institute of Classical Studies. Goodison, L., 2001. From tholos tomb to throne room: perceptions of the sun in Minoan ritual. In Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. R. Laffineur & R. Hägg (eds.), Aegaeum 22. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 77–88. Gore, C., 1998. Ritual, performance and media in urban contemporary shrine configurations in Benin City, Nigeria. In Ritual, Performance, Media, ed. Hughes-Freeland, F. London: Routledge, 66–84. Hägg, R., 1987. On the reconstruction of the west façade of the palace at Knossos. In The Function of the Minoan Palaces, eds. Hägg, R. & N. Marinatos. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 129–34. Hamilakis, Y., 1998. Eating the dead: mortuary feasting and the politics of memory in Aegean Bronze Age societies. In Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Branigan, K. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 115–32. Hamilakis, Y. & E. Konsolaki, 2004. Pigs for the gods: burnt animal sacrifices as embodied rituals at a Mycenaean sanctuary. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 23 (2), 135–51. Hastrup, K., 1998. Theatre as a site of passage: some reflections on the magic of acting. In Ritual, Performance, Media, ed. Hughes-Freeland, F. London: Routledge, 29–45. Hirsch, E., 1995. Introduction. In The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspectives on Place and Space, eds. Hirsch, E. & M. O’Hanlon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1–30. Hitchcock, L., 2008. Architectures of feasting. In Dais: the Aegean Feast, eds. Hitchcock, L., R. Laffineur & J. Crowley, Aegaeum 29. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 317–26. Hitchcock, L. & P. Koudounaris, 2002. Virtual discourse: Arthur Evans and the reconstructions of the Minoan palace of Knossos. In Labyrinth Revisited: Rethinking ‘Minoan’ Archaeology, ed. Hamilakis, Y. Oxford: Oxbow, 40–58. Ingold, T., 1993. The temporality of the landscape. World Archaeology 25 (2), 152–74. Ingold, T., 2000. Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling, and Skill. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. & J. L. Vergunst, 2008. Introduction. In Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, eds. Ingold, T. & J. L. Vergunst. Burlington: Ashgate, 1–19. Immerwahr, S., 1995. Death and the Tanagra larnakes. In The Ages of Homer: a Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, eds. Carter, J. B. & S. P. Morris. Austin: University of Texas Press, 109–21. Immerwahr, S., 2000. Thera and Knossos: relation of the paintings to their architectural space. In The Wall Paintings of Thera, vol. I, ed. Sherratt, S. Athens: Petros Nomikos Foundation, 467–90. Knapp, A. B. & W. Ashmore, 1999. Archaeological landscapes: constructed, conceptualized, ideational. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Knapp, A. B. & W. Ashmore. London: Blackwell, 1–30. Krzyszkowska, O., 2010. Impressions of the natural world: landscape in the Aegean glyptic. In Cretan Offerings: Studies in Honour of Peter Warren, ed. Krzyszkowska, O., British School at Athens Studies 18. London: British School at Athens, 169–87. Letesson, Q. & J. Driessen, 2008. From ‘party’ to ‘ritual’ to ‘ruin’ in Minoan Crete: the spatial context of feasting. In Dais: The Aegean Feast, eds. Crowley, J. L. Hitchcock & R. Laffineur, Aegeum 29. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 207–13. Lewartowski, K., 2000. Late Helladic Simple Graves: a Study of Mycenaean Burial Customs, British Archaeological Reports International Series 878. Oxford: Archaeopress.

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Lonsdale, S. H., 1995. A dancing floor for Ariadne (Iliad 18.590–592): aspects of ritual movement in Homer and Minoan religion. In The Ages of Homer: a Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, eds. Carter, J. B. & S. P. Morris. Austin: University of Texas Press, 273–84. Loughlin, E., 2004. Grasping the bull by the horns: Minoan bull sports. In Games and Festivals in Classical Antiquity, eds. Bell, S. & G. Davies, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1220. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1–8. Maggidis, C., 1998. From polis to necropolis: social ranking from architectural and mortuary evidence in the Minoan cemetery at Phourni, Archanes. In Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Branigan, K. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 87–102. Maran, J., 2006. Mycenaean citadels as performative space. In Constructing Power: Architecture, Ideology and Social Practice, eds. Maran, J., C. Juwig, H. Schwengel & U. Thaler. Hamburg: LIT, 75–91. Marinatos, N., 1987. Public festivals in the west courts of the palaces. In The Function of the Minoan Palaces, eds. Hägg, R. & N. Marinatos. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 135–43. Mee, C. & W. Cavanagh, 1984. Mycenaean tombs as evidence for social and political organization. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 3, 45–64. Morris, C., 2001. The language of gesture in Minoan religion. In Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age, eds. Laffineur, R. & R. Hägg, Aegaeum 22, Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 245–51. Morris, C. & A. Peatfield, 2002. Feeling through the body: gesture in Cretan Bronze Age religion. In Thinking Through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality, eds. Hamilakis, Y., M. Pluciennik & S. Tarlow. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 105–20. Mukherji, S., 2011. Thinking on thresholds. In Thinking on Thresholds: the Poetics of Transitive Spaces, ed. Mukherji, S. London: Anthem Press, xvii-xxviii. Murphy, J. M., 1998. Ideologies, rites and rituals: a view of prepalatial Minoan tholoi. In Cemetery and Society in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Branigan, K. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 27–40. Niemeier, W.-D., 1987. On the function of the Throne Room in the palace of Knossos. In The Function of the Minoan Palaces, eds. Hägg, R. & N. Marinatos. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 163–8. Nordquist, G., 1990. Middle Helladic burial rites: some speculations. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid, eds. Hägg, R. & G. Nordquist. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 35–43. Nordquist, G., 2008. Feasting: participation and performance. In Dais: the Aegean Feast, eds. Hitchcock, L., R. Laffineur & J. Crowley, Aegaeum 29. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 105–12. Olwig, K. R., 2008. Performing on the landscape versus doing landscape: perambulatory practice, sight and the sense of belonging. In Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot, eds. Ingold, T. & J. L. Vergunst. Burlington: Ashgate, 81–91. Papadimitriou, N., 2001. Built Chamber Tombs of Middle and Late Bronze Age Date in Mainland Greece and the Islands, British Archaeological Reports International Series 925. Oxford: Archaeopress. Pearson, M., 1998. Performance as valuation: early Bronze Age burial as theatrical complexity. In The Archaeology of Value: Essays in Prestige and the Processes of Valuation, ed. Bailey, D., British Archaeological Reports International Series 730. Oxford: Archaeopress, 32–41. Pearson, M. 2006. In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Pearson, M. 2010. Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pearson, M. & M. Shanks, 2001. Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge. Peatfield, A., 2001. Divinity and performance on Minoan peak sanctuaries. In Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age, eds. Laffineur, R. & R. Hägg, Aegaeum 22. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 51–5.

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Protonotariou-Deilaki, E., 1990. Burial customs and funerary rites in the prehistoric Argolid. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid, eds. Hägg, R. & G. C. Nordquist. Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 69–83. Renfrew, C., 1985. The Archaeology of Cult. London: British School at Athens. Richardson, M., 1984. Place and culture: a final note. In Place: Experience and Symbol, ed. Richardson, M. Baton Rouge: Geoscience Publications, 63–7. Sampson, A., 1987. The Early Helladic graves of Manika: contribution to the socioeconomic conditions of the Early Bronze Age. In Thanatos: Les coutûmes funéraires en Égée à l’âge du Bronze, ed. Laffineur, R., Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de Liège, 19–28. Schieffelin, E. L., 1998. Problematizing performance. In Ritual, Performance, Media, ed. Hughes-Freeland, F. London: Routledge, 194–208. Schiffer, M. B., 1999. The Material Life of Human Beings: Artifacts, Behaviour, and Communication. London: Routledge. Simandiraki-Grimshaw, A., 2010. The human body in Minoan religious iconography. In Cretan Offerings: Studies in Honour of Peter Warren, ed. Krzyszkowska, O., British School at Athens Studies 18. London: British School at Athens, 321–29. Soles, J., 2001. Reverence for dead ancestors in prehistoric Crete. In Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age, ed. Laffineur, R. & R. Hägg, Aegaeum 22. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 229–36. Soles, J., 2010. Evidence for ancestor worship in Minoan Crete: new finds from Mochlos. In Cretan Offerings: Studies in Honour of Peter Warren, ed. Krzyszkowska, O., British School at Athens Studies 18. London: British School of Archaeology, 331–8. Sourvinou-Inwood, C., 1988. Space in Late Minoan religious scenes in glyptic: some remarks. In Fragen und Probleme der bronzezeitlichen ägäischen Glyptik, CMS Beiheft 3, ed. Pini, I. Berlin: Mann, 241–57. Thomas, J., 1993. The politics of vision and the archaeologies of landscape. In Landscapes: Politics and Perspectives, ed. Bender, B. Providence: Berg, 19–48. Tilley, C., 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths and Monuments. Oxford: Berg. Tilley, C., 2010. Interpreting Landscapes: Geologies, Topographies, Identities, Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 3. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Tuan, Y.-F., 1984. In place, out of place. In Place: Experience and Symbol, ed. Richardson, M. Baton Rouge: Geoscience Publications, 3–10. Turner, V., 1975. Symbolic studies. Annual Review of Anthropology 4, 145–61. Turner, V., 1979. Process, Performance and Pilgrimage: a Study in Comparative Symbology. New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. Turner, V., 1986. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Van Gennep, A., 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Van Leuven, J., 1989. The religion of the Shaft Grave folk. In Transition: Le monde égéen du Bronze moyen au Bronze récent, ed. Laffineur, R., Aegaeum 3. Liège: Université de Liège, 191–201. Vansteenhuyse, K., 2002. Minoan courts and ritual competition. In Monuments of Minos: Rethinking the Minoan Palaces, ed. Driessen, J., Aegeum 23. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 235–48. Voutsaki, S. 1999. Mortuary display, prestige and identity in the Shaft Grave era. In Eliten in der Bronzezeit, eds. Kilian-Dirlmeier, I. & M. Egg. Mainz am Rhein: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, 103–17. Warren, P., 1988. Minoan Religion as Ritual Action. Göteborg: P. Åströms Förlag. Wells, B., 1990. Death at Dendra: on mortuary practices in a Mycenaean community. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid, eds. Hägg, R. & G. C. Nordquist. Stockholm: P. Åströms Förlag, 124–40.

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Wolpert, A., 2004. Getting past consumption and competition: legitimacy and consensus in the Shaft Graves. In The Emergence of Civilisation Revisited, eds. Barrett, J. C. & P. Halstead. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 127–44. Wright, J., 1987. Death and power at Mycenae: changing symbols in mortuary practice. In Thanatos: Les coutûmes funéraires en Égée à l’âge du Bronze, ed. Laffineur, R., Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de Liège, 171–84. Wright, J., 1994. The spatial configuration of belief: the archaeology of Mycenaean religion. In Placing the Gods: Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece, eds. Alcock, S. E. & R. Osborne. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 37–78. Wright, J., 2004. A survey of evidence for feasting in Mycenaean society. Hesperia 73 (2), 13–58. Zedeño, M. N. & B. J. Bowser, 2009. The archaeology of meaningful places. In The Archaeology of Meaningful Places, eds. Bowser, B. J. & M. N. Zedeño. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1–12.

Performative Places: Movement and Theatricality

Maria Chountasi

Funerary Ritual-Architectural Events in the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Knossos “Of the extent and the tragic nature of that catastrophe, a moving record has survived” (Evans 1964: 988)

Performance theory, ritual and architecture Performance studies emerged as a postmodern movement that amalgamated a number of interdisciplinary approaches in the 1960s and 1970s (Fernandez 1965; Goffman 1967; Goody & Watt 1968; Burke 1973; Turner 1974; Cohen 1979). It was then that theatre and performance was connected for the first time with the wider forces of ritual that thread through many spheres of human culture. It was suggested that the notions of theatre and performance were key metaphors and practices with which to rethink gender, language, fine arts, economics, war, culture and self. In the field of religion, the performance approach made some very important historical and epistemological contributions, which gave the study of ritual and religion in general a new dimension. Particularly, performance theory stressed that religion, as a state of mind rather than as practical knowledge of institutions that guides behaviour, is a rather modern phenomenon (Asad 1993: 41). It also challenged the traditional epistemological dualism between thought (religious beliefs) and action (ritual), fusing the two by focusing on ritual’s dynamic role as an emotion-driven and physical action which leads participants to structure religious beliefs and to confirm or modify their cultural values.1 Although this was not the first time that interest shifted to ritual,2 performance theorists made some provocative suggestions as to how ritual is correlated with physicality, how performance and ritual come to structure cultural ideals and, in turn, how these cultural ideals are embodied in social attitudes. By shifting analysis from what ritual means to what ritual actually does, performance theory transitioned from the static representation of ritual to the exploration of “non-intellectual dimen-

1 The dynamic role of action in forming conceptual categories has been highlighted by George Lakoff, who demonstrated that kinesthetic schemes and physical action are crucial factors in experiencing conceptual categories as real and sufficiently stable, so as to be the building blocks of shared knowledge systems (Lakoff 1987: 32–7, 46, 200). 2 The so-called ‘myth and ritual school’ emerged in the end of 19th c. and was the first approach to stress that ritual is the original source of most of the expressive form of cultural life. Robertson Smith’s work notions on totemism and primal sacrifice, as well as Sir James George Frazer’s theory of myth as secondary remnant or survival of ritual activity, laid the groundwork for the historical and cultural primacy of ritual (Bell 1997: 5).

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sions of what ritual does, that is the emotive, physical, and sensuous aspects of ritual participation” (Bell 1997: 73). Contrary to the functionalist view, according to which religion and ritual are conventional strategies for maintaining the integrity of sociopolitical systems (Robertson Smith 1969; Durkheim & Mauss 1967; Durkheim 1965; Radcliffe-Brown 1945: 33– 43; Lévi-Strauss 1963; Gluckman 1963: 110–36; Firth 1967: 23; Leach 1968: 524), a performance-oriented approach upholds that the relationship between ritual and society is complex and volatile, since the participants in ritual proceed through various and fluid states of being which have a great impact in their comprehension of social structure. For performance theorists, ritual is structured by the human senses and movements and conceptualised as a passage that directs participants to the core of society with a renegotiating and regenerating attitude (Schieffelin 1985; Schechner & Appel 1989; Grimes 1995). Ritual introduces chaos into ordered perception, produces shock and disorientation, ‘destroys’ cultural reality and recomposes it. According to Walter Puchner (2003: 256–7), this process is not just about reversing the social status quo, but also experimenting with alternative realities. That ritual enables community to continuously revise and renew itself can be traced back to the complex emotional states that it induces in participants. These states of being are characterised by liminality, communitas, intersubjectivity and fluidity of identities. Liminality is a term that Arnold Van Gennep first used in the beginnings of the 20th c. to correlate geographical progression with the ritual marking of cultural passages. He defined rites of passage as “rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position, and age” (Van Gennep 1960: 14). According to him, these transitions are marked by three phases: a) separation, b) margin (or limen, signifying threshold in Latin), and c) reincorporation. During the intervening liminal period, the ritual subject passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state. Victor Turner, one of the most influential performance theorists, further developed this concept (Turner 1967: 93–103; 1969: 94–6). According to him, ritual marks the transition of an individual from one state to another and manifests a liminal state of being for the participants. Turner noted that ritual subjects are secluded from everyday life and experience liminality. During this phase the sense of time and space is disrupted and the ritual subjects become liminal personae, i.e. agents of an ambiguous, transitional phase as “they are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between” (Turner 1969: 95). For Turner, all ritual subjects as liminal personae experience ‘sameness’, wherein sociostructural distinctions between the ritual subjects disappear in favour of an absolute equality. This is what Turner called communitas (1967: 93–111). He noted that during a ritual performance participants are all treated equally, deprived of all distinguishing characteristics of social structure, constituting a ‘community or comity of comrades and not a structure of hierarchically arrayed positions’ (Turner 1967: 100). During the liminal phase, subjects create intense emotive bonds and experience a sentiment of ‘humankindness’ and togetherness.

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Communitas is a complex state experienced intersubjectively: during a ritual performance subjects constitute a public before whom they present themselves and hold multiple roles with very different development cycles exposed alternatively to communitas (Turner 1969: 97). During ritual performance, and especially during moments of emotional intensity and communion, every participant brings his/her own world to the event (ideas, emotions, memories, subconscious), while at the same time being directly or indirectly influenced by other participants. It seems that through a unique confluence of intersubjectivity the impressions and reactions of participants converge (Schechner 1977; Grimes 2004). Furthermore, communitas is a dynamic and dialectic process, i.e. a recurrent situation in which people transition from stability/structure to instability/antistructure, eventually returning to the former. According to Turner, communitas is antistructure, appearing where structure does not. It is exactly this aspect of performance that accounts for ritual’s potential in cultural and social negotiation. Ritual ‘destroys’ positions, statuses and social structures through communitas, enabling participants to renegotiate cultural values and social identities. This aspect of identity building is the main feature of communitas and liminal rituals. Rituals of vital crisis generate an essential ‘us’ that involves all possible relationships among participants. Ritual performance effects a transformation of the emotional state of participants and the surrendering of the I-self and merging with the Us-self (Schechner 2007: 24). Of course, this essential ‘us’ is liminal and temporary in nature. A persistent and thus institutionalised Us-self is impossible, given the fact that communitas is always a unique experience structured intersubjectively and thus temporarily. Us-self building through communitas is a difficult object of academic study because it is felt during ritual, rather than a concrete understanding. Participants enter a liminal state of being with a double consciousness: “I am in a liminal emotional state and also performing a Brechtian ‘alienation effect’. I am doing and watching myself doing […]. I did not invent these actions, but in doing them, I am reinventing them” (Schechner 2007: 24). By presenting these dramaturgical-ritual actions to themselves and to other participants and by reinventing them, ritual subjects break down stable social identities and experience communitas. They ‘autotransform’,3 returning to social structure having experienced antistructure intensely as Us-selves. The outcome of this process is rather unpredictable, as it allows either the affirmation or the total breach of established cultural values and social identities. The above analysis shows that for performance theory ritual is not merely a means to socialise human beings and thus a strategy of reconciliation in a world of well-organised social values, but a process of deeper transformation. In a funerary

3 According to Castoriadis, the human subconscious consists of endless and inexhaustible instincts and feelings and it can be ‘autotransformed’, meaning it can produce and reproduce deeply rooted human desires by engaging features of real world (1981: 409).

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context, ritual practices become particularly dramatic, as they involve persons who experience acute grief due to the trauma of loss, thus entering the ritual activities in a highly unstable emotional state. In this context, liminality and communitas are experienced even more intensely than in other rites of passage. During a funerary ceremony, all participants involved (deceased or living) are transformed into liminal personae: the deceased leave the world of the living and enter the world of ancestors, while the living abandon life with the deceased and enter a new state of being without him/her. It is in this ambiguous, intermediate state of being, that communitas emerges. Participants have neither concrete social statuses nor ordinary social identities. The deceased enter a world with totally different cultural values (albeit ones articulated by the living). The living experience equality by facing the fact of the death and sharing intense and traumatic sentiments. Communitas cultivates a sense of cobelonging by sharing emotional experiences and through communal participation in cultural fermentations. The research challenge in archaeology is to explore the relationship between these aspects of ritual performances and material culture. One of the most important questions that performance theory has raised is how architecture contributes to the production and transaction of meanings, particularly in the context of ritual, and how researchers might come to terms with such mechanisms. It is suggested that this question is very important for Aegean archaeology, since architecture is typically regarded as a straightforward manifestation of religious beliefs and social status in this field. Architecture is a very visible and powerful means both for expressing and stimulating religious sensibilities; it should not be comprehended as pure representation, but rather in performative terms, i.e. as a category of material culture with inexhaustible performative dimensions. Buildings do not reflect concrete social structures; rather they are defined spaces with the potential for performance during ritual. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer (2013: 157), the study of architecture is based on architectural occasions, rather than architectural objects; it is this comprehension of architecture through occasions and human practices that “explodes that prejudice of the aesthetic consciousness according to which the actual work of art is what is outside all space and all time, the object of an aesthetic experience” (Gadamer 2013: 158) and brings about the eventful character of architecture. This phenomenological approach stresses that buildings do not have timeless meanings, but ‘reception histories’ built through complex interactions between them and people: “the house is one of the greatest powers of integration for the thoughts, memories and dreams of mankind” (Bachelard 1994: 6). The body itself becomes the focus of built structures: by moving around, performing activities and using the senses, bodies give meaning to their surrounding space. This notion is directly relevant to cultic architecture, which tends to be fluid and continuously structured by ritual events. But the diversity and fluidity of the reception histories of cultic spaces and the fact that built forms in general evoke different meanings and responses in different audiences, may impede the performance-oriented study

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of architecture. However, detailed analysis of ritual taking place within buildings, such as Lindsay Jones’ work (2000), can be illuminating. Jones focuses on aspects of human experience that endow ritual with situated meaning within the built environment of tombs. In an effort to trace down the eventful character of architectural organisation, Jones introduces the term ‘ritual-architectural event’ and creates a framework that ‘aspires to have heuristic relevance to any human experience of cultic architecture’ (Jones 2000: 2). Orientation, commemoration, and ritual context are some dimensions4 that construct the reception history of cultic architecture and associate it with performance taking place within. Performance in the context of funerary architecture represents a particular challenge, as the interrelationship of buildings, rituals, senses and emotions is very complex and discursive. The enactment of ritual dramas is circumscribed by the senses and emotions; at the same time, performance can produce sensory experience and elicit a series of emotive responses. Every movement, transitional space and routine or experimental practice becomes crucial for the interpretation of the tomb itself. Oppositional schemes (inside/outside, ascending/descending, light/dark etc.), transitional zones such as fixed podia and thresholds, spaces suited for stationary assemblies of onlookers, and processional, interactive spaces suited for ceremonial movement, are all important dimensions of the rituals performed within tombs.

Funerary ritual-architectural events in the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Knossos The present paper explores two Late Minoan tombs, the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Knossos based on the above theoretical framework. The preservation of these two buildings and their architectural complexity present us with a useful configuration that illuminates the link between funerary architecture and ritual performance. Following Jones’ methodological scheme, it is suggested that in these tombs a fusion of sacred, theatrical and commemorative elements is witnessed, in the form of ambience, exclusiveness/inclusiveness and affectivity. First, people interact with architectural configurations dialogically, with the latter playing the role of stages and backdrops for rituals acted out. The hermeneutical experience of architecture engages the whole ritual context and ambience, rather than just built forms. Performers participating in these events are not concerned with the buildings per se, but rather the general ritual atmosphere. Indicatively participants have difficulties in describing details of the physical aspects of the ceremonial environment following a ritual performance, as they get lost in the abstract and total ritual experience of which architecture is only a part (Jones 2000: 268). Other aspects

4 For a detailed explanation of the framework, see Jones 2000: 296–332.

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that contribute to such ambience and the overall allure of the experience are movements, gestures, even preserved and stored bodily remains. In most cases body remains relate to a desire for communicating with the beyond (Jones 2000: 170), constituting part of a wider strategy to create a transcendental ritual environment. Secondly, funerary events are characterised by exclusiveness or inclusiveness: enclosed spaces delineate the inside from the outside, create a zone of restricted access, and mark areas as either off-limits or suitable for participation. Liminal, inbetween spaces play the role of frontier between two ways of being (inside/participant vs outside/non-participant), and create gradations of sacred spaces. According to Van Gennep (1960: 20), “the door is the boundary […] between the profane and the sacred worlds in the case of the temple. Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world”. A series of liminal architectural features enables passage of the deceased and the transitioning of the living to a transcendent reality. Finally, funerary events entail active involvement of participants in terms of emotions and affectivity. Even though emotions are difficult to pin down, in ritual contexts they can be regarded as a means to differentiate ‘from more formal concepts of world-view or ideology’ (Williams 1977: 132). Emotions are culturally embedded, bringing together domains usually set apart and traceable in the performance of intersubjective relationships, such as ritual (Rosaldo 1984; Lutz & White 1986; Lyon 1995; Kovecses 2000). Emotions are fundamentally social, linked to the interpretation and evaluation of particular events (such as funerary rituals) and cultural configurations (such as architectural forms). Affective elements (e.g. impulse, restraint, tone) triggering emotions of mourning, melancholy, healing awe, fear and wonderment are evoked through complex relationships between architecture and funerary ritual. The present paper attempts a double reading of the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Knossos: firstly, it adopts a hermeneutic approach distinct from the functionalist perspective; secondly, on a more general level, it offers a new methodological framework for approaching funerary architecture. It is argued that this performanceoriented approach has great potential in archaeological hermeneutics, as it is a suitable interpretive framework for combining the individual and the collective dimensions of ritual: on one hand, being based on the physicality of the human body and experience of space takes into consideration individual agency; and on the other hand, it highlights the communal nature of a ritual performance, tracing broader cultural fermentations in society.

The Temple Tomb The Temple Tomb (Evans 1964: 964–1018) at Knossos [Fig. 1] was apparently connected through a paved road with the complex of the House of the High Priest, which comprised an enclosed court and a building with a pillared forehall, an antechamber with two cists and an inner room with limestone altar and two double axe stands

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(Pendlebury 1954: 59; Evans 1964: 207–9). It was used from the beginning of the New Palace period (Middle Minoan IIIB/Late Minoan IA). After an earthquake in Late Minoan IA, repairs were carried out in different parts of the building, which was reused from Late Minoan II until Late Minoan IIIA, when it was abandoned. The ground floor comprised an entrance passage (1) leading to a roofed two-columned portico (2), the terrace of which was accessed through a small entrance at the north part of the building. This portico led to a paved court (3), on the west end of which was a narrow entrance leading to the inner hall (4). At both ends of the inner hall two doorways provided controlled access to the pillar crypt (5) and the rock-cut chamber (6) to the west of the latter. Restricted access to the latter two spaces is evident by the fact that the doorway at the east end of the inner hall could be locked only from the inside: the inner face of the stone jamb to the left of this doorway has holes and perforations corresponding with those for bolt and lock, while a bronze key with a blunt and a pointed end was found in the inner hall (Evans 1964: figs. 945–7). The inner hall flanked on either side by two bastion-like chambers, the southern one of which (7) contained a staircase providing a private access to the pillar crypt and the rock-cut chamber from the upper floor. In this upper floor there was a bicolumnar space with limestone horns of consecration between the two columns, interpreted as a sanctuary (Evans 1964: 965). This upper space stood in connection with the basement rooms (pillar crypt and rock-cut chamber) through the staircase (7), as well as with the terrace above the inner hall (4) and the terrace above the portico (2) through a series of steps. The upper space was approached either privately by the staircase (7) or publicly through the roof terraces without entering the complex of the basement rooms of the building. After the Late Minoan IA destruction and ensuing repairs, access to the rock-cut chamber was further restricted by the turning of the entrance jamb of the eastern door of the inner hall through 90o (Driessen & MacDonald 1997: 167), while changes in the ritual actions performed in the inner rooms can be traced in the remodelling of the pillar crypt into a corridor-like design through the construction of thin partition walls between the pillars, which formed a small compartment accommodating numerous burials. The remodelled pillar crypt continued to give access to the rock-cut chamber through a diagonal, narrower passage. A pit inside the rock-cut chamber was found to contain a group of objects dated to Late Minoan IIIA, including a golden ring, two bronze knives, part of an ivory comb, two alabaster vases, a jug, and a flask. While the finds would be suitable grave furnishings, they were not associated with human remains (Driessen & MacDonald 1997: 167). The arrangement of the rock-cut chamber and the pillar crypt, the columned courtyard, the windowless areas cut into the natural rock, the lack of evidence for primary burials, and the use of compartments as ossuaries for secondary burials in Late Minoan IA suggest a primarily cultic use for the building. The small columned courtyard would have accommodated a limited number of people (no more than 40), who would have accessed the space through the main entrance. The latter created a

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dramatic, if ambiguous, separation between the interior and the exterior: while the open area outside the tomb would have permitted a much larger group of people to attend, the courtyard constitutes both an open-air space and an architecturally defined one due to its surrounding walls and the adjacent roofed portico. From the courtyard, visibility to the western part of the building is limited to the inner hall and the pillar in the pillar crypt. The rock-cut chamber was invisible, reachable through a series of openings between the paved court and the inner hall, as well as between the inner hall and the pillar crypt. As described above, one of the most intriguing architectural attribute of the building was the fact that the eastern doorway of the inner hall (the doorway between the paved court and the inner hall) could be locked only from the inside, hence isolating the crypt and the rock-cut chamber. Strictly controlled access to these spaces indicates that they accommodated ritual activities to be witnessed by only a few people [Fig. 1]. Restricted ceremonial activities may have also taken place in the upper floor room connected to the staircase (7): only those who had access to the inner hall could have reached the upper floor without getting noticed from the courtyard congregation.5 Movement from the exterior/visible/well-lit spaces to the east, to the interior/invisible/dark spaces to the west, and vice-versa, further structured ritual practices through a series of spatial juxtapositions.

Fig. 1: Spaces of the Temple Tomb (after Driessen & MacDonald 1997: fig.7.33, modified by author).

5 Alternatively, the upper floor could have been reached from a rock platform on the northern part of the tomb, bypassing the more public portico and courtyard route.

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The Royal Tomb at Isopata The Royal Tomb at Isopata (Evans 1906: 136–172) [Fig. 2] was mostly used in Late Minoan II-early Late Minoan IIIA, although there are clear indications that it was used until Late Minoan IIIC. Architecturally, it combines features of Neopalatial and Final Palatial tombs. It features a spacious burial chamber evoking Late Minoan I tombs at Poros, Knossos, and a very long dromos usually associated with Late Minoan III tombs. Unlike the circular chamber and hemispherical vault of Late Minoan I tombs, however, the Royal Tomb has a rectangular chamber and a keel vault. The long rock-cut dromos (10 × 2 m) of the tomb is its most striking and defining characteristic. It leads to a narrow vaulted antechamber (6.75 × 1.58 m) with a corbelled arched door on each of its long sides and niches for secondary burials and offerings. Set at an angle to the antechamber is a rectangular, originally keelvaulted, sizeable chamber (approximately 47.80 m2). A rectangular built cist, internally plastered and covered with stone slabs, was cut into the floor at the northeast corner of the main chamber.

Fig. 2: Spaces of the Royal Tomb (after Evans 1906: pl. XCIII, modified by author).

The gradually sinking dromos, reaching 5.50 m in depth at the tomb’s entrance, emphasises physical movement from the exterior to the interior and from the ground surface to the underground space occupied by the chamber. The dromos would have marked the most crucial phase of the funerary performance, the gradual entrance and descent into the domain of the dead. Ritual performance would have included processions from the dromos into the rectangular liminal space of the antechamber, which constituted an extension of the dromos. The performance would have con-

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tinued inside the main chamber, the dimensions of which allowed the gathering of a significant number of people (potentially up to 40) close to the burial cist. This procession to the main chamber and gathering inside of it would have been imbued by the contrast between the exterior/shallower/visible/well-lit space outside the tomb and the interior/deeper/invisible/dark chamber and anteroom [Fig. 2]. The ambience of the tomb engendered through such juxtapositions would have allowed complex psychological processes to take place that grappled with divergent remembrances of the past and reinserted the collective body of ancestors in community.

Inclusiveness, exclusiveness and hybridisation of public and private spaces The Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb represent a combination of public and private ritual spaces that both include and exclude. The fusion of elements of inclusiveness and exclusiveness especially in the transitional rooms of the two tombs signifies a hybridised architectural form of semipublic and semiprivate spaces. Ritual activities performed in relatively open, public spaces, such as the Temple Tomb’s portico and court and the Royal Tomb’s dromos and antechamber, suggest that these ritual performances were semipublic, i.e. they were accessible to a considerable number of people but not necessarily to everyone, as the public spaces of both structures were clearly defined by walls and entrances. Inversely, ceremonies held in more private, difficult to access spaces, such as the Temple Tomb’s inner hall and rock-cut chamber and the Royal Tomb’s main chamber, would have been off-limits to most participants even though they were spacious enough to accommodate a limited number of people. Thresholds marking entrances demarcated liminal spaces and constituted the frontiers between two antithetical ways of performing (Van Gennep 1960: 3, 189; Bourdieu 1977: 114–27); doorways signposted gradations of inclusivity and exclusivity in ritual performance. In the Temple Tomb, two doorways introduce successive boundaries and therefore degrees of separation between the inner spaces and the courtyard [Fig. 3]. The fact that the upper room (‘sanctuary’) was connected on one side with the inner staircase leading down to the inner basement rooms, and on the other side, by means of a series of steps, to the rock platform forming the starting point of the whole entrance system, indicates that this upper room would have been both exclusively and inclusively accessible, perhaps during different phases of a ritual performance (or different ritual performances). On one hand, a limited number of participants may have had access to the basement rooms (which, as mentioned above, could be locked from the inside); on the other hand, a potentially larger group could make their way to the upper sanctuary almost directly from the entrance and without entering the sepulchral system of the building (Evans 1964: 965). Thus, the upper floor afforded various levels of exclusiveness and inclusiveness associated with the inner, private

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rooms and the outer, more public spaces. Furthermore, the open spaces such as the court (3) and the pavilion (2), are not freely accessible as they are surrounded by thick walling and entered through the main entrance (1).

Fig. 3: Inclusiveness and exclusiveness at the Temple Tomb (after Driessen & MacDonald 1997: fig.7.33, modified by author).

Fig. 4: Inclusiveness and exclusiveness at the Royal Tomb (after Evans 1906: pl. XCIII, modified by author).

Accordingly, in the Royal Tomb the dromos is a free passage leading to the more restricted antechamber through a doorway. Another doorway leads to the main

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chamber, a semipublic space based on its capacity and visibility from the dromos with both passages unobstructed [Fig. 4]. These doorways and passages mark a series of transitional spaces, representing a blend of inclusive and exclusive characteristics, and likely constituted the architectural background for respectively inclusive and exclusive dramatic enactments that contributed to such ambiguity and blurring of clear-cut boundaries.

Choreographic options, gradations of sacrality and liminality Ritual space and time are constructed through a wide and complex range of choreographic options performed in a built environment, i.e. “experiences of movement, whether gestures made in using an object or the shift of visual attention across lines, colors, and patterns” (Buchanan 1989: 103). Thus, the ritual nature of space does not depend on a vague concept of ‘sacredness’; the latter is not necessarily a permanent or absolute quality of a ritual site,6 but is created through an event or a performance involving stationary participation or processional movement. A series of transitional zones between the inside and the outside, such as entrances, thresholds, steps etc., can further elicit participation by spectators and contribute to an interactive engagement with the buildings themselves. In this section, I argue that ritual movement in the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb, whether as part of primary or secondary burial rites, delineated ritual space performatively and transiently. Some spaces of the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb are suitable for relatively static gatherings where performers and onlookers are separated, whereas others afford more active participation in activities contributed to both by ritual actors and spectators. In the Temple Tomb, the paved court is subtly separated from the inner hall, by means of a low step raised above the level of the court, drawing a potential audience gathered in the court closer to the inner hall (Evans 1964: 995, fig. 948). The narrow entrance leading to the latter and the bastions projecting on either side of the entrance enhanced the visual impression of depth by casting shadows, through which actors would have gradually emerged or vanished into, blending actors with the audience and the dark interior with the well-lit court7 rather than presenting the audience with a flat ‘stage’ [Fig. 5]. The audience would not have had a direct view of the tomb’s interior, which would have been within hearing range of activities, however. Of special importance are steps establishing liminal and gradual transitions in the

6 For example, DeBernardi 1992, on the Chinese temples of Amoy; Cobo 1990, on the Inca’s festival called Coya Paymi; Powers 1982, on the so-called ‘sweat lodges’ of the contemporary Oglalas. 7 Evans regards these bastions as vantage points for spectators on the roof terrace (Evans 1964: 949).

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building: apart from the staircase connecting the inner hall and pillar crypt with the upper floor, there is a series of external steps, such as 12 steps outside the building leading to the entrance platform, two steps up from the entrance platform to the roofed terrace just above the inner basement rooms, three steps up from the roofed terrace to the upper room (‘sanctuary’), three steps up from entrance platform to the roof terrace of the pavilion (Evans 1964: fig. 950), as well as a series of internal stairs: the staircase (7) and a high step between the interior staircase and the inner hall (Evans 1964: 944). The structured, multidimensional space created in this way would have enhanced gradual ritual movement throughout the building and may have introduced an element of surprise through unexpected appearances from the inner and darker rooms to the upper and more open spaces. All these stairs in combination with the more open spaces of the court and the pavilion suggest a fusion of stationary participation and ambulatory movement in ritual performances. Gatherings in the court and the pavilion would have been combined with gradual enactments through stairs and terraces, stressing a gradual passage between antithetical architectural configurations, such as from dark/interior/basement rooms, to light/exterior/upper spaces and vice versa.

Fig. 5: Choreographic options at the Temple Tomb (after Driessen & MacDonald 1997: fig.7.33, modified by author).

Inversely, the Royal Tomb’s long dromos provides a fixed route from the exterior to the interior of the tomb, imposing the direction and sequence by which it can be experienced. However, this arrangement also physically mobilises participants, inviting them into a processional scheme and eliminating the perceived distance between spectators and actors even further. Processions in the dromos would have continued in the narrow space of the antechamber. The long and spacious dromos, which

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descended considerably just outside the blocked arch of the antechamber, reaching 5 m in depth below the level of the surface of the rock, and the narrow arch-shaped antechamber with its side walls sloping inwards and its two doorways communicating with the dromos and the main chamber, operated as theatrical scenery for ritual movement. Eventually the procession would have continued into the spacious inner chamber, where participants would have gathered between the cist and the niche on the back wall [Fig. 6]. Compared with the analogous spaces of the Temple Tomb, some differences concerning the physical movements of the participants can be observed: in the case of the Temple Tomb the most spacious rooms, where 30–40 participants could have had gathered, were the outer and lighter court (3) and pavilion (2); whereas in the Royal Tomb the most spacious room was the inner and darker main chamber. The narrowest and most restricted spaces in both buildings are the inner and controlled chamber (6) in the Temple Tomb (approximately 16 m2) and the transitional antechamber in the Royal Tomb (approximately 11 m2). The architectural configuration of the Temple Tomb seems to afford predominantly stationary rituals involving a larger number of participants in the outer spaces, while a limited number of performers had access to the inner rooms; the latter may have played a more active role in the rituals, utilising mostly the vertical axis of the building (transitional zones of stairs and terraces) and choreographic contrivances such as sudden or gradual appearances and disappearances. On the contrary, in the Royal Tomb movement along the horizontal axis seems to have predominated, calling for ambulatory choreographies. The liminal zones of the Royal Tomb, i.e. the dromos and the antechamber, gradually prepared participants for entering the main chamber, where ritual probably culminated. That said, a considerable number of spectators could have stood outside the tomb.

Fig. 6: Choreographic options at the Royal Tomb (after Evans 1906: pl. XCIII, modified by author).

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Allurement and affectivity Apart from the choreographic arrangements analysed above, ritual allurement entails dramatic architectural spaces that seduce, affect, or amaze participants; such allurement can be produced by intensifying affective responses through interaction with the composition of viewing spaces, lighting, timing, costuming and so forth (Jones 2000: 201). These features not only enhance comprehension of the ritual performance, but also invite spectators to be involved in ritual and to be emotionally moved. In the funerary context, grief, melancholy, fear and wonderment may be evoked by the overall funerary ambience and not just the loss of a specific person per se.

Fig. 7: Structuring allurement at the Temple Tomb: façade as seen from the paved court (after Evans 1964: fig. 948).

In the case of the Temple Tomb, the façade of the entrance leading to the inner hall [Fig. 7], which resembled a tripartite shrine with a variety of hewn, built and painted features offers powerful visual and tactile allure: for example, the deeply carved

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mason’s marks in the form of double axes on the walls of the inner hall (probably Middle Minoan III), the shallower marks in the form of tridents on the entrance bastions (probably early Late Minoan IA; Evans 1964: 971, 995), the gypsum jambs of the entrance of the upper sanctuary, the green schist paving of the terrace just outside the upper sanctuary, the extensive use of timber floor supports in the pillar crypt, the central gypsum pillar, the gypsum paving and the deep blue stuccoed roof in the rockcut chamber, the green schist paving of the inner hall and the gypsum jambs of the entrance between the court and the inner hall (Evans 1964: 965, 968, 975, 992, 995). Furthermore, the fact that rock-cut chamber is hewn entirely out of bedrock, unlike the entrance and the inner hall, as well as the two massive wooden beams resting on the top of the central pillar and crossing the ceiling of the chamber from north to south and from west to east leaving visible only four square fields of the original rock ceiling (Evans 1964: 974–5) create a somewhat claustrophobic effect. Changes in acoustics and light and temperature conditions must have been noticeable, and would have further contributed to the special ambience and feeling of gradual transition from the outer parts of the building to the rock-cut chamber. In a similar vein, walking down the Royal Tomb through the dromos [Fig. 8] allows one to descend into a deeper, much darker and colder place than outside and to be exposed to a variety of sensory experiences. Because the inner dark chamber is mostly invisible from the dromos, encountering the unseen would have been an unnerving experience for procession participants and would have enhanced the ritual allure of the tomb. Accordingly, the narrow antechamber is a liminal zone between the naturally lighted dromos and the dark main chamber. Already from the descending west end of the dromos, i.e. the part closest to the entrance of the antechamber, the participants would have experienced the lack of natural light standing almost 5 m underneath the surface. Artificial lighting through lamps would have been necessary to proceed inside the burial chamber, which likely cast moving shadows of the participants and shone off the mason’s marks on the inward side walls and the vaulted roofs of the antechamber and the main chamber.8 It is not only the shape of the marks, but also their location that is of interest here: placed on transitional architectural features (entrances) and on the stones of the niches (where they would certainly require artificial lighting to be seen), they produced a strong visual as well as tactile effect, inviting textural exploration under the low lighting conditions.

8 Notably, the mason’s marks are placed on prominent parts of the walls: the double axe on the north wall of the main chamber entrance and twice in the north niche of the antechamber, while a branch mark is carved on a block near the entrance of the antechamber (Evans 1906: 166–7). In addition, a block that may have formed the coping stone of the niche in the main chamber was carved with four mason’s marks, i.e. a branch, a double axe, a trident and an eight-rayed star (Evans 1906: fig. 146).

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Fig. 8: Structuring allurement at the Royal Tomb: route to the antechamber through the dromos (after Evans 1906: fig. 121).

Moreover, the entrances at both ends of the antechamber are visually arresting features emphasising antithetical movement (entering/exiting). The vaulted roof of the antechamber and the burial chamber, the apex of which stood 8 m above the floor (Evans 1906: 163) [Fig. 9], would have created stunning visual and acoustic effects during ritual performances. Echoes, resonances, natural and artificial vibrations produced in the main chamber (even in the burial pit dug almost 1.50 m beneath the floor), in conjunction with the dull lighting of lamps, would have created an atmosphere of mystery and reverence.

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Fig. 9: Structuring allurement at the Royal Tomb: section of vault at the main burial chamber (after Evans 1906: fig. 145).

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In sum, visual and tactile features such as mason’s marks, variously textured and coloured materials, built elements and space layout, as well as contrasts pertaining to entrance and egress, light, temperature and acoustic conditions brought about by the architecture, did not merely express ideologies and beliefs, but constituted important elements of interactive performance and strategies for allurement. Such features in the architecture of the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb helped intensify experiences, elicit emotional reactions and evoke collective memories. They created a heterotopic ambience and shifted emphasis from cognitive human functions, such as comprehension of the words themselves and interpretation of their meaning, to more subconscious and affective responses, such as emotional processing, deeper reflection, sensuous apprehension of funerary rituals and experimentation with alternative cultural realities. As Lawrence Sullivan (1986: 5) stresses, what characterises ritual performance is a ‘quality of knowledge’ experienced in those situations. Indeed, alluring architectural arrangements are a most efficacious means for heightening awareness of a cultural reality. By creating illusionary effects, exaggerating contrasts and enhancing sensuous and affective responses, architecture not only intensifies ritual, but also creates an experiential and poetic frame of knowledge through which cultural reality is continuously reinterpreted and revised.

Conclusion: anthropocentrism, belonging and monumentality Analysing the architectural configuration of performative ritual in the Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb at Knossos suggests a fusion of elements, complex modes of inclusiveness and exclusiveness, and gradations of sacrality, liminality and affectivity. If such an analysis is to “enable us to perceive and understand the dialectics of permanence and change, to settle ourselves in the world, and to place ourselves in the continuum of culture and time” (Pallasmaa 2005: 71), the cultural values articulated and monumentalised by these two buildings need to be considered also. As argued previously, the theatrical mode is mainly concerned with eliciting emotional responses. Theatrical strategies of allurement, complex combinations of movement choreographies and liminal transitions manifest a preoccupation with participants and onlookers and their involvement in ritual proceedings. This mode, seen in both tombs, can also be seen as anthropocentric (Jones 2000: 192) in that it promotes interpretations of reality through wonder and awe, sensuous and emotional experience. Furthermore, both tombs are designed around a conceptual distinction between ‘us’ and ‘the other’. Clear boundaries create a sense of belonging among participants and alienation among non-participants. Elements such as doorways, passages, and transitional spaces, both contain and keep out, structuring shared experiences on the basis of which a sense of community can be developed: “depend-

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ing on one’s view they either welcome or rebuff” (Jones 2000: 292). What may be sacred and safe for the insider/participant may be forbidding and dangerous for the outsider/non-participant. However, the ‘inside’ does not exist without the existence of the ‘outside’ and similarly a sense of belonging cannot be cultivated without alienating ‘the other’ in tandem. Moreover, in both tombs the boundaries between the interior and the exterior distinguished between two worlds: that of the everyday life with its routines, concerns and social strategies, and that of communitas where people confronted their deepest metaphysical questions relying on emotions and reevaluated cultural realities as a group at the site of the tomb. Finally, monumentality seems to be an important dimension of ritual-architectural events at these tombs. Understanding monumentality in purely representational terms (sizeable dimensions, plan complexity, quality of materials, fine craftsmanship), i.e. as the production of “knowledge that maps, mirrors, or corresponds to how the world really is” (Pickering 1995: 5) and as grandiose material manifestations of high social status or attempts to renegotiate status, is limiting. From this perspective, funerary practices, the tombs themselves included, are thought to represent ‘ideology, the way people think about themselves and choose to represent themselves […] funerary practices allow us to discern the organising principles that govern social life’ (Voutsaki 1995: 57). In this representational paradigm, funerary architecture is a mere symbol or tool for political power. Ritual is deemed to be an arena where political identities are constructed and legitimised, a social mechanism distanced from cultural experimentation and play. People are portrayed as shadows of themselves (Pickering 1995: 6), disembodied, emotionless and lacking sensuous apprehension of their cultural environment. By contrast, the performative approach upholds that the empowering potential of ideology is manifested in the performance of social practice: it “cannot be treated strictly as a liability, an obstacle we must overcome before proceeding with the business of true knowledge, a mere negativity. It should equally be thought of as a positive force, as the element that empowers practice, the constitutive condition of practice” (Fotiadis 2006: 8). Thus, funerary ideology and its material manifestations (monumentality included) should not be understood in terms of sociopolitical representation alone, but as part of broader cultural processes; social life is not merely the outcome of acting out cultural rules, but founded upon the continuous reproduction and reshaping of culture through human agency. From this perspective, monumental tombs are not just symbols, a series of signs, or works of art, but constituted by what may and may not take place within them: the “opposition between inside and outside, as indicated by thresholds, doors and frames, acoustic, gestural movements, chains of meanings, breaches opening onto limitless perspectives, all are organised into a monumental whole (Lefebvre 1991: 224). Monumental space is constructed through a continuous back-and-forth between private/subjective and public/intersubjective utterances and is actively engaged in the construction of cultural meaning; through repeated embodied experience and sensuous encounters, monumental space be-

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comes a form of local knowledge that constructs place. Though seemingly imperishable, timeless and atemporal, monumental tombs introduce temporality by creating a time-specific interpretative framework that both structures funerary ritual and is reproduced by it. They attempt to escape mortality by translating fear about the passage of time and anxiety about death into awe for the timeless and the infinite. The Temple Tomb and the Royal Tomb, although different in appearance, share a mode of presentation that utilises inclusiveness versus exclusiveness, choreographic options and various methods of allurement meant to elicit sensory responses. While the buildings undeniably constructed flow, visibility, acoustics, participation etc. in performance through architectural design, they also acquired monumental ambience through performance: they became monumental, not just by virtue of spectacle and the qualities of the architecture as representation/symbol, but also through the kinesthetic and multisensory experiences of participants that produced an embodied, emotional and spiritual total. Their monumentality can be regarded as the transient outcome of a sensed totality and an inexhaustible metasensory resource, which was (re)remembered and (re)activated through successive funerary performances or analogous performance in other frames of social life. Their monumental character transformed them into memoryscapes, i.e. sensed, embodied spaces inseparable from human experience and loci of shared memories that enabled the ‘sensory reception of history’ (Seremetakis 1994: 4). Acknowledgements: The author is grateful to the editors of the volume, Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and Michael Boyd, for their insightful comments and advice. The paper has also benefited from helpful suggestions from the participants at the 2012 Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting. Moreover, the author is especially indebted to Kostas Kotsakis, Michael Fotiadis, Stelios Andreou, Emily Bonney, Clairy Palyvou, Despina Catapoti, and Elina Kardamaki for their helpful advice and constructive conversations. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Roberston Smith, W., 1969. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: the Fundamental Institutions. New York: KTAV Publishing House. Rosaldo, M., 1984. Toward an anthropology of self and feeling. In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion, ed. Sweder, R. A. & R. A. LeVine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 137–57. Schechner, R. 1977. Essays on Performance Theory (1970–1976). New York: Drama Book Specialists. Schechner, R., 2007. Living in a double consciousness. In Teaching Ritual, ed. Bell, C. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 15–28. Schechner, R. & W. Appel, 1989 (eds.). By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, E., 1985. Performance and the cultural construction of reality. American Ethnologist 12 (4), 707–24. Seremetakis, N., 1994 (ed.). The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Boulder: Westview Press. Sullivan, L. E., 1986. Sound and senses: toward a hermeneutics of performance. History of Religions 26, 1–33. Turner, V., 1967. Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Turner, V., 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Turner, V., 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Van Gennep, A., 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Voutsaki, S., 1995. Social and political processes in the Mycenaean Argolid: the evidence from the mortuary practices. In Politeia: Society and State in the Aegean Bronze Age, eds. Laffineur, R. & W.-D. Niemeier, Aegaeum 12. Liège: University of Texas at Austin, 55–64. Williams, R., 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Michael J. Boyd

Fields of Action in Mycenaean Funerary Practices 1 Fields of action Barrett’s (2000) call for an ‘archaeology of inhabitation’ arose from his thesis that agency cannot be understood independently of the material structural conditions in which it operated and the historically contingent structuring principles it engaged with: hence the fields within which effective agency can operate are as much the object of our study as the agency operating through them. That such fields should be related in some way to archaeological context is obvious, but a suitable theoretical framework is essential in relating archaeological observations to past contexts of action. In a recent paper, Robb envisages ‘fields of action’ as ‘genres of action’ enacted within ‘situations and arenas of social performance’ with ‘rules and strategies’ concerning participants and modes of action (Robb 2010: 507). Fields of action are an intermediate construct between specific instances of practice, on the one hand, and the pervasive background of habitus, on the other. Fields of action are nonetheless created out of knowledgeable action and recursively sustained through structuration (in the sense developed by Giddens 1979; 1984). They are created, recreated, maintained and developed through discourse and action. This concept is derived from Barrett’s ‘fields of discourse’ (1988a). Setting out the challenge to archaeology to become a discipline of historically situated social practice, he noted: “Archaeological evidence should not be treated as a static outcome of past dynamics (a record). Instead it is the surviving fragments of those recursive media through which the practices of social discourse were constructed. Social practices are the object of our study: archaeology is the empirical examination of material evidence to discover how such practices were maintained within particular material conditions” (Barrett 1988a: 9). These recursive media are material culture and other aspects of locale, including architecture; they are recursive because of the duality of structure, which is both medium and outcome of action. The field is ‘an area of time-space occupied by virtue of the practice of a particular discourse’ (Barrett 1988a: 11). Fields cross-cut and share components or resources (and hence their isolation as a unit of study is artificial). The analytical components of the field were seen as frequency of inhabitation and tempo (discussed further below), spatial extent, cultural resources, and transformations within it. This formulation of the concept is particularly useful in highlighting the relationships between fields of action in space and time: their overlap, or that one field of action may exist only within another. Thus Robb’s hierarchy of habitus, field

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of action, and particular instance of action is extended by the hierarchical nature of many fields of action, existing within or containing other fields of action. Semantically, the difference between ‘fields of action’ or ‘discourse’ is fine (cf. ‘fields of social practice’: Barrett 2001). The former term perhaps lays greater emphasis on the empowerment of situated human agency, in particular its relational, collective and material aspects (Robb 2010); the latter highlights the collective effect of socially efficacious communicative action. But both formulations include these principles and I take them here to be almost interchangeable. In asserting fields of action we are investigating effective, situated agency; the perimeters of the field are drawn by us, ‘reconstituted through our own inquiries’ (Barrett 2001: 158) in order to understand how that agency operated. Fields of action exist in time-space and the temporal aspect requires some development. In his definition Barrett (1988a: 11) refers to ‘tempo’ as ‘the temporal frequency within which the field is routinely occupied’. Here ‘tempo’ is derived from Bourdieu (1977), and Barrett offers the example of the cultural understanding of cycles of agricultural production. However, Bourdieu employs tempo to refer to time as an attribute of action (as in the manipulation of the timing of action: 1977: 7, 15). Moreover, in discussing the ritualisation of practice, he assigns action the temporal qualities of moment, tempo and duration (Bourdieu 1977: 163). In its normal usage, tempo evokes rhythm and regularity, frequency and cycles, but also changeability, quickening or slowing pace. Tempo is therefore a key concept in understanding the inhabitation of fields of action. It is a key attribute of the repeatability and changeability of action. As illustration, one very specific field of action we might consider concerns the toasting of the dead within a Mycenaean tomb. The toast is widely evidenced (Boyd 2016a) and so can be considered a field of action. The analytical components of the field would include its frequency of inhabitation (at the end of a funeral, though perhaps not always), its tempo (the temporal qualities of action as cups are filled, drained and deposited), its spatial extent (in the tomb, carried out in relation to the corpse), its cultural resources (the corpse as culturally constructed, appropriate serving and drinking wares, appropriate liquids), and transformations within it (which might include such changes as how many would drink, how many cups would be used, or whether it seems better to break the cup afterwards). These analytical components relate both to structural conditions (locale, material resources and the presence of others) and to structuring principles (the contingent and fragmentary knowledge of how to act effectively given certain conditions). This field of action is entirely enclosed within others: the funeral, itself enclosed within the wider funerary cycle. It also cross-cuts others which do not enclose it: actions carried out over a corpse, or the drinking of toasts in general. The evidence with which to investigate this field is apparent in most Mycenaean tombs. This is one straightforward example within the hierarchies of fields of action which I shall examine in this chapter under the heading ‘the funerary cycle’.

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As noted, Robb refers to ‘genres of action’, and this may imply not only different types of action, but different ways of acting. All action is performed in the sense of being carried out, but it is also the case that most action is performed in the sense that the actor is aware of the presence of others, and taking into account their observation and anticipated reactions, the actor may vary both what is done and how it is achieved. This public and communicative aspect of agency, encapsulated by the term ‘performance’ (‘behavior heightened, if ever so slightly, and publicly displayed; twice-behaved behavior’: Schechner 1993: 1), is highlighted as a style of behaviour in certain fields of action, where the discursive aim of the performance eclipses in importance the functional aspects of what is being done (Dakouri-Hild, this volume). Many different fields of action of this kind can be imagined: the habitual family meal, the changing of the guard, a criminal trial, or an initiation ceremony. The funeral is among the most obvious of examples. One question this chapter aims to address is the manners in which, and extent to which, performed behaviour is facilitated by Mycenaean funerary arenas, and the time-space trajectory of performative action in Mycenaean funerary events, as well as the potential role of the funeral as public spectacle (Inomata & Coben 2006). Heightened and stylised behaviour, where recognisably repetitive or seeking to recreate past events, can be characterised not only as performance but also as ritual (Bell 1992). This chapter will also consider the role of ritual in the events of the funerary cycle: how ritual forms a key shared resource within the tempo of events by structuring repetition and the recall of past events, and how the forms of cemeteries and tombs shaped and were shaped by ritual. In this chapter I aim to examine the fields of action of the Mycenaean funeral. As outlined above these are not merely reducible to locale but concerned with genres of action, their structuring principles, and their material structural conditions. In what follows, I examine events taking place within the funerary cycle, which includes both the fields of action associated with a funeral and others active at other times. The major divisions of this chapter therefore reflect the tempo of the funerary cycle as well as its locales, material resources and the knowledgeable actions of those involved. This chapter will not attempt to deal systematically with variation through time and space. This is not to imply that there was none, or that there is a ‘true’ Mycenaean funeral whose nature must be understood before we examine deviations from it: it is of course the case that there is significant variation in space and time. I have elsewhere deconstructed the notion of ‘Mycenaean’ through a consideration of variation in ‘Mycenaean’ funerary practices (Boyd 2016b). However, in what follows I shall consider the major aspects of the funerary cycle as a field of action, most of which can be variably related to the evidence from different tombs, sites, regions and time periods. Some examples are given here but detailed case studies, through which spatial and chronological variation will eventually be better understood, require their own publications (Boyd 2014a; 2014b; 2015b).

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How may we legitimately infer the actions of the funerary cycle? Death would usually imply at least three locales and two stages during which transport of the body is necessary: initial transport from the place of death to the place where the body is prepared for burial, if these two places are not the same, and then transport from there to the place of burial. These two stages might not be universally observed—it is indeed likely to be that case that many of the dead, especially if death took place far from home, may have been buried close to their place of death. There is also a major debate about what proportion of any given community (rather than the population as a whole, as this is a factor which clearly could have differed in time and space) might have been selected for burial in archaeologically visible ways (summarised in Snodgrass 2015: 191–2). But in the subset recovered archaeologically the evidence indicates that many of the bodies were prepared for burial, which must often imply a two stage transportation process, from place of death to intermediate point—perhaps the house, or some customarily preferred public arena—and from there to the grave. It is almost impossible to infer evidence concerning the first locale, the place of death, or the initial transportation stage from the place of death to the place where the body is prepared for burial, so these will not be considered further here. Some of the remaining relevant stages of a funeral are shown below. [Fig. 1]. All of these may be examined on the basis of the evidence available. Beyond the funeral itself, activity in Mycenaean tombs taking place at other times is often evidenced. These ‘non-burial’ stages of the funerary cycle will also be taken into account.

Fig. 1: Stages in a funeral. Stages in brackets are not evidenced in every case (after author).

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2 The funerary cycle 2.1 Prothesis The preparation and dressing of the dead, no matter how simple or complex, form a connected series of acts carried out by the living upon the dead. The agency of the dead is absent, though it may be deemed to be ordained, or manipulated by those taking part in the funeral activities. Indeed it is one of the chief burdens and opportunities of the funeral, to proceed with much concern for a physical entity whose active participation in society has lately so abruptly ceased. The relationship between those arranging the funeral and the recently dead has already changed: no matter the extent to which the agency of the dead is proclaimed, it is for the living to arrange how to proceed. In this field of action the focal point is the inactive (though in some ways responsive) corpse, upon and through which activities are carried out. The field’s analytical components are its frequency of inhabitation (irregularly, in response to death, and early in the funerary cycle), its tempo (the temporal ordering of the sequence of actions carried out on the corpse, including variation between periods of activity and periods of waiting, presentation or contemplation), its spatial extent (which cannot be recovered, but was perhaps usually limited), its cultural resources (the stock of material resources and immaterial knowledge employed in the field), and the transformations within it (which we may glimpse through variation in time and space). The dead may be washed, anointed, or treated with cosmetics; she may be dressed in garb habitual or never before worn. She may be wrapped tightly in a shroud, or adorned with jewellery. The mourners proceed to transform the appearance of the corpse until deemed fit to be seen, transported, and buried. The unpredictability of a living agent is transformed into a limited and refined representation crafted and curated by the mourners. Numbers participating in this phase may be very limited, though the gathering of items for use in the presentation of the corpse may involve wider networks. If there is a period of presentation after preparation and before transport to the grave, this may involve a larger group of people, through which participant roles in the funeral might begin to be negotiated. In finding the tempo of this stage, mourners would usually have been guided by their expectations in relation to length of time between death and burial, and customary times of the day for burials to take place. The expectation may often have been, as it is now in many Mediterranean societies, that burial would take place with little delay after death. However, mourners may sometimes have varied the tempo, perhaps in order to ensure effective representation of different groups at the funeral, or to obtain appropriate material resources for use during the funeral. The archaeological evidence for this field of action is necessarily limited to any evidence preserved in the tomb for the presentation of the corpse. Influenced by historical accounts, and by very limited iconographical evidence such as the Tanagra

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larnakes (Cavanagh & Mee 1995; Burke 2007; Dakouri-Hild in press), we may have tended to believe that the intermediate stage was similar to the prothesis of later periods. However many of the actions on the body inferred from its final state within the tomb might equally have taken place either before or after interment. In considering the cumulative manipulation of the corporeal representation that is the focal point of burial, it is usually not at all clear when most of the crafting of that representation took place. Indeed in considering the actions on the body which cumulatively produced its final buried state, we might expect considerable chronological, regional and individual variation in emphasis between preparation before burial and actions on the body in the tomb. Although it may seem obvious that much of the work on the body was done before the procession to the tomb, in fact this may not always have been the case. The presence of items such as alabastra may hint at cosmetic actions on the body within the tomb (Cavanagh 1998). The material resources used in this field include a subset that might be evidenced in the tomb, among a larger group of material that we would normally expect to find little evidence for. Organic materials, such as clothing for the corpse and mourners, wooden furniture where used, unguents, oils and cosmetics, can all be imagined as candidates for use and would make their way to the tomb adhering to the corpse or to the mourners, rarely to be recognised archaeologically; other materials could be employed in this or any stage, without forming part of the material deposited in the tomb. The principal materials often found in the tomb which can be related to this stage are jewellery and other bodily adornments and clothing refinements; during the preparation of the body, other materials might be gathered for the funeral, from potentially quite disparate sources (Boyd 2014b), drawing in networks of participants with interests in the material being contributed (see Harrell 2014 for an intriguing discussion of the mechanisms by which swords came to be concentrated in some shaft grave assemblages). If there were a phase of public display before the procession to the grave, it is conceivable that material gathered for the funeral, such as martial culture, or food or wine for consumption, might be displayed at this point with the readied corpse.

2.2 Readying the tomb Tomb construction and the preparation of the tomb for a funeral form two separate fields of action. Both form part of the wider funerary cycle but tomb construction must rarely have been part of the process of the funeral itself, given the requirements of time and expertise (Boyd 2002: 54–62). Tomb construction was a project which required those organising it to call upon specific skill sets and sufficient (practised?) labour, and to draw in tools and, for built tombs, materials. In the case of the larger tholos tombs these resources would have been significant and the time required substantial: once activated, this field of action would have consumed considerable resources of

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time and energy from a major subsector of the community. Even for much simpler chamber tombs, however, construction was not trivial and, being perhaps in the purview of a much smaller organising group, would have the effect of requiring similarly taxing levels of commitment from those involved. The initial choice of location of the tomb, often with reference to existing tombs, perhaps in a specific cluster, was also the first step in reorganising the cultural landscape, of physically inserting a new point of reference into the already inhabited network of paths and places, of asserting the place of the living and the dead as a future trajectory within the surrounding chaos of tradition and ongoing action. In this way the effect of individual and collective agency in inhabiting the field of action of tomb construction was to transform the wider locale and imbue it with the expectation of future performance. The preparation of the tomb to receive the dead forms a quite different field of action. Three principal activities, perhaps not performed by the same groups of people, are involved: the digging out of the dromos, if required; the opening of the blocked doorway; and the rearrangement of the interior contexts of the tomb in order to be ready for the funeral itself. Each involves selection of participants and movement to the tomb; obvious material resources such as digging tools would be required, along with objects perhaps to be used in the rearrangement of the interior. None of these activities would have seemed mundane. The choice of which tomb to open and use might have seemed unavoidably pre-ordained, and therefore uncontroversial; but we know little about the make-up and variability of groups using Mycenaean tombs, and the mechanisms by which inclusion came about might have been less obvious than, for example, simple membership of a family group. The decision about which tomb was to be opened might have been more discursive, and it is not inconceivable that activity took place at more than one tomb in coming to a decision. The digging of the dromos, if not already open (there is no need to believe the dromos was always filled in after every funeral: Boyd 2002: 63–4; for detailed studies of this question in individual cemeteries, see Karkanas et al. 2012; Smith et al. in press), was an act of bodily reengagement with a particular locale, physically transforming it in order to rediscover the affordances of place (Dakouri-Hild, this volume; Papadimitriou, this volume) so suitable for the later acts of the funeral. It would also often have been a time of rediscovery of the detritus of past acts in that place, most often through the recovery of smashed potsherds in the dromos. These, held in the hand, became a tangible reference point for what had gone before, and a pointer to the future. Where these acts of smashing indicated a closure for the tomb, now their recovery and removal pointed to the subsequent act of removing the blocking wall in the stomion. These acts may have been structured in reference to claims of competence in allowing and directing the opening of the tomb. The tomb, once open, flooded the senses of those entering with the sights, imperfectly perceived in limited light, of the acts of another time; the smells, the odd and familiar soundscape; shockingly different from the outside world and yet strongly familiar to those who had been there before (Boyd 2014b: 200–1). The funerary cycle

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is filled with dramatic moments where those participating confront the past, present and future circumstances of their lives. The entry into the tomb is one of these: the detritus of past action richly imbued with meaning and memory. The activities carried out in the chamber at this point, utilising the material to hand and perhaps other material now introduced, tended to rearrange interior contexts in ways that I have described elsewhere (Boyd 2014a; 2014b; 2016a). In brief, actions on material within the tomb could occur at three junctures: before the interment, as presently discussed (whether immediately before or some time earlier), where a primary motivation is to prepare the tomb and its contents for the coming funerary rite; during the interment, where a primary motivation is to set the dead within the newly remade tomb interior context; and at a later point, after the dissolution of the flesh, where a primary motivation is often to undo the primary burial context and set its components among the other material in the tomb. Each of these moments can result in action destructive to burial contexts, creating ‘secondary’ deposits, which can occasion dismay among archaeologists; in fact, the tomb interior is better understood as a resource container and a keeper of evidence (Dakouri-Hild in press), whose worth and meanings are recovered in the multiple acts of rearrangement so richly demonstrated. In preparing for the funeral, those entering the tomb reinterpreted its contents and made them ready for use in the funeral to come. Practical aspects, such as the definition of areas for movement and a place of deposition, went along with the acquisition of knowledge through engagement with the material past, some of which may have been removed at this point for use in the funeral (Boyd 2014b) or elsewhere.

2.3 Ekphora Although the consideration of funerary processions might initially seem archaeologically intangible or indeed beyond recovery, we are in fact able to infer rather a lot about these important events using sources of information such as the final deposition in the tomb, the layout of the tombs themselves and the nature of funerary landscapes.

2.3.1 The nature of action in funerary processions A procession is ‘the action of a body of persons going or marching along in orderly succession, esp(ecially). as a religious ceremony or on a festive occasion’ (Onions et al. 1973). The word ‘action’ is significant in highlighting the active nature of a procession and the agency of those participating. Another theme to consider is the tension between the individual and the collective in forming the ‘body of persons’. The ‘orderly succession’ emphasises that ordering, ranking, and reordering are a key consideration in how people function within a procession. A funeral may not always

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count as a ‘religious ceremony’, but it is important also to consider the part that cosmology or the supernatural may have played. What can we infer of the nature of these funerary processions (Papadimitriou 2015; cf. Pearson & Shanks 2001: 128–9)? As a field of action, we can begin to define it in terms of its analytical components: frequency of inhabitation, tempo, spatial extent, cultural resources and transformations. Most important, however, are the multiple participants in funerary processions. Processions are first and foremost public, open events. For the most part they take place in relatively unbounded space, although surrounded on all sides by the topography of memory and tradition. During the space of time taken up by the procession, the group moves from locale to locale, perhaps beginning in a more confined urban or domestic environment, but in most cases ending up in a cemetery locale away from the houses of the living. Traversing the open countryside, processions would have been highly visible from multiple viewpoints, and routes of movement could have been relatively freely chosen and altered. We can imagine at least three basic participant roles, and there may have been others: those leading the procession, those following and forming the main body of the mourners, and those standing by, watching. The leaders were those making the strategic decisions directing the funeral: perhaps those claiming a close relationship with the dead, as a relative or as a member of another defined group; but also perhaps those with a wider interest: ritual specialists, for example, or representatives of the different groups claiming a stake in the interpretation of the funerary topography. Those leading took care for the performance of the funeral, the transport of the dead, gathering much of the material culture destined to be utilised during the process, and organising other participants. The actions of those following may also have been important in shaping the nature of the event. They may have behaved in certain ways—through their dress, forms of movement and gesture, in making certain noises, in singing or in performing music—which had an effect on the procession (cf. Dakouri-Hild in press, for the evidence from Tanagra). These sorts of activities might have been foreseen by custom or ritual but nonetheless have offered considerable freedom to the mourners in how they constructed their own performance, creating a dialectic between those at the head of the procession and those behind, and influencing the overall act. Those not directly following but standing by and watching participated by observing and acknowledging the procession. The flow of the procession may at times have been influenced by the presence of these ‘non-participants’, especially if the latter were drawn to gather at particular locales whose significance may be employed in shaping the action of the processants, such as buildings associated with particular lineages, other tombs, or shrines. Those participating in the procession may have acknowledged these other groups by stopping or by other actions acknowledging their presence. In contrasting leaders with followers and onlookers, it is important to bear in mind one of the essential but often overlooked aspects of the funerary process:

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individuals always embody the potential to transcend roles through their agency, and the funerary procession is a key opportunity to do this. The procession is a composite act whose overall nature is defined through innumerable individual acts. The standerby can become a follower by joining the procession; a follower can become a key actor in the process through some action anticipated or unanticipated; and those at the front of the procession can fall back and let others lead. These little scenarios point us to a key aspect of funerary processions: they are the perfect model of the duality of structure and human agency (Barrett 1994). The structured (but not rule-bound: Barrett 2012) nature of the procession is open to constant redefinition during the lengthy process of enacting it. Indeed, this is the most open moment of the funeral: once at the graveside, other factors can be employed to reinforce order. During the procession, hierarchy is both made manifest and open to negotiation. The greater the numbers participating in the funeral, the more apparent this aspect would have been: in the biggest funerals, those with the most ‘reach’ into wider society, there would have been people, groups or representatives of groups all seeking to make their place in proceedings both seen and understood.

2.3.2 Procession locales and tempo Between the starting and ending points, the route marked time, proceeding through a formidable succession of known locales, viewpoints and distant backgrounds. Routes may not have been particularly short or efficient, but instead have wound their way on a circuitous course intending to take in certain waypoints and vistas, as well as to be seen from other locations. These waypoints may have been the appropriate points at which to stop, and have given the impetus for temporary changes of roles among the mourners. The backdrop of a particular monument or house or vista or tomb is the opportunity for those asserting association with that locale to foreground themselves in the procession narrative and support the significance of their group’s relationship with the dead or the importance of their group in relation to the events being played out at the funeral. Each such backdrop forms an ‘amplifying mechanism’ (Barrett 1994: 17) employed as a reorienting and reordering device allowing those foregrounding themselves at that place temporarily to act as the focal point of the group. While we cannot now reconstruct something so ephemeral as the route of a funerary procession three and a half thousand years ago, we can go surprisingly far in understanding the structuring principles offered by funerary landscapes as we have been able to reconstruct them. Consider the funerary landscape of Nichoria in Messenia (Choremis 1973; Parlama 1972; 1976; Lukermann & Moody 1978: 108–9; Coulson 1983; McDonald & Wilkie 1992; Boyd 2014a). The site is located on the western arc of the Gulf of Messenia, about 2 km inland and on a ridge at the edge of the upland plateau. The area is liminal: to the east and south the land drops away steeply toward

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the coast in a broken landscape of steep ravines, while to the west and north lies the relatively flat central Messenian plateau, as well as the most direct route to Pylos. Both habitation site and cemetery are situated on small plateaux amid ravines and bedrock outcrops.Thirteen tombs form a cemetery to the northwest of the settlement site with four distinct but proximal foci [Fig. 2]. The most prominent focal point is the Tourkokivouro ridge, where six tombs cluster toward the highest, southeastern end. Other tombs lie to the west, east and south. The excavators suggested significant eastwest and north-south routes between the tombs: the four cemetery foci surround, emphasise and to some extent define a crossroads, as well as the postulated main route into the settlement.

Fig. 2: Plan of cemetery at Nichoria (after Boyd 2014a: fig. 1).

A funerary procession early in Late Helladic III had to negotiate its way through this richly meaningful Nichoria landscape. It may have begun to the east, within the settlement, or have approached from elsewhere, utilising the established paths to approach the cemetery area and its elevated tomb groups. On reaching the crossroads they could easily have incorporated the tomb groups and individual tombs within their route in a great circuit round the cemetery before finally reaching their intended destination. But what makes this likely? The repeated disposition of Mycenaean tombs in cemeteries and groups can at least in part be explained by the needs of procession. Consider the group of five small tholos tombs built into a prominent mound at Kaminia in Messenia (Korres 1975a; 1975b; 1980; Boyd 2002: 116–9). The mound forms

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the northern end of a wider cemetery landscape stretching some 3 km to the southwest (Boyd 2002: fig. A4.6). After perhaps having gone past some of the other tombs in the vicinity, the procession would approach the mound itself as the principal focal point. The secondary focal points offered by the entrances to the tombs would become apparent only as the group closed in on the mound, and only from certain directions. The mound itself emphasised the relationships between the tombs, all of which were enclosed within it and raised off ground level. Individual tombs could only be approached by means of the mound, which structured the relationships between them. This type of arrangement was Middle Helladic in origin: in the Late Helladic period, such arrangements became less usual, as more often individual tombs were built in their own mounds or underground, and the relationships between them structured by proximity and by the choice of processional route (Boyd 2016a). The site of Pellana in Lakonia (Karahalios 1926; Spyropoulos 1982; 1983; Boyd 2002: 195–200), for example, shows a simple such arrangement: six tombs are lined up along the ridge into which they were cut. Procession might have approached from different directions: from east or west, they would encounter the tombs as a group, perceiving this small cemetery as a whole before perceiving individual tombs. From north or south, they would have encountered each tomb one by one. Whether passing by the other tombs, or stopping along the way, the route of the procession became itself an engagement with the past acts manifest in the landscape, the different approaches highlighting different emphases in the relationships between the tombs and those using them. Just as when new tombs came to be constructed within a cemetery their location was chosen in relation to the other tombs, so the procession in arriving at the tomb via the others around it reemphasised those relationships, adding to their history through the process of the funeral. The great chamber tomb cemeteries of Late Helladic II-III, such as that at Mycenae itself, are the result of the incorporation of wide areas into funerary landscapes. At Mycenae there are some 27 cemeteries of more than 250 tombs collectively (Shelton 2003). The Kalkani area excavated by Wace (1932; [Fig. 3]) formed one such cemetery area, set into the side of one of the many eminences radiating around Mycenae. The tombs form an approximately linear arrangement, and so are comparable with Pellana on a basic level; however, their differing elevations and orientations make for a more complex arrangement. As with the other examples, procession may have approached from different directions with the result that the order in which the tombs were encountered would be different. The procession could also have been seen from near and far: some of those observing or passed by could have been located at tombs or other buildings with which they claimed association; others would have seen the gradual progress of the procession from a greater distance. Each group of tombs in the wider cemetery forms a focal area, and the ties that were emphasised in placing the tombs together were reaffirmed and tested through the route of each funerary procession. Processions may have wound their way between groups en route to their final destination, the procession binding groups of tombs together. Those arranging for

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processions at Mycenae would have chosen their route through a landscape brimming with memories and associations.

Fig. 3: Sketch plan of the Kalkani cemetery at Mycenae (after Wace 1932: fig. 9).

This brings us back to Nichoria [Fig. 2]. Here we see four small groups of tombs, each located at a prominent spot around the hypothesised crossroads. The Tourkokívouro group in some ways resembles the Kamínia mound: small tombs radiating out from a central point. To the west, at the Akónes group, the entrances also point outward from a shared central point. Their orientation would facilitate processional groups gathering to the south and west looking north and east, that is focused not only on the Akónes group but also facing the rest of the cemetery. The Véves and UMME tombs also have their entrances facing away from the cemetery. So while the crossroads may indeed have been located between the tomb groups, it would seem from the orientation of many of the entrances that the focal points were usually from the outside of the cemetery, facing inward. This tendency in orientation may have promoted a route around the circumference rather than from the centre outward, with stopping points

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that promoted the reorientation of the processants. This circuit recognises the four separate tomb groups and also allows for the expression of relationships between them. To summarise: in Mycenaean cemetery landscapes, the procession has to pass tombs in its progress, and the presence of proximal tombs was no doubt an influence on the participants. The procession became the active means by which to rediscover and renegotiate the relationships inferred from the network of tombs in the cemetery. One purpose of the cemetery was to shape processions, and one purpose of the procession was to inhabit and understand the cemetery.

2.3.3 Procession resources and transformations In processing, the participants brought with them multiple cultural resources whose meanings were rediscovered or transformed in the act. Foremost among these was the corpse, prepared for presentation during the preceding phase. One purpose of the procession was the transportation of the corpse, and this would have involved some of the participants directly. The modality may have differed: transport in a container, on a bier, on a vehicle, on the back of an animal, or carried by one or more of the participants directly. Depending on the amount of effort on the presentation of the corpse before the procession and its arrangement during it, the corpse may have formed a spectacular centre point during this phase. One important aspect of the procession is display: the use of certain resources by different actors in the procession for display in their attempt to convey certain meanings or messages. One need not only conceive of this in relation to the grandest processions involving greatest effort or number of people, such as might be expected at a late shaft grave funeral, for example. For this aspect of display worked at different scales: less ostentatious funerals involving less conspicuous elements of display nonetheless used the spectacle of the funeral for similar ends (Boyd 2014b). The corpse need not have been the only focal point of the procession. Those arranging for the funeral, those related to the dead, or ritual specialists, among others, may have taken leading roles in the procession, and may have worn unusual clothing or adornments, or carried particular items, with the intention both of making manifest their claimed position, and perhaps also of contributing to the creation of the funerary context (Dakouri-Hild in press). Others not directly involved in organising the funeral may nonetheless also have dressed differently or brought material to use in the funeral. These aspects of the procession all contributed to its spectacle, which made it interesting to observers and may sometimes have invited them also to take part. Harrell has recently (2014) examined how the life-histories of swords may have contributed to their being gathered together for use in funerary events, highlighting that mechanisms more complex than simple inheritance may have been at play in

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determining which items came to be deposited in tombs. In different ways this may have applied to much of the material used in funerary rites (Boyd 2014b). Processions would have been a moment for the display both of material likely to be deposited with the dead and material that was not intended for deposition in the tomb. If it was sometimes the case that participants were drawn into funerary events by the material objects they held (swords, in the hypothesis presented by Harrell 2014), it may be that the life histories of other objects influenced participation in processions and funerary rites, even where those items were not finally interred with the dead. The procession would have been the most important moment for the display of those items and the apprehension of their individual and sometimes collective significance by other participants and those observing. Besides the jewellery or other adornments of the corpse, and the ‘martial culture’ (Harrell 2010) and other items eventually deposited with the corpse, the pottery recovered from many tomb contexts indicates drinking or pouring rituals, and other funerary consumption. All of this gear was transported to the tomb, either as part of the main procession or perhaps in a separate event (which would have been a procession of a different kind). These items, observed by all, may have indicated generosity by specific groups in initiating widespread consumption, or quite differently have signified a much more restricted consumption, confined to a select group at the graveside (Boyd 2015b). The scale of participation in the funeral does not necessarily correlate with the numbers able to participate in these rituals of consumption, but whether the subject of wide participation or not, their place in the procession ensured awareness of the acts among all participants.

2.4 Taphos and taphe 2.4.1 Procession, tomb and cemetery At each waypoint on the route of a procession, the possibility exists for the group to stop and for activities to occur which involve the reordering of the group. These activities might have involved stopping, turning, or a word from one or more participants. But can we suggest more than that? Burials involve the creation of a burial context within a tomb (Boyd 2016a). This involves reordering the material already present in the tomb, if it is not an empty tomb, then depositing the corpse, along with the materials worn by the corpse, and with other items brought into the tomb, used and deposited during the funeral. Later rituals, often referred to as ‘second burial’ (Cavanagh 1978; Wells 1990: 135–6; Voutsaki 1993: 151–3; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 76; Boyd 2002: 84–7; 2016a: 207–8; Gallou 2005: 113–4; Jones 2014; Moutafi 2015; Lagia et al., this volume; Smith et al. in press; Cavanagh et al., this volume, review the evidence for developments in the Middle Helladic period), involve a new reordering of the material in the tomb, often

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disarticulating the latest burial and dispersing materials associated with it. Some material may be removed to the dromos or removed from the tomb altogether (Moutafi 2015). The cumulative effect within the tomb is often to de-emphasise separate burial contexts and to place emphasis on the material as an evolving resource manipulated in action each time the tomb is used. When further burials come to be made, this cycle was repeated, the latest rearrangement being itself rearranged once more. This ongoing mixing and reorganisation emphasises the recovery and articulation of relationships between the dead rather than the dead as individuals as action proceeds within the tomb. The placement of many Mycenaean tombs within cemeteries further emphasises the networks of relationships within which the dead are placed, both within the tomb and within the wider cemetery. These wider relationships are rediscovered and redefined with each act of inhabiting the cemetery, and especially during funerary and other processions. Here we may introduce some speculation. As the procession went its way to the tomb, passing and perhaps stopping at other tombs along the way, part of the performance may sometimes have involved entry into those tombs in order to rearrange material therein and particularly to remove one or two items for use in creating the new burial context of the present funeral. This activity would reaffirm the relationships already to be found in the topography of the cemetery, and allow one group to presence itself in a funeral largely conducted by another group by acting through material culture more strongly associated with the former group and resonant of past events. That this is at least a possibility is shown by recent analysis of a substantial bioarchaeological dataset from Voudeni in Achaia (Moutafi 2015), where bone removal from the tomb is demonstrated as common practice. This potential insight allows us further to understand the large range of activities that come under the ‘second burial ritual’ heading, and moves us further away from the notion of the tomb as a closed receptacle opened on rare occasions whose contents are perhaps barely remembered, but toward the idea of the tomb as regularly inhabited and known resource-set, and the cemetery as a topography maintained in action. The greatest moment of reorganisation in the funeral party came on reaching its final destination, the tomb. Mycenaean funerary architecture is singularly designed both to accommodate the needs of procession and exert an influence over the nature of that procession (cf. Papadimitriou, this volume). For the individual, the experience of approaching and entering a tripartite Mycenaean tomb is unlike most other contemporary architectural engagements (though in some ways replicated in Late Helladic III at the Lion Gate: Wright 1987; 2006). The tomb, carved or built underground, or built into a mound, is a subterranean construction whose architectural features are often barely visible from a distance, and even at close quarters only the dromos and façade may be discerned. Unlike most architectural constructions, the tomb does not impinge on the horizon, skyline, or line of vision (and where an artificial mound is used, as with most tholos tombs, this appears as part of the landscape, even if obviously modified: its constructed core is well hidden). Instead the tomb invites those entering to traverse a passage underground, taking them out of the landscape

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and into a radically different space (discussed in detail by Papadimitriou 2015; this volume; see also Chountasi, this volume; Van de Moortel, this volume). During the act of walking the dromos, the individual’s sense of surrounding is completely altered: at the outer end, the dromos and façade are seen cut into the landscape context, but as one approaches, the sides of the dromos rise until they restrict all peripheral vision and focus the senses entirely on the façade. In many tombs the dromos is narrower at the top, so as even to reduce the available aperture for viewing the sky. In the few steps from one end of the dromos to the other, a complete environmental and sensory transformation is effected. Sounds from outside may now appear muffled, the ambient light and field of vision are dramatically reduced, and smells, of the cut earth or those emanating from the tomb, would also have been sharply detectible. The stomion, often narrow and low, restricts further the line of sight into the chamber; the eyes (during the day) take time to adjust, so little can be seen of the interior approaching. At night the chamber would seem completely black unless torches or lamps had already been set within. Entry often involves bending down, and given widespread evidence for incomplete opening of blocking walls for many instances of reuse, perhaps sometimes crawling. Once inside, living bodies are once more constrained: by the scale of the architecture, the presence of others, and restrictions on movement created by material on the floor and the presence of benches or other architectural features. The temperature would be noticeably cooler, and sound would create unusual effects, especially in tholos tombs. During the day, the entrance would be a source of blinding light, perhaps somewhat offset by the use of artificial lighting. On leaving the tomb, the individual experiences the opposite of entry: walking along the dromos, the walls slowly lower; the horizon becomes progressively wider, until once more in the open landscape, the body and its senses are freed of the constraints and affordances of the tomb. Significant factors affecting the experience of entering the tomb would be scale, whether entering during the day or night, and the presence and numbers of others. Most tombs are scaled to the living occupant (Boyd 2002: 83–4): the dromos, stomion and chamber are large enough to permit movement, sometimes quite constrained, sometimes freer, but not so large as to overwhelm the individual. Of course some tombs are much larger, and this difference in scale is discussed further below. Scale is an important limiting factor on how many can be present in the chamber at any given moment; scale therefore enables the gathering and copresence of a limited group, a subset of participants, whose actions within the chamber will be obscured from the view of most of those remaining outside. Scale affects those participating in conjunction with the numbers of people involved: smaller tombs and larger groups lead to a very small proportion of the total being inside at once; larger tombs permit greater numbers to enter, perhaps in some cases a larger proportion of those taking part, dependent on the numbers involved. This analysis so far has focused on the relationship between the architecture of the Mycenaean tripartite tomb and the individual. However, in many instances of

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engagement, the individual is operating both in relation to the tomb and to the copresence of others. The most obvious such instance is the arrival of the procession at the tomb and the subsequent conduct of the funerary rites. During the procession there may have been several focal points operating in turn or simultaneously: the corpse and those transporting it; others enacting leadership roles, such as lead mourners, ritual specialists, or community or corporate group representatives; particular places en route; and, at the end of the procession, the tomb itself. The arrival at the tomb signifies a change in the nature of the event: an end point has been reached, and the ‘aim’ of the procession—transport of the corpse to the graveside—has been achieved. The mourners may have rearranged themselves to allow a small group to carry the corpse inside immediately. However, perhaps it is more likely that on arriving the processants rearranged themselves around a focal point created by the entrance to the dromos and temporarily enhanced by setting down the corpse (and any transport mechanism) at this point [Fig. 4]. As the mourners rearranged themselves for the funeral, those carrying materials may at this stage have come forward so that an initial representation of the funerary gear could be seen. Perhaps material could also have been brought out of the tomb and presented to the mourners, perhaps as additional adornment for the corpse (Boyd 2014b).

Fig. 4: Schematic representation of the possibilities of focus, orientation and flow of movement in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. Note the diagram takes no account of obstacles restricting flow, such as installations or material present on the chamber floor (after author).

The corpse and funerary gear act as attention-focusing devices in the manner described by Renfrew (1986: 18) and the architectural properties of the tomb act as an ‘amplifying mechanism’ (Barrett 1994: 17), defining the focal point at the entrance to the dromos as a threshold, a transactional area (Dakouri-Hild, this volume). These factors orient the group: most mourners gathering around and facing the dromos entrance and corpse, while those occupying that space received their attention and were able to direct their gaze out to the group [Fig. 4]. The interior space of the tomb

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is a hidden backdrop to this activity. Any part of the ritual carried out at this point is open to all to view, and participate in, in contrast to actions later in the tomb; such ritual action would emphasise the community of the living and the recently-dead’s place in it, while later actions in the tomb would be more oriented to the community of the dead. As members of the company go into the tomb the mourners are effectively broken into transient subgroups: those inside or in the process of entering, and those left outside, with little or no vision of activity inside. The small scale of most tombs restricts the numbers entering and inside, and as noted the presence of installations or material on the floor further restricts circulation within. Thus the actions of inhabiting the tomb architecture facilitates the breaking of the mourners into at least two groups—those inside, taking care of the main funerary acts, and those outside, who may nonetheless gain entrance as part of a controlled flow of participants. The architecture of the tomb allows for this control, and it was open to the participants to exploit this to reassert the hierarchy of the funeral after the relatively open part of the procession. Thus it is important to consider the extent to which the architectural properties of any given tomb may have been used to maintain the interior funerary performance as a hidden and intimate act, or alternatively as a mechanism enabling the controlled flow of participants in and out as part of the ritual. As noted above, scale is the most important factor in understanding how funerary groups could have inhabited Mycenaean tombs. Scalar differences in tombs introduce different possibilities in how individuals can interact and move as a group, as well as in simply controlling the maximum numbers who can enter the tomb. I have elsewhere discussed the sizes of tomb chambers (Boyd 2015b; 2002: table 24; [Fig. 5]) and their relationship to group size: each metre added to the diameter produces approximately 10 m2 extra floor space in the smaller tombs, and considerably more in the larger tombs. Hence numbers inside could be imagined to be considerable as tomb size increases, assuming the available floor space was used to its maximum capacity. However, material on the floor and installations such as benches, the need for space to act on the corpse and place material to go with it, and other (elected) restrictions on numbers would mean in most cases that participants would have been considerably fewer than the maximum possible number. For a chamber of about 4 m in diameter this might mean three to six participants [Fig. 4], whereas for an 8 m diameter it might vary from 12–25 participants, and a 12 m diameter may accommodate as many as 55–110 persons [Fig. 6]1.

1 Based on giving each participant 2 m2 for the lower figure and 1 m2 for the higher figure, and assuming that only half the tomb floor was available for use. Other permutations are clearly possible: see Boyd 2015b: table 2.

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Fig. 5: Scale in Mycenaean tombs. Mycenae: chamber tomb 502 with the Panayia, Kato Phournos and Lion tholoi, shown to scale (after Wace 1932: fig. 2, and Wace 1923: figs. 59, 61, pl. 53, respectively).

Chamber capacities introduce important considerations in the types of action available to the participants and the nature of performers and audiences. In larger chamber tombs and mid-sized tholoi, not only might larger numbers be present in the chamber during the final stages of burial, but the material and historical resources of a wellused tomb would be significant. The potential is there for the expression of different roles in action before a larger group. The wider dromoi of larger tombs, the more impressive facades, and larger stomia, allow for enhanced modes of circulation. Circulation in the smaller tombs probably operated as a basic ‘in-out’ system, as described above [Fig. 4]. In the larger tombs, and especially in the large tholoi, while the dromos entrance continues to act as a focal point, the dromos is itself massive and capable of accommodating large numbers of people (Papadimitriou 2015), and the stomion façade becomes a second focal point, with the dromos offering the potential for its own self-contained circulation system between its outer end and the stomion. As well as gathering at the end of the dromos, hundreds of spectators could have occupied standing positions within the dromos, been lined up along the edges of the

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Fig. 6: Schematic representation of the possibilities of focus, orientation and flow of movement in a large tholos tomb. Note the diagram takes no account of obstacles restricting flow, such as installations or material present on the chamber floor. Dimensions approximately based on the Lion Tomb at Mycenae [Fig. 5] (after author).

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dromos, and even looking down from the top of the mound. The procession, its arrival at the tomb, and its progress along the dromos would have been very public events, with potentially huge numbers participating as observers. Once at the second focal point of the stomion, the procession would split once again: perhaps here another pause in proceedings would allow the façade to act as an amplifying mechanism for those acting on the corpse in the open for the last time. Then a select group would bear the corpse into the chamber, along with the accoutrements of the funeral. In the largest tholoi, there is a clear potential for a sizeable subgroup of mourners to gather within the chamber. At this point a secondary system of circulation would be in operation [Fig. 6], with a good number of those gathered at the stomion able to enter the chamber at certain points while others would leave and join the group outside. Movement within might be structured around a central focus, but existing material and installations might be used to create multiple secondary focal points. Hence the large tholos tombs embodied the potential both to enforce and display a strict and relatively deep hierarchy, but also for individuals—very visibly—to transcend and remake those hierarchies in action. A final embellishment, the side chamber, present in two of the largest tholos tombs (as well as in some much smaller tombs) would allow large numbers to observe most of the ceremony within the chamber but retain the restricted participation in final interment rites which was a feature of non-monumental ceremonies. Mycenaean funerary architecture and Mycenaean cemeteries show us how important coordinated movement was to the entire procedure of carrying out a funeral. Mycenaean cemeteries and tombs were for procession: procession, as a negotiated composite act, was the way in which to inhabit, understand and utilise Mycenaean cemeteries and tombs. The procession describes the interaction of participants in this mass action, through which the practical aims of transporting corpse and mourners to and into the tomb were achieved, and in which individuals could exercise their agency as part of a collective act, utilising the numerous potentials for action which the procession provided. Procession provided the means through which to occupy different spaces both predictably and creatively, and afforded all participants the potential to perform the roles they wished to enact, or which might be expected of or imposed upon them.

2.4.2 Performing burial If we consider the latter stages of the funeral, conducted within the chamber, as a field of action, we can again consider in turn the analytical components of the field. The chamber defines the spatial extent, with the constraints of scale and availability of floor space as just described. This also contains the resources available, in particular the material near to hand on the floor, available in niches, or even to be disinterred from pits, as well as that brought into the tomb by the mourners, including the corpse.

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The tempo is dictated by the actions to be performed, and the impetus (or reluctance) for different participants to enter and leave the scene. I have recently considered the deposition phase in these terms in detail for the final burial in Routsi Tholos 2 (Boyd 2014b). One might easily consider the burial in the cist at Vapheio in similar terms. However, at this point it is worth considering some less exceptional (though not necessarily ‘ordinary’) examples. It is important to note that in examining burials not subsequently disturbed in order to understand the practices of deposition, one is selecting an unusual subset of all burials: most burial contexts were disarticulated as part of later interventions, and it may often be that unusual circumstances explain those left untouched (later intervention is discussed further in the following section). As will be evident, even where burials are partly or largely intact, it is difficult to be certain with many objects—especially pottery—whether they are untouched remnants of the original burial context, or later additions. Although this is problematic in defining the sequence of action, it further highlights the nature of funerary material as a resource open to manipulation in a chain of ongoing interventions in tomb interiors. At tomb XXVI at Prosymna (Blegen 1937: 93–8) the side chamber contained the remains of three individuals: one on the floor and two on a bench against the northeast wall. Unusually, this chamber contained neither areas of concentrated bone, nor areas of bone scatter. None of the three burials was intact, thus problematising the number and sequence of interventions. The pottery in the tomb is dated in three groups by Shelton (1996: 68–73, 212–4): in Late Helladic I, IIB and IIIB1, with a single example of a palatial jar of Late Helladic IIA date. The pottery distributions are regionalised by chronology: all the pottery on the floor, and the two pots with the lower burial on the bench, date to in Late Helladic I; the remaining pottery comes from the upper level of the bench. The two pottery items with the lower bench burial are a cup and a jug; no other items were directly associated with this burial, but as it had been disturbed before or during the later deposition of a second body here, it is possible that some of its material was removed from context. The other early burial, that on the floor, had two small jars at its feet, and a jug some 0.20 m west, with a group of items, some 0.15 m west again, consisting of a large and a small jar, a pot base reused as a stopper for the larger jar, and a terracotta button. Two bronze ‘scale pans’ were found under the larger jar. Elsewhere on the floor of the chamber was another large jar with stopper in the southwest corner, and another small jug with bronze dagger (dated Late Helladic I-II by Dickinson 1977: 118, n. 16) about 0.60 m east of the skeleton. The upper body on the bench was associated with an array of bronze (and a little gold) material, as well as some pottery. Five of the pots, four alabastra and a cup, date to Late Helladic IIB (Shelton 1996: 69–70) and were found in fragments. The Late Helladic IIA palatial jar fragments are a special case discussed further below. The remaining pots date to Late Helladic IIIB1 (Shelton 1996: 70–1) and Blegen seems to imply (1937: 97) that these postdate both burials, as he describes their position as ‘above’ the bench. Where opinions have been offered about the dating of the non-ceramic material, these

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suggest contemporaneity with the Late Helladic IIB pots2. Shelton suggested the later pots were ‘dumped’ on the earlier burial contexts; however so placed, it seems they did not reach their final location as part of a burial context. The upper burial on the bench is therefore likely to be the latest in the tomb; there is no way to suggest which of the earlier two was first. However, we can now consider the actions of the mourners in the chamber as they might have found it. There is approximately 4.70 m2 floorspace in the chamber (excluding the space taken up by the bench). In the earlier burials the mourners brought the body into the chamber and placed it in its final position—on the bench to the right of the entrance, or on the floor opposite the entrance. In the former case, if the whole floor (except the bench) were available (i.e. if this were the first burial), then perhaps five persons might have occupied the chamber—and more if people were prepared to crowd in (conceivably up to 18 participants, at 0.50 m2 per person, though this degree of crowding seems very unlikely). If the whole floor were not available (i.e. if this were the second burial) even less space would be available-perhaps about 3 m2, realistically enough space for just three people (though again, reducing the area per person to 0.50 m2 would give a theoretical maximum of 12 persons, perhaps very unlikely). The same numbers would apply for the floor burial, whether conducted before or after the bench burial. We can assume, therefore, that few persons were copresent in the chamber during the interment; perhaps we should think of a core group of three to four people in each of the cases outlined, with the possibility of one or two persons entering and leaving periodically, if it were possible for mourners in the main chamber to seek to gain temporary entry to the side chamber. For each of the two earlier burials, the mourners brought some pottery with them, perhaps also reusing what they found in the chamber for the second burial. The non-ceramic items—the dagger on the floor, the two bronze discs, and the terracotta button—were not directly associated with either burial on excavation: the bronze items had probably been placed with one or other burial during the interment, and been moved at a later point. The pots associated with the lower bench burial were a cup and a jug; the pots closest to the burial on the floor were small jars and jugs. The two larger vessels were set in the corners of the chamber and as such seem to have acted as available resources for the chamber rather than accoutrements of a specific burial. The functions of storage (larger vessels), distribution (smaller jars and jugs, perhaps also the larger vessels) and consumption, either through drinking or pouring (cup, perhaps

2 Fortenberry dates as Late Helladic IIB-IIIA1 the arrowheads (Fortenberry 1990: 509), a gold cross-staff (1990: 321), and boars tusk items (1990: 347–8). She dates the spearhead Late Helladic IIB-IIIB1 (1990: 440): Blegen himself suggested Late Helladic II (1937: 338), and Harrell gives Late Helladic IIB-IIIA1 (2010: 116, table 10). Dickinson suggests the dagger dates to Late Helladic I-II (1977: 118, n. 16); Blegen implies (but does not state) that the knife fragments should be Late Helladic II in date (1937: 343). If the longer date range for the spearhead is correct, it could therefore be seen as an addition at the time of the late pottery, but all the other items seem to date from the original burial, as might the spearhead.

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also the smaller jars and jugs) suggest the actions of the mourners over the corpse. Liquid was passed from one container to another, and containers were passed from person to person; only after a series of demonstrative actions was the liquid consumed through drinking or pouring. The passing of containers from hand to hand might have included movement out of the chamber to the main chamber, dromos and beyond. I have suggested elsewhere (in relation to shaft grave funerals) that the different categories of vessel used to consume wine (or other liquid) allowed for a division in the mourners: between those using smaller cups used personally or shared within a small group, and those using larger drinking vessels which were intended to be shared among a wider group (Boyd 2015b). The pottery associated with the earlier burials in this tomb suggests something similar: a movement of liquids from larger to smaller vessels; consumption in the chamber from the cup (and perhaps from the smaller jars); and perhaps the passing round in the slightly larger containers to those not at the front. The later burial on the bench presents some different possibilities. In this case, the mourners would enter the chamber—with the same restrictions of space—to be confronted with material from practices of the already quite distant past. Their work in the chamber included some remodelling of the lower burial context, whether deliberate or incidental, during the positioning of the corpse on the bench. On or beside the body were placed items of ‘martial culture’ (Harrell 2010): bronze arrowheads, a dagger, knives and a spearhead. Small gold and boars’ tusk items also served to enhance the final image of the corpse as deposited. These items, if not fixed to the clothing of the corpse, would have been brought into the tomb and placed on the bench, perhaps by different persons as they entered. They were placed at different points on the bench, including arrowheads (though their points of discovery might have been the result of later interference) so that the entire length of the bench was afforded bronze items. The pottery related to this burial included a cup, with in this case four further items, all alabastra, whose specific role in the interment is difficult to discern. On top and in the centre were found some sherds of a Late Helladic IIA palatial jar, sherds of which had also been found in the main chamber and in the dromos. One might suspect a long use-life for this item, which was probably used in several funerals and once broken (perhaps in the dromos) its larger sherds were placed with this burial (Boyd 2015a).

2.5 Inhabiting the mortuary locale This discussion of action within the chamber leads us to a consideration of the longterm of the funerary cycle as a field of action: the consideration of its frequency of inhabitation, transformations within it, and the position of the field in the broader nexus of social action. I mentioned above that at least three distinct modes of inhabitation of funerary spaces can be discerned on the basis of the actions performed. We have already

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considered the rearrangement of a funerary space immediately prior to a funeral (or the construction of a new tomb), and the creation of an interment context during interment. It is however apparent that these were not the only moments of activity within Mycenaean tombs. Many tombs in central and southern Greece (though less frequently in Thessaly, Crete and the Dodecanese: Boyd 2016b; Voutsaki 1993: 133) preserve evidence for postfunerary acts, often referred to as ‘second funeral’ (fully referenced above). The results of such repeated engagements have recently been defined for Ayia Sotira in the Corinthia (Smith et al. in press) and for Voudeni in Achaia (Moutafi 2015). It is clear that there was no one, tightly defined postfunerary rite, but rather a range of actions evident at different times and places. All tended to the deconstruction of the funerary context and the dispersal of its constituent parts. This might be achieved by carefully collecting, sorting and redistributing bones to different parts of the chamber, or to pits or niches, or to destinations outside the chamber. This activity could include mixing of bones and gathering like parts together: caches of skulls or long bones are often reported. Sometimes apparently less careful acts, with less emphasis on sorting or reburial, are reported: bones may simply be piled in one part of the chamber, and breakage is common. The non-bone material may similarly be sorted, gathered, cached, broken or removed. The archaeological result is a crafted palimpsest which often occasions despair or disinterest in the archaeologist hoping for pristine burial contexts (Boyd 2014a)—a tragedy for the recording of past excavations and a crisis for the present and future requiring rethinking of approach, technique, recording and specialists studies (though see the exemplary excavation at Ayia Sotira: Smith et al. in press). As with the funeral itself, it is worth considering some of the parameters of action in this third mode of inhabitation of Mycenaean tombs and cemeteries. The journey to the tomb for this particular purpose may have shared some of the properties of the funeral procession, depending on the numbers involved. However, one major difference is the absence of the corpse as a focal point. The period of preparation preceding the funerary procession would also have been absent (though other kinds of personal preparation, including wearing specific clothing, or non-material preparation, may have been relevant). It may be that material was brought to the tomb for use there, and perhaps for deposition there: perhaps pottery for use in toasting rites; or containers for unguents or oils, if any ritual ‘cleaning’ of the bones were envisaged. The evidence for such actions is inconsistent and perhaps in many cases the amounts of material brought to the tomb were minimal: it is one of the difficulties in reconstructing the specifics of secondary rites that objects specific to those practices have not been identified. On entering the tomb, the constraining and enabling properties of scale, as described above, imposed limitations on the numbers of persons involved in these activities. This does present a clear difference between the funeral and the later actions: during the funeral, those left outside have participated in the procession, as well as any graveside rites, and although excluded from any rites conducted within the tomb, there is the possibility, as described above, of a flow of participants in and

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out, allowing for the viewing of the corpse in its depositional context in the tomb. In the case of secondary rites, however, most of the action may have occurred in the tomb, with limited opportunity for participation for any persons left outside. This leads to two possible conclusions: the obvious one is that the secondary rites would more often have been conducted by a smaller group than the funeral, making these events less public and more confined to a specific, select group. The alternative is to imagine the funeral in reverse. For those not involved in the rites in the tomb, their participation and the public aspect of the event may have begun with the emergence of those who had been in the tomb, perhaps displaying relics in the form of bones or material culture. Some of these items may have been removed from the tomb at this point, and the procession in reverse might have made its way back through the cemetery, conceivably even redistributing material into other tombs, and ultimately reaching the inhabitation area. The regular remains of material within dromoi, normally interpreted as a rite of smashing cups after drinking a toast, might be related to this phase, rather than the funeral itself. I have emphasised elsewhere (Boyd 2014b; cf. Barrett 2001: 160–1 for the importance of transformation in fields of action) the role of transformation throughout the funerary cycle: in preparing the corpse, creating the funerary context, and in reordering the tomb on multiple occasions. The tempo of transformation helps to define the frequency of inhabitation of the field as a whole: the funerary cycle. Seen in this light, the evidence suggests a far greater frequency of involvement in the funerary sphere than has hitherto been imagined; and the position of the cemetery in landscape paths, routine or otherwise, should also be considered. It also suggests how one final aspect of the field might be effective: the transfer and transformation of resources of social capital between fields, in Barrett’s terms (2001: 161). Funerals and other rites mediate significant changes in social order occasioned by the deaths of social actors. Those taking care for the funeral invest social capital and material resources at each stage in order to manage the transition to a new social order in the absence of the newly dead. Each stage of the performance allows for material and personal investment in the process, but each stage also allows for the accumulation and transfer of social capital out of this field into the more complex fields of action of everyday life. In some circumstances these transfers would have been symbolised by the movement of material, but such transfers need not always have had material correlates. Nonetheless, through these transfers we dimly perceive some aspects of the integration of the funerary cycle in the larger cycles of routine life.

3 Conclusion: inhabiting fields of action This volume opened with a powerful call for a reimagining of Mycenaean funerary practices in relation to performance and locale: situated human action (Dakouri-Hild, this volume). The specific notion of fields of action, entailing a detailed theory of

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agency, performance, and inhabitation, offers a mature theoretical framework within which to structure actions, material resources, places and traditions. The study developed in this chapter offers a series of archaeological implications derived from the reordering of the evidence within such a framework. In so doing, I have consciously addressed the often put complaint against theoretical approaches: “how does this theory work in practice?” Important implications arise from these results. I have demonstrated that even without a specifically designed new recovery strategy, existing data can be usefully reconsidered in the terms set out by this theoretical approach (the full potential of which has recently been demonstrated by Moutafi 2015). I have demonstrated in other studies that it is possible to reassess the data from existing excavations in a nonsuperficial manner (e.g. Boyd 2014a; 2014b; 2015b), and that the results can surprise, and occasion a rethink of wider approaches. Similar results are demonstrated by the detailed studies in this volume. A clear implication is that studies foregrounding contextual variation, rather than top-down aggregation, ultimately lead to a more complex, nuanced understanding of past fields of action. This is the challenge articulated by Barrett a quarter of a century ago: “We must confront the full diversity of our data. This is only possible with the aid of a theoretically competent framework designed to expose the nature of specific practices” (Barrett 1988b: 32). The nature of the challenge is that confronting the full diversity of archaeology’s vast data is timeconsuming, perhaps often beyond the limited time available in academic timeframes. However, the framework outlined here fulfills the requirement of competency, and the intellectual projects highlighted in this book often align with its aims. We may hope that this volume represents a first step in reorienting general and specific interpretations of Mycenaean funerary practice. The second implication lies in the fact that fields of practice are not limited to the funerary sphere, and the approach may offer something to the wider agenda of Aegean prehistory (Schoep 2012). Practice-centred approaches might usefully be developed for broadly analogous questions such as the ritual aspects of ‘palaces’ (e.g. Thaler 2015) as well as quite different fields such as the production of ground stone (Tsoraki 2011). As new theoretical approaches emphasise contextualised information this reorientation will become more essential. The third implication affects how we plan and conduct our work. I have referred elsewhere to a ‘methodological emergency’ in Greek archaeology (Boyd 2015a: 155). Context-centred approaches are not common, especially in the field of rescue archaeology in which most tomb excavations are conducted. Studies such as Moutafi’s (2015) and recent excavation by Smith et al. (in press) demonstrate the potential for reexamination of existing material and for advances in field and laboratory technique respectively. Needless to say, future excavation strategies which foreground the importance of context through methodologies competent for the investigation of past human practice would lead to the remaking of the arguments presented here from a much more detailed data base, revealing the nuances of shifting practice through

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time and over space which is currently obscured by an archaeological process lacking in appropriate methodology, recording and interpretation. For practical reasons this may appear a longer-term goal but as the undiscovered and unlooted archaeological resource dwindles the need for properly resourced and strategic fieldwork becomes ever more acute.

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Moutafi, I., 2015. Towards a Social Bioarchaeology of the Mycenaean Period: a Multi-disciplinary Analysis of Funerary Remains from the Late Helladic Chamber Tomb Cemetery of Voudeni, Achaea, Greece. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sheffield. Onions, C. T., W. Little, H. W. Fowler, J. Coulson & G. W. S. Friedrichsen, 1973. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Oxford: Clarendon. Papadimitriou, N., 2001. Built Chamber Tombs of Middle and Late Bronze Age Date in Mainland Greece and the Islands. Oxford: Archaeopress. Papadimitriou, N., 2015. The formation and use of dromoi in Early Mycenaean tombs. Annual of the British School at Athens 110, 71–120. Parlama, L., 1972. Καρποφόρα. Ἀρχαιολογικὸν Δελτίον 29 (B2), 262–4. Parlama, L., 1976. Ἀψιδωτοὶ Μυκηναïκοὶ τάφοι στὴ Μεσσηνία. Athens Annals of Archaeology 9, 252–7. Pearson, M. & M. Shanks, 2001. Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge. Renfrew, C., 1986. The Archaeology of Cult: the Sanctuary at Phylakopi. London: British School of Archaeology at Athens. Robb, J., 2010. Beyond agency. World Archaeology 42 (4), 493–520. Schechner, R., 1993. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London: Routledge. Schoep, I., 2012. Bridging the divide between the ‘Prepalatial’ and the ‘Protopalatial’ periods? In Back to the Beginning Reassessing Social and Political Complexity on Crete during the Early and Middle Bronze Age, eds. Schoep, I., P. Tomkins & J. Driessen. Oxford: Oxbow, 403–428. Shelton, K. S., 1996. The Late Helladic Pottery from Prosymna. Jonsered: Paul Åströms Förlag. Shelton, K. S., 2003. The chamber tombs. In Archaeological Atlas of Mycenae, eds. Iakovidis, S. & E. French, Archaeological Society of Athens Library 229. Athens: Archaeological Society, 35. Smith, R. A. K., M. K. Dabney, E. Pappi, S. Triantaphyllou & J. C. Wright, in press. Ayia Sotira: a Mycenaean Chamber Tomb Cemetery in the Nemea Valley, Greece. Snodgrass, A., 2015. Putting death in its place: the idea of the cemetery. In Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World “Death Shall Have No Dominion”, eds. Renfrew, C., M. J. Boyd & I. Morley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 187–99. Spyropoulos, T. G., 1982. Πελλάνα. Ἀρχαιολογικὸν Δελτίον 37 (B1), 112–3. Spyropoulos, T. G., 1983. Τοπογραφικὰ Μυκηναϊκῆς Πελλάνης. Πελοποννησιακὰ Παράρτημα 9, 113–28. Thaler, U., 2015. Movement in between, into and inside Mycenaean palatial megara. In Mycenaeans Up to Date: the Archaeology of the NE Peloponnese – Current Concepts and New Directions, eds. Schallin, A.-L. & I. Tournavitou. Athens: Swedish School, 339–60. Tsoraki, C., 2011. Disentangling Neolithic networks: ground stone technology, material engagements and networks of action. In Tracing Prehistoric Social Networks through Technology: a Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean, ed. Brysbaert, A. London: Routledge, 12–29. Voutsaki, S., 1993. Society and Culture in the Mycenaean World: an Analysis of Mortuary Practices in the Argolid, Thessaly and the Dodecanese. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge. Wace, A. J. B., 1923. IX. The tholos tombs. Annual of the British School at Athens 25, 283–396. Wace, A. J. B., 1932. Chamber tombs at Mycenae. Archaeologia 82, 1–242. Wells, B., 1990. Death at Dendra: on mortuary practices in a Mycenaean community. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid: Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 11–13 June, 1988, eds. Hägg, R. & G. C. Nordquist. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen, 125–40. Wright, J. C., 1987. Death and power at Mycenae: changing symbols in mortuary practice. In Thanatos: Les coutûmes funéraires en Égée à l’âge du Bronze. Actes du colloque de Liège, 21-23 avril 1986, ed. Laffineur, R., Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de Liège, 171–84. Wright, J. C., 2006. The social production of space and the architectural reproduction of society in the Bronze Age Aegean during the 2nd millenium B.C.E. In Constructing Power – Architecture, Ideology and Social Practice, eds. Maran, J., C. Juwig, H. Schwengel & U. Thaler. Hamburg: LIT, 49–74.

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Politics of Death at Mitrou: Two Prepalatial Elite Tombs in a Landscape of Power Introduction Changes in mortuary practices at the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age in mainland Greece have been widely documented, and their relation to the rise of a political elite has been much discussed (e.g., Iakovidis 1981; Graziadio 1991; Maran 1995; Cavanagh & Mee 1998; Cavanagh 2008; Voutsaki 1998; 2010; Papadimitriou 2001; Wright 2004; 2008a; Petrakis 2010). Whereas other dynamics should not be ruled out, and indeed are explored in current scholarship, newly excavated evidence from Mitrou, a coastal site located on the North Euboean Gulf in east Lokris, central Greece, underlines the importance of the theatricality of the funerary realm in the creation and legitimisation of power by the emerging elite. It will be argued in this paper that early in the Late Helladic I pottery phase, Mitrou’s leadership introduced radical changes in the spatial organisation of the site as well as in burial practices in an effort materially to construct a new ideology of power. In this new architectural landscape of power, funerary monuments and performances played a crucial role. In his masterful cross-cultural study of archaic states, Yoffee points out that the establishment of an early state-level society with a political elite is accompanied by and accomplished through the creation of a new ideology of power and a new system of order legitimising elite right to preeminent status and resources. The reorganisation of the built environment may be an important material expression of this new order (Yoffee 2005: 33–4, 38–40). Indeed, architecture can be understood as a form of visual ‘language’ that is shared and understood not only by elites but also others. For instance, a Middle Helladic village with rudimentary organisation, narrow roads, and houses that are fairly similar in size and appearance (Wiersma 2014: 236–8, 243–6) would have given inhabitants and visitors a very different message from a more hierarchical Mycenaean town with a palace, citadel, and houses and tombs of different sizes, shapes, and architectural qualities. Grander, more monumental buildings and higher quality of architecture often are used by elites to express, construct, and legitimise their status in society. As Maran has remarked (2012: 149–50), architecture and the built environment often express social inequality and at the same time, as people move daily through this architectural landscape, relations of power are played out and confirmed both consciously and subconsciously. In a landscape of inequality, access to specific buildings and places typically is restricted on the basis of social status or role, and behaviour is codified. In addition, such landscape often is the setting of public rituals and performances, and it enhances their social significance.

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Since, once created, such built environment is ever present in the inhabitants’ lives, forcing them to engage with it, it contributes to the internalisation of social inequality and social roles by elites and non-elites. Thus architecture helps construct group identities performatively. In mainland Greece, I would argue that an ideological realignment such as is described by Yoffee for early states took place to some extent already at the beginning of the formative period of Mycenaean palatial society, several centuries before the establishment of palatial states. As Maran has reasoned, the very emergence of a political elite in the archaeological record of Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic IIA must have been the result of a new attitude toward elite status (Maran 2011: 285–8). Middle Helladic society, in his view, had a social elite but was dominated by a strong community ethos that allowed only limited material displays of social inequality, imposing tight restrictions on the glorification of individuals in life or death (cf. Voutsaki 2010: 101–3; Petrakis 2010). During Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic IIA, however, elite families throughout mainland Greece, inspired by their understanding of Minoan Crete, made themselves more visible through new practices and new material forms, such as the monumentalisation of their tombs and splendour of burial gifts. This new visibility of the elite represented a radical departure from the values of Middle Helladic society, and it is reasonable to conclude that it was the outward expression of a new ideology of power. At the same time, the material expression of their elevated status must have contributed to the construction of this new elite identity in the eyes of the elite and others. In central Greece, our understanding of this formative period had been impeded until recently by a shortage of evidence. This situation has now changed because excavations, surface survey, and geophysical surveys conducted in 2004–2008 at the site of Mitrou have produced a uniquely rich data set for studying sociopolitical developments in the Prepalatial period (Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1133–6). Whereas the evidence for rising elites elsewhere on the Greek mainland has come primarily from graves, at Mitrou we are able to study its emergence both in a settlement and a mortuary context, and this from the beginning of Late Helladic I through the Late Helladic IIIA2 Early ceramic phase. Because of Mitrou’s very detailed and continuous stratigraphic sequence we can trace this elite development with unprecedented chronological precision.1 Even though the site has been only partially excavated, our finds provide new evidence for a political elite that asserted itself in

1 On the basis of Mitrou’s long and uninterrupted stratigraphic and architectural sequence, Christopher Hale (Melbourne University) has subdivided the Middle Helladic period at Mitrou into 7 ceramic phases (Hale 2016) and he and Salvatore Vitale (University of Calabria) have subdivided the Late Helladic I phase at the site into four ceramic subphases (Vitale & Hale 2012; 2013). The Late Helladic IIA, IIB, IIIA1, and IIIA2 Early ceramic phases are richly represented as well, both stratigraphically and architecturally (Vitale 2011; 2012). All this allows us to study societal developments in the Prepalatial period at Mitrou with unprecedented chronological precision.

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novel ways not only in death but also in life. It appears that Mitrou’s elite consciously created a new ideology of power at the beginning of the Late Helladic I phase. As part of this new ideology it strove to make its elevated status more visible in society through the construction of elite complexes and elite tombs as well as the development of an elite lifestyle. It even went so far as to alter the landscape of the living and the dead in a radical fashion by laying out a new system of roads in connection with the elite complexes and tombs, and by changing centuries-old burial customs. Behaviour with respect to burial practices as well as the use of at least some of these roads, and presumably also the elite complexes, became codified according to social status or role. By thus imbuing the built environment with social inequality, Mitrou’s elite created what I would call a landscape of power. This newly ordered settlement with its elite centres, large roads, and new grave plots would have provided a suitable theatrical backdrop for elite performances, enhancing elite activities while at the same time being enhanced by them. Thus the reorganisation of the built environment and burial areas at Mitrou should be understood as parts of the local elite’s conscious strategy of power.

A new architectural landscape at Mitrou in the Late Helladic I phase (17th/16th c. BCE) In the course of the Late Helladic I phase, two large architectural complexes with elite characteristics were constructed and an orthogonal network of long, straight, paved roads was laid out. The two elite complexes, labelled Buildings D and H, have been only partially excavated, and their architectural plan and precise role in Mitrou’s built environment are incompletely understood [Figs. 1, 3, 4]. There is no doubt, however, that their size was impressive for that time: Building D was at least 230 m2 in area, and Building H at least 600 m2 and perhaps as much as 750 m2. Even at their minimum size, Buildings D and H would have exceeded the surface area of any ordinary domestic structure of the Prepalatial period in mainland Greece currently known, as well as that of most domestic structures of the Mycenaean palatial period (cf. Darcque 2005: 139–43, 320–6, figs. 33, 100, 103–4, 111). Both complexes demonstrate special features that differentiated them from the other late Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic structures at Mitrou and that are typically associated with elite architecture: they had the thickest outer walls of any building, ca. 0.75 m wide, and the walls of Building D had been constructed with very large stones, much larger than those used in any other building. Both complexes in addition had areas paved with carefully constructed bright white lime plaster floors not found in other Late Helladic or Middle Helladic structures at Mitrou.

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Fig. 1: Outlines of Late Helladic I walls and roads as well as Late Helladic IIB Road 4 superimposed over electrical resistance and magnetic gradiometry maps and balloon photo of the islet of Mitrou. Excavated walls are in solid red and hypothetical reconstructions in red dashes (architectural drawing G. Bianco; balloon photo K. Xenikakis and S. Gesafidis; geophysical maps and overlays G.N. Tsokas, P.I. Tsourlos, A. Stampolidis & G. Vargemezis).

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Fig. 2: Plot of early Late Helladic I cist graves with large grave 51, possibly once covered by a tumulus, excavated in trench LR797 in the northeast corner of the islet (balloon photo K. Xenikakis & S. Gesafidis).

Finds from within both complexes also testify to their elite connections (Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1135–6, figs. 6–10; Tsokas et al. 2012: 419–20). Building H produced unusually large concentrations of high-quality Late Helladic I, IIA, and IIB tableware and south Aegean pottery imports, indicative of elite drinking and dining. Specialised cooking vessels identified in this complex testify to the development of an elite cuisine, whereas the finds of unusually large cooking pots suggest that cooking was done for large numbers of people (Lis 2012: 203–9). Building H’s earthen courtyard ostensibly was used for the slaughter of animals and the processing of meat, as it contained concentrations of animal bones in the vicinity of a stone platform as well as lithic blades and cooking pot fragments. This courtyard also provided evidence for the manufacture of purple dye from Murex snails, which would have been used to produce purple dyed or purple trimmed garments that may have been worn by the local elite and used as trade items (Vykukal 2011; cf. Burke 1999). The northernmost area of Building H was used for the processing and storage of grain: in Room 1 grinding stones

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were found as well as pithos fragments and a concentration of charred cereals. Nearby, a horse-bridle piece made of deer antler, found in a final Late Helladic I destruction level of Building H, testifies to the use of light horse-drawn chariots by Mitrou’s elite as well as its participation in far-flung elite exchange networks. With its unusual incised wave band decoration it may have been imported from the Carpatho-Danubian region or represent a local imitation (Maran & Van de Moortel 2014). Building D’s finds are still under study, but its elite status is amply demonstrated by our discovery of a finely constructed elite tomb with elite grave goods (see below).

Fig. 3: Plan and section of Building D and built chamber tomb 73 in Late Helladic I-IIIA1 (G. Bianco & A. Van de Moortel).

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In conjunction with the construction of Buildings D and H, Mitrou’s settlement layout underwent a radical reorganisation. A network of long straight orthogonal roads was created, appearing as long linear anomalies in the geophysical survey maps ([Fig. 1]; cf. Tsokas et al. 2011: 422–3, figs. 11–13). Four of these anomalies have been partially excavated and identified as roads; three of these roads were initially constructed early in the Late Helladic I phase [Figs. 3, 4]. Roads 1 and 2, bordering Building D on the west and north sides, respectively, have been excavated over their full widths and determined to be 3 m wide. Road 1, which had 13 major successive pebbled surfaces and is 0.80 m thick, can be traced in the geophysical survey map as a thick black band over a length of 80 m running north-northeast to south-southwest in a straight line. Road 2 can be traced in the geophysical survey by the buildings bordering it over a length of 60 m, running west-northwest to east-southeast in a straight line and ending in the east scarp of the islet, where its remainder has been destroyed in more recent times by the encroaching sea. The two roads met at an angle of exactly 90o, implying the use of precise survey methods in their layout. Road 3, bordering Building H on the southwest, had nine major pebbled surfaces and is 0.75 m thick. Road 4, which was excavated down only to its Late Helladic IIB surface, ran some 60 m to the south of Road 2 and parallel to it. Below Road 1 a Middle Helladic II Final/Middle Helladic III building was uncovered, signalling that the new Late Helladic I road system disregarded the previous late Middle Helladic settlement layout and overrode Middle Helladic property boundaries. With these roads the character of the settlement must have changed drastically. The Late Helladic I roads were up to three times wider than the roads of the Middle Helladic settlement. Moreover, unlike the gravel-and-dirt roads of the Middle Helladic settlement, which invariably were strewn with trash, the Late Helladic I roads were paved with small pebbles and white lime plaster and they were kept meticulously clean (Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1133; Karkanas & Van de Moortel 2014). Excavation and geophysical surveys also show that the new roads had been lined by rectilinear buildings. Thus I believe that in the Late Helladic I phase the character of Mitrou changed from a rural to a more organised, urban settlement. The new road system must have made a deep impression on Mitrou’s inhabitants, creating new, straightforward circulation routes and long vistas in the town, and this as well as their meticulous construction and the apparent prohibition to dispose of trash in the roads would have created something of a new, well-ordered world for Mitrou’s inhabitants, which reminded them every day of the power of Mitrou’s elite. In addition to helping establish a sense of a new societal order, the roads were closely associated with Mitrou’s elite. The three pebbled roads (1, 2, and 3) bordered elite complexes and were constructed at the same time. Karkanas’ micromorphological analysis of Roads 1 and 2 showed that their pebbled surfaces were carefully maintained, each with multiple lime-plaster coatings that were remarkably wellpreserved and had not experienced normal foot traffic. Thus it appears that these roads were used for special and, presumably, ceremonial purposes (Karkanas & Van de Moortel 2014: 208). Comparison with similar roads found at Late Helladic IIIA-B

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Dimini suggests that they may have been reserved for the elite (see below). Such restricted use and exclusive status would have further increased their elite association for Mitrou’s non-elite inhabitants. The initial impetus for building the new roads at Mitrou may have been to accommodate a new form of elite transportation: chariot riding. Aegean imagery indicates that chariots drawn by two horses were introduced into the Aegean at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (Crouwel 1981: 78–9; 2005). The final Late Helladic I horse bridle piece from Building H shows that Mitrou’s elite had adopted horse-drawn chariots by this time. This cheek piece had been reworked at some stage and given serrated edges—a feature that is associated with the use of horses for pulling light chariots (Maran & Van de Moortel 2014: 535, 537, 541). With estimated axle widths of perhaps as little as ca. 1.10 m–as evidenced by the wheel ruts in the Late Helladic IIIA-B roads at Dimini (Adrimi-Sismani 2013: 155; cf. Maran & Van de Moortel 2014: 537, note 29), these chariots would have fitted comfortably on Mitrou’s 3 m wide roads.2 Thus these roads would have enabled Mitrou’s elite to parade in their chariots through the town, presumably wearing purple or purpletrimmed garments, elevated above the onlookers. In this capacity they would have enhanced the theatricality of elite power. That parades were important in the construction and visualisation of Mycenaean elite ideology in the palatial period is suggested by the procession frescoes found at Thebes, Tiryns, and Knossos, and the chariot fresco from Tiryns. In addition, as Maran has argued, the citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns appear to have been designed in such a way as to enhance the theatricality of parades (Maran 2006; 2012: 149–54). The establishment of the long, straight and wide roads at Mitrou suggests that theatricality was important already to this settlement’s Prepalatial elite in the Late Helladic I phase. In addition to chariot parades, it is possible that these roads were used also for other kinds of processions and performances that have left no trace in the archaeological record. In sum, I believe that the reorganisation of Mitrou’s settlement and construction of these new, wide, clean roads signify the rise of a stronger central authority at Mitrou. Even though it is not inconceivable that they resulted from communal decisions on the part of the inhabitants, their close connections to Mitrou’s elite centres and activities such as chariot riding make it much more likely that they were implemented at the initiative of Mitrou’s ruling elite and represented a conscious effort at creating a new built environment manifesting and legitimising elite power. Such an extensive system of orthogonal roads thus far is unique in the archaeological record of Bronze Age Greece, but evidence is emerging for its existence in other Late Helladic settlements of central Greece. Some 20 km west of Mitrou (as the crow flies), at the unexcavated fortified settlement of Kalapodi-Kastro Souvalas in northern Phokis, two impressive north-northeast to south-southwest roads lined with

2 I would like to thank V. Adrimi-Sismani for permission to refer to this information and for sending me part of the manuscript of her Ph.D. dissertation before publication.

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walls, ca. 100 m long and 3.50 m wide, have been documented on the modern surface (Felsch in press).3 Felsch tentatively dates the settlement to the Middle Helladic period, but allows for the possibility that it continued in the early Late Helladic period and was the seat of a local elite group buried from Late Helladic IIA/B onwards in elite chamber tombs excavated at the nearby modern village of Kalapodi (Dakoronia & Dimaki 1998; Dakoronia 2009: 293, figs. 488–9). Given the close similarities of its roads with those of Mitrou, it is conceivable that Kalapodi-Kastro Souvalas had been reorganised into an urban settlement early in the Late Helladic period also. Two even more impressive, orthogonal roads with earth-and-pebble surfaces have been excavated in the Late Helladic IIIA-B settlement of Dimini, near Volos. One road was 4.50 m wide and at least 95 m long, and the other was even wider and met the first road at right angles, leading to Dimini’s harbour. Like the roads of KalapodiKastro Souvalas, the Dimini roads were delineated by walls on both sides. These bordering walls were built on purpose and had an important function because, as Adrimi-Sismani observed, they allowed the roads to be accessed only from the settlement’s elite centres, Megara A and B, while preventing their access from any other excavated building (Adrimi-Sismani 2007: 161–2, fig. 15.2; 2012: 160–1, figs. 3–5). These roads were used for chariot riding, as the presence of wheel ruts demonstrates. Thus it is evident that these two wide roads at Dimini were closely associated with the settlement’s elite and played an important role in its manifestation of power. Mitrou’s Road 1 was accessible from Building F in the Late Helladic IIB phase. Otherwise the roads have not been sufficiently excavated to reveal whether they, too, had continuous border walls limiting their access. However, the fact that Roads 1 and 2 were carefully maintained and not used for normal foot traffic makes it plausible that their access was restricted in a similar fashion. The other roads at Mitrou have not been sampled for micromorphological analysis. Like Mitrou, Dimini had two elite complexes, and the political structure of the two sites may have been comparable, with Dimini representing a more developed, palatial society. In contrast to central Greece, the southern Greek mainland has not provided evidence for long broad streets with restricted access. This may be due to the fact that little has been uncovered of its Late Bronze Age towns. However, recently a fairly well-preserved street has been documented at Korphos-Kalamianos, apparently a planned settlement established in the palatial period by Mycenae to serve as its harbour on the Saronic Gulf. The most important road of this town (the ‘Avenue’) was at least 60 m long but only 1.50 m wide on average and quite irregular in shape. Lacking bordering walls, it must have been accessible from the adjacent structures (Tartaron et al. 2011: 602–3, fig. 31). Thus it was much less impressive than the roads of central Greece, and its access was not restricted. Likewise, in palatial Crete and the

3 I am grateful to R. Felsch for permission to mention this information and for sharing his typescript before publication.

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Late Bronze Age Aegean islands, roads tended to meet at right angles as in central Greece, but they were as a rule narrower and more winding, and access does not seem to have been restricted. Even when they were wide and straight, such as the Royal Road at Knossos or the two paved roads bordering Building T at Kommos, they were accessible from houses in the town. Thus, on present evidence, it seems that long, wide urban streets with restricted access were specifically a feature of the vocabulary of power of the central Greek mainland in the Late Bronze Age.

A new mortuary landscape at Mitrou in the Prepalatial period (Late Helladic I-IIIA2 Early, 17th/16th-early 14th c. BCE) The efforts by Mitrou’s elite to create a new landscape of power also extended to the mortuary realm. In the course of the Late Helladic I phase, centuries-old burial practices underwent a drastic change at Mitrou. The timing of this change as well as the construction of two elite graves make it reasonable to assume that this too was brought about by the ruling elite. In the Middle Helladic period the dead at Mitrou were buried individually in cist, pithos or pit graves placed within the ruins of abandoned buildings. Areas alternated between funerary and settlement use, as has been found at other Middle Helladic settlements in mainland Greece (Maran 1995; Voutsaki 2005). The organisation of Middle Helladic society is widely thought to have been kinship-based (Maran 1995; Voutsaki 2005; 2010: 92; Wright 2008b: 238–9; Petrakis 2010; Maran 2011: 285–6), and it is conceivable that the alternating use of land plots for habitation and graves reflects a practice of each family burying its dead on its own property. This hypothesis remains to be tested at Mitrou through studies of biological relationships between the buried individuals. In the course of the Late Helladic I phase at Mitrou, intramural burials and the alternating use of plots for graves and buildings came to an end. From then until the Late Helladic IIIC Late phase, toward the end of the Postpalatial period, no more ordinary burials have been found within the settlement. Instead, as I have argued, an area of the settlement in the northeast part of the site, covering roughly 2,500 m2 and bounded by Roads 1 and 2, appears to have been converted into a cemetery ([Fig. 1]; Tsokas et al. 2011: 425; Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1134). Although most of this area has not yet been excavated and its interpretation is tentative, there are strong clues supporting it. Two permanent burial plots with cist and pithos graves have been excavated at the northern and eastern borders of this area; a recent reexamination of their pottery by S. Vitale and C. Hale has dated the northern plot of cist graves to Late Helladic I phases 1–2 [Fig. 2], and the eastern plot, containing a cist and pithos grave, to Late Helladic I phase 2. The graves were dug into earlier habitation levels but were not covered by later Late Helladic habitation. Furthermore, the remains of a disturbed

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cist grave have been found at the modern surface in archaeological grid squares LS792–002, LS793–004, and geophysical grid square R5 [Fig. 1]; its associated finds suggest that it dates to Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I (Belz 2012). In the eastern sea scarp nearby, the latest building documented close to the modern surface is of Middle Helladic II Final/III date, and there are no Late Helladic buildings. Likewise, electrical resistivity tomography in geophysical grid squares R4 and R13 has revealed no buildings close to the modern surface down to a depth of 0.75 m, and comparison of their elevation with the stratigraphy of nearby excavation trench LX784 indicates that the latest structures in those grid squares must date to Late Helladic I at the latest (Tsokas et al. 2012: 409–10). Relatively few structures are visible elsewhere in the geophysical map of this area. Finally, fine-grained surface survey in this area has recovered an unusually high proportion of Middle Helladic pottery fragments and a low proportion of Late Helladic pottery (Belz 2011). All of this indicates that the northeast part of the site was largely devoid of Late Helladic buildings and had been converted into a large cemetery. In later times, perhaps in the Late Helladic IIB or IIIA phase, Mitrou’s burials may have been moved offsite to extramural chamber tomb cemeteries, which at the time were being created throughout east Lokris (Van de Moortel 2007: 245–9; Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1135). The reasons for the abandonment of intramural plots and the presumed creation of a cemetery at Late Helladic I Mitrou are as yet unclear, but a similar phenomenon has been noted at other late Middle Helladic/early Late Helladic sites in mainland Greece, from the southern Peloponnese to Thessaly (Maran 1995; Papadimitriou 2011). With an estimated surface area of 2,500 m2, this new cemetery would have been large enough to serve the entire community of Mitrou. At the most basic level, this radical change in centuries-old burial practices represents an effort to separate the world of the living and the dead. The reason for making this change at this time is not certain. Perhaps it was made for hygienic reasons, or justified in this way. Maran (1995) suggested that it was necessitated by settlement nucleation, since at several sites it was accompanied by a reorganisation of the settlement. But this does not explain why an inhabited Middle Helladic settlement area was converted into a cemetery at Mitrou. This location, which was close to Building D, bordered by the sea, and accessible only via Roads 1 and 2, must have been chosen because it created an undeniable connection between the new cemetery and Mitrou’s elite. The lack of normal use of these roads even allows us to surmise that the elite exerted control over access to the new cemetery. Arguably, the establishment of a single cemetery serving the entire settlement in Late Helladic I would have moved the mortuary realm from the private into the public sphere, and enhanced a sense of community among Mitrou’s inhabitants. At the same time, it would have placed emphasis on the ‘theatre of death’ in the community, in the sense that it facilitated participation and viewing of funerary events by a larger audience and accommodated permanently visible graves. Papadimitriou (this volume) makes the compelling suggestion, in regards to Late Helladic chamber tomb cemeteries, that formal cemeteries were created in order to establish

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locales of collective memory and group identity and to compensate for the loss of private burial plots. His suggestion is equally applicable to late Middle Helladic/early Late Helladic communal cemeteries, in that they became places of community-based, collective memory and identity, whereas the tumuli found in several of these cemeteries may have been family plots that reinforced family-based identity.

Fig. 4: Aerial image of Building D and built chamber tomb 73 as well as other remains. White circles indicate the places where walls of Building D were purposely broken off so they would not touch the funerary enclosure. White arrows indicate remnants of the thick white plaster coating at the exterior facades of the funerary enclosure (balloon photos K. Xenikakis & S. Gesafidis, 2008, 2009; overlay A. Van de Moortel).

Too few graves have been excavated in Mitrou’s purported Late Helladic I cemetery to understand its spatial organisation, but the dense spacing and similar orientation of the seven exposed cist graves in the northern plot, in trench LR797, makes it

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possible that they had been covered by a tumulus [Fig. 2].4 Unfortunately, the proximity of the modern plough zone made the secure identification of such a tumulus impossible during excavation. These seven graves can be dated to the first or second ceramic subphase of Late Helladic I now identified at Mitrou. If indeed they had been covered by a tumulus, the area could represent a bounded family burial plot within the new communal cemetery, reinforcing a sense of family identity. This plot had a striking, dramatic location, as it was situated near the highest point of the site, bordered to the north and east by sea cliffs. If these graves had been covered by a tumulus, this would have been seen by anyone approaching from the sea. The tumulus and the entire new cemetery would have been visible from the current shore south of Mitrou as well, since it was located on a sloping surface facing that shore. With respect to its prominent location and clustering of cist graves, the Mitrou tumulus would correspond to contemporary, slightly earlier, and later tumuli and tumulus groups found elsewhere in central and southern Greece, such as at Pelasgia, Marmara, Vrana, and possibly Antron (Glypha) (Papakonstantinou 2011; Dakoronia 2011; Merkouri & Kouli 2011; Müller 1989: 20–5, figs. 10–11; Müller Celka 2007).

Mitrou’s elite tombs: highly visible exceptions to the new rule This new mortuary landscape provided a fitting backdrop for two Late Helladic I elite tombs that we have uncovered at Mitrou. The first one, tomb 51, is an unusually large slab-built cist tomb (1.80 × 1.50 × 0.90 m) forming part of the early Late Helladic I grave plot possibly covered by a tumulus at the northeast extremity of the islet [Fig. 2]. Recent restudy by Vitale and Hale of pottery fragments found below this large cist grave indicates that it was constructed in Late Helladic I phase 15 and may have been the oldest grave in this plot. It had been emptied and produced only six small fragments of human bone. Four simple spindle whorls and a pottery fragment reused as a spindle whorl were found in it as well, potentially signifying a female burial. A clay animal figurine fragment might have been deposited as a token of devotion in the later Late Helladic period (see below). However, the disturbed condition of the tomb fill makes any such associations hazardous. The unusually large size of cist tomb 51 and its location, near the end of Road 1 and the highest point of the site overlooking the sea, as well as its connection to Building D via Road 1, support 4 I would like to thank F. Dakoronia for suggesting the possibility of a tumulus in this location. 5 On purely ceramic grounds a Middle Helladic II Final/III date cannot be excluded, but because of cist grave 51 s strong connections with Road 1 and Building D, the Late Helladic I phase 1 date is much more likely. For the definition of Middle Helladic II Final/III at Mitrou, see Hale 2016: 282–288.

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its interpretation as an elite grave [Figs. 1, 5]. Because of its spatial and visual connections to Building D, it likely was associated with the group who lived in that elite complex. This tomb represents the first attestation of exceptional treatment in death of Mitrou’s elite. Its location on the west side of Road 1, separated from the presumed early Late Helladic cemetery by that road and perhaps more easily accessible from the settlement, may also have served to emphasise the special status of the deceased buried within it. The second elite grave, tomb 73, is an L-shaped rectangular built chamber tomb (see Papadimitriou 2001: 1–3, 153) constructed in the northwest corner of Building D. It postdates elite cist grave 51 as it belongs to an architectural phase ceramically dated to Late Helladic I phase 3 or 4 [Figs. 3–4]. It was used into Late Helladic IIIA1. This tomb is much larger and more elaborate in its construction than cist grave 51, manifesting a heightened investment in funerary ostentation and the display of elite social status in death. Its original chamber, oriented north-northeast to south-southwest, is very large for this type of tomb (2 × 5 × 1.20 m) and almost five times larger than cist tomb 51. Its construction is of high quality: the tomb chamber was dug ca. 0.60 m deep into earlier levels and lined with 1.20 m high mudbrick walls projecting above the surrounding surface; these walls were covered on the interior by finely finished, 1 m wide and 0.15 m thick rectangular sandstone slabs (Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: fig. 9). Similar orthostates were used to line the dromos. Such highquality orthostates and greenish sandstone material were used exclusively in this tomb, and have not been encountered elsewhere in primary usage at Mitrou, indicating the special status of the burial associated with it. The tomb chamber is likely to have been covered by a flat earthen roof resting on roof beams, as evidence for such roofing has been found in its second phase, and it is a common feature of rectangular built chamber tombs (Papadimitriou 2001: 158). Tomb 73 at Mitrou had an entrance or dromos oriented at a 90o angle to the westnorthwest, and ending at Road 1. In its first architectural phase, the tomb chamber was accessed from this dromos through a fairly narrow opening, or stomion, 0.60 m wide, located at the south end of the chamber [Fig. 5]. It is no longer clear how this stomion had been closed off between burials, as this evidence was obliterated by the later remodelling of the tomb chamber. The dromos was large (3 m long × 2 m wide) and had an earthen floor sloping up gently from the chamber to Road 1. At its western end it featured a porch with two support bases bordering the road. A 0.07 m high and 0.12 m wide clay ridge with a rounded top had been placed across the porch just west of the support bases [Fig. 3]. Having been made out of unbaked clay, this curious ridge could not have been intended to keep rain water out, and it does not serve any other practical purpose. On the contrary, it would have provided a minor hindrance to people entering or leaving the tomb, requiring them to lift their feet extra high. Thus this clay ridge may have provided a symbolic threshold between the dromos and the road. Comparable clay ridges have been uncovered recently delineating stoas of a courtyard at the Late Helladic IIIA palace of Agios Vasileios in Lakonia (Vasilogamv-

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rou 2012: fig. 2).6 Their presence suggests to me the importance of delineating particular spaces in this culture. Like the restricting of access to the large straight roads in central Greek settlements, these clay ridges suggest a concern with codifying behaviour in the built environment based on a person’s social status or role. The dromos of Mitrou’s tomb 73 must have remained open after burial, as no evidence was found for its filling with sediments during the lifetime of the tomb; it was finally filled in early in Late Helladic IIIC.

Fig. 5: Isometric reconstruction drawing of Building D with built chamber tomb 73 and its funerary enclosure, Roads 1 and 2, and grave plots in the late Late Helladic I phase; parts of the roads shaded in grey were uncovered through excavation, while the outlined parts were seen in the geophysical survey (G. Bianco).

A large rectangular enclosure (13.50 × 8.25 m) was built around built chamber tomb 73, featuring a substantial wall (ca. 0.75 m thick) constructed with roughly squared calcareous fieldstones larger than any other seen at the site. To judge by the level tops of the stone wall socles and the layers of disintegrated mudbrick sloping down from them to the east, north, and south of this enclosure, this enclosure must have had a

6 I am grateful to A. Vasilogamvrou for permission to mention the clay ridges from the A. Vasileios palace. A photo of these ridges was published in Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Chronique des Fouilles en ligne 2012, fig. 2 (http://www.chronique.efa.gr/index.php/fiches/voir/3407/).

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mudbrick superstructure, although it is difficult to determine how high its walls would have been. These walls were wide enough to support a roof, but no trace of the latter has been preserved. The rooms outside the tomb and within the enclosure had earthen floors and must have been accessible during the Late Helladic I phase. No artefacts were found in these, except for a spindle whorl. East of the tomb was a small, low rectangular platform built of roughly squared stones, of as yet unknown use. Built chamber tombs in mainland Greece are extremely varied, and Müller-Celka (1995) as well as Papadimitriou (2001: 194–201) have argued convincingly that they represent the elite’s early experiments with making their tombs more elaborate than those of the rest of the population. The origin of this tomb type is local to the Greek mainland. Tomb 73 had been emptied in Late Helladic IIB, but multiple fragments of a large Mainland Polychrome vase inside the tomb as well as a fragmentary non-local Vapheio cup found with human bones outside of the tomb in the east of the enclosure testify to the placement of at least one burial during the Late Helladic I phase. Associated with this phase of the tomb were also four pieces of one or more boar’s tusk helmets, two stone arrowheads, one to three small gold nails and a silver nail, a tiny fragment of a bronze sheet—perhaps from a cup or bowl, a turquoise faience spindle whorl, as well as a tiny amber bead. Even though these are scant remains accidentally left behind after the removal of the tomb’s contents, they are indicative of the presence of one or more warrior burials and at least one female burial of high status. The bell-shaped spindle whorl made of this exotic faience material with its bright blue-green colour may represent an elite woman’s symbol of female domesticity and high status, as was argued by Maran (2011: 287–8) for the gold-covered spindles from shaft grave III in Grave Circle A at Mycenae. Because of the extreme scarcity of faience at Mitrou in this period, this spindle whorl is likely to have been imported from the south Aegean. The occurrence of amber beads both in the tomb and in an earlier phase of Building D shows that Mitrou’s elite had access to also this striking, high-status material imported from the north roughly when it was first acquired by elites elsewhere in Greece (Maran 2004; 2013). The arrowheads from tomb 73 are long slender specimens of Karo’s ‘crab-claw’ type typical for the Late Helladic period; they are similar to the ones found in Shaft Grave Circle A at Mycenae (Karo 1930: 208, pl. 101, nos. 536–540) and somewhat more slender than those from the Middle Helladic II elite warrior grave at Kolonna (Kilian-Dirlmeier 1997: 19, 22, 28–35, fig. 6.4 nos. 1–2, 5–6; fig. 9.4 nos. 1, 4–5, pl. 3). The small gold and silver nails are identical to nails found in Grave Circle A at Mycenae and the Dendra tholos tomb, where they secured ivory hilts and grips on decorative dagger and sword handles (Karo 1930: 143, 162, pl. 146, nos. 803, 804b, 805, 806, 807; Persson 1931: 61, pl. 24). Together with the large size and architectural splendour of the tomb, these finds suggesting originally rich furnishings would have made a strong statement about the new ideology of power of Mitrou’s leadership: its wealth, warlike ethos, and access to special and exotic goods from the south and north.

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Current investigations indicate that built chamber tomb 73 had been set into the northwest corner of Building D’s complex when the latter was actively inhabited; it seems that Building D continued to function as a dwelling after the tomb was built. In this final Late Helladic I architectural phase, as well as later during the use span of the tomb, new walls were constructed and earthen as well as white lime plaster floors were laid east of the funerary enclosure [Fig. 3]. Pottery and finds associated with these floors are still under study. The funerary enclosure had been purposely separated from the rest of the architectural complex by breaking off the ends of exterior cross walls so that they would not touch the enclosure, and by covering the exterior facade of the enclosure with a thick coating of white lime plaster which was renewed several times. This lime coating has been preserved at various places on the north, east, and south facades of the funerary enclosure [Fig. 4]. These arrangements support the notion that Building D was inhabited as a residence during the use span of tomb 73. A tomb set into a living complex is unique for Prepalatial mainland Greece (cf. Papadimitriou 2001: 189–90 and passim), and its establishment would have been highly significant, marking an escalation in the display of power of Mitrou’s elite. For one, its location would have sharply contrasted with the new burial practices of Mitrou’s population: whereas people now buried their dead in a designated communal area, abandoning their traditional family plots and clearly separating the world of the living and the dead, the inhabitants of Building D constructed a large tomb inside their own living complex, thus setting themselves clearly apart from the rest of the community and demonstrating that the new burial practices did not apply to them. Furthermore, by breaking off the exterior cross walls and coating the enclosure with bright white lime plaster the elite may have wanted to make an alternative symbolic gesture signalling that it, too, wanted to separate its dead from the world of the living —but that it did so in its own way. Thus tomb 73 and its gleaming white enclosure would have served as a permanent reminder of the power and special status of the elite deceased buried within. In order to reach the communal cemetery, Mitrou’s inhabitants may have passed by this funerary enclosure, or they would have seen it from the cemetery and would have been reminded of the elevated status of the elite. Tomb 73 remained visible and accessible from Road 1 through its open dromos throughout its use span. The fact that this dromos slightly projected into Road 1 and was directly accessed from that road, rather than from the interior of Building D, is a clear indication that prominent visibility in the public eye during and after burial was deemed important. As Papadimitriou has argued (2011; 2015; this volume), the dromos was a transitional space, a passage between the world of the living and the dead, between public and private, and a place rich with symbolic connotations. It is possible that the deceased dressed in purple or purple trimmed garments and adorned with gold and amber jewellery and other accoutrements of status was carried around in procession along the wide roads lined with members of the community and brought into the white enclosure, where the body was viewed in the dromos by a mourning

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audience filing by prior to burial. Even though the dromos afforded a public view of the tomb entrance, it would have allowed only a limited and select number of spectators to witness actual entombment, in contrast to most other funerals at Mitrou which took place in an open, more accessible area. Likewise, whatever rituals took place in the small rooms surrounding the tomb would have involved only a small group of people. In the Late Helladic IIB phase, the chamber of tomb 73 was extended south to a length of 7 m, making it the largest rectangular built chamber tomb presently known in Prepalatial mainland Greece [Fig. 3]. A wooden support was added to the southern part of the chamber to hold up the roof. The stomion was widened to 1.50 m; to judge from the linear remains of stone rubble, it would have been blocked by such rubble between burials. The dromos was given a new, sloping clay floor that covered the Late Helladic I support bases of the porch and ended flush with Road 1. The walls of the rectangular enclosure were widened to an impressive 1–1.20 m. Flimsy earthen floors have been identified in most rooms of the enclosure, but not everywhere. The flimsiness of these floors as well as the fact that the wider enclosure walls no longer had an interior facade suggest that the entire enclosure was now filled with earth, forming a tumulus. Within the enclosure and to the south of tomb 73 we identified one small cist grave and a pit grave that were largely empty and may date to this phase. East of the enclosure wall, in the presumed inhabited part of complex D, new walls and earthen surfaces were constructed. Some pottery and other finds, currently under study, have been recovered in association with these spaces. Even though this final use phase of the tomb was looted in the Late Helladic IIIC and Protogeometric periods, we found in this stratum remains of three fine patternpainted clay alabastra and a piriform jar as well as six pieces of one or more boar’s tusk helmets, a bronze arrowhead, a rock-crystal disc, two to four amber beads, a bronze ring, and 11 pieces of gold jewellery (including a fairly small finger ring, two thin chain bracelets, several beads, a pinhead, and pieces of gold foil that had been sewn onto a dress). Thus at least one other male warrior and probably another female —to judge by the small size of the ring—must have been buried in this phase (Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1136, fig. 10a-c; Maran & Van de Moortel 2014). Only a few small fragments of human bone have been recovered from this use phase of tomb 73, so it is not possible to comment on the precise number of bodies or the layout of individual burials within the chamber. These grave goods demonstrate that from Late Helladic IIB onwards Mitrou’s leaders adopted the full package of elite burial goods developed in the Mycenaean heartland of the northeast Peloponnese, consistently with other areas of the Greek mainland (Vitale 2008; cf. Davis & Bennet 1999; Wright 2004: 77–80). No doubt such furnishings represent an aggrandising strategy by local leaders, who were keen to increase their prestige by linking themselves to the emerging elite culture of southern Greece. This gradual adoption of Mycenaean elite customs, together with the fact that built chamber tomb 73 featured local architectural characteristics and continued in use throughout the Prepalatial period, suggests that

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Mitrou’s leadership was continuous and Mycenaeanisation was a gradual process of assimilation that mixed local or regional with Argolid elements, rather than the outcome of war or conquest and forced transplantation of elite practices from the Argolid (cf. Vitale 2012: 1151–2). In contrast, the appearance of Mycenaean rock-cut chamber tombs with Mycenaean-type burial goods elsewhere in east Lokris from the Late Helladic IIB phase onwards seems to signal a different form of Mycenaeanisation. Only five or six rock-cut chamber tombs dating to the Prepalatial period have been found at three different locations in the Atalante-Livanates area of east Lokris, and all may have been elite tombs (Van de Moortel 2007: 245–6). It is conceivable that these elites were new, and sought to strengthen their position by adopting the Mycenaean rock-cut chamber tomb. It is also plausible that they originated from an area further south, bringing this funerary form with them. In the Late Helladic IIIA2 Early phase, after the destruction of Buildings D and H, which likely signified the political demise of Mitrou’s elite through conquest, the chamber of tomb 73 was no longer used for burials, but its dromos remained open until early in the Late Helladic IIIC period (Van de Moortel & Zahou 2012: 1136–7; Van de Moortel et al. in press). Road 1 was resurfaced numerous times with pebbles and lime plaster, perhaps as often as every ten years (Karkanas & Van de Moortel 2014). Eighteen Late Helladic IIIA-B figurine fragments found on Late Helladic IIIA2 Middle to Late Helladic IIIC surfaces of Road 1, concentrated near the dromos, suggest ongoing public rituals related to the Prepalatial leaders buried in tomb 73 (O’Neill, pers. com.). Similar clusters of fragmentary palatial-period figurines have been found outside the stomion of Mycenaean tombs and near monumental walls of tombs such as the peribolos wall of the Tomb of Klytaemnestra at Mycenae or the Kyklos wall near tholos tombs 2 and 3 at Peristeria; these figurines are interpreted as remains of memorial ceremonies for the dead (Tzonou-Herbst 2002: 145–61, 180–4; 2008: 217).7 The long social afterlife of tomb 73 and the multiple resurfacings of the adjacent road at Mitrou strongly signal the enduring awe in which the Prepalatial elite of this site was held for about 200 years after the demise of its rule. It also gives a clear indication of the important role that the elite tombs and landscape of wide paved roads must have played in the memorialisation and glorification of Prepalatial elite power.

Conclusion I hope to have demonstrated that the manipulation of the mortuary realm and its spatial manifestation was carried out by Mitrou’s emerging elite in the Prepalatial period for political purposes. The new ideology of power allowed the elite to construct

7 I thank I. Tzonou-Herbst for alerting me to the finds of figurines near Mycenaean elite tombs, and discussing their significance with me.

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and express its special status through material means and become much more visible in society than it had been in the Middle Helladic period. It also allowed it to change the architectural landscape at Mitrou radically and assign the living and the dead to specific locales. This new built environment was intended to visually remind Mitrou’s inhabitants on a daily basis of the changed world in which they lived and of the increased power of the ruling elite. In this elite strategy to materially construct and legitimise its power, the theatricality of the funerary realm played an important role. Already early in the Late Helladic I phase, Mitrou’s elite accorded itself special status in burial. Oversized cist tomb 51 was placed in a grave plot possibly covered by a tumulus, and located near the highest point of the site overlooking the sea. At the same time it was separated from the remainder of the purported new cemetery by Road 1, the same wide straight road that materially as well as visually connected tomb 51 to Building D. With the construction of built chamber tomb 73 within Building D, one or a few generations later, Mitrou’s elite took a further step. It created a highly visible exception to the newly introduced practice of burial in a communal cemetery, with the dromos of tomb 73 and the white-plastered walls of its funerary enclosure serving as a visual reminder of the elite’s exceptional status. It is no exaggeration to state that over time, Mitrou’s leadership increasingly distanced itself from the rest of the community. Galaty and Parkinson (2007: 10) have interpreted the Mycenaean palatial elite as a ‘networked elite’, i.e. an elite that legitimises its power in part by separating itself from its own community and creating supporting networks with elites elsewhere. I would argue that we see the first stages of such a networked mainland elite at Mitrou. As a counterpoint to elite exceptionalism, the creation of a communal cemetery replacing private family burial plots at Mitrou may have been intended to draw the various families or households of the settlement closer together as a community, as it must have facilitated the viewing of and participation in funerary events by larger audiences and created permanently visible monuments of collective memory and group identity. Thus the evidence from Mitrou has given us a much fuller picture than we had before of the emergence of a Prepalatial elite in central Greece and the strategies it developed to enhance and legitimise its power. It is clear that Mitrou’s early elite was not only warlike but well versed in the establishment and management of an organised settlement, and aware of the ideological effects of a constructed landscape for the living and the dead. The inspiration for these new developments appears to have been largely local to mainland and, more specifically, central Greece. In material terms, cist tombs and built chamber tombs were grave types local to the Greek mainland, and Mitrou’s orthogonal network of straight roads, highly charged with elite connotations and at least in part restricted in access, appear to have been a central Greek feature. Elite grave goods in the first use phase of elite tomb 73 mixed local with imported goods. Even though Mitrou has produced sporadic finds of Minoan pottery and was involved in intense maritime contact with Ayia Irini on Kea and Kolonna on Aigina via the Euboean Gulf from the Middle Helladic II Early phase

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onwards (Hale in press), it actually experienced a downturn in external trade during the Late Helladic I phase, as is indicated by the decrease in pottery imports (Vitale & Hale 2012). It is only at an advanced stage of its development, in the Late Helladic IIA and IIB phases, that Mitrou’s elite began to import large amounts of Mycenaean pottery and adopt Mycenaean elite practices (Vitale 2012). Thus we may conclude that Mitrou’s elite developed its own vocabulary of power, strategies to legitimise it, and settlement organisation in the Late Helladic I phase prior to ‘Mycenaeanisation’. Perhaps it did so to assert its own identity in reaction to outside influences. Whether or not this was the case, our finds show that Mitrou’s elite understood how to project power through the rearrangement of the built environment and the mortuary realm into codified performative spaces, and that these ideas owed nothing to Minoan Crete or Mycenae. Acknowledgements: The Mitrou Archaeological Project is codirected by Aleydis Van de Moortel of the University of Tennessee and Eleni Zahou of the Ephorate of Phthiotida and Evrytania. It is carried out under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Major sponsors are the University of Tennessee, the Institute of Aegean Prehistory, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities (Collaborative Research Grants Nos. RZ-50652–06 and RZ-51162), the Loeb Classical Library Foundation, and the Greek Archaeological Service. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The author wants to thank the volume’s editors for their invitation to contribute to this volume and for their many helpful suggestions for improving this typescript.

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Maran, J., 2011. Lost in translation: the emergence of Mycenaean culture as a phenomenon of glocalization. In Interweaving Worlds; Systemic Interactions in Eurasia, 7th to 1st Millennia BC, eds. Wilkinson, T. C., S. Sherratt & J. Bennet. Oxford & Oakville: Oxbow, 282–94. Maran, J., 2012. Architektonischer Raum und soziale Kommunikation auf der Oberburg von Tiryns – Der Wandel von der mykenischen Palastzeit zur Nachpalastzeit. In Orte der Herrschaft. Charakteristika von antiken Machtzentren, eds. Arnold, F., A. Busch, R. Haensch & U. Wulf-Rheidt, Menschen – Kulturen – Traditionen, ForschungsCluster 3, Bd. 3. Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf, 149–62. Maran, J., 2013. Bright as the sun: the appropriation of amber objects in Mycenaean Greece. In Mobility, Meaning and Transformations of Things: Shifting Contexts of Material Culture through Time and Space, eds. Hahn, H.-P. & H. Weiss. Oxford & Oakville: Oxbow, 147–69. Maran, J. & A. Van de Moortel, 2014. A horse bridle piece with Carpatho-Danubian connections from Late Helladic I Mitrou and the emergence of a warlike elite in Greece during the Shaft-Grave period. American Journal of Archaeology 118 (4), 529–48. Merkouri, C. & M. Kouli, 2011. The spatial distribution and location of Bronze Age tumuli in Greece. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans – Adriatic – Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium B.C.), eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée – Jean Pouilloux, 203–17. Müller, S., 1989. Les tumuli helladiques: où? quand? comment? Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 113 (1), 1–42. Müller Celka, S., 1995. Les tombes de Médéon de Phocide: architecture et mobilier. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Lyon. Müller Celka, S., 2007. L’origine balkanique des tumuli helladiques (HA-HM): réflexions sur l’état de la question. In Between the Aegean and Baltic Seas: Prehistory Across Borders, eds. Galanaki, I., H. Tomas, Y. Galanakis & R. Laffineur, Aegaeum 27. Liège & Austin: Université de Liège, 175–89. Papadimitriou, N., 2001. Built Chamber Tombs of Middle and Late Bronze Age Date in Mainland Greece and the Islands, British Archaeological Reports International Series 925. Oxford: Archaeopress. Papadimitriou, N., 2011. ‘Passing away’ or ‘passing through’? Changing funerary attitudes in the Peloponnese at the MBA/LBA transition. In Honouring the Dead in the Peloponnese: Proceedings of the Conference Held at Sparta, 23–25 April 2009, eds. Cavanagh, H., W. Cavanagh & J. Roy, Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies Online Publication 2. Nottingham: Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies, 467–91. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/csps/opensource/ hounouring-the-dead.aspx (accessed 27 March 2013). Papadimitriou, N., 2015. The formation and use of dromoi in Early Mycenaean tombs. Annual of the British School of Archaeology 110, 71–120. Papakonstantinou, M.-P., 2011. Bronze age tumuli and grave circles in Central Greece. The current state of research. In Ancestral Landscapes; Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans – Adriatic – Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium B.C.), eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée – Jean Pouilloux, 391–9. Persson, A.W., 1931. The Royal Tombs at Dendra near Midea. Lund: Gleerup. Petrakis, V.P., 2010. Diversity in form and practice in Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean elaborate tombs: an approach to changing prestige expression in changing time. In Mesohelladika: la Grèce continentale au Bronze Moyen, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. C. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 403–16.

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Familial Places: Deathscapes and Townscapes

Kalliope Sarri

Intra, Extra, Inferus and Supra Mural Burials of the Middle Helladic period: Spatial Diversity in Practice Introduction The funerary landscapes of the Aegean Bronze Age are characterised by a wide variety of burial grounds, triggering communal memories and demonstrating the cohesive force of societies. Burial grounds redefined the future of a community based upon the traces of the past. They had their own connection with the past, linking society with the ancestral environment. Such links were brought about by means of monumental burial structures or by choosing burial places with specific significance, closer to or further away from the habitation areas, sometimes in close proximity or even coexisting with the latter depending on architectural planning and social group mobility. This contribution explores the so-called intramural graves of the Middle Helladic period. The spatial overlap between funerary and habitation areas has been given a range of ideological, cultural and economic explanations (largely exaggerated), resulting in this unusual funeral model. Unfolding excavations and the reevaluation of the data has opened up new perspectives. The phenomenon seems better explained by practical considerations and the relocation of activity space, rather than an underlying, peculiar burial practice. Nevertheless the use of former living spaces carries some ideological weight, signifying an intention to maintain important and meaningful communal memories. The Middle Helladic period is traditionally considered a period of regression. Compared with the Early Helladic period, there is a decrease in the number of settlements, and the complex social organisation and the organised system of redistribution disappear (Forsén 1992; Maran 1998: 232–40; for more recent approaches, see Weiberg 2007). To many scholars, the Middle Helladic burial practices reflect a cultural setback, economic recession, poverty, sloppiness, lack of social stratification and a complete lack of religious beliefs (Dickinson 1977, 38; 2010). The practice of burying the dead within the settlements, both between houses and in the floors and walls of buildings, is observable at all Middle Helladic settlement sites. Much has been written about this strange custom that suggests at a first glimpse cultural regression, idiosyncratic beliefs, and superstitions and which has no exact analogies in the prehistoric Aegean. The few parallels come from the Neolithic period and from distant ethnographic evidence. Intramural burial is not the only funerary practice of the period, but one of several attested patterns. There are also small burial clusters and extensive cemeteries either

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near the settlements or attached to their boundaries, while some unbuilt areas within the settlements appear to have been used as grave islets. The coexistence of intramural burials and external cemeteries has raised the question of whether there was ranking (age, social status or ethnicity based) among individuals or groups who were buried in the different areas (Voutsaki 1997). There is growing evidence that in the last phases of the Middle Helladic, burials took place in the ruins of abandoned settlements, a phenomenon that appeared almost simultaneously at many sites (Nordquist 1987: 95; Dietz 1991: 27, 275; Maran 1995; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–5; Boyd 2002: 33– 6; Milka 2010). This diversity complicates our understanding of the evolution of Middle Helladic settlements and the management of living space, increasing the risk of misinterpreting the cultural development, human activities and ideological background of Middle Helladic society. This paper explores Middle Helladic intramural burials in their contexts for two purposes: to demonstrate the diversity of burial strategies by region, and to determine whether the phenomenon of Middle Helladic ‘domestic’ graves requires a spatial, chronological or cultural interpretation. The review of the data is followed by a reconstruction of the burial pattern of the period and suggestions on how the reconstruction might contribute to a better understanding of Middle Helladic society.

Middle Helladic burial practices: the data Already in the 19th c. some burial groups were known at Thorikos, Aphidna, Elateia and Sesklo (Stais 1895; Wide 1896; Soteriades 1902; Tsountas 1908). These pioneering excavations revealed basic features of the Middle Helladic period. It was characteristic of these early discoveries that mortuary remains were detected long before settlements of the period and that the earliest examples were external cemeteries in the form of burial mounds.

Orchomenos The first discovery of Middle Helladic graves within a settlement was at Boeotian Orchomenos where in 1903 the Bavarian Academy uncovered an extensive settlement with three successive building phases, making possible the first stratigraphic comparison of a Greek site with Troy (Bulle 1907). Excavation revealed 50 graves of children and adults among architectural remains of the Middle Bronze Age. Pithos burials, slab and built cists, and simple pits were found, sometimes in groups and sometimes dispersed over the settlement from the hilltop down to the churchyard of Skripou [Fig. 1]. Being unprepared for such findings, the excavators only briefly recorded the results of the first excavation season and although in the second year they kept a more careful record of the stratigraphy and the burial contexts, they

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were uncertain of how to interpret the domestic burials (Bulle 1907: 67). Noting that the graves were at the same level as some of the house walls, they interpreted the graves as contemporary with the settlement, but noted that study of the stratigraphy by Reinecke had given him the impression that the graves had been constructed after the abandonment of the settlement (the early publication of excavations at Orchomenos contains some rare stratigraphic drawings of a Middle Bronze Age site: Bulle 1907: 23, pl. V). Recent restudy of the site’s stratigraphy indicates that most of the graves are positioned higher than the latest Middle Helladic floors and were cut nearly contemporaneously after the Middle Helladic occupation (Sarri 2010: 52–3). The presence of layered, sometimes circular, stone platforms around many of the graves and the fact that these follow the same stratigraphical and morphological pattern over a large area extending from the hilltop to the plain, supports the hypothesis that this is a cemetery, presumably containing stone paved tumuli (Sarri 2010: 52–3, 199–200, 210–1), the remains of which are more clearly visible in Trench P [Fig. 1]. The image of the intramural burial practices described by Bulle was adopted by many subsequent excavators and scholars researching the Middle Helladic period, although the data were not supporting this view. The Lianokladi stratigraphy, depicted in one of the very rare cross sections of the Middle Helladic period, shows clearly that cist graves are found at a higher level than the remains of a house [Fig. 2]. Tsountas, for example, interpreted the findings from Dimini to include graves located within the ruins of houses (Tsountas 1908: 131). At Korakou, Blegen excavated a pithos burial containing two children under Late Helladic walls and another intramural child burial surrounded by Grey Minyan pottery within a wall angle (Blegen 1921: 100–1). Mylonas emphasised the significance of new burial customs as evidence for the arrival of the Indo-Europeans (Mylonas 1930: 6; for discussion of Early Helladic intramural burials, see Forsén 1992: 237–40; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 15). The study of Middle Helladic burials by Blegen and Wace (1930) focused primarily on types and elements of construction and, although they referred to the burial customs and to cultural continuity from the Middle Helladic period into the Late Helladic period, they did not comment on the spatial relationship of the graves with the living space.

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Fig. 1: Orchomenos. Middle Helladic walls and graves in trench P (adapted from Bulle 1907: figs. 15–6).

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Fig. 2: Kirrha. Middle Helladic burials in trench A (after Dor et al. 1960: fig. VIII).

Eutresis Goldman followed the same interpretive model in evaluating similar intermingling of buildings and burials in Eutresis (Goldman 1931), where 24 pre-Mycenaean graves were uncovered, two of them probably belonging to the Early Helladic period. Goldman appears to have been convinced that burying the dead within the limits of the settlement was typical for both the Early Helladic and Middle Helladic (Goldman 1931: 221). She notes, however, that apart from two child graves, these graves were not contemporary with the architectural remains in which they were found (Goldman 1931: 224), on the evidence of several stratigraphical observations: a) the walls were often destroyed by the graves, b) the graves were located at floor level or only a few inches below it, c) in some cases the graves were covered by a mound of soft soil up to 0.60 m in height and d) the floors which were disturbed in order to construct the shafts of the Middle Helladic graves were nowhere repaired. In spite of these precise stratigraphical observations, Goldman seems to conclude that burials and walls were contemporary, ultimately proposing that the inhabitants’ beliefs and highly emotional states brought on by the deaths of children led them to bury their infants and children within and between the buildings (Goldman 1931: 223).

Lerna In excavations of the American School at Lerna in the 1950s, where more than 200 intramural graves were discovered, the excavators concluded that the inhabitants buried their dead within the village (Caskey 1958: 144). Caskey considered the introduction of this burial practice to be the most significant change made in the Middle Bronze Age period, comparing it to similar Neolithic practices, and noted its relevance for the study of migrations during the Middle Bronze Age (Caskey &

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Blackburn 1997: 14). He conjectured that the inhabitants might have kept their deceased children nearby out of a sense of superstition or because the small size of the tombs made the practice feasible (Caskey 1973: 135). Blackburn’s analysis of the Middle Helladic burials at Lerna (Blackburn 1970: 9–12) and their general distribution in the settlement, while providing a clear picture of burials inside the architectural remains, showed that it was difficult to detect the layer in which the Middle Helladic graves were constructed [Fig. 3]. Zerner’s later contextual analysis of Middle Helladic graves of Lerna indicates that the earliest child and infant graves are within the village, and as an explanation of this practice she mentioned the possible interest in keeping the burials of children close to family and particularly to their mothers (Zerner 1990: 23).

Fig. 3: Lerna. Hypothetical cross section of a grave (after Blackburn 1970: fig. 2).

None of the available stratigraphic drawings from Lerna indicate the depths of the burials. Doubts about the synchronising of the late Middle Helladic graves with the houses at Lerna have been expressed by Dietz, who proposed that, on the evidence of the mortuary data of the Argolid, the settlement of Lerna appears to have been abandoned after the Middle Helladic IIIA period and to have been turned into a cemetery (Dietz 1991: 175). In 1997, the revised version of the Lerna site guide stated that the dead of Lerna V were buried inside the settlement, but that many of the graves dating from the middle of phase V and into phase VI were clustered to form a sort of cemetery (Caskey & Blackburn 1997: 24). Milka proposed that Lerna had three successive periods of burials contemporary with domestic use of the settlement space, and that intramural burial was typical of only the Middle Helladic I period, the earliest of the three (Milka 2010: 352). Recent reinterpretation of the Lerna burial evidence indicates that the burnt House 100 served as a cemetery (Voutsaki et al. 2013: 139). Outside Lerna, in the wider area of Myloi, the tombs and cemeteries of the Middle Helladic III to Late Helladic I phase show no relation to any settlement (Dietz & Divari-

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Valakou 1990), which further challenges the image of contemporary use of houses and intramural grave clusters. Caskey’s interpretations of Middle Helladic burial practices remained widespread throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. Vermeule, in her overview of the Aegean Bronze Age, appears to have been convinced about the contemporaneity of Middle Helladic buildings and graves within various sites, remarking that intramural burial had long been known in the East (Vermeule 1964: 79). She expressed doubts, however, about some of the anthropological interpretations, noting that at some sites where large numbers of infant graves were found close to houses, many adult graves had also been uncovered. In a slightly later survey on burial customs Vranopoulos (1967: 291) writes that the dead of the Middle Helladic period were undoubtedly buried in the floors of houses and in jars between buildings. Vranopoulos was in agreement with Mylonas that strong changes in customs and lifestyle from the Early Helladic to the Middle Helladic suggested tribal invasion. Howell in his study of the origins of Middle Helladic culture did not focus on interpretations of the burial practices, but he states that some burials had been found beneath floors and others against walls (Howell 1973: 75). The latter observation usefully focuses attention on the elevation of the burials, a matter to which we shall return below.

Kirrha The settlement of Kirrha yielded 40 tombs within the inhabited area. The excavators followed interpretations that had previously been made at Orchomenos, Dimini, Asine, Eleusis, Malthi, Lerna and Argos (Dor et al. 1960: 49). The findings at Kirrha were clear: Early Helladic pithos burials are followed by Middle Helladic pits and cist graves [Fig. 4]. No drawings from the old excavation show the exact level of the graves but the photos show a large number of burials at a depth that is the same or slightly lower than the foundations of the walls (Dor et al. 1960: pl. XIX). The 17 Middle Helladic tombs in Area D were constructed in open spaces between the houses and belong to the last phase of the settlement, while in Area A the large and rich cist graves seem to belong to the settlement’s elite (Philippa-Touchais 2013 (replaced in the bibliography). Maran has argued that the settlement of Kirrha was abandoned in Middle Helladic III and was turned into a cemetery (Maran 1995: 70).

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Fig. 4: Lianokladi. Plan and section of a house (after Wace & Thompson 1912: fig. 137).

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Attica Differentiation by age is not in evidence in the West Cemetery at Eleusis where adults and children were buried in 43 Middle Helladic graves of various types (Mylonas 1975: 318). Excavation of the settlement at Eleusis in the 19th c. had yielded a large number of graves almost all of which contained child burials. All four adult graves were constructed on an open plateau, and in only one instance in a floor, inside an abandoned house (Cosmopoulos 2014). In the Athenian Agora among the rich Middle Helladic settlement finds, no burials were uncovered. Expecting a coexistence of burials and houses, Immerwahr interpreted the complete absence of burials as a result of later disturbances (Immerwahr 1971: 52), but the absence more likely indicates that the burial ground is located in another area. The tumuli at Aphidna and Marathon also attest a separation of the domestic and burial environment (Forsén 2010; Papadimitriou 2010: 248).

Asine The discovery of the East Cemetery of Asine in the 1970s provided the first clear evidence of intramural burials and cemeteries coexisting at a single site (Dietz 1980). Asine yielded a third model of Middle Helladic burial practice at Barbouna hill which, after its abandonment in the Middle Helladic IIIA period was occupied by graves (Nordquist 1987: 91). Overall at Asine 147 graves were found, most of them in the lower town. The grave types were pits dug into earth or rock, built graves, cists and jars. Jar burials recovered at Asine are dated to the beginning of Middle Helladic I-II (Voutsaki et al. 2009: 8–9) and might be seen to continue the practice of Early Helladic intramural child burial attested at the site (Pullen 1990). Stratigraphic sections which could clarify the contemporaneity of buildings and graves at Asine are not published (Dietz 1991: 246, 275). The intramural burials of Asine are mainly child burials, which led early excavators at the site to conjecture that the burial site might have been chosen in anticipation of reincarnation (Frazer 1933: 18). These early excavators also discussed hygienic problems that would have resulted from keeping burials in the domestic area, proposing that antiseptic media and embalming substances such as honey might have been used (Frödin & Persson 1938: 351). The complexity of the burial customs in Asine is seen in Nordquist’s reconstruction of the character of Middle Helladic society. She notes that complexity in Middle Helladic burial customs, rather than uniformity, is a feature of small communities, while the choice of an external cemetery may signify the existence of an elite (Nordquist 1987: 98–101; 1990: 38–9). The most recent findings at Asine in combination with the Pefkakia sequence and the early building activities at Tiryns attest diversity of Middle Helladic burial practices (Kilian 1987). Maran has questioned the existence of intramural burials for at

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least the last phase of the Middle Helladic period and has attributed the dispersal of burials in the living space to a more general abandonment of settlements in the latest phase of the Middle Bronze Age (Maran 1995). Nevertheless, in their overview of Bronze Age grave customs, Cavanagh and Mee (1998: 23–36) point to the abandonment of organised cemeteries and the prevalence of intramural burials as evidence of drastic change from the Early Helladic to the Middle Helladic. In regards to age differentiation they state that intramural burials are confined to child burials, and that adults are buried in the immediate vicinity of the settlement, both in small groups and in extensive burial grounds, which at some sites include tumuli. The phenomenon of cemeteries constructed on top of abandoned settlements is highlighted more recently by Milka (2010), who shows that only a few Middle Helladic burials are really intramural. She proposes that the model of successive episodes of building activities, destructions, abandonment and construction of burials that she detected at Lerna might also apply at Aspis (see below).

Thebes In rescue excavations at Thebes, a total of 150 Middle Helladic graves have been reported at various parts of the Kadmeia (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010). The burials are located in three extensive cemeteries, in several smaller clusters and in some isolated graves. At the western edge of the East Cemetery isolated child burials were found; in the North Cemetery many Middle Helladic graves were situated near some earlier graves and one later grave; and in the West Cemetery burials were found in both the Early Helladic and Middle Helladic habitation layers. All of the pithos burials were recovered outside of the cemeteries. Also outside of the cemeteries, a number of jar burials were recovered, in which adult burials are more numerous than those of children. There is great variety in the correlation of graves and buildings. In the north group no Middle Helladic architectural remains were found, in Area A graves were very close to buildings and in Area D graves were constructed after the buildings were no longer in use. Although initial excavation reports had identified the find spots of individual graves and grave groups as being under house floors and inside walls the stratigraphic evidence indicates that the contemporaneity of the houses and graves should not be taken for granted (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 389). According to the authors, there are as yet no stratigraphic drawings showing the relation between graves and domestic structures, and final assessment of the evidence awaits full publication. Dakouri-Hild has shown that in the excavated units of the Kadmeia, at least in the early and middle stages of the Middle Helladic when the burial ground cannot be distinguished from the areas of habitation, there is no border between intramural and extramural graves (Dakouri-Hild 2001: 115). Intramural burials of infants, children and adults appeared in clusters related to certain buildings, while concentrations of

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child burials were observed in three loci of the settlement. Cists were the most prevalent type of grave, and were used for all ages, while children were buried in pithoi and pits. The funeral clusters appeared at the end of Middle Helladic as organised cemeteries.

Argos The rich Μiddle Helladic remains throughout modern Argos and from the hill of Aspis testify to an extensive and densely inhabited settlement throughout the Middle Bronze Age (Touchais 1998: 71). The most systematically examined mortuary data come from rescue excavations of a burial complex at the foot of Aspis containing approximately 100 graves and designated by its excavator as a tumulus cemetery (ProtonotariouDeilaki 1980). No monumental features are preserved in these graves, except in the so-called tumulus Γ, where the concentration of cist burials and pithos burials might form a burial tumulus with graves placed in a circle (Sarri & Voutsaki 2011: 437, fig. 3). The rest of the graves were found at the same depth, sometimes in very dense clusters. None of them was related to domestic buildings, and they might be part of a very extensive, well-organised cemetery which is now vague in form due to later disturbances. Of a total of approximately 100 burials, only one was located under walls and even that burial is not to be interpreted as intramural, since the grave and the building belong to very distinct stratigraphical phases (Protonotariou-Deilaki 1980: fig. Β2.3). On the Aspis hill which preserves rich building remains from all Middle Helladic phases some 16 burials have been found (Voutsaki et al. 2006: 615; the recent 2013 is more relevant Philippa-Touchais 2013), most of them assigned by the excavators to a later phase of the Middle Bronze Age. The basis of their dating is unclear, because only a few of them contained grave goods; although some of them appear to be associated with buildings or other graves, the level at which they are constructed is unknown (Voutsaki et al. 2006: 617). C-14 dating of four of the skeletons indicated that two of the graves belong to Middle Helladic III and two others to the Middle Helladic III period (Voutsaki et al. 2006: 624, fig. 1). The latter group cannot be regarded as intramural since it was constructed deeper in the bedrock than the buildings. The three graves found outside and below the level of apsidal buildings belong to the Middle Helladic IIIA period. Another two graves were found in the extension of a damaged wall, which was perhaps destroyed by their construction. The southeast sector of Aspis preserves some graves with a proximity to walls, but in my opinion they are not chronologically related to the buildings, since they are found either in open spaces or in damaged buildings or were constructed in layers much deeper than those buildings. In the wider area of the Argolid, the extensive cemetery of Prosymna (Blegen 1937), the Middle Helladic burial circle within the North Cemetery of Corinth (Rutter 2003: 78) and Circle B at Mycenae (Mylonas 1973) provide clear examples of the

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Middle Bronze Age separation of funerary and domestic grounds, even though they preserve no intramural contexts.

Pefkakia At Pefkakia, a few graves of children and adults have been uncovered in Trench EF VIII within the Middle Helladic settlement, but it is uncertain in which layers they were constructed (Maran 1992: 34–5). On the basis of current evidence, there is no pattern of intramural burials of any date at Pefkakia and the excavated graves were constructed after the last Middle Helladic building phase (Maran 1994: 209).

Messenia and Laconia Research on the burial customs of Messenia conducted by Boyd (2002: 33) has documented burials both in cemeteries and in settlements. The site of Malthi yielded 32 Middle Helladic burials of which 31 were found within the settlement (Valmin 1938: 192). These included a large number of child burials placed in the masonry of walls. Some of the burials at Malthi postdate the buildings in which they are located, while others were found at the same depth as the floor of the associated building and might be contemporary with or postdate the building’s use. At Ayios Stephanos, 74 Middle Helladic graves of various types were found, most of them of adults, many of them disarticulated (Taylour & Janko 2008: 142). From the available information it appears that these graves were most likely placed in abandoned structures of the settlement. Boyd (2002: 35) proposed that intra-settlement burials such as those seen at Ayios Stephanos arise from the desire to retain affinity with ancestors.

Keos and Euboea Ayia Irini on Keos provides the main comparative evidence from the Cyclades for Middle Helladic practices (Overbeck 1989). There are three successive burial areas outside the settlement IV (Overbeck 1989: 205, pl. 3). A total of 25 graves from these areas were jar burials, cist graves, stone-built structures and simple pits surrounded by stone platforms (Overbeck 1989: 184, figs. 18–22). The one intramural burial that has been securely identified in the settlement is furnished with ceremonial facilities, which points to organised funerary celebrations. The burials at Ayia Irini IV are infant and child burials while the cemetery of adults has not yet been discovered. Remains of adults that have been found so far have included only scattered bones recovered in various locations within the settlement (Overbeck 1989: 189). Within the habitation area of Kaloyerovrysi on Euboea a small complex of Middle Helladic graves sur-

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rounded by stone paving made of large slabs has been uncovered at the edge of the excavated area, but according to the excavator it cannot be considered part of the settlement’s cemetery (Sampson 1993: 155, figs. 23–4).

Challenges to the intramural burial model The hitherto reviewed data provide no indisputable examples of simultaneous use of intramural graves and houses of Middle Helladic date, and for that reason, I propose that the question of the contemporaneity of Middle Helladic domestic and intramural funerary remains should be reconsidered. A conclusive answer will require accurate description of the contexts, the use of a consistent terminology and stratigraphic information documenting the process of grave construction, the elevations of graves, foundations and floors, possible disturbances and the character of the grave fills. Some recent discoveries and studies (Nordquist 1987; Maran 1995; Hielte-Stavropoulou 2004; Milka 2010) have already revealed problems with the traditional model of intramural burials. Some of the difficulties with the intramural model can be characterised as follows:

Stratigraphical considerations – – – – –

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Burials within the masonry of stone foundations (Malthi). Graves inside houses and incorporating parts of the house masonry as one or two of their sides (Kirrha, Malthi), which would be visible to the house residents. Pithos burials and burials covered by jar fragments at the same depth as the house floors (Orchomenos), which would sometimes project into the living space. Graves constructed at a much greater height than the house floors (Orchomenos, Lianokladi). Graves covered by piles of soil, stones, gravel or successive pavings (Orchomenos, Eutresis, Ayia Irini, Kaloyerovrysi), sometimes with markers that projected as much as 0.50 m above the graves (Lerna). Graves constructed much deeper than the architectural remains (Orchomenos, Lerna, Aspis, and the so-called tumulus B in Argos).

Spatial considerations – –

Lack of consistency of grave location in respect to the settlement pattern (Sarri 2010: 52). Lack of orientation of graves in relation to the house plan, particularly in respect to funerary ceremonies and the use of the living space.

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The scarcity of the intramural burial pattern with respect to the many extensive and well-preserved house contexts of several architectural phases. An excessive number of graves inside houses, for example as many as nine in one room at Peristeria. The existence of multiple and complex spatial models, at least three for the same social group, specifically graves in house interiors, built in architectural structures and in open areas of the settlement (Asine, Argos, Eleusis). Concurrent use of intra-settlement burials and external cemeteries (Eleusis, Asine, Argos, Ayia Irini, Thebes) and the attested continuity of burying in Early Helladic cemeteries and tumuli (Asine, Thebes, Lerna, Kastroulia, Corinth). Lack of age differentiation between settlement burials and cemeteries (Eleusis, Prosymna, Argos), most notably the presence of child burials in both locations. Lack of social status differentiation between internal and external cemeteries (Eleusis, Asine, Argos), attested by the presence of many graves without any offerings next to rich burials. The existence of burial grounds in open spaces of the inhabited areas (Asine, Kirrha, Lerna, Barbouna, Thebes), without differentiation by age or status. Establishment of new burial grounds within the ruins of settlements and the expansion of cemeteries into the sites (Orchomenos, Barbouna, Pefkakia).

Hygienic considerations For reasons of hygiene, it would be unexpected for a burial to be placed in a living space in unsealed floors unless chemical agents were used to prepare the body. To address this problem posed by intramural burial, there have been suggestions that the bodies might have been embalmed (see above; Frödin & Persson 1938: 351) and that after burial the houses might have been abandoned and left to the dead (Rose 1925: 128). Difficulties are presented by suggested parallels that are not stratigraphically and contextually comparable, such as examples from the Aegean Neolithic (Perlès 2001; Triantafyllou 2008), and from contexts located far away from the Aegean region (Naumov 2007).

Cultural considerations The practice of widespread intramural burial has no parallel in Aegean prehistory, neither from earlier nor later periods. Neolithic examples are comparably few, do not form a specific spatial pattern and have been called into doubt (Perlès 2001). Proposed ethnological parallels have been drawn from communities at different cultural stages, with lifestyles that were probably closer to nature, sometimes nomadic (Mellaart 1967: 204), in dissimilar climates or interacting with buildings of a cultic character (Wide-

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ngren 1969: 411–2). A direct comparison of the Middle Helladic burial practices with ethnographic data has not been attempted. If we were to accept the intramural model, the development of the Middle Helladic societies into those of the Mycenaean era would present an apparent reversal: the well-organised Early Helladic cemeteries with family tombs would have been replaced by disordered burials inside living quarters in the Middle Helladic, a period of increasing wealth and developing social stratification which led to the establishment of elites in the last Middle Helladic phase. In the Middle Helladic period the strongly built and large buildings arranged in quarters around communal spaces, the roads, and occasionally fortifications reveal a spatial hierarchy and planning with proto-urban features.

Chronological considerations No intramural burials with grave goods have been conclusively dated to the middle phase of the Middle Helladic. This gap is difficult to see in such regions as the Argolid, where Matt-Painted pottery continues to dominate from Middle Helladic II to Middle Helladic III with a new shape repertoire. In Boeotia, on the other hand, where some of the most extensive Middle Helladic settlements like Orchomenos, Eutresis and Thebes have yielded rich architectural remains and some hundreds of graves, it is clear that the classical Minyan phase (Middle Helladic II) is missing from the settlement burials. At these Boeotian sites, at least, burials of the main, middle or classical Middle Helladic II phase are likely to be found in external cemeteries.

Conclusions The model of Middle Helladic intramural graves has been puzzling and disputed in some aspects, and has led to inconsistencies and controversial statements in the scholarly literature. In the light of new observations and discoveries, intramural burials today seem paradoxical and in my opinion they should be treated more critically, if not completely dismissed. The most crucial flaw in the analysis of Middle Helladic burial data is that information about the locations of the graves is based mainly on ground plans, and the third dimension is usually ignored or neglected. Stratigraphic drawings which would clarify the relationship between buildings and graves are often unpublished. A number of scholars have felt compelled to accept the intramural model despite stratigraphic or logical problems it entails. Once the model became dominant, scholars expressed little concern about the idea of dead children placed inside masonry or in pithoi and pits inside houses.

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The invasion of tribes into Greece is a topic often brought into studies of Middle Helladic burial practices. It is likely, however, that assumptions about the introduction of burial practices from outside Greece were developed in support of the ‘arrival of the Indo-Europeans’ which was placed at the beginning of the second millennium BCE (Mylonas 1930: 6). There has also been a reluctance to raise the topic of burial mounds because of a concern that it would lead to a revival of the Kurgan hypothesis (Gimbutas 1956) and the arrival of people from the Pontic steppe (Korres 2011: 586). At Voidokoilia and Lerna, the establishment of Middle Helladic tumuli on top of the Εarly Ηelladic settlement may reflect a tradition of covering abandoned settlements with burial mounds, potentially a symbolic practice intended to create collective memory. This Early Bronze Age phenomenon persists in the Middle Helladic, when tumuli are found in the earliest phases of the period at sites which have been identified as secondary centres in the Late Helladic (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 35). The prevalence of intramural child burials should be disassociated from the issue of the existence of intramural burials. The demography of the human society and the society of the dead are not exactly parallel, which means that one cannot expect that the same population groups (age, gender and social class) are reflected in burial grounds. The high frequency of intra-settlement child burials can be explained by increased child mortality or by the custom of burying infants and children in special locations, and it could also coincide with the rise of particular social roles for children, who were as a consequence buried in graves set apart from those of adults (Nordquist & Ingvarsson-Sundström 2005: 164). This image is supported by the wealth of grave goods in child graves during the Shaft Grave period (Lebegyev 2009: 28). The strong presence of child burials within a settlement is still a puzzle, but there is an Early Neolithic analogy of uncanonical child burials situated at the boundaries of settlements. In her study of the Neolithic burials, Perlès came to the conclusion that our view of Early Neolithic intra-settlement burials has focused on exceptions to the rule (Perlès 2011) and I tend to believe that the same could hold true for Middle Helladic burials.

New interpretations of Middle Helladic intramural burial While there are some regional differences in the frequencies and spatial patterns of Middle Helladic burials, the evidence does not support the interpretation that intramural burials were the main burial custom of the Middle Helladic period. The model proposed is that the dead of the Middle Helladic were buried in external cemeteries as in the Early Helladic period and quite possibly at the same locations. Graves located very close to buildings belong to mortuary complexes in open spaces, and burials usually interpreted as intramural are extensions of inhabited space onto burial grounds or vice versa extensions of the cemeteries onto former living quarters. Middle Helladic communities may have had practical as well as symbolic reasons for selecting old built areas for new burial grounds. Ruined settlements provided

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building material that facilitated the construction of burial mounds, burial markers, and cist graves, allowed for better drainage by consolidating the soils and preventing erosion in the case of simple pits opened into soft earth. Moreover, the deceased buried within the settlements may have been associated with the site of their burial during their lifetime (e.g. place of residence or birth). An emotional connection with place and its history, and ancestral worship created a desire to maintain the community’s traditions, which were mirrored in the choice of the burial grounds. Collective identity and memory was likely enhanced when the living and the dead ‘met’ at ancestral places which served as cross-generational links.

Directions for future research While the use of proper terminology is important for the study of burial practices of the Middle Helladic period, it is also necessary to evaluate the life trajectory of the Μiddle Helladic settlements and their ‘conversation’ with associated burial places. The current indistinct picture has led us sometimes to wrong dates and has not helped our understanding of Middle Helladic communities and their activities just before the Late Helladic period. The testimony of a general abandonment of settlements in the last phase of the Middle Bronze Age in particular deserves further attention. Possible causes of the abandonment include the lack of security and the concentration of power by elite groups in efforts to ensure peace and prosperity during the Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic IIA period. After the abandonment of the settlements the old habitation spaces were used as burial grounds and the inhabitants may have fled to the central authority of the Mycenaean citadels. This scenario would provide an explanation of why we can rarely identify intramural burials of the Middle Helladic II period in spite of the large number of Middle Bronze Age intra-settlement burials. The usual explanation is that these graves did not contain any grave goods, but it could also be the case that there were no intramural burials during the Middle Helladic II period and that settlements were used only for the living. In respect to the new model proposed here, graves of the Middle Helladic II period must have been contained in external cemeteries or in open areas of the settlements. If these Middle Helladic cemeteries or their Early Helladic predecessors took the form of tumuli, they may have been situated in different locations on hilltops, on slopes or at the base of hills near the plains (Pelon 1976: 99). In contrast with the great regional variation of Early Helladic funerary practices, those of the Middle Helladic show a general homogeneity from Messenia to central Greece and up to Thessaly and Macedonia. In all regions there are intramural burials, external cemeteries, and tumuli as well as funerary grounds constructed on top of the ruins of settlements. The prevalence of some types over others is probably related to the stage of research at each site. The reconstruction presented here contributes several new proposals to the understanding of the Middle Helladic period:

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There is a solid cultural continuity from the Early Helladic period, since the use of cemeteries and tumuli continues to the Middle Bronze Age (Thebes, Asine, Corinth, Kastroulia). Middle Helladic settlement burials are not associated with a peculiar burial custom requiring a complex interpretation, but with the general abandonment of settlements and the converting of previously inhabited areas into cemeteries during Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic IIA. There is a close linkage between the community and the former inhabited space, and the spatial symbolism acquires great significance for the strengthening of social cohesion.

As to the question of why and where the inhabitants of many settlements moved at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, one possible hypothesis is that they moved into premises which met the requirements of the new era in regards to social organisation and security. These new habitation areas were likely to have been the earliest buildings on the Mycenaean citadels. The remains of these citadels, situated under the later Mycenaean ruins and to a great extent destroyed by them, have not been sufficiently explored. By reviewing the scholarship concerning Middle Helladic burial customs, we can see interpretations trying to create a single entrenched image of a society characterised by stagnation and primitivism. Our present views of the burial practices and the history of the Middle Helladic settlements allow an alternative picture of the social fabric which appears less exceptional, more quickly developing than before, gradually introducing new forms of better organised burial spaces. In conclusion, it is difficult to see the domestication of death in Middle Helladic society as something more than the product of scholarly misunderstanding. Acknowledgements: I owe many thanks to Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and Michael Boyd for including this paper in the present volume. I am grateful to Michael Cosmopoulos, Soren Dietz, Anna Lagia, Ioanna Moutafi and Raphaël Orgeolet for reading earlier versions of the paper. Many discussions on Middle Helladic burial customs with colleagues over several years led me to the conclusions expressed in this paper. I owe many thanks to Oliver Dickinson, Josef Maran, Sofia Voutsaki and Anna PhilippaTouchais for their time and for sharing their views with me.

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Mylonas, G.E., 1973. Ὁ ταφικὸς κύκλος Β τῶν Μυκηνῶν (Βιβλιοθήκη τῆς ἐν Ἀθήναις Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας, 73). Athens: Archaeological Society. Mylonas, G. E., 1975. Τό Δυτικὸν Νεκροταφεῖον τῆς Ἐλευ-σ-νος. Athens: Archaeological Society of Athens. Naumov, G., 2007. Housing the dead: burials inside houses and vessels in the Neolithic Balkans. In Cult in Context, eds. Malone, C. & D. Barrowclough. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 255–65. Nordquist, G. C., 1987. A Middle Helladic Village: Asine in the Argolid. Uppsala: Academia Ubsaliensis. Overbeck, G. F., 1989. The cemeteries and the graves. In Keos VII. Ayia Irini: Period IV. The Stratigraphy and the Find Deposits, ed. Overbeck, J. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 184–205. Papadimitriou, N., 2010. Attica in the Middle Helladic Period. In Mesohelladika. La Grèce continentale au Bronze Moyen, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance Hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 243–257. Pelon, O. 1976. Tholoi, tumuli et cercles funéraires. Recherches sur les monuments funéraires de plan circulaire dans l’Egée de l’âge du bronze (IIIe et IIe millénaires avant J.-C.). Athens: Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome. Perlès, C., 2001. The Early Neolithic in Greece: the First Farming Communities in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Philippa-Touchais, A., 2013. Les tombes intra-muros de l’Helladique Moyen à la lumière des fouilles de l’Aspis d’Argos. In Sur les pas de Wilhelm Vollgraff. Cent ans d’activités archéologiques à Argos, eds. Mulliez, D. & A. Banaka-Dimaki. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 75–100. Protonotariou-Deilaki, E., 2009. Οι Τύμβοι του Άργους. Athens: Eforeia of Palaeoanthropology and Speleology of Southern Greece. Pullen, D., 1990. Early Helladic burials and Early Bronze Age mortuary practices. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid: Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 11–13 June, 1988, eds. Hägg, R. & G. C. Nordquist, Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 9–12. Rose, H. J., 1925. Primitive Culture in Greece. London: Methuen. Rutter, J. B., 2003. Corinth and the Corinthia in the second millennium B.C. Old approaches, new problems. In Corinth, The Centenary: 1896–1996, eds. Williams, C. K. & N. Bookidis, Corinth XX. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 75–83. Sampson, Α., 1993. Καλογερόβρυση: Ένας Οικισμός της Πρώιμης και Μέσης Χαλκοκρατίας στα Φύλλα της Εύβοιας, Athens: Morfi. Sarri, K., 2010. Orchomenos IV: Orchomenos in der mittleren Bronzezeit, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Abhandlungen, n. F. 135. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Sarri, K. & S. Voutsaki, 2011. The Argos tumuli: a re-examination. In Ancestral Landscapes in Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans -Adriatic-Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium B.C., eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée – Jean Pouillou, 433–43. Soteriades, G., 1902. Ἀνασκαφαὶ δύο τύμβων παρὰ τῆν Χαιρώνειαν. Πρακτικὰ τῆς ἐν Ἀθήναις Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας 57, 53–9. Stais, V., 1895. Προïστορικοὶ οἰκισμοὶ ἐν Ἀττικῇ καὶ Αἰγίνῃ. Ἀρχαιολογικὴ Ἐφημερὶς 34, 193–263. Taylor, W. D. & R. Janko, 2008. Ayios Stephanos. Excavations at a Bronze Age and Medieval Settlement in Southern Laconia, Supplementary Volume 44. London: The British School at Athens. Touchais, G., 1998. Argos à l‘époque mésohelladique: un habitat ou des habitats? In Argos et l’Argolide: Topographie et Urbanisme, eds. Pariente, A. & G. Touchais. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 71–8.

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Triantafyllou, S., 2008. Living with the dead: a re-consideration of mortuary practices in the Greek Neolithic. In Escaping the Labyrinth: the Cretan Neolithic In Context, eds. Isaakidou, V. & P. Tomkins, Sheffield Studies in Aegean Archaeology 8. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 139–57. Tsountas, C., 1908. Aἱ Προϊστορικαὶ Ἀκροπόλεις Διμηνίου καὶ Σέσκλου. Athens: Archaeological Society. Valmin, M. N., 1938. The Swedish Messenia Expedition, Acta regiae societatis humaniorum litterarum lundensis XXVI. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup. Vermeule, E. T., 1964. Greece in the Bronze Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Voutsaki, S., 1997. The creation of value and prestige in the Aegean Late Bronze Age. Journal of European Archaeology 5, 34–52. Voutsaki, S., S. Dietz & A. J. Nijboer 2009. Radiocarbon analysis and the history of the East Cemetery, Asine. Opuscula Atheniensia 2, 31–56. Voutsaki, S., E. Milka, S. Triandaphyllou & C. Zerner, 2013. Middle Helladic Lerna: diet, economy, society. In Diet, Economy and Society in the Ancient Greek World, eds. S. Voutsaki & S.-M. Valamoti. Leuven: Peeters. Voutsaki, S., A. J. Nijboer, A. Philippa-Touchais, G. Touchais & S. Triantafyllou, 2006. Analyses of Middle Helladic skeletal material from Aspis, Argos. Radiocarbon analysis of human remains. Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 130 (2), 613–25. Voutsaki, S., A. Ingvarsson-Sundström & S. Dietz, 2011. Tumuli and social status: a re-examination of the Asine tumulus. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans -Adriatic-Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium B.C., eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée – Jean Pouilloux, 445–61. Vranopoulos, E. A., 1967. Τάφοι τῆς μεσοελλαδικῆς περιόδου καὶ ταφικὰ ἔθιμα αυτῆς. In Χαριστήριον εἰς Ἀναστάσιον Κ. Ὀρλάνδον ΙΙΙ, ed. Nikolaidi-Gavrili, M. Athens: Archaeological Society at Athens, 280–94. Wace, A. J. B. & M. S. Thompson, 1912. Prehistoric Thessaly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weiberg, E., 2007. Thinking the Bronze Age: Life and Death in Early Helladic Greece, Boreas: Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 29. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. Wide, S., 1896. Aphidna in Nordattika. Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung 21, 385–409. Widengren, G., 1969. Religionsphänomenologie, Berlin: De Gruyter. Zerner, C. W., 1990. Ceramics and ceremony: pottery and burials from Lerna in the Middle and Early Late Bronze Ages. In Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid: Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute at Athens, 11–13 June, 1988, eds. Hägg, R. & G. C. Nordquist, Stockholm: Paul Åströms Förlag, 23–34.

Kate Harrell

The Practice of Funerary Destruction in the Southwest Peloponnese The political geography of the southwest Peloponnese was rewritten throughout Late Helladic IIIA and into Late Helladic IIIB, the floruit of the Palace of Nestor (Bennet 1999). Using various types of data, including Linear B textual records, survey evidence and excavation information, Bennet (1995: 596–601, pl. LXXI) has suggested a model of systematic hegemonic domination on the part of Pylos within the wider region during this period. The site histories of Beylerbey and Ordines are one example of the divergent trajectories that Bennet (1999) interprets as being guided by the invisible hand of the Palace of Nestor. Beylerbey may be associated with one of the earliest known tholoi, but throughout the Late Helladic III period, settlement development was not pronounced in terms of geographic expansion or the consumption of material wealth. In contrast, the site of Ordines flourished in Late Helladic III in spite of having an unremarkable early history and no tholos. Ordines was not in competition with Pylos in the way that Beylerbey was, and thus benefited from a closer relationship with the Palace (see also Nakassis 2013: 181–2). Other sites like Beylerbey also had their tholoi go out of use, presumably because these sites were similarly eclipsed by the Palace of Nestor. The most striking examples of this are tholoi IV (Late Helladic I-IIIB) and III (Late Helladic II-IIIB) at Pylos itself. Blegen et al. (1973: 77) recall: “[…] We were led to wonder if tomb III had for some unknown reason been sacked, plundered, and ruthlessly destroyed by enemies, for we had never seen in eastern Peloponnesos the utter annihilation displayed at Kato Englianos […] however [tholos IV at Pylos] seem[ed] to have suffered a similar grim fate, apparently in late Mycenaean times”. The excavators note that the level of destruction cannot be attributed to natural phenomena, such as an earthquake, or even the inadvertent wreckage of theft: tholos III was left ‘topsy-turvy and [with] crush[ed…] human bones in […] scattered fragments and splinters’ (Blegen et al. 1973: 78), while the remains of tholos IV indicate that the structure itself was partially dismantled, as the tomb did not contain all of the stones from the collapsed dome. Indeed, Lord William Taylour mentions this utter destruction as one of the ‘three enigmas to which it is difficult to give a satisfactory answer’ (Blegen et al. 1973: 109). That two wealthy tombs containing the remains of preeminent local families could be intentionally destroyed on the Palace of Nestor’s watch clearly baffled the excavators (Blegen et al. 1973: 78–9). Since then, a deeper understanding of the site history has put the demolition of tholos III and IV in perspective; the new construction of the palace in Late Helladic IIIB included the abandonment of the entrance at room 41 on the northwest side and the whole reorientation of the site to the southwest, which included the construction of a new main entrance at Propy-

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lon 1 (Blegen et al. 2001: 37). The ‘enemies’ that Blegen and his team identified were the Pylians themselves. We may conclude that the destruction of tholoi III and IV are material manifestations of the social ascendency of the Palace of Nestor, similar to the constraint put on the site of Beylerbey. Nevertheless, it seems that the wholesale destruction of tholoi III and IV and the sealing off of the old entrance at room 41 are redundant activities. Tearing down tholos IV so that the dome could never be reerected and systematically destroying tholos III were sufficient to end the use of these monuments as tombs. Yet the Palace of Nestor could have downplayed the significance of these ancient sites by reorienting the direction by which passers-by arrive at the site and by the sheer impressiveness of the new and expansive Late Helladic IIIB palace, without having to go through the effort of physically destroying the tholoi. The histories of Beylerbey and Ordines can be interpreted in a similar way: the Palace did not need both to suppress Beylerbey and foster Ordines. When discussing the palatial manufacture of objets d’art Bennet (2008: 161) notes that pieces “seem […] to have belonged to a Mycenaean ‘aesthetic’ that juxtaposed carved, subtractive with cast, additive materials”. Bennet’s description of a local affinity for the pairing of the made and the unmade, along with the sense that the combination of opposites reinforces the meaning of the other, may be part of a larger pattern or tradition spanning the entire Mycenaean period. We will return to this aesthetic again throughout this chapter, since in many of the examples presented here, there is a distinct emphasis on the idea that in order to create something new, something old must be in one way or another destroyed. This chapter focuses on the practice of intentional destruction of objects— predominately swords, but including other material culture, and even tholoi—in order to understand how the practice of destruction was a multivalent strategy spanning the earliest Mycenaean deposits in the southwest Peloponnese (the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’, Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I) through Late Helladic IIIB. As will be argued, the individual methods of physical destruction are as diverse as the various meanings that the act expressed, suggesting that different groups made use of material destruction throughout the period. We begin our survey of object destruction at the Palace of Nestor, from which we have textual records indicating that the Palace preserved certain items so damaged as to be no longer useable. Building on the work of Palaima (2003), Bennet (2008) discusses cauldrons and tripods mentioned in the Linear B tablets, heirlooms first created in Neopalatial Crete and imported to mainland Greece in the early Mycenaean period—Palaima (2003: 191) identifies the cauldron from Shaft Grave IV with a Linear A inscription as one such example—and still later obviously treasured by the Palace of Nestor. Tablets PY Ta 641 and 709, part of a series inventorying the implements of a state sacrifice, register six vessels, two of which are wholly broken, one with legs that were burnt away and the other with two legs missing (Bennet 2008: 154; Palaima 2003: 198). While working on the inscriptions of the Ta series, the footless and burnt tripods were a red flag for Leonard Palmer, who regarded these objects (together with the other

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items listed in the series including furniture, tables and the like) as grave goods,1 thus arguing that the Ta tablets were a tomb inventory (Palmer 1957; 1960); some of his exegeses were incorporated into Documents in Mycenaean Greek (Palmer 1960: 60). Palmer’s suggestion received criticism almost straightaway (Gray 1959; 1960), and later the idea that the Ta tablets inventory a state sacrifice superseded Palmer’s initial interpretation (Killen 1998). Since Palmer’s article, the world of the Linear B tablets has been highly elucidated; now we know that the tablets are exclusively concerned with inventorying palatial holdings and doings. The very idea of scribes being sent to tombs in the countryside with stylus and tablet in hand with the aim of recording their contents, or checking off items as pieces passed by on their way to the grave during a funeral, is practically incompatible with our understanding of the role of writing in Mycenaean society. The factors, which Palmer weighs to make his assessment that the Ta series tallies grave goods, are echoes from an earlier era of scholarship, when Michael Ventris was still alive and finds like the Dendra panoply had only just come to light (Palmer 1960: 58). For Palmer (1960: 59–60), the most conclusive pieces of evidence that the Ta tablets reflect tomb contents, rather than the furniture of a palatial reception room, are the accounts of the damaged tripods and two swords (qi-si-pe-e). Why would the Palace of Nestor want these items? How these objects—some of them so broken as to be useless—could relate to the tables, chairs, and cooking implements recorded on the other Ta tablets was unfathomable to Palmer, if not for being part of the same funerary assemblage. While I do not dispute the interpretation that the Ta tablets record a state sacrifice, Palmer’s underlying supposition, that ‘battered […] antiques’ (to borrow a phrase from Broodbank 2013: 500) are more apropos of the grave than the Palace, has gone unchallenged (Åström 1987). This gloss, in turn, makes it hard to understand the novelty with which the Palace of Nestor went about subverting Bennet’s (2008: 161) aesthetic for its own purposes.

Bent and broken swords in the southwest Peloponnese: the evidence We can use the objects that piqued Palmer’s interest, the swords, as guideposts in our exploration of intentional destruction in the mortuary sphere, since this artefact class offers many benefits. For one thing, intentionally destroyed blades are among both the earliest and the latest damaged objects to be found; swords are bent or broken throughout the Mycenaean period, from Middle Helladic III until Late Helladic IIIB2. Swords are a popular grave gift throughout the era, particularly for individuals buried

1 Palaima (2004: 233) rejects Palmer’s tomb inventory interpretation, in part because in the earlier article Palmer (1957) never discusses Ta 716.

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in tholoi; thus we have many specimens from graves throughout the region. Swords are also more consistently destroyed than other types of grave gifts, such as vessels or jewellery (although cf. Boyd 2015). Finally, their manufacture in bronze allows us to be relatively certain of the fact that blades were intentionally rather than accidentally destroyed, betraying human intent. Each of these factors has reciprocal drawbacks, of course, which will become clear. The most acute problem, however, is that by focusing on one artefact class others are overshadowed, and, as always, more data are needed, although research on the intentional destruction of objects is fraught with issues (Harrell & Driessen 2015). [Table 1] lists the swords and Schlachtmesser (single edged swords) in the southwest Peloponnese that are in some way damaged or broken. The Pylos ‘Grave Circle’ remains are the earliest interments and preserve a diversity of practices, some of which continue throughout the Mycenaean period and others of which do not, underscoring the experimental nature of this monument. Pit 3 SE contained four Type A swords and one Schlachtmesser in nearly complete condition except for broken tangs and missing tips. The Type A blade is structurally weakest at the tang; the breakages in pit 3 SE may have been the inevitable but not intentional result of this fault. Likewise, the missing tip could be from normal sword fighting wear-and-tear. In other areas of this grave, pit 1, pit 3 NE, and pit 4, all of the Type A swords were bent, three at a 90° angle and CM 2182 at 45°. The Schlachtmesser in pits 1 and 4 are missing their tips and CM 2192 a handle fragment; however, the Schlachtmesser in pit 3 NE is in pristine condition. In the case of Schlachtmesser, broken hafts are less easy to attribute to a structural flaw, since these areas are not unduly weak in the same way that Type A tangs are. Archaeologists are apt to have varying opinions on broken swords: a conservative view would suggest that much of the damage to the tang and tip were the unintended consequences of use, or even the effect of centuries of interment. On the other hand, the fact that all the swords in pit 3 SE had broken tips and tangs may strike others as meaningful, although the significance of this deposit is still unclear. What is interesting about the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’ is that we have earlier swords that were not bent and later swords that were. This suggests that the practice of bending swords was introduced during the use of this monument. Indeed, there are other finds from the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’ that indicates that people are reconsidering the appropriate way to inter objects —and even individuals—in the tomb: in pit 4 a gold diadem was found torn and crumpled in four pieces, each deposited in a distinct area of the pit (Blegen et al. 1973: 147). In pit 3 a palatial jar was repaired before interment; fragments preserve drill holes and lead. Inside was found a human skull (Kalogeropoulos 2011: 210). Nearby a skeleton was dismembered before being placed in a pithos, the mouth of which was sealed by a circular stone that was broken in half (Blegen et al. 1973: 143–4), while in pit 2 a body was laid out supine (Blegen et al. 1973: 142). The swords of pit 3 NE, besides being bent, were carefully positioned; one was oriented ‘with its tip pointing up at the heavens’ (Blegen et al. 1973: 136), whereas another was placed in the opposite direction, its tip embedded deeper in the soil (Blegen et al. 1973: 138, 145).

Circle’

Pylos, ‘Grave

MH III-LH I

LH I

LH I-II

Pit 3 (NE)

Pit 4

MH III

Date

Pit 1

Pit 3 (SE)

Site Found and Context Unk. Blegen et al. 1973: 159-60.

Sword split along midrib and broken at tang.

2187

CM 2184,

CM 2183

CM 2182

2013

2005,

CM 2186,

CM 2089

CM 2192

159-60.

at tang and tip.

Schl. blade tip missing.

Sword bent at 90° angle and broken.

Sword bent at 90° angle.

167.

Blegen et al. 1973:

163-4.

Blegen et al. 1973:

163-4.

Blegen et al. 1973:

163-4.

Blegen et al. 1973:

157. Sword bent at 45° angle.

Blegen et al. 1973: missing.

157.

Blegen et al. 1973:

159-60.

Blegen et al. 1973:

Blegen et al. 1973:

Schl. blade tip and handle fragment

broken at tang.

Sword bent at 90° angle and

Schl. blade tip missing.

Blegen et al. 1973:

Sword split along midrib and broken

CM 2198

159-60.

at tang.

159-60.

Sword split along midrib and broken

Blegen et al. 1973:

Reference

Description

2103

CM 2195

Schl.

CM 2196,

E

Sword broken at tang.

D

CM 2189

CM 2188

A

Type (by Museum No. , if known)

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Table 1: List of bent or fragmented swords and Schlachtmesser in the southwest Peloponnese. Italics indicate the blade was found in fragments. NM 7849, the flanged tang, may, however, be from a knife, not from this sword (cf. Blegen et al. 1973: 84).

(Routsi)

Myrsinochori

niche in

floor

chamber

at center of

male burial

with adult

Tholos 2,

(chamber)

tholos wall

LH II-IIIA:1

LH I-IIA

LH I

MH III-LH I

Peristeria, small built tomb Tholos 1,

Date

Site Found and Context Unk.

168 gamma.

tang broken. Burnt.

CM

CM 672

Sword with broken haft.

handle and flanges broken off.

Incomplete Schl. in three fragments;

Schl. broken.

CM 671

Schl. in two fragments.

Schl. blade tip missing. CM 659

CM

Schl. in four fragments.

Sword split along midrib.

Sword split along midrib.

CM 667

into S-shape.

Sword split along midrib and bent

Tripathi 1988: #909.

Tripathi 1988: #1075.

Tripathi 1988: #1076.

Tripathi 1988: #1074.

Tripathi 1988: #1077.

Tripathi 1988: #1073.

Tripathi 1988: #903.

Tripathi 1988: #900.

Tripathi 1988: #902.

Tripathi 1988: #901.

Tripathi 1988: #904.

Lolos 2007: 77.

Korres 1977: 312, pl.

Sword bent at 90° angle, tip and

Sword bent at 90° angle.

Reference

Description

Sword fragmented in ten pieces.

CM

Schl.

CM 658

E

Sword broken.

CM 2471

D

CM 666

CM

1

1

A

Type (by Museum No. , if known)

144 Kate Harrell

Chamber

Stomion

Pylos, Archive Room 7

Pylos, Tholos IV

LH IIIB:2

LH III

LH I-III

LH IIIA:2

Nichoria, UMME Tholos, pit 3

LH IIA

LH II-IIIB

Tholos C

Tholos B

LH IIA

Date

Pylos, Tholos III, chamber

Kakovatos

Tholos A

Site Found and Context Schl.

122.

Museums: CM=Chora Museum, NM=National Museum

1966: 95.

Blegen & Rawson

1966: 95.

Blegen & Rawson

1966: 94-5. which join. Appears to have been bent before fragmentation.

Blegen & Rawson fragments. In five pieces, not all of

Sword originally found in 18

Blegen et al. 1973: over lengthwise.

Blegen et al. 1973: 111.

1978: #1008.

McDonald & Wilkie

Blegen et al. 1973: 84.

Müller 1909: 300-1.

Müller 1909: 298-9.

Müller 1909: 291-2.

Reference

Sword fragment, crushed and folded

Sword fragment.

Sword bent at 90° angle.

joining).*

Sword in four fragments (two

Sword(?) tip and rivets only.

Sword bent and in fragments.

daggers.

Fragments of two different swords or

Description

Sword fragment?

NM 7792

E

NM 7788

D

Sword fragment?

1

A

Frag.

Frag.

Frag.

1

7853

7844,

NM

Frag.

2 frags.

Unk.

Type (by Museum No. , if known)

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The Pylos swords are not isolated examples from a single grave; at Peristeria at around the same time, a Type A sword with its tang and tip missing was interred. This example was also bent at a 90° angle and may have been burnt as well. At Routsi tholos 1 a bent Type A sword was found in a niche in the chamber wall together with the remains of a helmet or crown as well as metal vessels. By Late Helladic IIIA1, every one of the 11 swords from Routsi tholos 2 was also damaged, but in unexpected ways. Only one was bent, although not at a right angle; instead this artefact was twisted into an S-shape. Two other Type A swords were split along the midrib and the other two were broken. The Schlachtmesser from this grave were either broken or missing fragments as well, and the Type D sword had a broken haft. The case of the sword from Kakovatos tholos B serves as a stark reminder that how we treat objects after excavation may in time eclipse how we view the object’s original state of preservation, making the study of the intentional destruction of objects all the more difficult. As Boyd (2015: 155) discusses, the hazards of reassembling of fragments with the intention of returning objects to a state of ‘perfection’ are acute. Müller’s report (1909: 298) on the state of the tholos B blade notes that it was found highly fragmented and weathered; it was also bent (‘in der Mitte verbogen’). It was during the repair of this object that the bent fragment was replaced by a fabricated straight join (“Beim Zusammensetzen wurde das mittelste, gekrümmte Stück durch einen gerade gerichteten Abguss ersetzt”, Muller 1909: 298), which is how it remains today as displayed at the National Museum and depicted in Sandars (1961: Fig. 17:2; see also Buchholz & Karageorghis 1973: 58, #704). When Müller excavated the tholos B sword, the bent comparanda from the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’, Routsi, Peristeria and Nichoria were decades away from discovery. Müller may have turned to the Vapheio tholos, which contained a sword that is—perhaps uncharacteristically for this region—not bent, to understand the Kakovatos assemblage (although see the tomb of the ‘Griffin Warrior’ sword2). We are fortunate indeed that Müller even recorded the fact that the team forged a straight join when they curated the blade. To this author’s knowledge, there are no photographs or drawings of the sword as it was originally found, and so the bent form of the Kakovatos tholos B sword will be forever unknown to us.

Bending and breaking: performances in context We could certainly interpret the diversity of practices outlined as part of the changing conceptualisation of death, which had the material effect of communities experimenting with mortuary activities. Part of the changes in funerary practice at this time included articulating differences between the spheres of the living and the dead. This expression was emphasised to a degree through acts of appropriation; for example,

2 www.griffinwarrior.org.

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the tholos at Voïdokoilia was built into a Middle Helladic tumulus (Bennet 1995: 596– 7). It is evident from the complex stratigraphy of the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’ that people returned to this monument again and again to inter the deceased or furnish new grave offerings, move things around, open new pits, and so on. Considering that this type of enmeshed communal burial was still quite new, perhaps mourners were concerned that the things they left for their loved one would be appropriated by others, separated from the deceased, or the objects would in some way find themselves out of place. The mourners may have had greater concerns than just their loved one’s claim of ownership; the changing perception of death may have meant that once dedicated to the tomb, objects subsequently carried with them a miasma of the grave. Perhaps the bending of swords is an extension of this type of message sending: the bent shape is a visible designator to others that the object belongs to the realm of the dead and needs to be handled with care. This may be the case with the Routsi tholos 1 sword as well. Found bent and deposited in a niche in the wall of the tholos underneath the foundations (Lolos 2007: 77)—a context so secretive that the niche was not discovered for decades after the primary excavation of the monument (Marinatos 1957; Boyd 2002: 154)—the find spot suggests that the sword was bent and buried in this space with the intention that it should remain with the structure permanently, becoming part of the very fabric of the tomb space. There is a subsequent shift in the state of the evidence from the later Mycenaean period. Except for the Routsi S-bent sword and the Nichoria UMME tholos sword (Late Helladic IIIA2), swords appear to be fragmented rather than bent from Late Helladic IIA onwards (Kakovatos tholoi A and B, Pylos tholoi III and IV, and Palace of Nestor, archive room 7, although this last example appears to have been bent before fragmentation). Contextualising this change is contentious, however, because the overall numbers of swords from Late Helladic II-III dwindles substantially.3 Scholars have questioned why the deposition of swords in Messenia, such as in the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’, appears to imitate Grave Circle B at Mycenae in Middle Helladic III but never effloresced into a parallel trajectory of consumption like that in the Argolid or central Greece during Late Helladic II-III (Sandars 1963: 119; Tripathi 1988: 186). To date, there have been no examples of Types B, C, F, G, or Naue II blades found deposited anywhere in the southwest Peloponnese, and there are only two Type D swords and a single clearly identifiable Type E blade (Harrell 2010: tables 11–12, 20). Depositional conservatism is particularly significant in light of the lack of Type C swords. As has been explained, the Type A sword has a structurally weak tang, and so the Type C was designed with a stronger tang and flanged shoulders to overcome the weaknesses of its predecessor. The fact that so many of the Type A examples in Messenia feature 3 We do not have the number of swords from Late Helladic IIIB-IIIC deposits in the southwest Peloponnese that we have in other areas of Greece such as the Tiryns Treasure, the Achaia warrior graves, or the Mycenae acropolis hoard. Remains from other types of bronze artefacts from the end of the Mycenaean period are equally sparse in the southwest Peloponnese.

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damaged or missing hilts makes the lack of Type C specimens all the more notable; people in this region had experience with the failing of Type A blades but continued interring them long after a more stable model had been designed. The swords of Routsi tholos 2 bring the issue of local conservatism in sword consumption to the forefront: were the Type A swords in this grave heirlooms from Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I or were they manufactured in Late Helladic IIA like the Vapheio sword (Tripathi 1988: 219, 325)? One example is over a metre in length, and another features gold-covered rivet heads; these aesthetics are typical of the earliest Type A swords. The level of preservation of Routsi tholos 2 allows archaeologists an opportunity to understand the highly choreographed used of space within this monument and may provide a definitive answer to whether the swords were antiques at the time of their interment. Boyd’s (2014b) deconstruction of the repeated funerary performances in this tholos identifies three different burial zones: pit 1, pit 2, and the latest interment, the skeleton on the floor, with whom the swords were interred (Marinatos 1957; Korres 1983). The stratigraphy of pit 2 was mixed, as if the pit had been returned to at a later date. Working from research conducted by Rehak and Younger (2000) on the dispersal of sealstones around the tholos, Boyd has suggested that the skeleton on the floor was furnished with some of the grave goods originally from pit 2, including sealstones that were restrung to form a bracelet, and also the swords, which were carefully positioned around the corpse. He notes that in pit 2, only the niello inlaid daggers were found, but no swords. It is possible that the Type A swords and the Schlachtmesser were appropriated from an ancestor in pit 2 while the Type D sword was the deceased’s own. We cannot know if this is when one of the swords was bent into an S-shape and the others fragmented. Indeed, we cannot even be sure if the broken swords were intentionally fragmented, rather than being the result of the collapse of the tomb roof, although the fact that many were broken at the tang and tip is consistent with earlier breakages. Nevertheless, the methodical assemblage of the grave gifts, including the reinterment of older blades, the mixing of old and new swords and their deliberate arrangement around the corpse and perhaps the intentional destruction of these objects, expresses the poignancy of the moment. The composition of Routsi tholos 2 offers insight into how the experience of death was a rite that evolved throughout the Mycenaean period. By way of contrast, the arrangement of the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’ and other early interments present life and death as two conflicting states of being, with artefact destruction offering a visual reminder to mourners that tomb space was not for the living. At Routsi tholos 2, however, a different viewpoint had been adopted. Pit 2 was excavated and the offerings from that deposit were reclaimed—in the case of the sealstone bracelet, the stones were strung to form a new object that was then worn by the deceased—and the pit swords were curated together with a newer blade and were carefully arranged next to the individual on the floor. This appropriation seems to be the very behaviour the mourners who interred the sword in the secret niche of Routsi tholos 1 were intending to prevent. It suggests that that the fear of the miasma of death had subsided or could be

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circumscribed. In this context, the power of older grave goods and the intention behind bending the sword had not waned or been forgotten, but was instead redirected for new purposes. Rather than being signposts to warn the living of the presence of death in the tomb, heirloom, bent and broken swords became instruments for the newly dead to complete their transformation, joining the cadre of departed ancestors (see Boyd 2014b). The power of heirlooms is also evident in the context of the Nichoria UMME tholos, although the structure itself was built rather late for this region, in Late Helladic IIIA2 (although see the discussion in Boyd 2014a: 200–1). Many of the finds from this tomb were antiques (Late Helladic IIA-IIIA1) by the time of their deposition in the tomb (Boyd 2014a: 201; Wilkie 1987: 131); moreover, they were frequently worn, broken or damaged. Ceramic vessels were found in fragments, pieces of which were deposited in shafts, left on the floor, and still others missing, removed from the tomb (Wilkie 1987: 129–30). Rehak and Younger (2000: 259) note that one of the sealstones (CMS V 431) is heavily worn. Pit 3 held a cache of bronze vessels, all of which were noted to be in deformed condition, as well as a sword, bent at a 90° angle (McDonald & Wilkie 1978: 253). The excavators indicate that the vessels were crushed in order to fit into the pit, although a bronze vessel from pit 3 was deliberately pierced at its spout in addition to being crushed (Wilkie 1987: 132). The excavators speculate that the tight size of the pit may have been the reason the sword was bent as well, although they note that the diameter of the pit was nearly identical to the length of the sword, and thus fit into the pit with ease, and they also record that the sword hilt was carefully positioned pointing north. The sword is a hybrid of an unclassifiable overall type, with the characteristic long body, midrib, and tang of the Type A, but with the sloping shoulders and riveting arrangement like Type B. It features gold-covered rivets, ivory hilt plates, and a semiprecious pommel (lapis lacedaemonius; Wilkie 1987: 132), and incised decoration on the midrib, all characteristics of early Mycenaean swords. The body decoration is ornate, featuring incised spirals run along the midrib, the closest parallels for which are the swords from Zafer Papoura, although lapis lacedaemonius is a local stone (McDonald & Wilkie 1978: 262–3; see also Korres 1984; Hood 1992; Hiller 1996; Rutter 2005; Chapin et al. 2014: 147–8). Like many of the other grave gifts, the excavators suggest that it was an heirloom by the time of its interment in Late Helladic IIIA2 (McDonald & Wilkie 1978: 264). The careful composition of the mortuary furniture of the UMME tholos provides a good index of the most important symbolic components of the most lavish graves in this region. The sword in particular draws on three aspects that seem to be especially resonant: the blade is itself an heirloom object with a shape that echoes the length and material adornment of even earlier Mycenaean swords; its inscribed decoration suggests ties to Minoan Crete—indeed, this may have been its ultimate origin—and it was intentionally damaged in a manner that recalls the earliest deposition of swords in the southwest Peloponnese. The excavators suggest that pit 3 may have been a secondary deposit of grave goods; these items may have been first interred in the tomb

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together with a cuirass similar to that found at Dendra (McDonald & Wilkie 1978: 253; also Boyd 2014a: 201). At a later time, the tomb was reentered, the cuirass was mostly removed from the tomb, and certain vessels and the sword were selected for deposition in pit 3. The deformation of the vessels and the bending of the sword probably took place at this time. Other bronzes and fragments of the cuirass were dispersed throughout the tomb. The juxtaposition of making and unmaking as a way to heighten the significance of each is critical for contextualising these funerary rites.

Palatial destruction Now that the longue durée of intentionally damaged swords in the southwest Peloponnese has been outlined, we can return to our point of origin: the Palace of Nestor. The Nichoria sword is the latest complete sword found in a Mycenaean tomb in the southwest Peloponnese. This decline must be in part because the predominant context of consumption—the tomb—is no longer preferred. As discussed earlier, many tholoi in the region have gone out of use; at the same time, the Palace of Nestor site is growing both in terms of its physical construction but also as a locus for the consumption of prestigious and valuable objects. It is at the Palace of Nestor, in the latest phase (Late Helladic IIIB), that another complete sword was found. In archive room 7 some of the Ta tablets were left very near the well known remains of a sacrificial feast (Stocker & Davis 2004), composed of animal bones, ritual ceramic vessels, and weaponry, a sword and spearhead. This sword was broken in 18 pieces, an extraordinary number of fragments; moreover, the blade appears to have been bent before fragmentation. Both the sword and the spearhead are heirlooms (Avila 1983, 45; Hofstra 2001: 98–101; Sandars 1963: 132–3; Stocker & Davis 2004: 190). Stocker and Davis (2004: 190) discuss these armaments and reaffirm Killen’s (1998: 422) interpretation that PY Ta 716 inventories the instruments of sacrifice, the qi-si-pe-e mentioned above (also Hiller 1971: 82–3). Nevertheless, it is evident that this interpretation of the archive room deposit leaves certain questions unanswered, particularly regarding the weaponry. There is an uneasy correlation between the two sacrificial knives mentioned on PY Ta 716 and the sword and spearhead found nearby. The spearhead is a particularly remarkable artefact. Avila (1983: 44–5) classifies this spearhead as a Middle Bronze Age type; nevertheless, this type is exceedingly rare and old. A solitary Middle Helladic example was found in the Ionian Islands, while the only other examples are from Troy and date to Early Bronze Age II (Branigan 1974: 19, Types VIII and X, nos. 447, 457, 459). The inclusion of an ancient spearhead from a faraway land in almost pristine condition in this context remains unexplained, but it does suggest that the bending and fragmentation of the sword found nearby was an intentional act. If the armaments were the instruments of sacrifice, why were they not put away in the storerooms along with the bronze and ceramic cooking vessels after the event? Instead, the complete destruction of the

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sword, and the presence of weapons with the bones and pottery, suggest that the weapons may have been considered to be ‘consumables,’ rather than the tools and implements inventoried by the Ta series. We need to reconsider the role these objects played with the surrounding feasting debris, as well as disassociate the weaponry in room 7 from the qi-si-pe-e mentioned on Ta 716. As Palmer noted (1957; 1960), heirloom and fragmented weaponry would not look out of place in the context of the tomb, so it reasonable to ask whether the way such objects were traditionally used in death rites holds relevance in this new palatial context. Bennet (2008) has termed the palatial legitimacy and the social significance over the power of production and consumption Palace™. Bennet chiefly discusses crafting, such as working in glass, with regards to the concept of Palace™, but he also includes the ownership and curation of the antique tripods of PY Ta 641 and 709 within the model of Palace™. Performing death in the form of an animal sacrifice, in which the deceased animal becomes food for the attendants, transforms the meaning of death by emphasising how it sustains life (Hamilakis 1998). The spear, as the weapon of the Mycenaean hunt, and the sword, the symbol de rigueur of the male warrior burial, both carry historical associations that allow them to become symbols of fecundity within the context of the sacrificial feast. Coopting the material symbols associated with the grave, especially objects from lavishly equipped tholoi, for use in palatial rituals would seem to be another form of Palace™. By changing the context of consumption, the palace redefined the meaning of these treasures as objects that sustain the life of the community. In conclusion, the main purpose of this chapter is to narrate the longue durée of damaged swords in the southwest Peloponnese and to raise what appear to be meaningful interrelated variables, such as the local propensity for early types, the Type A sword and the Schlachtmesser, and the consumption—or imitation, in the case of the UMME tholos sword—of these types as heirlooms in later contexts. Reference to foreign manufacture, generally Crete, but perhaps Troy as well, as in the case of the archive room spearhead, seems to be another aspect that imbues value. Bending swords, typically at a 90° angle, comes into practice during the use of the Pylos ‘Grave Circle’ and continues through Late Helladic IIIA2. Sword fragmentation, if it is indeed intentional, is performed throughout the Mycenaean period. Although intentional destruction of swords takes place in the funerary context, the act held different meanings depending on the intended recipients of the social message and contemporary ideologies. As first practiced in Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I, sword bending may have signified that the object belonged henceforth to the realm of the dead and should remain within the tomb with the deceased. By Late Helladic IIA at Routsi tholos 2, appropriation of gifts from earlier interments and the accoutring of the deceased with bent and heirloom swords aided the deceased in making the transition to death and the realm of the ancestors. The bent sword in the UMME tholos is one of many objects in this tomb that was an antique at the time of its interment and was also intentionally damaged. The grave goods together underscore connections across time and space.

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Later, the Palace of Nestor may have coopted the symbolism of the room 7 weaponry and their traditional consumption in tombs for the ritual of the palatial feast in order to emphasise the palace as a power broker, mediating the act of sacrifice to sustain life. The interpretations offered here are necessarily limited, since understanding the bending and fragmenting of swords must be considered in light of wider patterns of destruction. Moreover, this paper began by comparing how the Palace of Nestor both initiated growth and production and made use of intentional destruction, and understanding how the two acts were used in tandem should be explored further. In every case, however, destruction of objects must be understood as disseminating layered and complex messages. Acknowledgements: I would like to extend my gratitude to Dimitri Nakassis for being speedy, but more importantly, for offering concise and insightful comments on the Ta series.

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Lolos, Y., 2007. Mycenaean burial at Pylos. In Sandy Pylos: an Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino, ed. Davis, J. L. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 75–8. Marinatos, S., 1957. Excavations near Pylos, 1956. Antiquity 31, 97–100. McDonald, W. A. & Wilkie, N. C. (eds.), 1978. Excavations at Nichoria in Southwest Greece: the Bronze Age Occupation, Vol. II. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Müller, K., 1909. Alt-Pylos II: Die Funde aus den Kuppelgräbern von Kakovatos. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 34, 269–325. Nakassis, D., 2013. Individuals and Society in Mycenaean Pylos, Mnemosyne Supplements 358. Leiden: Brill. Palaima, T. G., 2003. The inscribed bronze ‘kessel’ from Shaft Grave IV and Cretan heirlooms of the bronze age artist named ‘Aigeus’ vel sim. in the Mycenaean palatial period. In BRICIAKA: a Tribute to W. C. Brice, ed. Duhoux, Y. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 187–201. Palaima, T. G., 2004. Sacrificial feasting in the Linear B tablets. Hesperia 73 (2), 97–126. Palmer, L. R., 1957. A Mycenaean tomb inventory. Minos 5, 58–92. Palmer, L. R., 1960. Tomb or reception room? Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 7 (1), 57–63. Rehak, P. & Younger, J. G. 2000. Minoan and Mycenaean administration in the early Late Bronze Age: an Overview. In Administrative Documents in the Aegean and their Near Eastern Counterparts. Proceedings of the International Colloquium. Naples, February 29–March 2, 1996, ed. Perna, M. Naples: Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici, 277–301. Rutter, J. B., 2005. Southern triangles revisited: Lakonia, Messenia, and Crete in the 14th–12th centuries BC. In Ariadne’s Threads: Connections Between Crete and the Greek Mainland in Late Minoan III (LHIIIA2 to LMIIIC), eds. D’Agata, A. L. & J. Moody. Athens: Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene, 17–50. Sandars, N. K. 1963. The first Aegean swords and their ancestry. American Journal of Archaeology, 65 (1), 17–29. Sandars, N. K., 1963. Later Aegean bronze swords. American Journal of Archaeology 67 (2), 117–53. Stocker, S. R. & Davis, J. L. 2004. Animal sacrifice, archives, and feasting at the Palace of Nestor. Hesperia 73 (2), 59–75. Tripathi, D. N., 1988. Bronzework of Mainland Greece from c. 2600 B.C. to c. 1450 B.C. Göteborg: Paul Åström. Wilkie, N. C., 1987. Burial customs at Nichoria: the MME tholos. In Thanatos: Les coutumes funéraires en Égée à l’âge du Bronze, ed. Laffineur, R, Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de Liège, 125–36.

Yannis Galanakis

A Roof for the Dead: Tomb Design and the ‘Domestication of Death’ in Mycenaean Funerary Architecture Introduction Discussions on the interrelationship between the architecture designed for the living and the architecture designed for the dead are neither new nor limited to Aegean scholarship (on the latter see, Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 117–8; Gallou 2004; 2005: 63– 74). They actually extend well beyond the second millennium BCE and the Mediterranean world (e.g. Orthmann 1980: 101–4; 1981; Hodder 1984; Sherratt 1990; 1995; Bradley 1998; Laporte & Tinévez 2004). These discussions centre on the relationships that the living constructed with the dead and especially on the domestication of funerary architecture in an attempt to explain the ‘when’, the ‘where’ and the ‘why’ of this phenomenon. Explanations tend to link its appearance to sedentism (especially for the Neolithic period) or, most frequently for the Bronze Age and the first millennium BCE to projections of social or religious practice onto the category of tomb, i.e. the tomb as metonym for ‘abode and temple of the ancestors’, ‘oikos’ (family) and ‘household’ (e.g. Tsountas 1885: 30–1; Tsountas & Mannat 1897: 70; more recently, Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1987: 147; Koumouzelis 1996; Krystalli-Votsi 1998: 23; Gallou 2004; 2005: 63–75; Wright 2006: 57–8). There are numerous architectural elements in the design of built and rock-cut tombs in the Late Bronze Age Aegean that appear to have been appropriated from domestic architecture, from flat or pitched roofs and masonry styles (ashlar and rubble) to doors, drains, niches, benches, and carved or plastered decoration (Gallou 2005: 66–74; on wooden doors in tombs, see Moschos 2008). Some of the aforementioned features are more integral to funeral practice and are thus frequently attested in the Late Bronze Age (e.g. the door), while others appear less often (e.g. the painted and carved decoration). However, even when some design elements appear practical in character and are there to support certain beliefs or facilitate a particular mode of deposition and the funeral procession, the finished product, including the size, quality of execution and details, reveals decision-making processes in the planning stage. This paper makes a contribution in this direction in terms of one aspect of tomb design, that is roof form.

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The Mycenaean roof debate Despite the patchy nature of the available evidence, the roof has occupied a central role and constitutes one of the most widely discussed and fervently contested topics in Aegean scholarship. In this paper, I look first at the historiography of the pitched roof in the study of Aegean architecture and the impact these early theories may have had on more recent interpretative attempts. I then take a different approach by combining the evidence from tombs and settlements in an attempt to assess the relationship between the two spheres. In recent years interest on the subject has shifted from pitched or flat roofs to the construction and structural mechanics of corbel-vaulted tombs (e.g. Dobiat 1982; Cavanagh & Laxton 1981; 1988; Santillo Frizell & Santillo 1984; Stupperich 1995; Santillo Frizell 1997–8; Cremasco & Laffineur 1999; Kamm 2000; Como 2006; 2007). The pitched or flat roof is now primarily discussed in the context of the ‘megaron’ (Darcque 1990; Jung 2000) in the palatial complexes of Pylos, Tiryns and to a lesser extent Mycenae (on Homeric archaeology and its influence on the terminology and perception of Mycenaean architecture, see Burns 2007; on ‘Homeric houses’, see Rougier-Blanc 2005). The importance paid to the roof of the megaron is, in my view, a remnant of an old debate best summarised in a remark made decades ago by Baldwin Smith (1942: 99): “The architectural character and historical significance of the preHellenic and Mycenaean ‘megaron’, as well as the possibilities of its cultural origin, are conditioned by the type of the roof it had.” It seems that, for some scholars at least, the issue at stake was not simply an archaeological or architectural puzzle, but a quest for the origins and significance of Mycenaean civilisation as a whole. The megaron controversy revolved around two roof forms: (1) the flat, horizontal or slightly concave roof, and (2) the pitched roof (Iakovidis 1990). The exponents of the flat roof based their arguments on the absence of clay roof tiles and the existence of masses of dried mud with the impressions of saplings, reeds and leaves from the sheathing that covered the timber framework (e.g. Schliemann 1886: 225, 248–50, based on Wilhelm Dörpfeld’s observations; Perrot & Chipiez 1894: 691, n.1; Dörpfeld 1905; Holland 1920: 332–3, 339; Wace et al. 1923: 90, 231–2, 257, 270; Blegen 1945; Sinos 1971: 93). Those in favour of a pitched roof sought support in prevailing climatic conditions and cross-cultural analogies, such as comparisons between Mycenaean domestic architecture and Nordic houses or the Swiss lake villages (Middleton 1886; von Reber 1898: 498–509, 523; Leroux 1913: 48–59; Keramopoullos 1917: 76; Boëthius 1919–21; Dinsmoor 1927: 13–9, 30–6; 1942; Åkerström 1941; 1968: 50; Baldwin Smith 1942; Iakovidis 1990). Undeniably this exceedingly polarised, and seemingly trivial, debate produced some rather fanciful and imaginative reconstructions (discussed by Burns 2007), especially from the latter side, which exemplified Homeric readings of the ruins and sought to establish a connection with Classical Greek temple architecture. This approach was initiated by Christos Tsountas (1891: 8–11; 1893: 34) who thought that,

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while the palace buildings—especially the megaron—would have been covered with flat roofs, ordinary houses had a single or double pitch thatched roof (Tsountas & Manatt 1897: 53–4, 60, 70). Tsountas’ equation of horizontal with ‘palatial’ and pitched with ‘ordinary architecture’ is echoed in the writings of several later scholars (Xanthoudides 1904: 14; Mylonas-Shear 1968: 451; 1987: 9, n. 17; Walsh & McDonald 1992: 464). At a time when Louis Sullivan (1896: 408) coined the architectural credo of form ever follows function, the use of the pitched roof was taken to have a particular social, ethnic, and sacred character. In the late 19th c., Tsountas saw in the chamber tombs at Mycenae the translation of the quadrangular house with a pitched roof into funerary architecture, despite the fact that in his writings he acknowledged the existence of numerous other roof forms in the funerary context. He inferred that these ‘houses for the dead’ emulated the prevailing type of private dwelling in the Mycenaean age, ‘the national Mycenaean type’ as opposed to the eastern-borrowed flat roof, which was ‘confined to the palaces of the rich and powerful’ (Tsountas & Manatt 1897: 70). This in turn became his strongest point in arguing that “the settlers and builders of Mycenae came into Peloponnesus from the farther North” (Tsountas & Manatt 1897: 71), since quadrangular houses with pitched roofs were popular in Europe but not in the East. According to these early interpretations, it was via Crete that the flat roof was introduced to mainland Greece, as if roofs had a particular place of origin attached to them. Tsountas went even further in his discussion of the pitched roof by ascribing to it additional characteristics and connecting it with later Greek temple architecture: “the Hellenes looked upon the gable roof as an inheritance from their forefathers with an ethnic and sacred character” (Tsountas & Manatt 1897: 71). Later, he extended the undisrupted line of continuity to the Neolithic, thus underlying, as he believed, the continuity of the Greeks from the Neolithic to Classical times within a historiographical framework that was quickly gaining ground in modern Greece in the second half of the 19th c. (Tsountas 1908: 79–87, 390–5, esp. 394; see Voutsaki 2002; 2003 for the intellectual framework of Tsountas’ archaeological interpretations). Half a century later, William Dinsmoor, the distinguished American architectural historian of ancient Greece, was convinced that “the roof of the Helladic megaron was the prototype for the Greek temple” (Dinsmoor 1942: 370). Although scholarship today considers the form of the canonical Greek temple the product of a more complex process than previously thought, this early association of the pitched roof with sacred architecture is still pertinent to scholarship to this day and repercussions of this debate persist, particularly in the discussion of the Early Iron Age transition from ‘rulers’ dwellings to temples’ (e.g. Mazarakis-Ainian 1997; 2001; 2007). Without delving into great detail, the curvilinear plan of some tombs (especially the Late Bronze Age tholoi) has been interpreted in a similar way to quadrangular structures with pitched roofs. The origins of the circular plan have been sought in cave dwellings and the archetypal Ur-hut, as well as in the various symbolic

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connotations of the circle (e.g. Yiannouli 2011; Bradley 2012) and the use of fire that helped people gather around a central place. The primitive hut archetype, however, is above all an intellectual concept drawn from Vitruvius’ days (introduced to Aegean archaeology by Tsountas: 1885). As argued recently by McEnroe (2007: 7), this is not to say that such buildings did not once exist, rather that their subsequent reappearance does not constitute a survival in a unilinear evolutionary process. The picture is far more complex, with archaeological and anthropological approaches on the subject trying to understand the conditions that in certain periods and regions instigated the transformation of the small circular-to-oval structures to rectangular houses (e.g. the development of the Mesoamerican and the Near Eastern villages; Flannery 1972; 2002). In a funerary context in the Late Bronze Age Aegean, the oval-to-circle and square-to-rectangle forms appear to have inspired two strong architectural traditions, as I discuss below. It is thus imperative to assess their appearance within the social and cultural setting that produced and made use of them. To sum up so far: Aegean archaeologists ascribed early on a social, ethnic and sacred character to the pitched roof and considered this form, along with the quadrangular plan of the megaron, a precursor to the later Greek temple. Although these early interpretations have since faded away, the impact they have had on scholarship is far greater than previously thought. To some extent the association of the pitched roof with temples and houses, still popular in archaeological literature in the present, springs from the same intellectual source that shaped Tsountas’ ideas and gave rise to the early interpretation that this particular form of roof in the Late Bronze Age Aegean was the ‘national Mycenaean type’. Before revisiting these interpretations, let us look at the available evidence.

A (pitched) roof for the dead? Aegean archaeologists rarely turn to rock-cut architecture in order to glean information about built domestic architecture. Tsountas’ early observations on the possible interrelationship of the two should be acknowledged as pioneering in this direction. Indeed the best evidence for the existence and use of the pitched roof in the Late Bronze Age Aegean comes from funerary contexts (exclusively for the early Mycenaean period). Although most tombs equipped with such roofs remain unpublished and have been looted in the past, a good representative sample (around 70 examples) is available for discussion (Zavadil 2006; 2007; see also Koumouzelis 1996; ChatziSpiliopoulou 1998; 2001). The first tombs with pitched roof were uncovered at Spata in Attica in 1876 (Milchhöfer 1877; Koumanoudis & Kastorchis 1877). Excavations in the last 30 years have added a significant number of well-preserved examples to the known corpus discussed in detail most recently by Michaela Zavadil (2006; 2007, with additional

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references). Although the roofs of chamber tombs have often collapsed or are in a bad state of preservation, enough intact examples survive to suggest considerable variation in roof design. There are five common roof forms attested in rock-cut chamber tombs: (1) the irregular (cave-like) roof; (2) the slightly arched or horizontal roof;1 (3) the saddle roof that could have been inspired by domestic thatched roofs; (4) the tholoid roof (a term coined by Tsountas) set on a curvilinear or less frequently rectilinear plan,2 the top of which bears the carved likeness of a built tholos apex (ypotholio; Iakovidis 1966; this feature could also be interpreted as a ‘hut’s smoke hole’ or a ‘slot for a roof post’); and finally, (5) the two- or four-sided pitched roof that forms the focus of this paper. The earliest tombs with a pitched roof date to Late Helladic IIA: e.g. Dendra tomb 6, equipped with a low two-pitched roof in the main chamber and a saddle roof in the side chamber, and Dendra tomb 8 with a four-sided pitched roof in the main chamber and a two-sided pitched roof in the side chamber (Persson 1942: 20–31, 37–51; Zavadil 2006: 344, 351–2, placing the origin of this trend in the northeast Peloponnese; 2007: 355–6). Most of the known tombs with a pitched roof show a period of earliest use from Late Helladic IIB to IIIA2. Tombs with a pitched roof, in comparison with the other common roof forms, are restricted to a few regions and sites (about 14), although their geographical distribution is fairly widespread [Fig. 1].3 About 85% are found in north Peloponnese, mostly in the Argolid (49% in six sites, including Aidonia) and Achaea (36% in three sites). Most sites have yielded five or fewer tombs with a pitched roof per cemetery with the

1 The choice between the two is often determined by geomorphological conditions, primarily the hardness and qualities of the bedrock. It is worth noting here Dörpfeld’s explanation of the pitched shape of the roof in some chamber tombs: “in such rock [siliceous conglomerate] a sloping roof holds better than a flat one” (Tsountas & Manatt 1897, xxvii-xxix). This comment, though of value, cannot explain alone the choice for the pitched roof (cf. Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1987, 147: “a safe and stable roof, strong enough to resist the thrust of the superincumbent earth and […] to imitate the roof of an actual house”). 2 There are combinations of the above, such as the saddle roof with triangular ends in imitation of a two-sided pitched roof at Voudeni tomb 31 (Kolonas 1994: 229). The tholoid roof set on a rectangular plan is very rare in rock-cut chamber tombs (e.g. tombs 9 and 26 at Voudeni, Kolonas 1989: 131; 1994: 229), although the squaring of the tholos in built tombs is actually attested in mainland Greece and Crete (Galanakis 2011). 3 Northeast Peloponnese: Mycenae (at least ten tombs); Aidonia (at least ten tombs); Nauplion (one tomb); Argos (four tombs); Asine (one tomb); Dendra (five tombs); Achaea: Voudeni (more than five tombs); Kallithea Spentzes (at least 17 tombs); Spaliareika (one tomb?); Messenia: Antheia Ellinika (at least four tombs); Attica: Spata (two tombs); Boeotia: Thebes (at least five tombs); Thessaly: Kato Mavrolophos and Skyros (one tomb each). There are some discrepancies between the numbers given here and those given by Zavadil (2007), because some of the tombs identified by the latter as having a pitched roof are interpreted by the present author as concave or arched (i.e. not reminiscent of a domestic pitched roof).

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exception of Mycenae and Aidonia (where at least ten examples are known per site), Kallithea Spentzes (Rabadania), where at least 17 tombs of this type have been found and Dendra, Thebes and Voudeni (with at least five examples each). In relation to the distribution and possible significance, it is worth noting that no tomb with a pitched roof has yet been found on Crete or the Dodecanese, highlighting further the different traditions and regional choices present in the Late Bronze Age Aegean.

Fig. 1: Map showing distribution of tombs with a two- or four-sided pitched roof (after Zavadil 2006; 2007; map prepared and updated by the author).

The sizes of chamber tombs with pitched roofs vary considerably: from ca. 60 m2 at Antheia Ellinika tomb 6 in Messenia (among the five largest Late Bronze Age chamber tombs known in the Aegean to date) to 6.10 m2 at Kallithea Spentzes tomb P in Achaea (where smaller examples may exist, as not all dimensions have been published). The average area of the main chamber of tombs equipped with a pitched roof in these two regions is ca. 20 m2 (based on 46 of the 64 known examples; no data is available for the other 18 examples). The average is higher in the northeast Peloponnese (24 m2)

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and especially at Mycenae (26 m2).4 Thus, with the exception of the cemetery at Kallithea Spentzes in Achaea, discussed below, all other known tombs with a pitched roof are large (>10 m2) and, in a number of cases, even monumental by Aegean and local standards (>20 m2). Apart from their exceptional dimensions most of these monumental tombs are architecturally elaborate, featuring non-structural embellishments or additions to the main tripartite architectural structure (such as sculpted decoration, side chambers, very long and deep dromoi), as well as rich and diverse grave assemblages (discussed by Zavadil 2007). Their scarcity combined with their monumentality and rich furnishings could suggest that their use was in some way restricted for specific social groups. Out of the 40 largest chamber tombs in mainland Greece (Galanakis 2008: vol. 2, table 4), 27 preserved their roof intact. Of these, 56% are covered with a pitched roof, 25.5% with a tholoid roof5 (e.g. Pellana tomb 2 and Mycenae tomb 83, Danielidou 2000) and 18.5% probably had a concave or roughly horizontal roof (e.g. Mycenae tomb 505, Wace 1932: 12–8). Despite its prominent position in the tomb’s main chamber, the pitched roof can coexist with other forms when a side chamber is present: for instance, while in Spata tomb 1 the main chamber and the two side chambers have a pitched roof, at Antheia Ellinika tomb 13 the roof is pitched in the main chamber and flat in the side chamber (see also the Dendra examples mentioned above). Thus the chamber’s area did not determine the roof’s form and decisions had to be made at the construction stage as to which roof form to create, a point to which I return below. Although it may at present look like the exception to the norm, the cemetery at Kallithea Spentzes in Achaea is a further reminder that pitched roofs were not exclusive to monumental tombs. In this cemetery probably all 25 excavated tombs were originally equipped with a pitched roof (a feature still preserved in 17 tombs at the site). Their chamber area varies from 6 to 10 m2, a relatively modest size even by Achaean standards (Zavadil 2007: 359–62, with additional references). Interestingly this cemetery lies just 500 m away from another cluster of chamber tombs, Kallithea Laganidia, where an early Late Helladic tholos tomb might have been the first monument on site (Papadopoulos 1987; Pelon 1998: 132–3). In contrast to the Spentzes cemetery, however, all the tombs at Laganidia have round chambers, perhaps alluding

4 There is a discrepancy in the measurements given by Tsountas (Sakellariou 1985) and those of the Mycenae Survey (Shelton 1993). I follow Tsountas here, who gives smaller dimensions for the tombs in comparison to the latter source. 5 Such tombs are so far attested in just a few sites in the Aegean (Volimidia, Mycenae, Pellana, Mitopoli and Voudeni). They date from Late Helladic I to IIIC, although the peak of their construction actually falls within Late Helladic I/II and IIIA, thus coinciding with the time of construction of most of the chamber tombs with a pitched roof. Assigning special significance to them, however, depends on whether emphasis is placed on the apex or not, as they can simply be grouped with the more popular round, cave-like chamber tombs.

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to or in emulation of the tholos tomb (Zavadil 2006: 349–51; 2007: 358). A geological study is needed for the two cemeteries before extrapolating further on the formal differences of these two clusters of chamber tombs. Nonetheless, the rare cooccurrence of chamber tombs with domed and pitched roofs in the same location (e.g. at Mycenae and Voudeni, and a few other sites if tholos tombs are included6) may not just be an accident of archaeological preservation, but could reflect the existence of different (competing) architectural traditions in the funeral realm during Late Helladic II-IIIA2; traditions to which specific social connotations had been attached. A final point worth mentioning briefly is the morphology of the pitched roof. As already noted, there are tombs with four-sided pitched roofs and tombs with twosided pitched roofs. In the latter examples, the pitch can either follow the axis of the dromos-stomion-chamber or be perpendicular to it. There are also different levels of embellishment: in some cases we observe rock-cut ledges (also described as shoulders or eaves in publications) carved in two or all four sides of the tomb and ridge poles (imitations of central beams), as for example at Megalo Kastelli tomb 1 at Thebes (Spyropoulos 1972: 311; 2013: 92–4, pls. 204–6), Aidonia, and Kallithea Spentzes tomb Φ (Papadopoulos 1998: 84–6; Zavadil 2007: 355, 361).7 Despite this formal variation, however, the angle of these rock-cut pitched roofs falls within a rather consistent range: between 15o-30o, with the measurement taken (from the few published drawings) at the eaves. This range is ideal for pitched roofs in a Mediterranean climate (larger angles are more appropriate for areas with considerably more snowfall: Wikander 1986). This consistency may suggest that the tomb builders carving pitched roofs closely followed established standards already applied to domestic architecture as early as Late Helladic II-IIIA1. The careful finish of the chamber walls, the rock-cut gables and eaves and the presence of ridge poles appear to reinforce further this relationship between the world of the dead and the world of the living.

6 It is worth noting that monumental chamber tombs rarely coexist with tholos tombs (both in terms of date of construction and location in the landscape) with the exception of the Argolid, where tholos and chamber tomb groups are quite common. It is difficult to tell whether this is a true pattern or simply a result of archaeological bias. The fact that so many chamber tomb cemeteries have come to light with no adjacent tholoi (and vice versa) appears to reinforce the suggestion that even if tholos and chamber tombs coexisted at the same site, different locations were chosen for the construction of each tomb type, highlighting further the different connotations attached to each tomb type by people at the time. Interestingly most monumental chamber tombs appear to have been built in Late Helladic IIB-IIIA1, postdating the peak of tholos monumentality (Late Helladic I-IIA) in the Peloponnese (the core area of early Late Bronze Age tholos building). 7 Spaliareika tomb 2 in Achaea was decorated with a band, partly in relief and partly carved out, that ran along the sidewalls at 1.40 m from the chamber floor (Petropoulos 2000: 71). Rock carvings have also been reported from the chamber of Elateia-Alonaki tomb XLV (Dimaki 2003: 323). Although their interpretation is open to question, they allude to squared planks (perhaps of a timber-framed structure?) set vertically against the chamber walls. At Diasela in Elis, the ceiling of a chamber tomb is said to have imitated “une couverture de bois” (Daux 1957: 575).

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A (pitched) roof for the living? In order to develop a broader understanding of this relationship, we need to turn our attention to domestic contexts and look at the uses of the pitched roof there. Identifying domestic pitched roofs, however, is a very challenging and controversial issue largely due to lack of evidence. There is as yet no known two- or three-dimensional representation of a pitched roof from mainland Greece.8 With the exception of roof tiles, which may (or may not) be suggestive of tiled pitched roofs, there is actually little else to guide us as to the existence, use and popularity of pitched roofs in domestic contexts (Iakovidis 1990; Küpper 1996: 104–5; Darcque 2005: 80, 124–8). Yet, the recent publication of a very large (0.80 × 0.80 m, 1 m high) Late Minoan IIIB architectural model from Quartier Nu at Malia (Driessen & Farnoux 2011) warns us against generalising too quickly. This is so far the only known architectural model with a four-sided pitched (hipped) roof, which is also equipped with two chimney pots. The model’s roof is painted with black bands running on either side of the joints of the roof planes ‘to converge into a black disc on the flat space between the two chimney pots’ (Driessen & Farnoux 2011: 301, 304). The four slightly sloping planes (25o) along with the bands could imitate woodwork, although the linear framing is also attested in the decoration of larnax lids. Late Minoan larnax lids9 are the only other three-dimensional objects that have been interpreted, inter alia, as representations of pitched house roofs (e.g. Xanthoudides 1904: 14). There is no other funerary or domestic evidence from Late Minoan Crete10 regarding the use of pitched roofs (Shaw 1977; 2009: 153–5; Lenuzza 2013). Often very little is preserved of building superstructures in Late Bronze Age settlement contexts in mainland Greece and the two existing suppositions, already mentioned above, for the reconstruction of their roofs are problematic: the absence of tiles does not prove the absence of the pitched roof, since pitched roofs need not be tiled; tiles do not necessarily provide better insulation protection against rain (Wikan-

8 There are numerous Bronze Age flat-roofed and domed Cretan architectural models (Mersereau 1991; 1993; Schoep 1994; Hägg 2001; Poursat 2001; Petrakis 2006, with additional bibliography), the Late Helladic IIIA flat-roofed Menelaion model (Catling 1989), the only example known from mainland Greece, and some two-dimensional representations of horizontal roofs (Press 1967; Hue 1989; Hiesel 1989: 230–4; Krattenmaker 1991). 9 Most of the larnakes known from mainland Greece (Phialon & Farrugio 2005) are equipped with a flat slab, but there is at least one example from Thebes with a pitched roof (I would like to thank Dr. I Fappas for this information). 10 The compacted-clay upper surface of a partially surviving roof at Akrotiri on Thera, which slopes at 25o and helped conduct rainwater via a terracotta spout to the street (Palyvou 2005: 128–9) reminds us that, rare as it might have been, even in the case of Crete the inspiration for the Malia model and, perhaps the lids of the Late Minoan larnakes, may have derived from domestic architecture present on the island.

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der 1988: 206), but tiled roofs may, however, have been easier to maintain and safer (against fire) than thatched roofs, with greater visual impact. Dried mud alone (unless preserving the evidence of contact between side wall and roof) cannot demonstrate the exact roof form and does not provide evidence, as Iakovidis thought (1990: 160), for the existence of a dorosis system in the Late Bronze Age Aegean (i.e. tiles bedded in clay packed on a sheathing of reeds or twigs spread over the rafters, Hodge 1960); tiles could simply rest on laths or battens laid across the rafters, as Iakovidis had already noted in examples of vernacular architecture. Similarly, the presence of clay tiles should be cautiously assessed, as they constitute only one of the many features relevant to the reconstruction of a building’s roof. The identification of roof tiles is not always straightforward due to their often fragmentary state of preservation and the possible different functions they may have fulfilled (e.g. as drains or channels; tiles tend to have a high degree of adaptability, as first observed by Blegen 1942; also Sapirstein 2008: 38-54). Small fragments are difficult to distinguish from pithos, larnax, chimney or water channel fragments. In any case, it is only in recent decades that these materials have received more attention in excavation and publication. Despite all these limitations, however, and as tiles are the main basis for debating the presence or absence of pitched roofs, it is desirable to discuss briefly their distribution and compare it against the picture emerging from the funerary context. While the use of pitched roofs (tiled or not) does not appear to be an innovation of the Late Bronze Age (see e.g. the Early Helladic House of Tiles at Lerna, or the Middle Helladic apsidal buildings), the development of two distinct types of tiles, the wheelmade, semicylindrical cover and the handmade flat pan tile, based on present evidence is a Late Helladic IIIA development (Iakovidis 1990). The main objection, since Blegen’s time (1942), against their use as roof tiles has been their scarcity: when excavating classical contexts, one is frequently overwhelmed by the quantities of tiles preserved, often covering entire buildings. How can their scarcity in Late Bronze Age contexts be interpreted? Even if tiles were reused and subsequently scavenged or destroyed following the destruction or collapse of a Late Bronze Age building, their published quantities make such a function problematic and worthy of further systematic study. All published Late Bronze Age tiles come from relatively late contexts, with the largest concentration dated to the 14th and 13th c. BCE (Late Helladic IIIA2-B in pottery terms). Their distribution [Fig. 2] is not limited to the Peloponnese but extends further north, though no tiles have yet been discovered on the islands (Crete, the Dodecanese or the Cyclades). Gla in Boeotia features the largest concentration of tiles (Iakovidis 1989: 246–8; 1998; 2001: 135–7; 180 covers and 200 pans). However, these are associated with huge buildings that would have necessitated, if we follow the excavator’s argument, thousands of tiles more to support the theory that all buildings in Gla were covered with pitched roofs. A combination of roof forms (flat and pitched) appears the most likely scenario at present for the case of Gla.

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Fig. 2: Map showing distribution of clay Late Bronze Age cover and pan tiles in the Aegean. Their distribution must not be equated uncritically with the existence of tiled pitched roofs as there are few proper studies and site publications, while the numbers of tiles per excavated area tend to be very small to support such an equation (with the exception perhaps of Thebes) (after Iakovidis 1990; map prepared and updated by the author).

The 2008 excavation by Aravantinos & Fappas (2012) and 2013 study by the author of a Late Bronze Age building in Thebes (Theodorou plot), which was covered with a destruction layer containing collapsed tiles, advances the debate. The preliminary examination of about 2,500 tile fragments from an area ca. 50 m2 has allowed us to identify numerous cover (at least 115) and pan tiles (at least 75). Found in a Late Helladic IIIB context and in a relatively small area, the tiles from the Theodorou plot correspond to more than 50% of the total roof coverage of the Mycenaean building on top and on the sides of which they were discovered. Although it is at present difficult to reconstruct the roof of this building, which has only been partially exposed (with the rest continuing into the adjacent built-over plot), the concentration of pan and cover tiles from the Theodorou plot lends convincing support to the existence of tiled pitched roofs in Aegean Late Bronze Age architecture.

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The study of the Theodorou tiles has yielded a so far unattested, technical detail: some sidewalls of pan tiles (about 15 examples in total) bear a horizontal ‘nail-hole’ close to the edge. This hole would have probably been used to tie the wide ends of two pan tiles together in order to keep them in place. Since this feature does not appear in many pan tiles in the Theodorou assemblage, it can be assumed that perhaps it was limited to the lowermost course(s). No nail-holes on the flat surface of the pan have been found for securing them on the roof’s rafters (as in later Classical examples), suggesting that Late Bronze Age tiles were secured in place by their own weight (some of the largest examples weigh up to 12 kg each). The tiles were probably placed straight on laths or battens laid across the rafters. The fact that Mycenaean roof tiles were kept in place by their own weight would support an angle of 15o-30o for the roof to protect them from sliding (Galanakis 2013; see also Wikander 1986: 122–3). The presence of nail-holes (not necessary for flat roofs) lends additional support to the theory that in the case of the Theodorou plot we are dealing with a tiled pitched roof. Despite the lack of roof tiles from pre-Late Helladic IIIA settlement contexts, a number of chamber tombs equipped with pitched roofs add support to the existence of this roof type in domestic contexts as early as Late Helladic II. If the Theodorou assemblage provides us with a late context for a tiled pitched roof set at an angle of 15o-30o, the tombs with pitched roofs and their consistent angle discussed in the previous section provide an early reference point, as early as Late Helladic II-IIIA1, for the presence of pitched roofs, which in principle were also capable of successfully keeping in place tiles solely by means of their weight. Thus, tiled or not, pitched roofs appear to have been a feature of Late Bronze Age architecture at least from Late Helladic II to IIIB (for their use in multistoreyed complexes see Palaiologou 2015: 69– 70). The long-standing polarisation between the notion that all Mycenaean buildings had flat roofs (after Dörpfeld) and that upholding, inversely, low-pitched tiled roofs (after Iakovidis) comes as a surprise. The evidence from the tombs as well as settlements supports the existence of a number of different roof forms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean, including the two- and four-sided pitched roof (tiled or not) and the horizontal roof. Moreover, since a pitched roof does not actually require tiles, an attempt to delve further in this matter is of limited value. It is equally difficult to identify the functions of buildings covered with pitched roofs. What becomes increasingly evident is that different roof forms were used simultaneously and varied depending on context (geographical, chronological, archaeological) and the availability of resources and materials. Although roof tiles in settlement contexts and tombs with pitched roofs overlap chronologically, our limited knowledge of early Late Bronze Age settlements (Wiersma 2014) hampers a more detailed and nuanced comparison between funerary and domestic contexts. The spatial distribution of tiles in settlement contexts corresponds well with that of pitched roofs in chamber tombs [Figs. 1–2], lending further support

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to the idea that builders and commissioners intended to establish a visual and perhaps symbolic/ideological homology between the two worlds. By appropriating and updating the domestic vocabulary with features useful in the performance of the funeral, a setting was created that was both familiar and new, both known and hidden, approximating perhaps conceptualisations of the ‘other world’ (for a discussion on these additional features, see Wells 1990: 131–5; Gallou 2005: 63–75).

Politics of the hidden Tomb design in the Late Bronze Age Aegean helped to frame and support performative action. At the end of the Middle Bronze Age/early Late Bronze Age, a socially and culturally formative period in the Aegean world, an important shift took place in the mortuary practice of southern mainland Greece with the introduction of tombs with lateral entrances. Until then, graves were commonly accessed vertically (i.e. from the roof). This new design appears to have stemmed not just from practical or ritual considerations associated with the multiuse nature of these graves, but also from a significant realignment and reorganisation of sociopolitical and economic relations (Dickinson 1983; also Papadimitriou 2009, and this volume), with the emphasis now on family (Wright 2008). Two tomb types emerged as the most common across the Aegean through spiralling architectural experimentation and regional variation in the early Late Bronze Age: the built tholos and the rock-cut chamber tomb, both sharing a lateral entrance and the same tripartite plan, namely the dromos (passageway), the stomion (entrance), and the thalamos (chamber). Tholos tombs are encountered in a significantly smaller number (around 250 known examples) to chamber tombs (more than 3,000 known examples). Despite the considerable variation in both tholos and chamber tombs in terms of size, elaboration and burial assemblage, there is reason to believe that in certain regions large and elaborate tholoi became the tombs par excellence for the upper echelons of society, while chamber tomb cemeteries became an expression of a larger, more diverse community (though not necessarily ordinary) in social and economic terms (Voutsaki 1995). In mainland Greece, tholoi had a rather standardised form, being equipped with a circular plan and covered with a domed roof. Although differences can be observed in the elaboration and construction of tholos tombs, especially in the Late Minoan tholoi of Crete, suggestive of different architectural traditions across the Late Bronze Age Aegean (Galanakis 2011), the form of chamber tombs varied rather more. Early in the Late Bronze Age, two distinct traditions (or architectural styles) appear to have developed: the first involving tombs with a round, well-carved chamber, a domed roof and a rock-cut apex (tholoid tombs) and the second involving tombs with rectilinear chambers and pitched or horizontal roofs. Tholoid chamber tombs may have either emulated built tholos architecture (Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I) or shared the

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same source of inspiration as their built counterparts. On the other hand, the rectangular shape of chamber tombs with a pitched or horizontal roof (Late Helladic IIA onwards) appears to have drawn inspiration from domestic architecture. Yet irrespective of their interior differences, on the exterior they give, for the most part, a very similar if not identical impression;11 namely a rock-cut dromos, leading to a façade and a stomion, making the interior all the more restricted, hidden and esoteric.12 Whom did such a hidden chamber exclude? Did its design serve any purpose other than accommodating burials? Did the verisimilitude of the architecture of the living and that of the dead construct a unitary experience of space in Mycenaean communities? Setting aside the specific meanings that may have been attached to particular architectural forms, chambers and their roofs (among other design elements) are important inasmuch as they highlight the interplay between domestic and funerary architecture in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and suggest networks within communities that shared architectural styles (traditions). Chamber tombs with pitched roofs may well have developed in the northeast Peloponnese as suggested by Zavadil (2007: 355–6), but their distribution appears to have primarily formed part of a ‘package of funeral elaboration’. This design was one of many competing ‘packages’ in circulation at a time when architectural experimentation allowed for status display; domestic architectural traits were selectively taken up and adapted to serve the shaping and promotion of social identities in Late Helladic II-IIIA Aegean (for similar experimentation in Late Minoan II Knossos, see Preston 1999). Even though it is difficult to accurately quantify the popularity of the quadrangular chamber tomb with pitched roof in the Aegean, the prominence of this type among tombs built in Late Helladic II-IIIA (ca. 1550–1300 BCE) suggests that its use as ‘abode

11 Tholos tombs are distinguished from chamber tombs, among other things, on grounds of façade visibility. Even if interior access was not possible, viewers would still be able to see the built façade and stone-lined dromos of a tholos tomb. Nevertheless, occasionally we find façade elements shared by tholos and chamber tombs alike (e.g. plastering or carving). This sharing suggests a closer ideological connection between the groups of people who commissioned and used these two different types than previously envisaged. The Kokla tholos in the Argolid is astonishing in this regard: completely underground, it closely resembles chamber tomb architecture (Demakopoulou 1990). If the chamber interior was indeed coated with plaster, the impression one would get from the Kokla tholos would be identical to that of a tholoid chamber tomb. 12 It is often at the entrance, the most visible part of the tomb (at least during construction and the funeral procession), that additional features of architectural elaboration are observed (Kontorli-Papadopoulou 1987: 152–3; Gallou 2005: 67–9; Sgouritsa 2011): from fasciae and door fittings to carved and painted decoration on door jambs (most commonly in the form of beam ends , but also painted rosettes, spirals, papyri, checkerboard or simply monochrome bands often imitating wood; e.g. Mycenae tomb 53, Prosymna tomb 2, Tiryns tholos tomb 1, Argos (Deiras) tomb V, Argos tomb 12, Thebes (Megalo Kastelli) tomb 2, Thebes (Kolonaki) tomb 15. Such elements are also seen on the iconographic representation of a likely tomb on the Ayia Triada sarcophagus (Long 1974: 49–50).

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of the dead’ was a by-product of intense social competition on the mainland.13 The fact that very few (if any) new such tombs were built in Late Helladic IIIB-C corroborates the idea that this type is associated with the early Mycenaean era (Late Helladic II-IIIA1) when palatial ideology was at its formative stages. In this respect, I would argue that this funerary type should neither be viewed as a metonym for household, reflecting heightened importance of the oikos (family), nor refer to any specific building type (such as the megaron). Rather, it was an expression of mortuary elaboration inspired by domestic architecture in a socially and culturally transformative environment that made sense on the mainland, but not in other regions. ‘Going domestic’ in Late Helladic II-IIIA was one among many choices: it was neither the only form of monumentality nor to the only way to express the importance of family. We can envisage that the transference of architectural elements and styles occurred within social networks. The multilevel interaction between and within regions, communities and social groups led to the formation of distinct, yet versatile, craft traditions and architectural styles of power both in the funerary and domestic spheres (Wright 2006). In this framework, funerary architecture and practices can be understood as part of shifting and competing power networks (see e.g. Trigger 1990: 128) and wider strategies for the creation, promotion, negotiation and performance of social and regional identities (Boyd 2002: 94–9). The development of certain styles of mortuary practice bear witness, I would argue, to the existence of these strategies and the development across different regions of shared elite ideologies, especially during Late Helladic II-IIIA. This association could explain not only the possible high social status entertained by those buried in some of these early monumental tombs equipped with a pitched, flat or tholoid roof, but also for the dissemination of these forms as part of competitive elite ideological ‘packages’. Nevertheless, the case of the Kallithea Spentzes tombs should be a good reminder that in certain cases conformity to tradition might have been far more important than social display.

Conclusion Mycenaean tombs imitated domestic architecture at times, but clearly such imitation was done selectively: not everything encountered in a domestic context could (or

13 In relation to the distribution and possible significance of this roof form, it is interesting to note that no tomb with a pitched roof has yet been found on Crete or the Dodecanese in a corpus of around 800 chamber tombs. I already noted above the lack of any evidence for the existence of pitched roofs on Crete in the domestic context, with the exception perhaps of the Malia model and of the lids of the Late Minoan larnakes. Features originating from domestic architecture (e.g. pillars and pilasters, steps and benches) were introduced in Cretan funerary architecture: it was the pitched roof form that appears to have had little resonance with a Late Minoan clientele. This choice highlights further, in my view, the importance of this particular feature in the negotiation of mainland identities.

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needed) to be replicated in a funerary setting. Tombs helped transform and attach further (or different) connotations to appropriated, domestic architectural forms. However, in most cases, chamber tombs with pitched roofs are part of extensive cemeteries that display considerable architectural diversity. I have tried to argue that such tombs constituted one aspect of broader architectural experimentation during a period that was crucial socially and culturally for mainland and broadly Aegean politics. An investment in architectural sophistication and elaboration, manifested in part as an emphasis on tomb façades and long dromoi, have been linked to emergent social competition. The most ‘hidden’, less viewed element in funerary architecture was probably a tomb’s roof. In contrast to examples in other places and periods (e.g. first-millennium Etruria, Prayon 1975, and Cyprus, Christou 1996), Mycenaean roofs were not heavily ornamented, with the exception of the ashlar domes of the finest tholoi at Mycenae and the tomb of Minyas at Orchomenos. I have tried to argue that, although tomb builders’ attention and choices reveal knowledge and familiarity with actual domestic roofs and that this is one of the benefits of a comparative approach, the diversity of forms and the combination of various architectural elements that may never have existed in domestic contexts (such as ‘beam ends’ on the façade of round structures, as with the Atreus and Clytemnestra tholoi at Mycenae; or the many different roof forms at Voudeni) suggest that verisimilitude was not necessarily the main preoccupation of builders and their commissioners. A selection was made from the domestic vocabulary that was adapted to promote social power and serve the staging of death and the performance of funeral and postfuneral acts. Despite the elusive nature of roofs in the archaeological record, their form and significance has been the subject of heated discussion since the inception of Aegean archaeology. Little attention has been paid to comparative analysis across the funerary and non-funerary ambits and few scholars have tried to explain why tombs assumed domestic features on occasion. The social dynamics of staging death, from the form of the tomb to funeral and postfuneral actions, entailed elements that were hidden and visible only to few. In addition, ‘reading’ the tomb’s design entailed cultural competence important for interpreting the funeral itself. I have argued that the occasional use of pitched roofs in Mycenaean chamber tombs was a purposeful act of semiotic significance, yet another ‘word’ in the vocabulary of monumentality and elaboration intended for a particular audience. Tomb design in the early Late Bronze Age Aegean was not simply about practical considerations, but also an essential component in the expression of power serving the politics of death—hidden or otherwise. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the editors for inviting me to participate in the volume and their invaluable suggestions and corrections. I am grateful to John Bennet for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Various topics covered here have been presented by the author in lectures in Oxford and Cambridge.

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I thank the participants in these lectures for their feedback. I am also grateful to Professor Vasileios Aravantinos, Dr Ioannis Fappas and Dr Adamantia Vasilogambrou for giving me access to study material relevant to this paper from their excavations. Any mistakes remain with me.

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Placing Bodies, Embodying Places

Anna Lagia, Ioanna Moutafi, Raphaël Orgeolet, Despoina Skorda and Julien Zurbach

Revisiting the Tomb: Mortuary Practices in Habitation Areas in the Transition to the Late Bronze Age at Kirrha, Phocis Introduction In recent years the occurrence of burials in residential areas has become important in understanding the relationship of the living with the dead and the construction of social landscapes where memory is appropriated and transformed politically (e.g. van Dyke & Alcock 2003; Rakita et al. 2005; Hamilakis 2010; Adams & King 2011; McAnany 2011; Torres-Rouff et al. 2012). While the focus has been on burials in actively inhabited residential areas, graves built over abandoned domestic structures have received less attention (Sarri, this volume; Labrude, this volume). In the former case, placing the dead in the world of the living tends to be construed as a form of reanimation of dead bodies. Building graves in abandoned habitation areas, however, involves an interaction between entities that are often regarded as inanimate. The possibility that even inanimate objects can bring about change, actively affecting their environment, is all the more frequently discussed in archaeology (e.g. Meskell 1999; Chapman 2000; Thomas 2002). In this paper we search for components of this interaction at the Middle Helladic site of Kirrha at Phocis, based on osteoarchaeological evidence that focuses on the mode of burial and the treatment of the dead in mortuary grounds, in particular in graves used to accommodate many burials and in secondary handlings of osseous remains. Excavation data allow us to reconstruct multistage funerary rituals in which the grave, like the ‘dead’ site, comprises a place of revisitation, where the relationship of the living with the past is redefined and renegotiated. Similarities in certain practices that emerge among different sites of the same period refer to a common perception of this relationship, even if this may be constructed or even reversed through its continuous redefinition.

Placing the dead at Kirrha Burial use of abandoned residential areas is not uncommon in Middle Helladic times in the Greek mainland (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–5; Boyd 2002: 33–6; Milka 2010; Sarri, this volume), a practice viewed as a turn towards the past and a quest to extend links to it, independent perhaps of chronological continuity; at least in Thessaly, Middle Helladic graves are built over much earlier buildings (Tsountas 1908: 132–47;

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Maran 1995: 70; Adrimi-Sismani 2010: 302). In the transitional Middle Helladic III/ Late Helladic I period, funerary practices are characterised by greater diversity compared to the earlier Middle Helladic when there is little evidence of mortuary differentiation (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–5; Dickinson 2010: 21). Key developments in this era ‘form a core set of new (or much enhanced)’ practices encompassing innovations in funerary architecture, the use of collective burial practices and secondary rites, the development of a more complex funerary landscape and a marked increase in material culture use in mortuary rituals (Boyd 2016). Public forms of expressing the relations of the living with the dead predominate (Papadimitriou, this volume; 2011), while marked status differences are often seen in formal extramural cemeteries (Voutsaki 2010: 76). These new trends gradually develop into tradition during the early Mycenaean period (Late Helladic I-II) and continue through the end of the Late Bronze Age, although burials in simple graves never cease to co-occur (Lewartowski 1995). In the past, the funerary data have frequently been related exclusively to sociopolitical processes, reflecting elite competition crucial in the development of social hierarchies at the onset of the Mycenaean era (e.g. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 35, 56, 77–8; Voutsaki 1998). Current approaches, however, highlight the significance of a holistic understanding of funerary action as historically situated, embedded and relational, reflecting complex interactions between individuals, society, and the surrounding environment (Boyd 2002; 2016; Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016). Awareness of the complex nature of mortuary practices as rites of commemoration, often involving substantial emotional and corporeal investment (Chesson 2001; Meskell 2003; Smith 2007; Hamilakis 2010; Torres-Rouf et al. 2012), urges us to reflect on the relationship between habitation and mortuary landscape, and the performance of complex mortuary rituals. The resumption of systematic excavations at Kirrha (Skorda & Zurbach 2009; 2010; 2011; Zurbach et al. 2015) complementing the existing body of data from the site (Dor et al. 1960; Petrakos 1973; Tsipopoulou 1980; Skorda 1979; 1989; 1992; 2006; 2010), has provided the opportunity to trace a wider range of mortuary practices and look at the interrelationship of burials and inhabited buildings more closely. Recent finds from Kirrha suggest infants and children were buried in Middle Helladic houses during their active period of use or immediately thereafter. They also illuminate the transformation of domestic to mortuary space in the form of cist graves built over or adjacent to Middle Helladic walls and the continuing use of burial areas until Late Helladic I-II. Although a regional character becomes apparent in certain aspects of grave e, certain traits involving diverse secondary rites connect Kirrha to other sites of the mainland. Τhe multiple use of cist graves, dating mostly in the transitional Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I phase and Late Helladic I-II, is known from a number of sites in mainland Greece (Blegen 1928; Valmin 1938; Dor et al. 1960; Blackburn 1971; Mylonas 1975; Dietz 1980; Taylour & Janko 2008: 121–45; Adrimi-Sismani 2010; Zavvou 2010; Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016; Voutsaki et al. in press). Secondary burials in the vicinity of cist graves, however, are less well-known (e.g. Papakonstantinou 1999; Tsiouka & Agnousiotes 2012; Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016).

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At Kirrha an integrated field methodology permits a clearer understanding of secondary contexts from a combined architectural, stratigraphical and anthropological perspective. Moreover, it casts light not only on the sequence of funerary actions, which were clearly more complex than the umbrella term ‘secondary burial’ would imply, but also on the temporal interval between initial interment, exhumation and reburial. The modest architecture and limited grave furnishings of the tombs contrast with the rich array of mortuary practices attested: if social disparities are not apparent using traditional criteria of wealth and prestige, what was the purpose of these complex handlings of human remains, who undertook them and to whom were they addressed? These questions have been raised previously in the context of the transformation of Middle Helladic settlements into mortuary areas in the Shaft Grave period, looking at the relatively short time span within which this phenomenon occurred in many parts of the Greek mainland, its causes and the ways in which it was legitimated (Maran 1995). While the absolute date of certain burials remains incompletely understood, stratigraphic information in combination with bioarchaeological observations on their placement and condition allows the recognition of complex mortuary practices and their sequence. Intentionality in the construction of secondary depositions, one of the most difficult tasks in funerary archaeology (Duday 2006: 46–8; Andrews & Bello 2006: 17), is attested in several contexts described below. This allows us to reflect on the purpose of multiple relocations as part of a broad set of mortuary practices that may encompass more than one stage of funerary treatment (WeissKrejci 2005: 155–6). Although funerary practices involving the disturbance, removal, and redeposition of human remains are more common from the transitional Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I period onwards, an assessment of the intentionality and potentially ritualised meaning of ‘secondary burial’ (first discussed in this sense by Cavanagh 1978; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 116) is not as straightforward (cf. Cavanagh et al., this volume). Recent advances in field anthropology propose a comprehensive methodology to determine the nature of secondary osseous deposits that includes an evaluation of bone representation based on skeletal preservation patterns, the recognition of anatomical articulations, and the contextual analysis of the bone assemblage in relation to the surrounding architecture and the natural environment (Duday 2006; Bello & Andrews 2006; Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016; Knüsel & Robb 2016). Observations need to be founded on carefully excavated skeletal assemblages that enable a more secure differentiation of accidental from intentional secondary depositions (Andrews & Bello 2006; Moutafi 2015b). Such a rare opportunity materialised during recent excavations at Kirrha through the use of field anthropology and heightened awareness concerning the excavation, curation and analysis of skeletal remains.

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The site The prehistoric settlement of Kirrha occupies a low mound located on the north coast of the Corinthian gulf 2 km east of Itea, Phokis. The site, accommodating the harbour of Delphi in classical times, was discovered and first explored in the late 1930s (Dor et al. 1960: 13–24). The early excavations produced habitation remains spanning the Early Helladic-Late Helladic, with plentiful levels dating to the late Middle Helladic, on the mound in the vicinity of the modern cemetery church (Sector D; Dor et al. 1960). Following a lengthy break after World War II, rescue excavations at Kirrha were resumed in the 1960s to keep up with building activity in the growing modern town (Petrakos 1973; Tsipopoulou 1980; Skorda 1979; 1989; 1992; 2006). As a result of urban expansion in the southern part of the mound, this section of the prehistoric site came to be better known than the northern half, which is covered by olive groves. The prehistoric settlement occupied an area extending ca. 300 m east-west and 200 m north-south around the summit of the mound where the modern church stands today. In 2008 systematic investigations were resumed once more, under the auspices of the French School at Athens and the 10th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities. Based on the availability of expropriated land, the new trenches were plotted next to previously explored areas: the Northeastern Sector, east of the modern cemetery, is located next to a Middle Helladic architectural complex with pottery kilns (Skorda 2010), while the Western Sector, located at the west edge of the mound, is characterised by deep and successive Middle Helladic strata (Skorda 2006). Except one adult burial, only infant and young child burials (newborns to three-year-olds) have been thus far found in the Northeastern Sector, adjacent to or built in the walls of the buildings, in cist graves, and in earth pits; grave goods are lacking. In this sector Middle Helladic II is the earliest phase encountered, occurring just below the contemporary surface of the mound. Given that infant burials were set within or adjacent to the floor level of Middle Helladic II structures, we can conclude that the former are either contemporary with the houses or postdate them only by a small amount of time. The main bulk of funerary data originates from the Western Sector, where early Mycenaean graves were found to superimpose the latest habitation levels of the Middle Helladic III settlement. Two burial groups were identified in this sector. The first one consists of two infant graves: a small mudbrick-lined grave (L104) dug into a floor at the western edge of the trench, and a pithos burial (L475) dug into the ground outside of a house in the southeastern part of the trench. Graves and architectural remains belonging to this phase (D) were preliminarily dated to late Middle Helladic I or Middle Helladic II, and were sealed by a hard, homogeneous, almost sterile layer of yellow soil (ca. 0.15–0.20 m thick) that extended throughout the area and consisted of decayed mudbrick from collapsed house walls. This suggests that the burials were contemporary with the dwellings or, possibly but less likely, set into the settlement

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immediately after it was abandoned (i.e. date to an early phase of the Middle Helladic period). A number of simple pits cut into the surface of the aforementioned layer produced Early Mycenaean (Late Helladic I) sherds dating to phase C (as well the ensuing phase B, which was largely destroyed). Given that some of these sherds may have been intrusive, phases B-C are tentatively dated to the Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I period. The second group [Fig. 1] belongs to the uppermost stratum (phase A) and constitutes the majority of burials in the Western Sector. These include primary, single infant and child burials in cist (L101, L402) and pit graves (L466), commingled infant remains without clear architectural context (L105), secondary single adult burials in earth pits (L152, L456), secondary multiple burials in an earth pit (L401), and both atop and inside another cist grave (L402), successive primary with secondary burials (L150) and secondary burials (L459) in stone cist graves. It is clear that the construction of cist graves L150 and L459 disturbed preexisting residential walls. While L459 was built over one such structure, building the shaft for L150 required the removal of an underlying wall. Only four of these graves were furnished with grave goods, reflecting the scarcity of funerary furnishings in this period. All datable artefacts originate from secondary contexts. L151 contained a miniature vase of problematic date in association with commingled perinatal remains. L150, contained three successive burials, only one of which (consisting of the commingled remains of an adolescent female) was furnished with a small Late Helladic I globular jar. A single secondary burial in L456 was provided with two small Late Helladic I bowls, while the remains of at least four adults and three children in L401 were accompanied by a Late Helladic I-II jug. It seems reasonable to conclude that this small cemetery dates to the early Late Helladic period, which is consistent with the stratigraphy of the whole area. It is noteworthy that phase A is roughly contemporary with a dense concentration of Late Helladic I graves in Sector D (Dor et al. 1960: 39–42). Apparently, in both areas of the mound graves were set during the Late Helladic I-II period within the ruins of the Middle Helladic III settlement. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that burials belonging to this phase are not strictly contemporaneous. First, some graves are built on top of others (e.g. L455 and L456). Secondly, many secondary depositions in previously occupied graves offer clear evidence of temporal succession (L402), while empty pits may have been used for primary interment (L406). Finally, evidence on body desiccation from two secondary interments (L402 and L152) frames the time in which body exhumation and reburial may have taken place.

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Fig. 1: Plan of the western sector of the excavations (after authors).

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Revisiting the dead at Kirrha Cist graves Past excavations at the site have demonstrated that cist graves were used for the performance of a variety of rites involving synchronous and successive interments and the formation of contexts with commingled remains that were assumed to have functioned as primary tombs, ossuaries and even cenotaphs (Dor et al. 1960: 54–64). Such uses have been reported for a number of sites in the transitional Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I period (e.g. Blegen 1928; Valmin 1938; Mylonas 1975; Taylour & Janko 2008; Adrimi-Sismani 2010; Zavvou 2010), and are corroborated by recent anthropological observations (e.g. Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016; Voutsaki et al. in press). The meticulous excavation of two stone cist graves (L150 and L459) during the 2011 campaign provided the opportunity to substantiate multistage mortuary practices not adequately explained by functional interpretations related to the accommodation of a new interment. Moreover, the encounter in 2014 of the secondary burial of an infant within the primary grave of another (L200) confirmed that these rites were not restricted to the remains of adults. The contextual analysis of subcontexts within cist graves and secondary depositions in earth pits addresses difficulties in interpreting a context as primary, secondary or disturbed; determining the original location of interments found in secondary contexts; evaluating the condition in which remains were at the time of exhumation and reburial; and assessing the temporal distance between such activities. L150 preserved three subcontexts related to the latest operations taking place in the grave. The uppermost context covering the entire upper layer [Fig. 2] contained a fully articulated skeleton of a late adolescent male (ca. 19 years old), in the flexed position and lying on his right side. The skeleton was generally well-preserved, with the most damage along the zone of contact of the right side of the skeleton (and the sides of the bones that were in contact due to posture) with the ground, known to be the most vulnerable to taphonomic alterations (Lyman 1994: 405). The most extreme effects of weathering were noted on the right pelvic bone and the right femur, parts of which had been completely eroded away. The lateral rotation with partial displacement of the left femur and the collapsed thoracic region, two of the most labile articulations in the skeleton (Duday & Guillon 2006: 127), suggest that decomposition took place in an open space, i.e. the body was not covered with soil immediately after the interment. Nevertheless, the maintenance in articulation of other labile areas such as the pelvic region was secured by the tight space of the grave, the presence of architecture and microstructures such as large pebbles fixing the bones in position, and the gradual infilling of the grave with earth.

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Fig. 2: Secondary burial L152 and cist grave L150 with the articulated skeleton on its upper layer (after authors).

A pebble floor and a layer of soil separated this in situ burial from the rearranged bones of two earlier internments below [Fig. 3]. Most of the east side of the middle layer contained the heavily commingled bones of a late adolescent female. Taphonomic lesions on parts of the skeleton’s left side resemble the damage observed on the previously mentioned skeleton’s side that was in contact with the ground during decomposition. The disarticulated bones were not accumulated, suggesting they were not pushed aside to accommodate a new interment. Instead, bones had been cleared at the west side of the tomb to accommodate a rectangular cist or osteotheke (ossuary, 0.50 × 0.30 m), the long side of which was parallel to the narrow side of the grave. The osteotheke was lined by four large stones, forming a third sub-context within the grave [Fig. 4]. The densely packed bones of a young adult male were found within it, the long bones positioned along the long axis of the osteotheke. The separate construction of the osteotheke, the somewhat lower stratigraphic position of this interment compared to the commingled remains of the young woman, the careful alignment of the bones, and the absence of mixture of bones in the two contexts based on sex and age-at-death characteristics clearly differentiate the two last contexts and point to separate events of secondary treatment in the grave. An unusual provision in this tomb is an adjustment made on the west cover slab and part of a levering system (namely a notch in the upper south corner of the slab, whereas a stone used as a fulcrum had been set outside the grave just in front of the

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notch [Fig. 5]), which betrays an expectation of multiple reopening, although it cannot be determined precisely when the levering system was established. The presence of a single articulated burial and two other rearranged burials in a secondary context suggest that the grave was reopened at least three times if we assume, as the almost complete inventory of the skeletons suggests, that the bodies were initially placed and decomposed in this grave. Nevertheless, as it emerged from the study of secondary depositions in earth pits described below (L152), the completion of the skeletal inventory alone does not suffice to make such assessments. At Kirrha, single secondary burials in earth pits as well, demonstrate remarkable skeletal completion, even though decomposition certainly did not occur in these loci. The second cist grave (L459) is noteworthy for the occurrence of diverse secondary contexts and the absence of a primary interment. The upper layer was filled with the commingled remains of at least two adults of different sex and age. While disarticulated bones representing most anatomical areas were found throughout this layer, the presence of only a few articulated thoracic vertebrae and a concentration of long bones in the southeast part of the grave suggest bones had been pushed aside. It is tempting to interpret the articulated spinal elements as evidence of primary interment, but articulated ribs among secondarily deposited remains described below (L402) suggest otherwise. The few articulated skeletal remains may result from partially decomposed body parts at the time of reburial. Alternatively, the possibility of sedimentation of infiltrating soil may retain articulations together independent of the state of soft tissues at the time of reburial (Moutafi 2015a). Overall, the heavy fragmentation and erosion of bones in this layer indicate extensive weathering processes during the formation of the assemblage rather than just in situ weathering during decomposition. Taphonomic alterations on these bones differ significantly from those observed on the commingled remains from the middle layer of grave L150, instead resembling the crammed osteological material from L402 (see below). The lower stratum of L459 rests on the floor of the grave and is separated from the upper one by means of a soil layer. This lower stratum contained the internment of a young adult female carefully arranged and occupying the centre of the tomb conspicuously [Fig. 6]. The reversed right pelvis with the sacrum, rib, vertebral and long bone fragments lay on the east side of the bone cluster. At a lower level and at the centre of the cluster lay the cranium, placed on its right side facing east and between the thigh bones. The latter were oriented opposite to each other with the smaller long bones underneath, indicating that the internment was fixed with earth at the time of reburial (or the thigh bones would have rotated over the smaller long bones). The surrounding area contained few bones, but sparse skeletal remains belonging to two adults were excavated near the flanks of the grave. It appears that the floor of the grave was cleaned from preexisting burials, with remains pushed aside and removed to accommodate the specially arranged female secondary burial.

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Fig. 3: Cist grave L150: the commingled remains of the ‘middle layer’ (left) and the osteotheke (right) (after authors).

Fig. 4: Cist grave L150: a closer view of the osteotheke (after authors).

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Fig. 5: Cist grave L150: a notch in the upper south corner of the western slab and a stone used as a fulcrum outside the grave in front of the notch (after authors).

In sum, several secondary burials were made in this tomb, but there is no evidence of primary interment. The absence of primary internments is commonly explained as the result of preparation for a new burial that never happened (e.g. Valmin 1938: 204;

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Zavvou 2010: 89). In this case, it seems more likely that the intricate rearrangement of human remains was part of complex, ongoing mortuary practices at the site of the grave. This impression is corroborated by comparable evidence from pit L224 (see below).

Fig. 6: A carefully placed secondary burial on the floor of cist grave L459 (after authors).

L402 is a small stone cist (0.50 × 0.30 m) that accommodated a young child (ca. 2–3 years old) [Figs. 7–8]. The skeleton was partially articulated, in the flexed position and lying on its left side, on top of a pebble floor. A thin layer of soil separated this interment from the commingled bones of at least three adults found crammed inside the cist grave, overflowing it. A small cranial fragment and a few other bones missing from the child burial were recovered amidst the commingled adult burials. The partial disturbance of the child burial and the clear separation of the two subcontexts by a layer of soil indicate a punctuated use of the grave separated in time. This is corroborated by the marked difference in preservation between the child’s remains (both articulated and displaced), which were in excellent condition, and the heavily fragmented and weathered adult remains. A similar case of a multiple secondary burial (an ossuary of two-three individuals) deposited over the contracted skeleton of a child in a stone cist grave is also known from Malthi in the Peloponnese (Valmin 1938: 200, grave XXVI).

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L200, a larger than the previous stone cist grave (0.87 × 0.58 m), contained the primary and secondary burials of two infants: the skull and postcranial skeleton of one infant was piled on the east part of the cist along the feet of another infant flexed on the right side [Fig. 9]. The stratigraphic position of the former in relation to the articulated infant suggests that their placement took place simultaneously. The practice of placing the secondary burial of an infant together with the primary interment of another infant is also known from cist and built graves from Malthi (Valmin 1938, graves XXXVI, XL, XVIII) and one possible case from Ayios Vasilios (grave 24, Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016). In this site, grave furnishing suggested that the first interment that was constructed in the Middle Helladic was pushed to the side to accommodate a second interment of the same (Middle Helladic) or later (Late Helladic) period. Infant bones heaped in one side of the grave are also known from past excavations at Kirrha (Dor et al. 1960, grave 50), Eleusis (Mylonas 1975, grave Δπ4), and Agios Stefanos (Taylour & Janko 2008: 125, grave 12).

Fig. 7: The cist grave of a child (L402) (after authors).

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Fig. 8: A multiple secondary burial over the grave of the child in L402, with the ribs in articulation circled (after authors).

Fig. 9: A primary (center and right) and a secondary (upper left) infant burial in cist grave L200 (after authors).

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Earth pits Recent excavations at Kirrha demonstrated that simple earth pits, besides being used for adult (L511, [Fig. 1]; Dor et al. 1960: 45) and infant primary interments (L238, L466 [Fig. 1]), were also used to accommodate single and multiple secondary burials. A small oval pit (L152, 0.60 × 0.40 m), found in close vicinity to cist L150 [Fig. 2], contained the densely packed bones of a middle-aged man. Another one nearby (L456) contained the secondary burial of an adult along with two small Late Helladic I bowls [Fig. 1]. More such pits encountered in 2014 (e.g. L504 and L201B [Fig. 1]) suggest that this practice was not rare at Kirrha. Although no reference to secondary burials in pits was made in past excavations at the site, a pit with a few bones in disorder (Dor et al. 1960, grave 26), and another located at the exterior of a stone cist of an infant (Dor et al. 1960, grave 43) ‘tout contre les dalles de couverture’ with the bones of an adult ‘reduced to dust’ are noteworthy (Dor et al. 1960: 122). The reburial of bones and grave goods in pits adjacent to cist graves is known from Middle Helladic Thessaly (Papakonstantinou 1999) and southern Greece (Mylonas 1975). It is conceivable that L150 was the original location of the secondary burial in L152, an assumption also supported by its remarkable skeletal completion, but the issue remains open. Excessive sedimentation on the latter material, absent in neighbouring contexts, suggests that the primary burial may have been made in a different, still unidentified environment. Multiple secondary burials in pits of various sizes and shapes are also known from the Western Sector. The commingled remains of at least four adults of both sexes and different ages, two children, and an infant, along with an intact Late Helladic I-II jug, were found in the sizeable pit L401, which was dug against an earlier wall, probably dating to Middle Helladic I-II [Fig. 10]. Although the bones were placed in the pit in disarray their preservation was relatively good, unlike the material in L402 (see above), pointing to the occurrence of different formation process between the two assemblages. Beneath L401 had been dug a secondary burial in a pit (L224) with the orderly arranged remains of an adult furnished with steatite pearls [Fig. 11]. The nearly rectangular configuration of the assemblage resembles the female burial on the floor of L459 where the skull laid on its side between long bones and other skeletal elements. A comparable complex of graves placed on top of each other is also known from Lerna where a shaft with the secondary burial of seven individuals (two young adults, two adolescents, a three-year-old and an infant) was constructed above a pit with five articulated skeletons, four adults and a new born child (Blackburn 1971, graves 23 and 22, respectively).

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Fig. 10: Pit L401 with several adult and subadult remains and two Late Helladic I bowls (after authors).

Fig. 11: Secondary burial L224 below pit L401 (after authors).

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Time between first interment and reburial Secondary interments L402 and L152 offer rare insights on time elapsed between primary and secondary burial activities. Several adult ribs among the adult bones in L402 were anatomically articulated in the midst of the commingled remains [Fig. 8]. Given that this area comprises one of the most labile articulations of the thorax (Duday & Guillon 2006: 129) it seems that at least this segment of one body had not been fully decomposed when exhumation and reburial took place. A similar situation was noted in the single secondary burial of L152, where a large part of the spine was found articulated among the remaining, tightly packed remains of a middle-aged man [Fig. 12]. Estimating time since death based on the state of body decomposition is one of the most complex undertakings in forensic anthropology as it depends on a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, such as the circumstances of burial (e.g. open-air, earthcovered or placed in a container), its depth and exposure to organisms accelerating decomposition, temperature and moisture fluctuations, the amount of fat available on the body at death, and the presence of disease (Ferreira & Cuhna 2013). Although a buried corpse may start decomposing only weeks after burial in a temperate environment (Duday & Guillon 2006: 127), a number of possible factors affecting decomposition speed compels us to postulate a period of few months to a few years elapsed between the first interment and the secondary deposition (Galloway 1997; Bass 1997). The absence of other articulated remains in L402 may be due to the transportation of body parts and skeletal segments from burials in varying states of decomposition.

Fig. 12: Spine in articulation in secondary burial L152 (after authors).

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Age-at-death and commemoration A rather interesting picture emerges in regards to the treatment at death of different age groups at Kirrha. The burials of infants and young children present a range of diversity that is perhaps broader than that of adults: they are buried not only in different containers and modes of burial but appear to claim their own area. The East Sector that was potentially still active at the time of burials seems thus far to be almost exclusively used for the burial of infants and young children. This spatial distinction is also known from Thebes, where ‘a distinct concentration of single burials of infants/children’ was noted in the west sector of the East Cemetery (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 381). The Western Sector at Kirrha on the other hand, where early infant graves were also present (L104, L238, L475), is later occupied by the graves of adults in addition to children. At Kirrha the burials of infants and young children appear continuously in the habitation area in both phases of its use. The graves of adults, however, seem to enter the habitation area after the abandonment of the buildings and its transformation to a mortuary area. Funerary practices in the transitional Middle Helladic III/ Late Helladic I period, while largely similar between adults and juveniles in terms of grave type (pits and cists), mode of burial (primary and secondary), and body placement (mostly flexed on either side, with a predilection for the left, cf. Dor et al. 1960: 53; Ruppenstein 2010: 436), are clearly more complex for adults in terms of bone relocations. Nevertheless, the remains of subadults, albeit not as commonly as those of adults, are also rearranged in secondary contexts, either as bones heaped to the side of a cist (L200), or in pits accommodating several individuals (L401). Moreover, both the graves of children can function as a ‘pole of attraction’ for the secondary interment of adults (L402) and the graves of adults can comprise a ‘point of reference’ for infant burials. The burial of an infant in a pit (L466) was located outside cist grave L459 [Fig. 1], a practice that is also known from other sites such as Laconia and Ayios Vassileios (Zavvou 2010: 92, with references; Voutsaki et al. in press; Cavanagh et al., this volume). The concept of displacement, therefore, seems to describe the remains of adults more than those of juveniles, although the latter can also form part of secondary practices. These differentiations in the use of space for burial may help interpret differences between ‘intra-’ and ‘extramural’ cemeteries (Voutsaki 2004) that may actually concern burial in active or non-active areas, rather than concepts of exclusion of young ages in the mortuary practice. The persistence of subadult inclusion at Kirrha throughout the Early Mycenaean period, with their remains placed in clear association, or even collectively, with those of adults, is in contrast with the pattern of exclusion and age segregation suggested in contemporaneous ‘extramural’ Early Mycenaean cemeteries of shaft graves, tholoi, and chamber tombs in the Peloponnese, particularly in the Argolid and Messenia (Cavanagh & Mee 1998, 129; Gallou 2004: 366; Voutsaki 2004, with a list of examples).

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Conclusions In this paper the relationship of domestic and funerary space at Kirrha was assessed through interdisciplinary study and field anthropology. Skeletal remains in the graves and surrounding areas were given equal weight rather than treated selectively, casting light on multifaceted ritual processes as well as the biocultural identity of the deceased and the handling of their remains. Using osteological and contextual evidence it was demonstrated that the construction of secondary burial niches and the arrangement of the bones (position, alignment) were intentional. Different trajectories and variety of practices in the formation of secondary deposits were documented. Taphonomic characteristics, such as weathering patterns, breakage and skeletal completeness, were found to differ not only between primary and secondary depositions but also among secondary contexts and even within the same grave. The circumstances of partially articulated remains have suggested that time elapsed between initial interment and secondary treatment was sometimes shorter than anticipated, implying perhaps that the burials in question were removed in haste to make space for new ones or a need to perform rituals ‘on time’. Performance of mortuary rites within cist graves and many forms of secondary burial outside cist graves hitherto unattested at the site were largely substantiated by recent finds at Kirrha. What kind of effect would continual interaction with lifeless remains, parts of decomposed bodies, and the recently deceased, have had on tomb visitors and ritual participants? The levering system found on L150 certainly suggests awareness, perhaps already since the tomb’s construction, of the need to repeatedly reopen the grave. The multiple use of this tomb for at least one primary and two secondary burials, including the ‘orderly’ secondary internment in the osteotheke, and the placement of an adolescent literally over the (tended and jumbled) remains of his ancestors (L150) make ongoing ritual performance at the grave likely. The later placement of a secondary burial (L152) in direct vicinity to it reinforces the impression that the cist remained visible in later times. In a similar vein, the unusually arranged secondary burial of a young woman in the lower layer of L459, the many commingled and heavily weathered adult remains in the upper layer of the same tomb, and the burial of an infant outside its west wall suggest elaborate, multiple and selective ritual revisitations of the dead. In addition, multiple secondary depositions of adult remains over the almost intact cist grave of a child (L402) and of mixed adult and juvenile remains (L401) over the orderly secondary burial of an adult (L224) speak for practices with a strong emotional appeal. Why were some secondary burials commingled while others were reburied in orderly fashion in the same grave or pit? It is clear that burial practices at Kirrha extended well beyond the simple burial of the body. A role was attributed to the osseous remains that cannot be contained in functionalist interpretations. Human bones, even before the complete decay of soft tissues, are touched, sensed and transported. Some of the remains associated with secondary burials L402 and L152 may have been malodorous even. Ιt seems legitimate

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to ask who may have performed the rituals, if they were part of the kin or specialists in such practices. A form of detachment is hard to envision given the extent of the secondary practices and the inclusion in these of the remains of infants too. The emotions surrounding loss and death and the abandonment of a habitation area articulating conditions that can no longer return, are stirred in every new visit to the transformed habitation-mortuary area. A mnemoscape is formed, where memory is stimulated and negotiated continually. The abandoned buildings are transformed through practices that recall the same repetitive action: recurrence to the habitation and mortuary grounds, rearrangement, redefinition. Propelled by the common ‘attribute’ of both habitation and mortuary remains as dead, now passive partakers of the society that cares for them, we may ask whether the reenlivening of both through this iterative interaction, aimed at awakening or even constructing the memory of a presence that no longer exists. Something has changed in the world irreversibly and an attempt is made to adhere to the past, no matter how recent this may be. The exhumations and transportations of the dead remains, document the still articulated labile joints in L152 and L402, may have taken place relatively soon after the initial interment. From these rearrangements, infant remains are not exempted. Either as part of collective or single secondary graves, they too are relocated to a new mortuary environment such as an ossuary (L401), or are piled within the grave as a secondary burial in direct vicinity to a preexisting or newly deceased (L200). A sense of continuity and an unbroken unity appear to be highlighted with these practices taking place perhaps within a rapidly changing world. Although secondary graves of infants are known from a number of sites of the Greek mainland, grave L200 comprises one of the clearest examples of a secondary burial of an infant in a cist used for the first interment of another. A connection with the ancestral remains, including those of infants, is built at the moment of death. It is the past and the present that come together in relations of continuity rather than a specific age, sex, or socioeconomic group. The emphatic detection of emerging elites in the multifaceted mortuary rites of the transitional Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I period (Voutsaki 1998) necessitates explanations that may only minimally concern mortuary diversity at Kirrha where single graves prevail. So does the individuality of the remains of the deceased. Even in cists that were used repetitively (L150 and L459) individuality is largely maintained. Mingling, nevertheless, also exists and may also include children (L401; Blackburn 1971, graves 23, 36, 69, 83; Taylour & Janko 2008: 142–3); it may occasionally concern only adults placed over a child’s grave (L402; Valmin 1938, grave XXXVI); or mixed adult and juvenile remains (L401; Blackburn 1971, grave 23) dug over a secondary (L224) or a primary (Blackburn 1971, grave 22) pit. Could this continual recurrence to the past express an intention to seek protection in turbulent times, οr meaning in times that were rapidly changing? People often seek reference to the past when they feel insecure and search for roots and points of reference to the ‘familiar’ and the ‘secure’. We do not know yet if in this period

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socioeconomic hierarchies expressed also in health and dietary disparities, were in the process or were already developed, as becomes clear later in the Late Helladic III (e.g. Iezzi 2009; Schepartz et al. 2009; Papathanasiou et al. 2012). Arguably, the complexity of burial practices characterising Mycenaean collective tombs was already present in these early times and simpler graves. At the same time, the funerary record at Kirrha suggests that the individuality of secondary interments tended to be preserved, a phenomenon sometimes observed in the transitional period (e.g. examples from the Shaft Graves of Mycenae, Boyd 2015: 434–8). This may indicate tension between individual and collective identities on one hand, and tradition and innovation on the other (cf. Boyd 2002; 2016; Voutsaki 2010; Moutafi & Voutsaki 2016). It seems likely that transformations taking place at the political and social domains affected reciprocally the way with which the past was viewed and funerary practices materialised. The creation of collective identity through reference to relations of lineage or descent with a real or constructed past comprises a powerful mechanism of social reproduction, as recently discussed for the collective funerary practices that were introduced in the Early Mycenaean period (Boyd 2002; 2015, 2016; Voutsaki 2010). The return to abandoned buildings and existing graves, the proximity of primary and secondary burials, and the intimacy involved in handling the dead remains convey a sense of familiarity with the ancestral remains and a connection with the ancestral grounds. The practice of burial in abandoned habitation areas is a broad phenomenon in the Greek mainland and many of the funerary rites at Kirrha have parallels with other sites. Through these, a connection seems to be sought with a past, perhaps impersonal, that is shared in a broader geographic area. The construction of lineage, therefore, in the communal rather than the family sense seems to better describe the practices of recurrence to the habitation and mortuary milieu. If power games and games of prestige were played out too, these did not leave their mark on the funerary setting. Instead, a sense of unity with a past reality and a common perception of the relation with death and the dead in a large geographical region become apparent. We may never come to know the range of emotions that were negotiated with every new visit to the mortuary landscape and the notion of memory that was constructed and deconstructed with each new arrangement of the deceased remains. What we do seem to have in hand, however, is a glimpse of a mortuary landscape where identity, not in the narrow limits of the individual but in the broader frame of a community, was perceived in relation to the past and its negotiation. Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Mrs. N. Psalti, ephor of the 10th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities at Delphi, for allowing the resumption of systematic excavations at Kirrha; the French School of Archaeology at Athens and the INSTAP for generous support and funding to the excavations; Dr. S. Fox, former director of the Wiener Laboratory of the ASCSA, for the opportunity to conduct analysis of the human skeletal remains in state-of-the art laboratory conditions; and

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the excavation teams of the 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2014 campaigns, whose commitment to the excavation of human skeletal remains made this detailed presentation possible. Finally, we would like to thank the editors for their comments that greatly improved our text.

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Bill Cavanagh, Anna Lagia and Chris Mee †

Mortuary Practices in the Middle Bronze Age at Kouphovouno: Vernacular Dimensions of the Mortuary Ritual “The proper treatment of the dead may not, I suggest, be understood in the fullness of its instrumental operations without at least some account of the motivating beliefs that render the loss entailed in death more thinkable” (Smith 2007: 166).

Commenting on a recent account of the social dimensions of funerary traditions in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean (Laneri 2007), Smith (2007: 165) drew attention to the vernacular character of the mortuary ritual often overlooked in quests for their social and political dimensions. Smith (2007: 165–6) reminds us not only of ‘the real point of the mortuary ritual’, which is to contain loss and grief while securing ‘the (good) afterlife’, but also of the extent to which this very dimension, ‘the aesthetics of death’, form the springboard for ‘its instrumental employment’. The starting point for this paper is the burials from the site of Kouphovouno, close to Sparta, Lakonia (Cavanagh et al. 2004; 2007). Mortuary practices at Kouphovouno relating to the earlier phases of the Middle Helladic period indicate the existence of beliefs about the ‘proper treatment’ of the dead, and thus the power ascribed to the dead over the world of the living. In the light of these, we suggest a revision of our earlier position concerning the appearance of second funerary acts in the Late Helladic period. Based on contexts with relocated human skeletal remains, the proximity of the burials of infants to adult bodies, and the rather unusual burial in toto of a dismembered body, we reflect on the ‘motivating beliefs’ behind these mortuary acts and their potential development to more elaborate (instrumentalised?) acts in the following periods. As astutely noted by Smith (2007: 166) the instrumentalisation of death ‘presumes an effective world of feeling’.

Second(ary) funerary acts It is almost impossible to discuss ‘secondes obsèques’ without reference to the insights of Robert Hertz’s pioneering article published in L’Année Sociologique of 1905– 06 (Hertz 1907; followed by Les Rites de Passage, published by Arnold van Gennep in 1909). He observed that the physical instant of death was not countenanced by most human societies, which therefore instituted devices such as mourning customs, and rituals such as the second funeral, to mediate a longer process of transition, whereby the essence of the dead person only slowly released its hold on the community, relatives, dwelling, possessions and property, before passing onto the next world.

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These insights have, over the years been expanded by an increasing awareness of the complexity of practices and related meanings that the initial scheme may encompass (e.g. Metcalf & Huntington 1991; Carr 1995; Rakita & Buikstra 2005; Weiss-Krejci 2005; 2011), but still form a fundamental hold over our interpretation of archaeological mortuary data (Metcalf & Huntington 1991: 25–39). The recognition of second funerary acts or gestures, in particular those that can be called ‘second burial’, is a challenging task in field anthropology (Duday & Guillon 2006: 148–50), especially in periods such as the Middle Bronze Age in Greece where we find the use of a space sometimes for burial and the same space used earlier and/ or later for settlement. In previous work, we maintained that the second funeral arose in the Late Bronze Age, when the practice is well-established (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 118). Based on funerary contexts firstly from Kouphovouno and then from elsewhere we discuss here the possibility of recognising second funerary acts in earlier phases of the Middle Bronze Age than we have thus far considered. We further use the term ‘second(ary) actions’ which encompasses not only second burials but also the result of such actions which may leave bones behind articulated or disturbed (Andrews & Bello 2006: 17). The term ‘second’ rather than ‘secondary’ burial better conveys the sequential rather than qualitative configuration of such contexts as result from the reworking of the first interment, which may be of equal (or different) rather than ‘secondary’ importance in the ritual surrounding the burial of the body. According to Duday and Guillon (2006: 146) the term second or ‘double funeral’ denotes a ‘continuation of intentionality’ in the programming of funerary operations. While the recognition of intentionality versus incidental disturbance is an essential step in the identification of a second burial (Andrews & Bello 2006, 17), in itself it does not suffice to encompass the great variability in the practices of handling human remains and their mutable and manifold meanings. Weiss-Krejci (2005) reminds us how the term ‘secondary burial’ may encompass a range of practices with very diverse meanings both for those who performed them and for those who would interpret them. Exhumation and reburial may have a very different meaning from that of the initial burial, for example in some cases they can serve as a political expression on the part of those who relocate the remains in an attempt to bolster their claim to descent, but in others represent an attempt to subvert just such connections on the part of those who dislocate the remains. As Weiss-Krejci (2005: 171–2) states, “if a funeral defines a person’s status, so do exhumation and reburial. The evidence from burial deposits with disarticulated remains may neither hold any information on the status of a person at the time of death nor reflect the intention of the community that participated in the funeral. But the analysis of jumbled, incomplete, and disarticulated bones may display ideological change and social process and therefore open a different window to understanding ancient human behaviour”.

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Kouphovouno in context Kouphovouno was a major centre in the Middle Neolithic and Late Neolithic periods and was occupied during the Early Bronze Age (Cavanagh et al. 2004; 2007). After a hiatus at the end of the Early Bronze Age it was reoccupied, though the excavations and surface survey have shown that the Middle Bronze Age settlement was concentrated on the edge of the ancient tell, and the central section, where excavations have taken place, was given over to funerary use. In all some 27 burial locations have been uncovered, ten in the course of the excavations by von Vacano in 1942 (Renard 1989: 37–43) and 17 during the 2001–2006 excavations [Fig. 1]. For present purposes, we shall concentrate our discussion mainly on burials in Areas B and H from Kouphovouno, which best illustrate the phenomena of interest in this article. Burials at the site were uncovered very close to the surface, some within 0.20 m, and we believe that the original ground level has been severely eroded over the last 4,000 years. The stratigraphy in all parts of the site was difficult to read, but we concluded that, at least in Area H and possibly in other parts of the site, Early Bronze Age and Late Neolithic deposits had been quarried to build stone and earth mounds into which the Middle Helladic burials were inserted. The widespread distribution of tumulus burial in the Middle Helladic period adds support to the theory (Müller 1989).

Fig. 1: Middle Helladic graves at Kouphovouno: those with the prefix ‘vv’ are from the 1942 excavations; the others from the 2001–06 excavations (after authors).

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The burials found in Area H were densely concentrated on the western side, with one sometimes placed over another. H0705 was one of the contexts closest to the ground surface and yet, based on radiocarbon dating, it contained remains from one of the earliest burials in the mound; these were the skull, a few ribs, and the humeri of an adult male found in a pit ca. 1 × 1 m [Fig. 2]. Their arrangement over an irregular pit crowded with rocks, in addition to the total absence of the rest of the skeleton, speaks for the occurrence of a ‘second act’ in which the skeleton was displaced from its original place of interment. This intervention explains away the apparent paradox arising from the 14C dates taken on the human bones from the burials and illustrated on the stratigraphic matrix [Fig. 3]: H0705 (2286–2040 calBC) dates much earlier than H0713 (1896–1741 calBC), even though its stratigraphic position indicates that it should be later. The earlier date is consistent with those for Middle Helladic I at Lerna (cf. the date of GrA 28051 from grave BD14 in the appendix below, Voutsaki et al. 2010: 644). The solution to the paradox must be that the bones placed in H0705 were exhumed from a much earlier grave and redeposited in the space here.

Fig. 2: Context H0705 containing the bones of one of the earliest burials, which is nonetheless situated in the uppermost layer of the mound (after authors).

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Fig. 3: Stratigraphic matrix for Area H with dates (after authors).

To the east of this context, earth pit H0715 measuring ca. 0.70 × 0.45 m, held a dense concentration of disarticulated remains from a female in late adolescence. The bones had been carefully assembled to include most parts of the body without discrimination as to small and less resilient elements [Fig. 4]: the skull, teeth, scapulae,

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clavicles, vertebrae, ribs, humeri, ulnae, radii, hand bones, sacrum, the left pelvis, parts of the femora (the right femur and part of the left), the right patella-tibia-fibula and right foot bones. Along with these remains, the pit also contained a few wellpreserved bones from the postcranial skeleton of an adult male (the right femur, the tibiae, patellae, the left fibula and tarsal bones), probably earlier in date than the adolescent. Underneath this second interment, in context H0719, was found part of the left lower extremity of the adolescent in perfect anatomical articulation: the distal part of the left femur that joined with the proximal segment found in H0715, the left patella-tibia-fibula and foot bones in an orientation suggesting a flexed-on-the-leftside body placement of the original interment [Fig. 5]. In addition, bones from the hands and a few cervical vertebrae were found in the pit. To the west of H0715 were two articulated burials (H0706, and H0707) in situ, a female of advanced age contracted on her left and a middle aged male contracted on his right side.

Fig. 4: Context H0715 containing the largest part of the female adolescent skeleton initially buried in grave H0719 in addition to part of the skeleton of a much earlier burial of an adult male (after authors).

In Area B at Kouphovouno we encountered a situation generally similar to that in Area H, in the sense that there was a cluster of graves perhaps set into low mounds of stone and earth quarried from earlier Neolithic and Early Bronze Age deposits [Fig. 6]. Grave B0105 in the north part of the Area was a pit grave containing the articulated skeleton of a mature female adult, whilst in the south B0108 was a cist grave with the skeleton of a young adult male. Both of these graves held well-preserved contracted

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skeletons with the bones only slightly displaced by later disturbance. The cluster B0171/B0173–4/B0186, however, consisted of two grave pits surrounded by ledges, abutted against each other. In B0171 a 15–16 year-old youth was laid in a flexed posture. In the grave to the west there were two burial layers. In the upper layer B0173–4 held a few scattered bones: fragments of lower vertebrae, the sternum, ribs, the left scapula-humerus-radius-pelvis and talus. No cranial remains were detected, and these often comprise the most commonly selected element in second burials, although the absence of a skull does not rule out a second interment (Bello & Andrews 2006: 9). Underneath this disarticulated context, grave B0186 held the intact skeleton of a young adult male accompanied by a Middle Helladic II kantharos. The remains in the upper layer presented something of a puzzle and the possibility of their having been due to ploughing, tree-roots or burrowing animals, seemed equally improbable due to the absence of pertinent indications. The excavators were led, therefore, to the theory that only human intervention explained the deposition of these disarticulated and diverse bones. The inventory of the disturbed remains in B0173–4, their scattered arrangement among stones covering H0186, in addition to their common derivation and lack of affiliation to B0186 (confirmed through molecular analysis) suggest that the two contexts are separate and that the formation of the former was the result of a second act that does not relate to ritual but disturbance due to the construction of the new grave. The presence of small bones such as the metacarpals, tarsals, ribs and vertebrae among the scattered bones corroborates the inference that the area of primary burial must have been close, but most of the bones from the burial had evidently been removed and reinterred somewhere else, outside the excavated area, leaving only a few of the bones in the original burial context.

Fig. 5: Grave H0715, the left leg and foot of a late adolescent female in articulation in situ. The rest of the skeleton was placed in disarray in pit H0719 which lay above the side of the grave (after authors).

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Fig. 6: Location of Middle Helladic graves in Area B (after authors).

Bodies in proximity – Bodies whole Thus far the evidence from Kouphovouno suggests a desire for close proximity between burials, perhaps reflecting a close relationship during life. In area H at the bottom of the tumulus at a level below grave H0706 and disturbing H0719 which was at the same level, the skeleton of a 10–12 year old child (H0713) was found in partial articulation in a pit (ca. 0.70 × 0.50 m). A close association between adult and child burials has been witnessed in other graves at Kouphovouno. In particular, grave A0009 held the contracted skeleton of an adult man aged 35–45 years and an infant (birth-1 year). DNA analysis has revealed that the infant was a female and both skeletons shared certain identical, though incomplete, mitochondrial DNA sequences meaning that a relationship through the female line could not be ruled out. Similarly in grave C0213 an infant was found with a male youth buried with a bronze spear, though a genetic affiliation between the two could not be demonstrated.

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The skeletal condition and body orientation in this last grave, the result of dismemberment after a violent act, comprised an extraordinary burial. Contextual, osteological, and molecular investigation showed that the severed lower extremities of a young man had been placed in parallel and reverse orientation to the torso and head (Lagia & Cavanagh 2010: 342–4). No effort had been made to restore the dismembered body through a rearrangement of the severed parts to resemble a ‘normal’ skeleton. This may suggest that the ‘wholeness’ of the body and not necessarily its posture (which was neither flexed nor really extended) were of importance in this case. In theory it might be argued that the burial of the lower extremities in reverse orientation to the rest of the body was a sign of deviance, but other considerations point the other way: the formal burial of the body in its entirety in a single grave within the cemetery, the orientation of the head and neck towards the right side (as in other male burials at the site), and the inclusion of a grave good evidently prized in contemporary graves, indicate that the violent death of the young man and his body’s dismemberment did not result in the exclusion of his burial from the cemetery. It seems, consequently, that the concept of the ‘wholeness’ of the body as expressed in this grave may articulate perceptions of the status of the body and its parts (discussed in Rebay-Salisbury et al. 2010), in ancestral veneration and potentially in its journey to the afterworld.

Other sites At Kouphovouno, therefore, we have evidence of burials which were left intact and undisturbed after the first funeral, but other remains which witness exhumation and reburial. In one sense these finds are not so surprising. Archaeologists have long recognised in Middle Helladic cemeteries human remains clearly not in situ. It has been suggested that many of these are either from graves disturbed by accident or from earlier interments found in the fill of the grave, shovelled out when the grave was reopened and shovelled back into the grave when it was refilled (Alden 2000: 21; Dietz 1991: 106). But such explanations do not cover those cases where the bones are disturbed yet the grave sealed and no later burial made. In the light of the evidence from Kouphovouno and that, about to be reviewed, from Middle Helladic cemeteries elsewhere in Greece, our older view, that the revival of the second funeral at the very end of the Middle Bronze Age was linked with the adoption of collective burial in tholos and chamber tombs (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 118), needs revision. Indeed Carl Blegen, one of the most observant and meticulous excavators of his generation, drew attention to cases among the single graves at Prosymna. Note that the Middle Helladic cemetery at Prosymna resembled Kouphovouno: it was extramural, composed of clusters or small grave-plots mainly of pit graves, though with some cist graves, containing both adult and child inhumations. In Group 3 he noted of pit grave III, which had its three cover slabs undisturbed and in position, that “[…] the

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bones apparently of a single skeleton (were) in a curious and puzzling arrangement. The pelvis, femurs, and lower leg bones lay in orderly connection […] but […] the skull, arm bones and other remnants of the upper skeleton lay collected in a heap beside the lower legs in the north-western extremity of the cist” (Blegen 1937: 34). Two Yellow Minyan goblets were placed outside and above the grave—a practice observed at other graves. Grave VIII, in the same group, had bones found in a ‘quite inexplicable disarray’ (Blegen 1937: 35). Much the same was reported of grave IV in Group 4, where the bones of the upper part of the skeleton were in disarray (Blegen 1937: 38). The later grave XXI (Late Helladic II) contained two skeletons in situ with a heap of bones and five skulls and in Late Helladic III grave 25 the bones were evidently not in their natural order (Blegen 1937: 42, 44). Another interesting case has been reported from a cemetery located just 3 km distant from Kouphovouno. At the site of Psychiko, on the southeast edge of Sparta, a rectangular built tomb has been found. The finds, which include the remains of a boar’s tusk helmet, date to the end of the Middle Helladic and beginning of the Late Helladic period. The tomb contained no intact burial but collections of bones from earlier interments. The covers were intact and the entrance was sealed, so there is no evidence of later disturbance. The excavator argued that the bones had not been introduced from graves elsewhere, but the tomb had been prepared for a further burial which, for unknown reasons, had not been carried out (Zavvou 2010: 90–1). Similar contexts in which the commingling of bones cannot be explained ‘functionally’ by the presence of a later in situ burial have also been reported in earlier excavations at Kouphovouno (Renard 1989: 38–9), at Eleusis (Mylonas 1975: grave Λπ5), Lerna (Caskey 1957: 154) and Kirrha (Lagia et al., this volume). More frequently, however, commingling of bones in a grave in late Middle Helladic is attributed to the accommodation of a new burial argued by the occurrence of one or more skeletons in articulation in addition to bones pushed to the side. These appear to have been common among the Middle Helladic graves at Eleusis (Mylonas 1975: graves Δπ2, Ζπ7, Ηπ13, Ηπ17, Θπ7, Θπ22, Θπ25), and also to have occurred at Lerna (Caskey 1957: 143– 4), Volimidia Kefalovrysi (Marinatos 1964: 78–95; Marinatos 1965: 102–20; Boyd 2002: 139, 141–2), Malthi (Valmin 1938: 194, fig. 34, 202 and pl. 15.4) and Marathon (Marinatos 1970: 13) among other sites. All the more intriguing nevertheless, and apposite to the contexts discussed in this paper, are earth pits in which bones were found commingled and/or scattered and were attributed by the excavators to second burials. At Malthi two such contexts, graves 37 and 38, contained the commingled remains of at least three and eight individuals respectively, leading the excavator to conclude that they comprised a second burial, perhaps an ossuary underneath the Middle Helladic town wall. In grave 37 the bones of at least two adults and perhaps a child or small adult were placed in a pit above a triangular-shaped crevice (Valmin 1938: 188, fig. 30 and pl. 14.3). “About two thirds of the grave pit was filled entirely with bones. The rest, forming the western part of the crevice, contained fragments of bone, sherds of broken

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vases and charcoal”. Grave 38, a circular pit without an enclosure, “was filled with bones placed without any order in just the same manner as those in 37” (Valmin 1938: 189, fig. 31 and pl. 14.4). At the same site, grave 32, a cist grave of early Late Helladic date with dimensions 0.64 × 0.39 × 0.32 m, and containing seven skulls and disarticulated postcranial remains, was designated by the excavator as an ossuary. At Lerna in grave 130 scattered bones (pieces of skull and a few bits of bone) were found among burnt matter. Some 2.50 m away in the same layer were discovered a piece of jaw and arm attributed by anthropologist J. L. Angel to the same individual (Blackburn 1970: 111). At Eleusis in grave Μπ5, a shallow four-sided pit, commingled long bones and crania had been accumulated (Mylonas 1975: 190, pl. 185). No grave goods were present apart from three Middle Helladic sherds on the covering earth leading to the conclusion that the bones had been secondarily transferred there, perhaps from adjacent graves to accommodate later burials. Given that Middle Helladic graves sometimes continue to being used in the Late Helladic in several sites, as for example at Eleusis (Mylonas 1975: graves Eπ1 Z π 2, Θπ2, Ιπ1, Μπ9) and Glyfa (Papakonstantinou 1999: 173), we cannot always be certain about the chronological correlates of the construction of such depositions. Of equal interest to such second contexts (and perhaps also related to their construction as in the case of Kouphovouno grave H0719) are graves from which skeletal parts are missing. This is reported in a few cases, as for example in grave B13 at Lerna from which the head and right leg were missing (Caskey 1955: 35). The significance of the removal, reburial or potential enchainment of body parts is an area of investigation that has only recently started to be discussed in Bronze Age European contexts (Chapman 2010).

From gestures to beliefs? This summary of finds from Kouphovouno and elsewhere brings out quite a complex set of observances and, by implication, their associated beliefs, clearly one of the most difficult endeavours in funerary archaeology. The area was used for burial for a lengthy period. Graves were built side by side or above earlier ones while remains of earlier burials were repositioned in the vicinity of the initial interment. This disturbance appears to have provided the opportunity for the performance of second funerary acts, perhaps also second burial. There appears to have been no taboo on disturbing earlier burials, indeed the deliberately dense arrangement of the burials made disturbance almost inevitable. In one case, however, great care was taken to collect even the smallest bones from a burial and then rebury them. Furthermore, bones from the skeleton of a much earlier burial (at least 250 years older) were reinterred in one of the later graves of the burial mound. The inventory of the bones suggests that skeletal inclusion was poor and apparently random in contexts where bones were relocated. The skull was conspicuously

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absent in context B0173–4, while the placement of some (and the absence of many) bones in H0705 attests to the relocation of skeletal parts of a much earlier burial than its current surroundings. In H0715 the inventory of the commingled bones, their dense concentration in a pit defined by ledges, and their proximity to the place of initial interment speak for an intentional second burial. The occurrence in the same context of bones of an earlier date, which due to size and quantity could not have been imperceptible to those performing the act, affords a special meaning to this context. Here, human skeletal remains from graves of different dates, free of flesh and odour connecting them to the world of the living, were placed in a common pit independent of the time that intervened since the moment of death or the imminence of cultural association. Thus they seem to acquire a timeless dimension. Whether this act is part of a ritual performed by the community, a specific group or family cannot be postulated thus far. Gestures, however, toward the dead by people of a much later period are brought to the fore, rather by those who conducted the initial burial. As explained by Duday and Guillon (2006: 149) ‘this respectful a posteriori management of bones’ can provide information on the religious thought of the people who performed the second gestures rather than the population the bones belong to. An act of reverence by a community far removed in time from the first burial offers a new dimension to the third stage of Hertz’s model: the remains of those distantly deceased are not excluded and do not lose their significance, but instead are integrated in the new mortuary landscape in close proximity to the recently deceased. Continuity, at least in placing the dead, appears unbroken. Anthropological studies have drawn attention to the ways through which the sense conferred to the relocated skeletal remains, whether the result of intentional or accidental act, is shaped by the meaning ascribed to the space where bones are found (Naji 2005). It is their position within an area ascribed as sacred or not that often determines whether the relocated remains have been handled with veneration or whether they may represent ‘presumptions of an afterlife’. In sites such as at Kouphovouno where we have evidence in the funerary area of bone relocations that occurred in much later periods than the initial burials, within perhaps a different cultural setting, we are invited to ask how these, now ‘timeless’ and depersonalised remains, were perceived by later generations. Naji (2005: 181) has further drawn attention to the need to differentiate between funerary attitudes addressed to the corpse identified with a person and those that concern the depersonalised corpse. Can the occurrence of a second deposition of later, along with significantly earlier, bones in a common part in the (sacred) space of the cemetery, be taken to represent an expression of their importance as part of a broader impersonal ancestral unit? If a development in ‘the perception of mortal remains’ from ideas of ‘fear and reverence of the dead body to a ‘day-to-day’ familiarity with bones’ can be attested between the 5th to 18th c. AD (Naji 2005: 188) of staggering historical transformations in Europe, it is difficult to resist asking what kinds of social, political and cultural transformations occurred in the course of the Middle Helladic that led to the explosive

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variability of mortuary practices in Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I and the marked (for us) familiarity with handling human skeletal remains in Late Helladic III. The multistage funerary rituals that are common in the last phases of Middle Helladic seem to have been anticipated by acts of ‘familiarity’ with human parts, and perhaps also perceptions on body proximity and the ‘wholeness’ of the human body. Why would a dismembered body be buried in toto, relocated bones be placed together in a pit, or the burials of infants placed in proximity to adult bodies? It appears that these mortuary practices are the material expression of beliefs about the significance of bodily remains and the ‘proper treatment’ of the dead. It would follow that the varied treatment of human body parts and bones in later periods comprise the culmination of processes that started much earlier than we have thus far thought, expressing not only the complex relation between ritual and the political, social and economic dimensions of a community but also their fundamental character concerning the value ascribed to bodily remains as bridges to dimensions often remembered, sought and expressed in deathscapes.

Discussion and conclusion Various characteristics distinguish these ceremonies from the second funeral practised elsewhere, as analyzed by Hertz and described by many ethnographers before and since. Thus, only a small proportion of the burials at Kouphovouno underwent a second funeral. Of course, even where there is a strongly held belief that only second burial will properly lay the dead to rest, the cost of the celebration, for example, can lead to endless postponement. All the same it is hard to interpret the Kouphovouno practice as evidence for a social imperative; the second funeral was carried out only occasionally. Moreover, in contrast to common practice elsewhere, the second burials were evidently not reinterred in a charnel house or ossuary, to join the bones of other ancestors, but were placed back in the burial mounds and plots. Metcalf and Huntington (1991) have drawn attention to the complexity of Hertz’s theory concerning the second funeral. It emphasised not only the three ‘actors’—the living and the mourners, the corpse and the burial, and the soul and community of the ancestors—but the mediation through ritual between them. All rites of passage are an expression of the structure of a society and the relationship expressed through funerals between the community of the living and of the dead has a powerful symbolic force. In Middle Bronze Age Greece the dead were present across the landscape both within settlements—below houses, between houses, and in abandoned spaces—and outside the settlements, as at Kouphovouno and other sites. The clustering of burials within these spaces, under tumuli or in grave plots, expresses collectivities which were a key element of Middle Bronze Age society. All the same, it is difficult to explain the circumstance that frequently the dead were left undisturbed and intact, and only sometimes was some or all of the skeleton exhumed and reburied.

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At Lerna ‘secondary treatment or multiple burials are relatively uncommon, but they are found more often in two grave clusters’ (Voutsaki 2010: 92), perhaps hinting at specific customs restricted to a particular kin group within the community. The second funeral could be postponed because the lavish feasting put a strain on those whose duty it was to underwrite the celebration. The expenditure hinted at by remains of feasting from the Lerna shaft graves (Lindblom 2008; Lindblom & Manning 2011) might be interpreted in this light, but if anything our evidence, not least from the Shaft Graves at Mycenae, indicates that lavish expenditure was rather a feature of the first funeral, not the second. The eschatological explanation, that the soul is released from the body only after the full dissolution of the flesh and that this is marked by the second burial ceremony, has its attractions, especially for cases like that of the built tomb at Psychiko, Sparta, where it appears that the bones of all those buried in the tomb had been rearranged in second funeral ceremonies. But again our evidence is that such ceremonies were not mandatory and if the unhappy dead needed to be put to rest, only some of them required this special treatment. Moreover, the case of Kouphovouno H0705 indicates that reinterment could be granted to an individual who was long dead and could not, whatever those who reburied him might believe, have been known to them. The patterns of interpretation offered by Hertz do make some sense of our finds from Middle Bronze Age Greece, but there is a variety of practice, one might almost say an inconsistency of practice, which seems to imply no single ceremony. There is an element of choice which betrays an open set of beliefs rather than a narrowly dogmatic system of eschatology and this, as we have seen, is often true of a particular site. At a regional level the degree of variation can be even greater. So we must recognise that this was a period of diversity in which families or even individuals could be treated differently. This does not mean that the dead were necessarily denied prominence. Their graves may have contained few grave goods, or at least grave goods which are archaeologically visible, but when we look at the location of the Middle Helladic cemetery at Kouphovouno, for instance, we can understand how the treatment of the dead must have affected the lives of this community. If there is not the consistency that will be characteristic of the Late Bronze Age period and which can be attributed to a more hierarchical society, the dead in Middle Bronze Age Greece certainly had a prominent role.

Appendix: Burials and 14C Dates from the Argolid The case of grave H0705 at Kouphovouno raised in our minds the question whether other instances might be detectable of much earlier burials being reburied; our case was recognizable only because of the 14C dates. Thanks to the excellent work of the Middle Helladic Argolid Project we can turn to another series of Middle Helladic graves whose skeletons, like those from Kouphovouno, have been dated by radiocarbon and published in three ground-breaking papers (Voutsaki et al. 2006; 2009;

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2010). The major aim of these papers was to date skeletons from graves at Lerna, Argos Aspis and Asine, in order to clarify the absolute chronology of the Middle Helladic period, though at Asine there was a further aim of clarifying the relative chronology of the graves in tumulus IQ. The graves were ascribed to one or other of the three Middle Helladic phases on the basis of the combination of stratigraphy and the typology of associated artefacts. The aim here is a slightly different one, namely to see if there are any of the skeletons from the Argolid, whose 14C dates are earlier than their archaeological context would lead us to expect, and hence comparable with grave H0705 at Kouphovouno. In order to do this we have taken those radiocarbon dates whose ascription to one of the three Middle Helladic phases seems more reliable. Thus we have not included, for example, samples GrA-31074, 31078 and 31060 from, respectively graves 1971–11, 1972–5 and 1970–11, because although at first these were thought to date to Middle Helladic II the analyses showed that they must be of later date. We have also excluded dates of Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I and later as well, of course, as those samples whose results were unreliable. As a result we have selected 24 dates out of the 36 sampled [Table 1]. In order to try and recognise skeletons earlier than their ascribed context we have modelled the Argive sequence using the Bayesian methodology adopted on the OxCal calibration program (Bronk Ramsey 2009a; Buck et al. 1996). One of the advantages of modelling the dates in this way is that it is possible to recognise outliers whose posterior probability distributions do not fit the model (Bronk Ramsey 2009b, further developed in Christen & Perez 2009). It is important to bear in mind that outlier radiocarbon estimates are thought to occur through pure chance and form roughly 5% of laboratory estimates (Scott 2003). So we need to balance the likelihood of an archaeological interpretation against non-archaeological factors. Within our dataset Aspis GrA28288 and Lerna GrA28050 have 14C estimates that are ‘too early’ for the phases to which they are attributed [Table 1]. Asine GrA31061 is later than the Middle Helladic II phase to which it was initially attributed and, indeed, the authors have recorded that this grave (Asine East Cemetery 1970–12) could date to Middle Helladic III (Voutsaki et al. 2009). Of the Aspis grave TA4 (=GrA28288) the authors suggest: “with a result ranging 2020–1770 BC at 2σ standard deviation, the possibility that the grave dates to the Middle Helladic III period exists, but is statistically very small. An earlier date in Middle Helladic II or even in Middle Helladic I is more likely. On stratigraphic grounds, however, this early date is problematic, as the grave is situated at a high level, not only (directly) above TA 5, but also higher than all the neighbouring graves (TA 3, TA 6, TA 7, TA 8). The question has to remain open” (Voutsaki et al. 2006: 624). The burial was of a woman in a contracted position and there is no suggestion of second burial. Lerna GrA28050 comes from grave BD 19 (= Blackburn no. 80), a cist grave containing a Middle Cycladic beaked jug; again the skeleton was tightly flexed (Caskey 1957: 152 and pl. 41d). In neither case, therefore, can we argue for the exhumation and reburial of the skeleton from an individual long dead.

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Table 1: Radiocarbon dates of Middle Helladic graves in the Argolid.

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Voutsaki, S., S. Dietz & A. J. Nijboer, 2009. Radiocarbon analysis and the history of the East Cemetery, Asine. Opuscula 2, 31–56. Voutsaki, S., A. J. Nijboer & C. Zerner, 2010. Radiocarbon analysis and Middle Helladic Lerna. In Mesohelladika: la Grèce continentale au Bronze Moyen, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. C. Wright. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 641–7. Weiss-Krejci, E., 2005. Excarnation, evisceration, and exhumation in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe. In Interacting with the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, eds. Rakita, G. F. M., J. E. Buikstra, L. A. Beck & S. R. Williams. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 155–72. Weiss-Krejci, E., 2011. The formation of mortuary deposits: implications for understanding mortuary behavior of past populations. In Social Bioarchaeology, eds. Agarwal, S. C. & B. A. Glencross. New York: Blackwell, 68–106. Wide, S., 1896. Aphidna in Nordattika. Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts, athenische Abteilung 21, 385–409. Zavvou, E., 2010. Ευρήματα της μεσοελλαδικής και της πρώιμης μυκηναïκής εποχής από τη Σπάρτη και τη Λακωνία. In Mesohelladika: la Grèce continentale au Bronze Moyen, eds. PhilippaTouchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. C. Wright. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 87–99.

Ilse Schoep and Peter Tomkins

‘Death Is Not the End’: Tracing the Manipulation of Bodies and Other Materials in the Early and Middle Minoan Cemetery at Sissi The last two decades have seen a transformation in our understanding of cognition and materiality (e.g. Gosden 1994; Clark 1997; Knappett 2005; 2012; Knappett & Malafouris 2008; Hicks & Beaudry 2010). At the same time awareness has grown of some of the limitations of modernist thought, not least the way it has encouraged a fragmented conceptualisation and investigation of the human being in the world: i.e. as composed of separable human (i.e. economic, social, religious, political etc.) and material (e.g. ceramic, lithic, osteological, architectural etc.) domains and categories (Latour 1993; 2005; Thomas 2004). We recognise the need to reflect more critically on the artificiality of this static atomisation of human experience, on the one hand, and material residues, on the other, and to find better ways of tracing the flows of mutual relations between people and things in which the social is enacted. (cf. Latour 2005). Inevitably this translates in archaeology into an urgent need to develop more effective methodologies of characterisation capable of more comprehensively mapping the complex relations that existed between humans and nonhumans in the past. Recent (2007–2011) excavations at the Bronze Age cemetery at Sissi in Crete [Fig. 1] have provided an opportunity to respond to these theoretical agendas by trying to develop a more integrated, detailed and contextual approach to the characterisation of materials than had hitherto been attempted for a Minoan cemetery. In the process we have gained not only a wealth of information about Early Minoan II-Middle Minoan IIB funerary practices at Sissi, but also a means of reflecting upon the ways in which Minoan archaeology has typically engaged with cemeteries.

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Fig. 1: Plan of the cemetery at Sissi (P. Hacigüzeller).

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From reflecting to enacting: Minoan cemeteries as social arenas A key theme in the study of Early and Middle Minoan funerary data has been the question of social complexity, particularly the presence or absence of hierarchical relations (Branigan 1970; Watrous 1994; Voutsaki 1998; Maggidis 1998; Murphy 2011; see Legarra Herrero 2012). In common with wider trends in archaeology (e.g. Binford 1971; Peebles & Kus 1977; see Jones 1996), mortuary data were initially treated as straightforward reflections of fixed social personae and differential status and thus as isomorphic with social organisation and complexity. Fundamentally, this reflectionist view assumes a unidirectional relationship in which changes in society are responsible for changes in the funerary realm and funerary rites faithfully mirror a generalised set of fixed social conditions. By combining different episodes of funerary ritual, not simply within a single tomb or even in a single cemetery but collectively between cemeteries across the island, it was thought that one could make useful generalisations about a social totality that was termed ‘Minoan society’. More recent work on Minoan cemeteries has moved away from this position and has focused more on funerary rituals as social practices that actively articulate, rather than passively reflect the specific social worlds in which they take place (Branigan 1998; Murphy 1998; Papadatos 1999; Legarra-Herrero 2009; Schoep in press). The insight that society is not something that induces changes in the funerary realm (Parker Pearson 1982: 100), but rather that the social is carried forward (Barrett 1990: 182) or ‘enacted’ (cf. Latour 2005) by funerary practices, has been influential. It is after all the living that treat the dead and, as Barrett notes, mortuary symbolism is employed by mourners through concern not only for proper treatment of the dead, but also for the reallocation of rights and duties amongst themselves; it is the mourners who are the active participants in the funerary ritual, and the practices are amongst those who continuously bring the social into being (Barrett 1990: 182). In this way, cemeteries operate as arenas in which different, potentially contrasting understandings of the social are enacted by the living. Funerary activities therefore need not be isomorphic with social realities, but rather may seek to distort or misrepresent them (Morris 1987; Parker Pearson 1999).

Investigating funerary variation For investigators of Minoan cemeteries the key primary question is not so much what funerary behaviour can tell us about social complexity, although this secondary question may ultimately become answerable; rather, how one might gain a sense of the plurality of voices involved and of the potential commonalities, contradictions and contingencies enacted by funerary practices. Naturally, if we are to stand any

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chance of success in answering this primary question, we need, first, to be interested in all forms of variation manifest in funerary contexts and, second, to be capable of mapping and relating that variation (e.g. material, depositional, stratigraphic, taphonomic) in an adequate way. Much, of course, depends on the nature of the funerary deposits themselves; we can only trace what is there to be observed. For instance, complex collective deposits, such as those that are commonplace in Early and Middle Minoan cemeteries, typically comprise multiple episodes of activity that are juxtaposed, overlapping or intermingled (Branigan 1987) and thus pose greater challenges for the discrimination of specific episodes of practice than single inhumations. But, however simple or complex the depositional picture is, we believe the emphasis should always be on exhaustive tracing and relating of all meaningful variation, even if this means moving more slowly and painstakingly, transforming traditional excavation practices with new techniques and protocols, or indeed questioning orthodoxies regarding how we conceptualise and investigate the past.

Bodies and materials One particular dividing line that we consider to be a limiting factor in the study of funerary contexts is the one drawn between human bodies, on the one hand, and, on the other, material things, such as pottery, stone and metal artefacts and walls, pits and other ‘built’ features (Ingold 1998; see Sofaer 2006). There has been a tendency in excavations and studies of Minoan cemeteries to treat human remains separately, as something intrinsically different from these other materials. This has manifested itself in different ways: at times when emphasis was placed on relative dating and establishing artefactual taxonomies, cemetery excavations might carefully recover artefacts but discard skeletal material (e.g. Kamiliari tholos: Girella 2013); in other excavations human bone was recovered but studied in isolation from other materials according to a range of science-based osteoarchaeological approaches addressing sex, age, diet palaeopathology, genetic distance and metric variation (e.g. McGeorge 1987; 1989). In the last decade studies of skeletal assemblages have started to pay more attention to the taphonomy of human skeletal remains and the formation of the deposits in which they occur (e.g. Triantaphyllou 2005; 2009; 2010; in press; Schoep et al. 2009; 2011; 2012; Cavanagh et al., this volume; Lagia et al., this volume). However, rarely, if at all, in Minoan cemetery archaeology have bodies been treated as materials, understood alongside other materials (e.g. pottery), and the relations between them comprehensively explored. We are not really sure why this is. For prehistoric archaeologists it is self-evident that when they encounter bodies it will be in the form of their skeletal remains and accordingly they recover, store and study them as materials. However, it seems that there remains a general reluctance to treat corporal and artefactual materials as similar things. Perhaps with archaeological bodies we feel a sense of melancholy that mani-

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fests itself in a tension felt between these dry, lifeless materials and the living, thinking bodies of which they were once part. This tension most obviously manifests itself in a desire to reverse the decaying of time, to transcend the lifeless materiality of skeletonised remains and to find ways of reassembling and even reanimating bones into individuals, the latter well exemplified by our fascination for facial reconstruction. However, it is perhaps too easily forgotten that this dichotomy between the organic, living body of the past, and its skeletonised remains in the present is not one that maps simply onto ‘them’ in the past and ‘us’ in the present, but was also active and experienced in the past. Thus all cemetery contexts where past depositions remained in some way open, and thus available for future access (e.g. caves, built tombs, shaft graves), provided opportunities for encounters with skeletal remains that could have led to their modification in the past. In the context of Minoan funerary archaeology Branigan has usefully distinguished five distinct forms of intentional manipulation of human remains: clearance, fumigation, selected grouping of specific bones, selected removal of specific bones, and fragmentation of specific bones (Branigan 1987: 45; Triantaphyllou in press). This potential for past manipulation holds equally true for other materials deposited in open funerary contexts. Moreover, it is now widely recognised that everyday prehistoric artefacts could be subject to intentional manipulation of a variety of forms as a means of ritualising their deployment and constructing new meanings, from intentional fragmentation and the removal of parts, to intentional curation and the accumulation of groups of parts or wholes (Chapman & Gaydarska 2007; Gamble 2007: 132–52). These techniques of material manipulation may also extend to include the human body or what has been termed corporal culture (Gamble 2007: 87–110): good examples of fragmentation are the isolated skeletal fragments of adult humans that circulated in Aegean Neolithic settlement contexts (Triantaphyllou 2008), while curation and accumulation of selected groups of human skeletal parts are exemplified by ‘ossuaries’. Viewed in such terms the potential for parallels in treatment between bodies and other materials in Minoan cemeteries seems obvious, and yet this seemed to have been scarcely pursued in a systematic way in previous cemetery excavations on Crete. Thus for the Sissi cemetery excavation it made sense to us to pay closer attention to the identification and tracing of intentional material manipulation, both corporal and artefactual, and to the exploration of similarities and differences between different material categories.

Tracing materials and deposits: lessons from archaeothanatology It is an irony that human bodies, although undoubtedly a key component of past funerary practices, are comparatively less well-known to us because of the ways many Aegean cemeteries were excavated in the past. The excavation methodology applied in the cemetery at Sissi represents an attempt to improve characterisation by introducing

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a set of techniques known as ‘archaeothanatology’ (also ‘field anthropology’) into Minoan funerary archaeology (Crevecoeur et al. 2015). Although this methodology has gained a strong influence over the investigation of mortuary contexts in French archaeology, up until a decade or so ago its influence beyond was more limited (Rockandic 2002; Nilsson Stutz 2003; Willis & Tayles 2009). Rather than introducing the physical anthropologist after excavation is completed, archaeothanatology charges the physical anthropologist with the task of overseeing the whole process, from excavation and recording to post-excavation study. Since much interpretation turns on the quality of the field data, and since any information not recorded in the field is lost forever (Duday et al. 1990; Duday 2005; 2009), archaeothanatology begins with observations in the field and incorporates other disciplines, such as biological anthropology, ethnology and sociology (Boulestin & Duday 2006; Crevecoeur et al. 2015). Wherever human skeletal material was encountered in direct relation to other types of material (e.g. ceramic, stone), physical anthropologists recorded these interrelationships and recovered all materials [Figs. 2–4]. In archaeothanatology a distinction is made between primary deposition, when a body remains in the location where it was initially placed prior to decomposition, and secondary deposition, when bodily remains are removed from the locus of primary deposition to another locus, effectively making the locus of primary decomposition different from the final resting place (Crevecoeur & Schmitt 2009; Crevecoeur et al. 2015). Recognising this distinction is important because it allows different episodes in the manipulation of human bodies to be distinguished. It is a distinction we also sought to apply, where possible, to other materials in the Sissi cemetery in order to ensure that the manipulation of skeletal and other materials might be explored within a single framework. At this point we would like to make clear that in our distinction of primary and secondary deposits we are explicitly following a ‘forensic’ rather than an ‘ethnographic’ understanding of what defines primary and secondary treatment (Triantaphyllou in press for a discussion). While the key criterion in the former is spatial (i.e. a change in location), in the latter it is temporal (i.e. a distinction between ‘primary’ rituals practised close to death and ‘secondary’ rituals practised after a longer interval). In practice, this ethnographic distinction varies contextually (from days to weeks to months to years) and thus lacks an absolute value that can be applied crossculturally. Moreover, in the absence of direct participant observation, this distinction between funerary and postfunerary ritual practice may be rather arbitrary and thus difficult to enforce. When exactly does funerary manipulation of bodies end and postfunerary manipulation begin? While it is tempting, especially in archaeological contexts, to impose this transition at the point when the body has fully decomposed and skeletonised, this is a presumption, not a cultural universal, and should therefore be resisted. It seems preferable to us to view the treatment of bodies as a continuum of manipulation, rather than as something easily divisible into primary and secondary

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Fig. 2: Early Minoan II compartments 1.11–12 showing primary deposition with rearrangement of bones in 1.11 (P. Hacigüzeller & I. Crevecoeur).

stages, and to concentrate on tracing out the specific ritual chaînes opératoires of manipulation that are present in discrete archaeological contexts. This continuum begins, of course, immediately after death, not at the point when a body is deposited in a funerary context: the initial placement of a body in a cemetery space is also a form of artifice, involving inter alia the selection of a body for funerary treatment, its physical dislocation from the original place of death and its repositioning in the place of deposition. In a recent paper, Triantaphyllou (in press) has reviewed the Minoan funerary literature and concluded that the vast majority of human skeletal material encountered in previous excavations shows signs of intentional manipulation at some point after the initial placement of the body. On the basis of an ethnographic distinction

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Fig. 3: Schematic rendering of burials, including larnax (bottom right) in compartment 9.2 (A. Schmitt).

between primary and secondary treatment, she goes on to conclude that primary burials (defined as burials that showed no signs of subsequent manipulation) were very few and it is much more common to encounter articulated body parts. Following a forensic distinction we would frame this important insight slightly differently: namely that manipulation of human bodies in Minoan funerary contexts was very common, the rule even, but that the current literature generally lacks the necessary resolution and detail to allow adequate exploration of this manipulation. The unfortunate reality is that in most cases we are simply not in a position to be able to distinguish between bodies that have become disturbed, but are still in their primary location of deposition, and bodies or body parts that have been redeposited in a secondary location. However, putting the forensic distinction between primary and secondary deposits into practice is not always straightforward. A primary deposit of skeletal material can be identified when the initial and final location for the deposition of a body

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Fig. 4: Secondary deposition in compartment 1.9 (A. Schmitt).

coincide. The presence of mixed skeletal remains or the absence of a complete skeleton does not automatically imply a secondary deposit as alterations to the configuration of a primary deposit may occur due to a variety of taphonomic or anthropic factors. Bones may move through natural processes of decay and erosion or through human intervention, such as when an earlier burial is moved to accommodate a later one or when a more large-scale reorganisation of the burial space occurs. In order to speak of a secondary deposit, it must be demonstrated that a body (or body parts) has been moved from its original locus of deposition and that alterations to the configuration of its skeletal elements are anthropogenic in nature with all other potential sources of disturbance excluded (Duday 2009; Crevecoeur et al. 2015). Being in a position to demonstrate this, in turn, requires a commitment to the highly detailed observation and recording of the relative and absolute position of skeletal fragments and associated taphonomy that is the hallmark of the archaeothanatological approach. Applying these techniques to seemingly disordered collections of bone are essential in order to transcend previous impressionistic judgements regarding primary and secondary burial and achieve an accurate characterisation of the complexities present in the archaeological record. The same is true for other materials, such as pottery. Thus, through detailed in situ recording of the position of sherds, their stratigraphy and taphonomy and subsequently exhaustive refitting studies, it becomes possible to recognise whether a vessel is in primary or secondary position and indeed to determine whether and how a vessel has been manipulated since its initial deposition (e.g. broken or whole vessels pushed aside to make space for further deposition). As with the excavation of skeletal

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remains, the notion of ‘articulation’ (i.e. fragments in such a relation to each other as to suggest that they were originally deposited as single whole) is a useful one to apply to the recording of other materials during excavation, not least because it indicates a need to pay careful attention to the position of other potential joining fragments in the vicinity. Inevitably, it becomes more difficult when one is dealing with ‘disarticulated’ fragments. For instance an isolated sherd in a burial space could, technically, still be in primary position, while the rest of the vessel, to which it belonged, could be in secondary position (i.e. subsequently removed to another space). In this case the temptation would be to infer the opposite on the basis of completeness. Such an example demonstrates the importance of taking other attributes and contextual associations into account (e.g. patterns of breakage, representation and completeness, distribution of mending fragments through deposit, co-occurrence of material of mixed ages, differential wear patterns and, more generally, the formation and taphonomy of the deposit to which the sherds and vessels belong, etc.). In practice, by taking a wider range of such variables into account, we have often found it possible to distinguish between different primary and secondary states, in some cases even for isolated sherd material. In archaeothanatology a further distinction is made in secondary deposition between ossuaries and secondary placement (Crevecoeur et al. 2015). Secondary placement is defined as the result of a single, planned act in which a specific individual is removed to a secondary location. An ossuary, on the other hand, is a deposit formed by the moving of the disarticulated bones of multiple individuals from a primary to a secondary context on one or more occasions. During excavation it became apparent that both of these categories of deposit were present for the human skeletal material at Sissi, but might this also be valid for other materials? If our notion of a potential symmetry between the treatment of bodies and other materials in cemeteries were to be valid, we would expect to find ceramic equivalents to ‘ossuaries’ and secondary placement in the Sissi cemetery (see below).

The Sissi cemetery The site is situated to the east of the modern village of Sissi on the Kephala Hill, known locally as the ‘Bouffos’. The cemetery lies on a series of terraces immediately to the north and northeast of the settlement, on the lower, seaward side of the hill [Fig. 1]. The 2007–11 Sissi excavations were conducted under the auspices of the Belgian School at Athens and directed by J. Driessen (Université Catholique de Louvain). At the invitation of the director of the Sissi excavations, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven funded and oversaw the excavation of the cemetery, uncovering at least 30 compartments, belonging to several complexes or ‘house-tombs’ (Schoep et al. 2009; 2011; 2012). Stratified deposits from the cemetery indicate that the cemetery

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saw deposition between Early Minoan IIA and Middle Minoan IIB. One undisturbed Early Minoan IIA-B deposit was excavated (1.11–1.12; Schoep et al. 2011: 41–7), but unstratified Early Minoan II pottery occurs in several areas of the cemetery suggesting that more Early Minoan tombs may have existed. Several pottery groups intermediate between Early Minoan IIB and Middle Minoan IA have been recognised and tentatively assigned to Early Minoan III. But it is already clear that Middle Minoan IA was a major phase of (re)construction in the cemetery (cf. Gournia). The latest depositional activity in the cemetery dates to Middle Minoan IIB, after which it would seem a different treatment or location was used for disposing the dead. This seems to correspond to the picture from other house-tomb cemeteries on Crete (e.g. Mochlos, Gournia, Palaikastro, Petras; Soles 1992; Tsipopoulou 2012).

Primary deposition It is usually assumed, on the basis of accounts given by early excavators of housetomb cemeteries at Gournia, Mochlos and Palaikastro, that primary burial is rare in house-tombs (Soles 1992; Schoep in press). Boyd Hawes originally defined the housetomb as ‘an enclosure which from the existing remains of walls and doorway cannot be distinguished from an ordinary dwelling, but which is full of bones and skulls in disorder—a veritable charnel house’ (Hawes 1905: 186–8; 1908: 56). Other early excavators formed similar conclusions about the secondary nature of the deposition of skeletal material in house-tombs (e.g. Palaikastro, Dawkins 1904: 202; Mochlos, Seager 1912: 24). However, as noted above, a primary deposit need not take the form of articulated, complete skeletons, and may well resemble a ‘disorder’ of disarticulated or partially articulated bone. At Sissi primary burial is well-attested and involves the laying out of the body on the floor of chambers in house-tombs (1.7, 1.6, 1.12, 1.11, 1.2, 9.1, 9.2 [Figs. 2–3] or its placement in a container (e.g. pithos, larnax [Figs. 2–3]). Some primary deposits lack accompanying tableware (e.g. 1.2; Schoep 2009: 48–9), others contain a few (often just one or two) cups or bowls (e.g. 1.6, 1.7, 1.12; Schoep 2009: 51–4; e.g. 1.17, 9.1; Schoep et al. 2011: 49, 66). Larger deposits of cups and juglets are found in open-air spaces outside primary burial spaces (e.g. area to the south of 1.18 and 1.29; Schoep et al. 2011: 48). In the case of uncontained primary burials, the body can be placed on its back, its sides or even on its front. There seems to be no general rule about orientation or position. There are some cases of primary burial that were undisturbed (9.1), but disturbed primary deposits are most common (Crevecoeur & Schmitt 2009: 86–7; Schoep et al. 2011: 44–7). The degree of disturbance varies and it is sometimes hard to determine the degree to which skeletonised bodies had been intentionally manipulated because of subsequent erosion of the deposits (e.g. adult A in 1.7; Crevecoeur & Schmitt 2009: 63, 66). The Early Minoan IIA deposit from compartment 1.11 (Early

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Minoan II) included a primary collective deposit containing a minimum number of four individuals, two of which are completely represented [Fig. 2]. Careful study suggests that this was a primary deposit that was subsequently disturbed by the pushing aside of earlier inhumations, the rearranging of skulls and possibly the removal of parts of previously deposited individuals (Schoep et al. 2011: 44–7; Crevecoeur et al. 2015). In some, seemingly uncontained burials the hyper-contracted position of the legs suggests that these were originally bound. Inevitably the burial containers that are now best represented in the cemetery are ceramic. However, there are indications that non-ceramic containers were also used. Thus, for example, in compartment 1.17 the upper torsos of two individuals were found superimposed and facing one another in such a position as to suggest they decomposed while contained in a perishable bag or shroud (Schoep et al. 2013: 30). When bodies are placed in ceramic larnakes (Middle Minoan I) or pithoi (Middle Minoan II) there is no general rule about the orientation of the container and the body can be inserted head or feet first. Adults of both sexes and various ages receive this type of burial in Middle Minoan I and Middle Minoan II, while the custom of placing neonatals and foetuses in jars dates back to Early Minoan IIA. The Early Minoan IIA deposit in Loci 1.11–1.12 contains as many as five jars of different types containing such remains [Fig. 2]. Although the neonatals and foetuses are extremely fragile, there is no doubt as to their identification (Schoep et al. 2011: 44–7). The primary depositions of neonatals or foetuses in Loci 9.1 and 1.10, which date to Middle Minoan I, were not placed in a container. In most cases, pithos burials are primary burials. However, there is an example of a disturbed child burial which following decomposition had been removed from and placed alongside the pithos to make space for a new primary burial in the pithos (1.29; Schoep et al. 2012). In one case the head of the deceased, which protruded beyond the collar of the pithos, was covered by a jug (1.2). In several cases a juglet was found underneath (1.29) or next to the pithos (1.2). No grave goods, or at least none in durable materials, were placed inside the pithos with the deceased. The deceased must have been placed inside the pithos either before or after rigor mortis. In the case of the former this would presumably have taken place in the settlement, in the latter it could have happened in the cemetery. This raises interesting questions about the selection of the container used: was the pithos or larnax selected from an active domestic context or acquired especially for funerary purpose? We hope eventually to answer this question through a study of use-wear. In cases where the deceased was placed in an already fragmentary pithos or among pithos fragments (e. g. 1.18), we presume that a reuse of containers already in the cemetery is implied. In the open space of 1.18 the body of an adult was placed between two halves belonging to two different pithoi: the opening of the top half (pithos 1) oriented west, that of the lower half (pithos 2) was oriented east. The adult was placed in a hyper-contracted position, suggesting that the legs had been bound together before insertion off the body into the pithos.

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Larnakes have so far only been found in two locations (primary 9.2 and secondary in 1.30) in contexts of Middle Minoan IA and Middle Minoan IB date. In 9.2 the larnax was placed on a pebble floor and contained the primary remains of an adult lying on his or her back, with the legs drawn up and the head and knees probably resting against the sides of the larnax (Schoep et al. 2012: 44–5) [Fig. 3]. Although the absence of small bones (hand, feet, spine) could be explained by bad preservation, the missing tibia bones cannot and clearly suggest that they had been removed after decomposition. At a slightly later moment in time, after a thin layer of sediment had built up on the pebble floor of compartment 9.2, a side fragment of the larnax was broken off and placed horizontally to accommodate the remains of another adult; at this moment the left humerus of the individual in the larnax was probably disturbed. The second adult was placed on this larnax fragment on his or her back with arms folded across the upper body and legs drawn up to the thorax, a position which can only be explained by assuming that the legs were bound together or contained in a tight perishable container (e.g. textile, basket). This skeleton is not complete since the feet, right-hand tibia and fibula are missing. The placement of this second adult probably disturbed the left humerus of the individual buried in the larnax. Hypercontracted legs were also noted for individual 8 placed on the pebble floor along the south wall of 9.2 and associated with a gold earring and gold ‘drawing pin’ (Schoep et al. 2013: 45). To summarise, it may be noted that the majority of depositions of human skeletal material found inside compartments of the Sissi house-tombs may be characterised as primary depositions: i.e. the locus of decomposition corresponds with the final resting place of the body. However, few were completely undisturbed. While in some cases erosion may be to blame (e.g. adults in 1.2), in others the disturbance was clearly anthropogenic and included the reorganisation of bones in the same location (e.g. 1.11) or their selective removal (e.g. 1.7; 9.2, individual 7). The case of an adult (individual 2) in compartment 1.7 is particularly noteworthy as there is evidence for both the removal (right fibula) and displacement of bones (left tibula and left tibia; Crevecoeur et al. 2015). What happened to specific bones and body parts removed from primary depositions is unclear. Removal represents a form of diversion, but the motivation(s) for this, the new journeys taken and the final destination of the parts are by no means clear. The characteristics of the secondary depositions encountered in the cemetery (see below) are such that it seems unlikely that they represent the end-point of this process of selective removal. Thus for example, secondary depositions typically include skulls, yet in cases where bones were removed from primary depositions the skulls are usually left in place (a possible exception is the Early Minoan II deposit in 1.11 where the remains of four individuals were found but only three skulls recovered). Rather, the practice of removing some bones from primary depositions during the period of their accumulation seems to represent a separate category of ritual practice, one closer in time to the moment of primary deposition and thus, perhaps, more intimately

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connected with the treatment and memory of specific individuals. One possibility is that these removed parts circulated among the living in some way as mnemonic devices, as is attested for Neolithic settlements on Crete and elsewhere in the Aegean.

Temporalities of accumulation and clearance This evidence for the manipulation of human skeletal material, whether simple reorganisation or selective removal, sheds light on the temporality of deposition in primary deposits. The impression gained is one of a gradual accumulation of bodies in a specific burial space, each one laid down in a discrete episode of deposition. It is difficult to put absolute figures on the total amount of time represented by such primary depositions, but usually the associated pottery suggests they accumulated within the span of a single ceramic phase. In such cases a figure of no more than a century or two would seem reasonable, with a period considerably less than this quite probable. The absence of any clear evidence for age or sex biases would be consistent with a scenario where all members of the group burying in a specific space had the right to burial. This would mean that individual burial spaces could have filled up relatively quickly, perhaps over no more than a few generations. Given the likelihood that bodies accumulated relatively quickly in burial spaces, on the one hand, and, on the other, the long use-life of most burial complexes in the cemetery, which typically span Middle Minoan IA-II, it is likely that periodic clearance of burial spaces was regularly practised. Direct evidence for clearance within primary burial spaces is not always apparent, but neither should it be expected: in cases where floors were cleared and reused immediately—surely the most likely outcome—there may be little or no sign that clearance had taken place. Alternatively successive floors may have accumulated, only to be removed by a subsequent more extensive phase of clearance that cut back and removed these floors and took chamber back down to an earlier floor level. In cases where direct evidence is lacking the clearest indications of clearance come in the form of chronological disparities between the date of the original creation of a surface or chamber and the date of the final deposit. Thus, for example, compartment 1.7, which was originally constructed in Middle Minoan IA, contained a pebble floor upon which was found a primary deposition of five individuals (two adults, three children) together with pottery dating to Middle Minoan IB-Middle Minoan IIA. Clearance is more obviously evidenced in spaces with floor levels where skeletal and other material is absent (e.g. 1.2, 1.13; Crevecoeur & Schmitt 2009: 71; Schoep 2009: 48–9; Schoep et al. 2011: 57; 2013: 36–7). In the case of 1.2 and 1.13 the floor level was very obvious, being made of pebbles, it may be surmised that the floors had been cleared but not used for some time, allowing a thin (ca. 0.10 m) layer of sediment to accumulate upon which burials were later placed. This would suggest that clearance did not always directly precede new burials, and thus was not always motivated by the need to accommodate them. In 1.13 the otherwise empty pebble floor contained an

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inverted cup containing charcoal. Might this deliberate placement mark the terminal action of a ritual of clearance, which in addition to emptying the chamber of skeletal and other materials, had involved the use of fire? This association between fire, charcoal and inverted cups and bowls is one to which we will return below. However, clearance, while probably common, was not always practised once a chamber became full. Alternatively the chamber might have been simply abandoned, either permanently or long enough for sufficient sediment to accumulate and partially or entirely bury the deposited remains. Thus the Early Minoan IIA primary deposition in Locus 1.11 [Fig. 2] was found covered by a deposit, which soil micromorphological study has shown to contain fragments of wall plaster and roofing material, consistent with the permanent abandonment and gradual decay of the tomb (Carpentier 2015). The lowest burial level in 9.1 and 9.2, which dates to Middle Minoan I, was found almost entirely covered by sediment, upon which several cups (probably Middle Minoan IIA in date) but no skeletal material had been deposited subsequently.

Secondary deposition A valuable additional perspective on the wholesale clearance of chambers is provided by a number of secondary deposits in the Sissi cemetery. Ongoing study of these suggests that at least some rituals of clearance involved the careful separation of human bone from ceramic (and other) materials.

Purely skeletal secondary deposits In 1.9, a small compartment attached to 1.10, a secondary deposit was found containing the remains of at least 13 individuals (nine adults, two children, one adolescent and one perinatal [Fig. 4]). Every individual is represented by more than one bone but skulls are the most represented anatomical part (11 individuals) and coxal bones were also favoured. The deposit contained some small bones, such as carpals, metacarpals and phalanges, but these are proportionally underrepresented and raise the question as to whether these few small bones were brought to compartment 1.9 as the result of a specific selection of this type of bone or through transfer of a body part (for instance the upper limb) that had not completely decomposed. Support for the latter is provided by the existence of a loose anatomical connection between a craniofacial complex and the two first cervical vertebrae (atlas and axis) as well as a femur and an innominate bone in strict anatomical connection (Crevecoeur et al. 2015). Unlike primary depositions these bones were found placed, not on a prepared floor of clay or pebbles, but directly on the uneven natural bedrock. Also striking is the complete absence of pottery. This makes dating 1.9 difficult, but two handmade, straight-sided cups, found placed against the wall that 1.9 shares with 1.10, provide a

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terminus post quem of Middle Minoan IA (i.e. ca. 2100–1925 BCE; Manning 2010: table 2.2). It remains unclear why people were selected for secondary deposition. However, the contents of 1.9 indicate that both adults and children could be selected. In other words age and sex representation in 1.9 broadly parallels that of primary burial spaces and thus would be consistent with a scenario of selection following clearance of one or more primary burial spaces. More generally in the cemetery, it is noteworthy that other such secondary deposits of human skeletal material are actually rather scarce, at least in our excavated sample. This would suggest that the majority of the skeletal material obtained from the regular clearance of chambers was not selected for formalised secondary deposition in the cemetery. What happened to the (majority) of skeletal material that was not selected for secondary treatment remains unclear, but the implication would seem to be that they were discarded, perhaps in an unexcavated or now eroded peripheral area of the cemetery, perhaps in the sea which borders the cemetery to the north and west.

Purely artefactual deposits Excavation of compartment 1.16 and open-air spaces 1.15 and 1.30 revealed a stratified series of secondary depositions of Middle Minoan IA, Middle Minoan IB and Middle Minoan IIA pottery. Compartment 1.16 is a small chamber, built in Middle Minoan IA onto the extreme eastern end of a large and still only partially excavated house-tomb complex at the northern edge of the cemetery. Indications are that 1.16 may have been especially built to house pottery that had been moved from primary depositions elsewhere (e.g. burial chambers, open-air deposits). The lowest stratified unit inside 1.16 comprised a secondary deposition of ceramic material. Joins were typically distributed throughout the deposit suggesting that the initial breakage of the pottery had not occurred in situ and, moreover, that the fragments had become mixed before their redeposition in 1.16. Handmade straight-sided and carinated cups were common and other forms include jugs, bridge-spouted jars and a highly fragmented but seemingly complete larnax with rope decoration. Much of the pottery, including the larnax, showed evidence for burning, indicating contact with fire prior to deposition in 1.16. The presence of the larnax, cups and bowls seems to be consistent with an origin for at least part of the assemblage in a primary burial deposit. Skeletal material is almost entirely absent from the deposit, the sole exception being a small number of burnt cranial fragments which so closely resemble sherds that they were not identified during excavation, nor during washing, but only during the ceramic study. It seems likely that their presence in this deposit resulted from them being similarly overlooked in the original sorting of human skeletal from ceramic material that took place during clearance of a primary burial chamber. The evidence for the presence of fire, both on the pottery and the skull fragments, is once again noteworthy and suggests that a fire ritual (fumigation?) was used as part of clearance rituals.

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However, the quantity and typological range of the pottery represented (numerous cups, bowls, jugs and juglets) suggest that the episode of clearance that produced the Middle Minoan IA deposit in 1.16 probably also involved the clearance of other primary deposits and not simply those from other burial chambers. Specifically, the presence of numerous pouring vessels, cups and bowls more closely resembles the primary deposits of pottery found in open-air spaces. Outside compartment 1.16 are two small open-air spaces, one very narrow to the east (1.15) between 1.16 and a large wall to the east, and a larger one to the south (1.30) between 1.16 and a low, slightly overhanging rocky ‘cliff’ that delineates the southern edge of the terrace upon which the complex comprising 1.6–8/16/31 was built. While 1.15 remained free of deposition in Middle Minoan IA, 1.30 contained a large secondary deposit of pottery, in which charcoal was common but skeletal material entirely absent. A large proportion of the pottery was fully disarticulated, meaning that mending fragments were not found in (anatomical) relation, but rather were distributed throughout the deposit. At least one semicomplete larnax was represented in this way together with flared bowls, jugs and juglets and straight-sided and carinated cups. However, while much of the 1.30 Middle Minoan IA deposit appeared to have been dumped with little care or attention, its most striking feature is a series of open vessels (cups, bowls) that had clearly been deliberately placed, typically upside down, sometimes stacked one on top of another, and sometimes with charcoal inside. This more careful treatment was mainly concentrated against and under the rock overhang at the southern edge of 1.30. While some of these vessels are complete, more often they are more partially preserved, a missing rim fragment here, a missing handle there, but never so fragmented as to entirely lose their capacity to contain. Careful excavation and recording suggests that the missing fragments were not overlooked in situ during recovery, while detailed study confirms that they are absent from the deposit. The evidence is thus consistent with these more complete vessels in 1.30 representing a secondary deposition of vessels originating in a primary deposition elsewhere. This deposit is thus consistent with having resulted from the clearance of one or probably several primary deposits, some deriving from primary burial chambers (e.g. larnax, some cups and bowls), others possibly from larger externallylocated ‘group consumption’ deposits. Far from simply digging and dumping, redeposition was characterised by considerable formality and attention. The deliberate placing of charcoal inside inverted open vessels (mainly flared bowls) recalls a practice already noted elsewhere in the cemetery, and suggests the use of fire (such as might be used in fumigation rituals). The separation of human skeletal from ceramic material was clearly very carefully done: the complete absence of even small bone parts strongly suggests that pottery mixed with sediment was not dug and dumped, but rather that vessels and vessel fragments were individually collected by hand. While smaller fragments were probably collected in a container (such as a basket) and dumped in 1.30, more complete open vessels were selected for special placement against the natural rock.

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In the next phase of compartment 1.16, dating to Middle Minoan IB, low benches were built against its east, south and west walls and a small deposit of pottery was found associated with this ‘benches phase’. Outside, this time in both 1.15 and 1.30, a large secondary deposit of Middle Minoan IB pottery was recovered. Detailed study has shown this to be a single deposit with numerous joins between 1.15 and 1.30 and between its upper and lowermost parts. This Middle Minoan IB deposit shares the same general characteristics as the Middle Minoan IA deposit in 1.30, suggesting continuity in depositional practice. Thus the majority of the pottery is fragmented and was found disarticulated and distributed throughout the deposit. At least two semicomplete larnakes, and fragments of several others, are represented and complete or semicomplete cups and bowls were deliberately placed, upwards or inverted, under the overhanging rock face to the south of 1.30 or against the wall that demarcates the eastern edge of 1.15 [Fig. 5]. Placed against the latter was a small concentration of handle fragments; all but one of these were worn and appear to have been collected as fragments, but one was fresh and proved to join with a vessel fragment found at a much lower depth in the deposit. This deliberate selection and grouping of handle fragments recalls the practice of selective grouping of human bones observable at Sissi and in other Minoan cemeteries (Branigan 1987).

Fig. 5: Inverted cups and bowls placed under overhanging bedrock, part of a Middle Minoan IB pottery deposit in 1.30 (after authors).

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Although no direct joins have yet been found between the small Middle Minoan IB ‘benches phase’ deposit inside 1.16 and this larger Middle Minoan IB secondary deposition in 1.15/30, the former did contain the base of a distinctive, thin-walled amphora, fragments of which were found dispersed throughout the 1.30/1.15 deposit. While further study is required to confirm this hypothesis, the evidence is consistent with a scenario where compartment 1.16, more specifically its low benches, served as a special focus for the deposition of selected ceramic vessels, either as a primary deposition or, perhaps more likely, as a secondary deposition following the initial clearance of primary deposits elsewhere. At one or more later points in time, perhaps when it was considered to be full, compartment 1.16 was cleared of pottery, which was partially dumped but also carefully placed in 1.15/1.30.

Secondary placement of skeletal (and ceramic) material Compartment 9.1 comprised two different deposits: while its eastern part held a primary deposition of seven individuals, its western part contained a secondary placement of skeletal and ceramic material together. The former consists of the skull, long bones and hip bones of a slender adult; the long bones were grouped along the west wall, the coxal bones to the south and the cranium in the middle; the latter comprises a fragmentary lamp and tripod dish, which were placed over the bones (Crevecoeur et al. 2015).

Conclusions Cemeteries are places of transformation, material, social and spiritual. They are ritual arenas of the dead, where the living go to enact understandings, whether personal or shared, of the world and their place in it. In the process, materials take on different forms, are manipulated and deposited, remanipulated, redeposited and taphonomically altered, until perhaps one day they are released from their sediments by erosion or archaeological excavation. In this paper we have reflected upon our attempts to trace the potential complexity of this manipulation and transformation of materials in the Sissi cemetery. Central to our approach has been a commitment to highly detailed and specialist contextual recording during excavation. This meant that excavation was slow, and occasionally fraught, but it has only been through exhaustive, meticulous recording of materials, sediments and their relations by trained specialists in the field that we have been able to provide firm answers to old and new questions. In the process we occasionally found there to be an advantage in questioning some conventional disciplinary and conceptual divisions; some we ended up breaking down and abandoning, others we tried hard to bridge more effectively.

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And so, while the excavation and study of human skeletal material is necessarily a task for trained specialists, we have also gained insights by treating skeletonised bodies as just another material category and exploring relations with other material categories (e.g. ceramic, lithic etc). We have avoided enforcing a potentially arbitrary distinction between funerary and postfunerary ritual practice and instead have sought to treat all cemetery practice as a continuum of material manipulation, composed of discrete episodes of ritual practice connected by transformations to specific materials and their settings (ritual chaînes opératoires), and punctuated by a distinction between primary and secondary loci of deposition. In tracing out specific ritual chaînes opératoires, we have drawn attention to certain common emphases (primary deposition, fumigation and clearance, secondary deposition), but we have tried to avoid the temptation to reduce diversity in practice to a single, ‘Minoan’ or local code of funerary ritual. While there were clearly shared understandings of what was appropriate practice, our experience at the Sissi cemetery, working with only a tiny fraction of the total deposits laid down in the life of the cemetery, is that every time a walled chamber was created or a body or artefact first laid down, there was a diversity of potential outcomes, involving different possibilities for manipulation and diversion and different specific ritual chaînes opératoires. We see this diversity and contingency in the treatment of bodies and other materials in the Sissi cemetery as closely linked to the changing histories of the specific groups that constructed and curated, modified and manipulated and abandoned or destroyed the house-tomb complexes (kin groups? lineages?) and their specific compartments (families? households?). Most of these compartments were venues for the primary deposition of bodies and artefacts. Typically, however, bodies and pottery exhibit signs of subsequent disturbance, both natural and anthropogenic. They were both deliberately rearranged, sometimes on multiple occasions, and, in some cases, parts could be removed from the place of primary deposition. However, while bodies probably remained in the place of primary deposition (prior to substantial clearance episodes), the generally very low number of cups and bowls (i.e. n=0– 2) occurring in primary burial chambers, usually alongside multiple individuals, would seem to imply that cups and bowls were more regularly cleared from burial chambers than skeletal material or that not all burials were accompanied by ceramic vessels. All indicators suggest a wide access to primary burial during the attested Early Minoan II and Middle Minoan I-II phases of the cemetery and thus that individual chambers regularly became full, perhaps within a generation or two. Clearance of primary burial chambers was thus a regular occurrence. However, neither was it a rule, nor was it necessarily always motivated by a need to make new burials. Chambers could also be abandoned for a period of time, perhaps marking disruption in the line of the specific (household?) burying group. Common emphases in clearance rituals appear to be the use of fire, the complete clearance of a primary burial

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space, the careful separation of skeletal and ceramic materials, and the care and respect paid to the secondary deposition of at least some of these skeletal and ceramic materials. Within the category of secondary deposition, both ‘ossuaries’ and secondary placements of skeletal and ceramic material are attested. However, in contrast to primary burial, formalised secondary treatment of bodies seems to have been a much rarer and thus more restricted practice. On the basis of our excavated sample we are forced to conclude that secondary discard of human bone outside burial structures, following clearance, was a common practice. Nevertheless, when ‘ossuaries’ occur (e.g. 1.9), they seem to be neither age- or gender-specific, reflecting a group of essentially the same age and gender composition as found in primary burial chambers. In contrast, secondary ‘ossuaries’ of pottery are more common. Study of secondary deposits in and around compartment 1.16 suggests that pottery, once initially deposited in the cemetery, was not only consistently retained (in contrast to skeletal material) during clearance, but also continued to be formally and respectfully treated during secondary redeposition(s). This contrast in the secondary treatment of ceramic and skeletal material seems to hint at differences in the way these two materials were perceived, which in turn might link to their different material and taphonomic properties. Might it have been believed that the essence of an individual could exit its skeletal remains (and thus that this material could then be discarded in the open-air and allowed to decay to nothing), but that this essence somehow remained trapped in pottery, a material which better resists the decay of time?

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Biographies and Memories of Place

Giorgos Vavouranakis

A Posthumanocentric Approach to Funerary Ritual and its Sociohistorical Significance: the Early and Middle Bronze Age Tholos Tombs at Apesokari, Crete Introduction The passage from the Early to the Middle Bronze Age in Crete is usually seen as a shift from kin-based communities to regional proto-states. The former based their social cohesion upon elaborate funerary rites, while the latter hinged upon the palaces, court-centred buildings with residential, administrative and ceremonial functions. In south-central Crete, Prepalatial1 ritual performances at tholos tombs, circular and possibly vaulted constructions, are assumed to have been succeeded by the Protopalatial activity at the palace of Phaistos, a key site for Minoan archaeology. Since the 1990s, research has attempted to move away from traditional explanations of this phenomenon, which mainly appreciated the emergence of elite groups and their ability to manipulate resources at a regional scale (summary by Halstead 1988). Alternative interpretations have argued that palaces emerged through heterarchical structures and corporate groups, such as factions or houses that rallied social allies via the conspicuous consumption of food and drink (e.g. Driessen 2010; Hamilakis 2002; Schoep 2011; Hamilakis & Sherratt 2012). Despite the undoubted advances in the understanding of prehistoric Crete, the above views remain focused upon the upper tiers of the social pyramid. A comprehensive bottom-up approach should also include questions such as “What happened to the local communities, the inevitable prerequisite basis for the existence and exertion of palatial authority?” and “What happened to the tholos phenomenon which had upheld Early Minoan social constitution?” Inasmuch as many Prepalatial funerary settings were abandoned, others continued to be used in the Protopalatial period. The present paper addresses the above questions through the case-study of Apesokari, a site in south-central Crete featuring two tholos tombs used both in the Pre- and Protopalatial periods. The examination of these tombs promises an insight into the

1 Chronological conventions used in the text: Prepalatial (ca. 3500–2000 BCE) or Early Minoan I to Middle Minoan IA; Protopalatial (ca. 2000–1700 BCE) or Middle Minoan IB to IIIA; Neopalatial (ca. 1700–1450 BCE) or Middle Minoan IIIB to Late Minoan I. Specifically for south-central Crete, the Protopalatial begins in an advanced stage of the Middle Minoan IB and ends in Middle Minoan IIB, when the palace of Phaistos is established and destroyed respectively.

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ways in which local communities felt and responded to the reverberations of the palatial establishment.

Apesokari: history of research Apesokari is situated a few kilometres east of Phaistos, at the southern edge of the plain of Mesara in south-central Crete, on the northern foothills of the Asterousia mountains that flank the coast in this area [Fig. 1]. In 1942, August Schörgendorfer, an Austrian classicist, Wermacht captain and officer of the Nazi heritage service in Crete (Flouda 2011: 111), excavated part of an Middle Minoan-Late Minoan settlement on the top of a low hill about 500 m southwest of the modern village. He also excavated a Middle Minoan I-III tholos tomb (henceforth Apesokari A), at the northwest slope of the same hill (Schörgendorfer 1951a; b). In 1963, Costis Davaras (1964), Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and then Curator of Antiquities, excavated a second, Early Minoan I-Middle Minoan III tholos tomb (henceforth Apesokari B), 250 m north of the settlement. All Minoan monuments at Apesokari are currently being restudied (Flouda 2012; Vavouranakis 2012).

Fig. 1: Map of Crete with main sites mentioned in the text (after author).

A note on theory: posthumanocentrism in archaeology The longevity of Apesokari B suggests that the monument was an important feature of the Bronze Age community at the site. In order to appreciate such importance, especially the role that Apesokari B itself attained within processes of sociohistorical evolution, it is necessary to adopt a ‘posthumanocentric’ approach (Normark 2010).

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Posthumanocentrism argues that the study of the relationship between people and material culture has overemphasised human agency and underplayed the role of the material world and, by extension, of the human environment, both natural and manmade, within society. A symmetrical approach (Witmore 2007) to people and their environs should be based on the premise that both human and non-human entities should be considered as actants (Latour 2005). Focus is not to be placed upon on the actants themselves, but, instead, on their relations, which are the real carriers of agency that flows between actants. Agency constantly permeates and alters the actants. It follows that the latter are porous rather than bounded entities. Their constitution is not based on their boundedness, but founded upon spatiotemporal overlaps of agency flows that rework both the material qualities and the ascribed meanings of the related actant entities. Hence, the study of both human and non-human entities should not be a process of explanation through the description and comparison of their supposedly given and stable features. If entities are fuzzily bordered meshworks of agency discourses (Ingold 2011), their study should attempt to understand them in relation to the affordances of such a dynamic constitution. Affordance signifies the potential and limits of each entity in the world, either human or non-human, to facilitate agency (Gibson 1979), and in this sense, to invite human action. To give a simple example, a kitchen knife invites its use for cutting vegetables or other types of food, but also office use. The ability of entities to afford diverse activities is usually described as ‘virtuality’ (Lévy 1995). When an entity engages in a relationship or when a person uses the knife to cut something, this virtuality is activated towards a specific goal. Each such activation in its turn transforms the virtuality of the entity, namely its ability to facilitate other, future activations, since human pretensions and aims are rarely identical to the affordances of their environs. This mismatch results in a partial selection of affordances when virtuality is activated to a purpose. To go back to the example of the knife, using it to cut things that are significantly harder than food constitutes an extreme employment of its affordances with double ramifications. On one hand, the knife may not perform very well, while, on the other hand, it will become blunt. As a result its affordances will change, since the knife will be restricted to soft materials, such as butter. Thus, entities retain a dynamic interconstitutive relationship with both other entities and agency flows. Such a conceptualisation of the world entails important ramifications for the construction of archaeological narratives. The understanding of the Pre- and Protopalatial funerary remains at Apesokari ceases to hinge upon placing entities in evolutionary series, be they material (e.g. pottery traits or architectural features), social (e.g. the emergence of palatial elites, houses or other socioeconomic institutions) or conceptual (e.g. the shift in the orientation of funerary rites from memory and social identity to the diacritical consumption of pottery). Rather, the goal becomes a genealogy of relations between human and non-human entities (Vavouranakis in press), such as the community, the tholos tombs and the natural environs of

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Apesokari, in different modes and scales of place and temporality. These relations activated the virtuality of entities into specific directions and created historically contingent junctures that affected the trajectory of wider processes of sociohistorical evolution, such as the passage from Prepalatial communities to the palatial protostate of Phaistos in the Mesara.

Staging death at Apesokari during the Prepalatial period The location of Tholos B The pottery from the undisturbed part of the tholos fill dates the establishment of Apesokari B in Early Minoan I. The tholos location in a sense invited the building of the tomb, as it features an abundance of suitable building material, namely boulders ready for surface collection or detachment from the many rocky outcrops of the area. Furthermore, it offers a good visual command of the surrounding area. This includes the fertile plain of the Mesara and the Yeropotamos river [Fig. 2]. The latter is today seasonal, but used to be perennial. Apart from being the major irrigation source for the local agricultural production, the river offered fish, while its banks were sources of fruit and game. The view from the tholos site extends to two of the main mountain massifs of Crete, namely Psiloritis to the west and the western edge of Lasithi to the east. The Asterousia mountains border the southern view from the tomb. Asterousia may have been important for pasture and until recently was a hub for sheep traffic connecting Psiloritis to the east.

Fig. 2: The view from Apesokari B to the north (after author).

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Thus, the site of Apesokari B enjoys a liminal place within the natural and socioeconomic landscape, being between uplands and lowlands or pasture and agriculture. Such a place may have both added to and, at the same time, have been accentuated by the liminality of funerary rites in tholos B. The location of tholos B then, offered a standing point where Early Minoan I people could take distance from their everyday routines and re-view their way of life as a whole. The settlement related to Apesokari B is not known, since the excavated one is later and probably corresponds to Apesokari A. Intensive survey data in the Mesara (Watrous et al. 2004: 226–39) show a pattern of dispersed small and architecturally modest installations, mostly farmsteads and hamlets. Such a low-profile way of daily life is in sharp contrast to the monumentalisation of death through the stone-built tholos tombs, like Apesokari B, which constituted the main focal points in the Prepalatial landscape (Relaki 2004: 179). As a result, the selection of the specific burial location materialised the potential of the landscape in a specific form and made a statement about its relation with the people. The location of Apesokari B re-collected (Heidegger 1971: 141–60; NorbergSchulz 1980) its environs into a fresh synthesis, which allowed the visitors to the tomb to recompose personal experiences, memories and other connotations into a collective whole that was woven into the materiality of the place. The latter thus operated as an active constituent of the social web.

The architecture of Apesokari B The burial building [Fig. 3] further contributed to the active social role of its location, due to its prominence. It has massive 2 m thick walls and was a rather tall structure due to its vaulted roof. This hypothesis is corroborated by an inclination of the wall at 1.22 m of its height. Moreover, several boulders that project from the ring wall may have been stepping stones for maintaining a vault. Alternatively, they may have functioned as small buttresses that alleviate part of the superstructure’s weight stress. An ethnographic parallel for the latter may be found in the mitata, traditional shepherd shelters in west Crete (Xanthoudides 1924: 136). Following calculations for these vaulted buildings (Syrmakezis 1988), the 5.80 m internal diameter of Apesokari B would uphold the structural weight of a vaulted roof about 2.80 m high. Adding the vault height to the 1.22 m of the ring wall gives a total height of at least 4 m for the tholos tomb and makes a monument visible from afar and a landmark that added to the ability of its location to fix people’s experiences of the landscape. The link to the landscape was also stressed by the tomb entrance. It is oriented to the east, a frequent feature of tholos tombs and possibly related to metaphysical beliefs connecting the sun and the dead (Goodison 2001).

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Fig. 3: Aerial photo of Apesokari B. Grey lines note the limits of spaces 8 and 10; black line notes the limits of a small-scale cleaning operation in 2012 (after author).

Despite its prominence, Apesokari B did not stand out of its setting entirely, due to the employment of local building materials. The latter were probably a practical solution, but they would have nonetheless rendered the tholos an organic feature of the landscape and blended it with the many prominent rocky outcrops, small caves and rock shelters of the area. Such blending may have attained symbolic connotations if, as Branigan (1993: 38–40) has argued, tholos tombs were an attempt to simulate the experience of being in a cave interior. As a result, Apesokari B was a hybrid nature: man entity that rematerialised its constitutive relationship between people and their environs into a distinct form. Moreover, the tomb participated in this relationship in a dynamic manner, as is demonstrated by a closer look at building materials and techniques. The vaulting technique mentioned above would have required periodic repairs of the roof, especially reinforcement of the layer of earth and small stones that held the stone rings of the vault in place. There would have been more demanding repairs, too, as attested by the second ring wall. This was probably a necessary reinforcement of the initial tholos, which lacked in sturdiness, since it was built with relatively small boulders (less than 0.80 m in length). The second ring postdates the initial Early Minoan I construction, because it covers several of the projecting buttress or stepping stones. It also antedates the Early Minoan III rectangular annex rooms, which modified its eastern ends. It seems that the way Apesokari B was built necessitated regular maintenance which prompted an equally regular and dynamic relation between people and the monument. This relation further altered both the monument itself and

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the natural environment around it, while allowing the people that worked on the repairs to experience the place afresh.

Funerary performance at Apesokari B If Apesokari B was a dynamic stage for funerary rites, a look at the pottery and the human remains deposited in the tomb may illuminate its importance from a different perspective, since both pottery and dead bodies were entities with a rather different constitution from the tomb. Thus, pottery seems to have attained increased individuality comparable to the personal identities of the dead. For example, fruit stands and goblets, typical shapes in the assemblage of Apesokari B and also of other tholos assemblages, such as Agia Kyriaki (Branigan 1993: 27–30), Moni Odigitria (Branigan & Campbell-Green 2010a; b) and Lebena (Alexiou & Warren 2004: 27–127, 142–87), were employed for communal consumption, where the focal point was the vessel itself, as it passed from hand to hand. Other types of vessels at Apesokari B, such as the jugs, may have achieved the same status via their painted decoration, which made them stand out of the rest of the vessels. It should be also noted that all pottery was handmade and not mass-produced and in this sense each vessel was unique. Finally, tankards and pyxides, containers, probably deposited as gifts to the deceased, maintained a distinct presence due to their attachment to a specific dead person. If both pottery and dead bodies were equally individualised entities, it is not surprising that they both underwent a cycle of intensive manipulation and discard. The looting of tholos B at Apesokari has destroyed almost all evidence of human remains but in many Mesara tombs dead bodies were rearranged at the secondary burial stage. This rearrangement included pushing aside old bones for new burials, bone mixing, smashing and even chopping and, sometimes, discard in dedicated areas (Branigan 1987). Pottery vessels were intensively broken, too, as it is suggested by the high degree of fragmentation of Prepalatial sherds in Apesokari B. Indicatively, there are almost no joining sherds in the early Prepalatial (Early Minoan I-II) ceramic assemblage. Broken sherds were formally discarded in a dedicated area south of the tholos tomb. At Moni Odigitria bones and pots were also discarded separately. The deposition of human bones outside tholos A has been interpreted as evidence for the burial exposure of the dead (Branigan 2010: 255). Nonetheless, the tholos was found looted and the degree of bone wear is relatively low. The ambivalence of the above data allows only the more conservative interpretation that the bones were the products of secondary burial and discard. With regard to the pottery, the so-called ‘Pot Hoard and Burned Deposit’ is an example of clay vessel disposal in a special area (Branigan & Campbell-Green 2010b: 140–1). A similar, albeit not identical, pattern may be observed at Archanes-Phourni. The north part of the so-called Area of the Rocks was used for burials, the central part was used for the disposal of pottery and the southern part for the disposal of human remains (Sakellarakis & Sapouna-Sakellaraki 1997: 232).

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The above data suggest a conscious effort to de(con)struct both dead persons and vessels, which enjoyed an ephemeral presence in the tomb as coherent entities before transformation into a dispersed mode of being. They were then able to function as synecdochic memorabilia of the once complete and individual entities whence they came. At the same time, they were amalgamated into a heterogeneous multitude of sherds and human parts, which also fused individual memories of past persons into the collective memory of Prepalatial Apesokari. By contrast, the tomb itself outlived both pots and people and was thus a more stable entity. Stable does not equal static or rigid, as the tomb was repeatedly repaired and transformed, while the less flexible dead bodies and vessels were destroyed and dispersed. It would be plausible then to suggest that Apesokari B was not only a dynamic stage for funerary rites, but also an active melting pot that recollected both landscape references and individual stories and recast them as communal history.

Early Prepalatial Apesokari in its wider context The making of landmarks was a general feature of Prepalatial south-central Crete. Apart from the tholos phenomenon, there is an Early Minoan I tumulus in the middle of the settlement of Agia Triada, which marked the origins of the local community and complemented the corresponding tholos tomb (Todaro 2011a). More impressive evidence than Agia Triada comes from the Early Minoan strata of Phaistos. The area that was to become the West Court of the palace had been occupied by a pottery-making installation in close association with significant amounts of animal bones. These finds have been interpreted as events that combined pottery making with the conspicuous consumption of food and drink with wide participation beyond the local level, so as to encourage the sharing of technological information and expertise through social bonding (Todaro 2011b). Apesokari may have participated in these events, since it is not far from Phaistos. While at Apesokari B individuals were fused into the community, at Phaistos potterymaking and feasting transformed individual communities into nodes of a technological and social network. In both cases the key to the transformation lay in the dynamic and symmetrical engagement of people with non-human actants, such as the stonebuilt tomb that needed periodic attention or the transformation of elements, namely earth, water and fire, into pottery. Commensality, a common element of both social contexts, further stressed the holistic, corporeal character of these encounters. Finally, the intensive manipulation of pottery in the course of funerary ritual at Apesokari provided a symbolic appropriation of community participation in the pottery network of Phaistos. Staging a funeral at Prepalatial Apesokari was an opportunity to renegotiate a place in both the community and the network, by casting the materiality of the world in sharp relief through ritual acts. Any claims to status or hierarchy had to be

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channelled through a process of dematerialisation and rematerialisation of the world according to its affordances, by the making or de(con)struction of pottery, by the cooking and eating of plants and animals, and also the periodic maintenance of the architectural setting of such acts, namely the tholos tomb at Apesokari and the pottery-making area at Phaistos.

The Late Prepalatial and Protopalatial monumentalisation of the funerary stage The above process had a side effect. As people engaged with the world, they transformed its potential and this transformation altered the basis upon which social relations were founded. The late Prepalatial and Protopalatial developments at Apesokari may illuminate this process, which is known in social theory as structuration (Giddens 1984; for archaeological applications, see Barrett 1994). The two periods will be examined together due to dating problems of both Apesokari itself and the region of the Mesara in general. Thus, Early Minoan III is not the most visible period in the archaeological record of Crete and it has only been recently recognised in the area of Phaistos (cf. Watrous et al. 2004: 251–2; Todaro 2013). One of the problems is the sharp decrease of Mesara pottery exports since Early Minoan IIB (Wilson & Day 1994). Moreover, many tombs were abandoned during the same period, both in and outside the Mesara (Branigan 1970: 107–9). In the same vein, the ceramic assemblage of Apesokari B has produced only one mottled sherd of uncontested Early Minoan IIB date. In contrast, there is a distinct presence of Early Minoan III pieces, such as squat handleless cups, bowls with dark bands on the rim and sherds decorated with diagonal plastic barnacle bands, all with good parallels in the Early Minoan III levels of Phaistos (Todaro 2013). Unfortunately, Middle Minoan IB-II activity at Apesokari has resulted in mixed deposits and it is impossible to correlate individual vessels with specific architectural phases or periods of use. Similar problems occur in other tholos contexts, too, especially with regard to the distinction between Middle Minoan IA and IB, which is important, because it signals the establishment of the palace at Phaistos.

An altered recollection of the landscape By the end of the Prepalatial period, the landscape at Apesokari, and probably the way it would have been perceived, started to change, due to the establishment of the settlement on top of the hill 250 m south of Apesokari B and of Apesokari A, 130 m northwest of the settlement on the slope of the same hill. Both Apesokari A and the settlement overlook the plain of the Mesara and the Yeropotamos river, but do not

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afford an equally good view of the mountains. They also overlook Apesokari B. The location of Apesokari B in its turn allows a view of the settlement, but not of Apesokari A, with the exception of the vaulted roof. Apesokari A was only a point of reference for the visitors to Apesokari B, who were thus reminded that they were potentially subject to visual inspection. As a result, the inclusive view of the landscape offered by Apesokari B was rivalled by a new and alternative perceptive mode, one that was distanced, fixed and consequently formal, imbalanced and hierarchical. Apesokari B did not occupy the top place in this hierarchy and if, as John Younger (2011: 174) has argued, viewing in Bronze Age Aegean involved an inequality of power between the viewer and the viewed and the control the former exerted to the latter, then the status of Apesokari B may have started to shift from a socially dynamic entity to a passive object. This shift was not abrupt and complete, but gradual and subtle. Apesokari B continued to host funerary rites, which reviewed communal values. The addition of Apesokari A added a second funerary arena and ensured a degree of versatility regarding the ways in which the landscape, both natural and social, and the values it was imbued with were ritually reappropriated. Such developments at Apesokari were part of a wider tendency, since new tholos tombs were established throughout the Mesara. This tendency subsided in the Protopalatial, when building activity minimised with very few exceptions, while many tholos tombs ceased to function before the end of the period. On current evidence, Apesokari A did not receive any burials after Middle Minoan IB and the funerary perception of the landscape largely returned to having one major point of view, namely Apesokari B. Only this time it was opposed by the perceptual frame provided by the settlement and its focus on daily life, rather than death and the veneration rites outside Apesokari A, which may have also attained a wider social, rather than strictly mortuary, character.

The monumentalisation of Apesokari B and the establishment of Apesokari A The transformation of Apesokari B from a dynamic entity into a relatively static object may be seen in its late Prepalatial and Protopalatial architectural development. In the first place, the original vault had been standing for over a millennium and had probably become a monument in itself. This monument underwent significant changes. A last attempt to reinforce the tholos with a patch wall was accompanied by the building of annex spaces 1–7. Rooms 1, 3, 5 and 6 were proper rooms. Room 2 does not feature an entrance and may have been accessed from above. Rooms 4 and 7 were open-air with earth and stone-paved floors respectively. The earliest pottery in room 1 dates these changes to Early Minoan III. At a later, possibly Protopalatial, stage of development, ossuary pit 8 was dug along the south face of room 2, space 4 acquired a new earthen floor, a bench was added along the west wall of space 7 and room 9 was built. In between the two architectural phases of Apesokari B, Apesokari A was built, both the

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tholos and the annex, since the walls of the latter bind with the ring wall [Fig. 4]. The intensification in funerary construction at Apesokari is part of a wider Early Minoan IIIMiddle Minoan I phenomenon, with new tombs or annexes to old tombs at sites such as Agia Triada A, Drakones, Kamilari, Platanos, Porti and Vorou (comprehensive catalogue with dates in Goodison & Guarita 2005; cf. Legarra Herrero 2014).

Fig. 4: Comparative ground plans of Apesokari A, Apesokari B and the Kamilari tholos tombs (after Schörgendorfer 1951a: taf. 16, N. Michaelides and courtesy of L. Girella respectively; modified by author).

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With regards to Apesokari B, the above developments betray once more a tendency to monumentalise both the specific tomb and the entire social arena of funerary ritual. During this process, the malleability of Apesokari B became explicitly manifest as annexes were added to the original vault and the history of development was rendered visible and stressed by the difference between the curvilinear tholos and the rectangular annexes. Some of this malleability was lost after the last repair of the tholos, as emphasis shifted to the annexes. Apesokari A was less malleable to begin with, since it was designed and built in a single phase. Moreover, the walls of both Apesokari A and the annexes of Apesokari B were built with wider foundation courses. This was a practical measure to stabilise the tomb buildings, but it also minimised the need for periodic repairs and the relation between the people and the tomb started to shift from dynamic, ongoing and hands-on, to static and relatively hands-off. Both tombs at Apesokari became more bounded and relationally constituted to a lesser degree than before. They also became objects that could be compared and contrasted, especially if Apesokari B was the prototype and Apesokari A the simulacrum. This suggestion is justified by the layout of the Apesokari A annex, which is almost identical to rooms 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 of Apesokari B. This layout may have been a generic feature of late Prepalatial and Protopalatial tholos tombs, as it is also repeated at the tholos of Kamilari. Given its comparatively early date, nevertheless, the Apesokari B annex may have been the original source of inspiration, at least for the builders of Apesokari A. Such inspiration also led to the copying of the projecting boulders featured by Apesokari A. However, these are not functional, as they are placed at the lowest part of the outer ring wall. Such superficial repetition confirms the importance of Apesokari B as an emulated monument, while the original-copy relationship between the two tholoi may imply a rivalry between the groups that built and used them. Intracommunal competition has been proposed for other pairs or sets of tholoi, such as tombs Gamma and E at Archanes-Phourni (Papadatos 2007: 437–9).

Tholoi A and B: pottery and human bones The tholos tombs at Apesokari did not lose their porosity and mutable nature in the late Prepalatial period. These qualities were expressed through a shift in funerary rites, as illustrated by evidence from both tholoi. Room 1 of Apesokari B contained three primary burials and more than 450 conical cups, mostly Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan I in date. Room D of Apesokari A contained piled-up human remains and 105 conical cups. The increased deposition of drinking vessels in tombs is a common Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan I phenomenon, both in the Mesara (Branigan 1993: 76–80) and elsewhere in Crete (Vavouranakis 2007: 111–6). It has been interpreted as a sign of the importance of conspicuous consumption during funerary ritual (Hamilakis 1998), a practice that initially stressed conviviality and social cohesion during the late

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Prepalatial period (Borgna 2004), but also paved the way for the events of diacritical feasting which took place in palaces during the following Protopalatial period. The same interpretation may hold for room 1, too, but there is more to say about the burials and vessels it contained, which were not de(con)structed according to the early Prepalatial habit, but preserved into a mass that eventually fused with its architectural setting. Such fusion shows that the malleability of Apesokari B shifted from the interaction between people and architecture to the amalgamation of architecture with artefacts—if dead bodies may be considered also an idiosyncratic type of artefact. The fusion of human remains and pottery may be observed par excellence at the built rectangular tomb of Myrtos-Pyrgos in east Crete, where a pithos used as an ossuary vessel had been placed in a specially built space and was thus formally fused with the architectural setting during Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan IB (Cadogan 2011: 106–7). Another strategy for amalgamating dead bodies with pottery was the employment of clay coffins, such as pithoi and larnakes. Clay receptacles for the dead became widely adopted in Crete from the end of the Prepalatial to the Neopalatial period (Petit 1990). Leaving aside the symbolic connotations of this custom, clay coffins constituted a new mortuary technology that gradually rendered the early Prepalatial habit of the secondary manipulation of human remains obsolete, since they encapsulated the dead body and kept it both intact and inaccessible. At the same time, human remains and their terracotta container became indistinguishable. Clay coffins were found at Apesokari, too. A Middle Minoan IA small pithos containing the jaw of a child was found at Apesokari A and fragments of Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan I larnakes and an Middle Minoan IB-II intact larnax containing a child burial were found in space 2 of Apesokari B. The Protopalatial period brought further changes in the relationship between Apesokari B, pottery, human remains and the living community of the site, namely a tendency for human intervention and manipulation of all funerary depositions. Thus, the aforementioned Protopalatial larnax with the child burial was found in the lowest stratum of room 2, together with Kamares vessels. Their placement disturbed previous depositions, parts of which may have been cleaned out of room 2 and dumped in the ossuary pit 8, since its lowest stratum contained mixed Early Minoan-Middle Minoan pottery. The upper stratum contained bones, probably secondary depositions and mostly Middle Minoan pottery. It seems that both dead bodies and pottery vessels, including both earlier Prepalatial and contemporaneous Protopalatial burials, were cleaned away in the Protopalatial period. A similar pattern may be observed at Moni Odigitria. The ossuary pit accommodated material cleaned from other areas, as well as primary and secondary burials (Branigan & Campbell-Green 2010b: 131). Finds from other areas of Apesokari B diverge from the pattern witnessed at Moni Odigitria. Thus, Protopalatial pottery was discarded in area 10 south of the tholos, at spaces 4 and 7 and also inside and around space 9, which was not a proper room due to its lack of a doorway. Shapes are mostly serving and drinking/eating vessels, such

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as carinated cups, wide bowls and jugs. These depositions may result from acts of commensality, either disconnected from burial acts or loosely related to them, since they were kept separate from the human remains. Interference with dead bodies and the consumption of food and drink may at first seem to suggest return to old funerary habits. The difference from the early Prepalatial is that funerary depositions had merged with the architecture since the late Prepalatial. Thus, the Protopalatial interventions actually constituted human interaction with the funerary monument as a whole, which thus regained part of its lost malleability.

Late Prepalatial and Protopalatial Apesokari in its wider context The time from the end of the Prepalatial to the end of the Protopalatial period witnesses important social changes, namely the emergence of regional elites and the eventual establishment of palatial authorities. The possibility of late Prepalatial intracommunal competition has already been mentioned. Such competition extended to the inter-communal level. Thus, the pottery manufacturing and feasting events at the later West Court of Phaistos continued in Early Minoan III and through to Middle Minoan II, but they became progressively hierarchical in structure, as implied by several Early Minoan III red-stuccoed buildings on the top of the hill, which were succeeded by the Central Court of the palace in Middle Minoan IB-II (Carinci 1997; Todaro 2011b; 2013). The first signs of hierarchy probably challenged the notion of conviviality established since the early Prepalatial period. Commensality, the main vehicle of conviviality, may have also combined with increased construction activity in the funerary arena so as to facilitate both conviviality and social competition. It follows that the palatial emergence was not a process that excluded traditional modes of kin-or household-based social organisation. On the contrary, the intensification of funerary activity may have promoted both communal and proto-state structures, while the ability of peripheral communities (such as Apesokari) both to produce (Day et al. 2010) and to consume elaborate pottery suggests that the early Prepalatial social and technological network may have persisted into the late Prepalatial and Protopalatial periods. The emerging palatial centre of Phaistos may then have boosted rather than absorbed local social dynamics, whilst incorporating them into the political institutions that served the new order. The suggestion for a palatial authority operating in a decentralised manner is further corroborated by the dispersed character of the Middle Minoan IB-II urban settlement of Phaistos (Militello 2011). The palatial transformation happened in parallel and probably in relation to a transformation of the human:nature relationship, which stressed the human factor. Thus, the relationship between commensality and state formation may have transformed the products of the earth from relational entities mediating social interaction to bounded objects instrumental to sociopolitical goals. Such transformation is also

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indicated by Early Minoan III-Middle Minoan I seals from Archanes and Malia depicting people carrying bags and baskets or pressing grapes (Kopaka 2002). These scenes visualise the products of nature in the hands of people and literally turn them into objects subject to both human handling and display. The same is indicated by the deposition of Middle Minoan I miniature clay wine presses in tombs, including Apesokari A and B (Kopaka & Platon 1993). These miniatures stress the human action upon the grapes rather than the grapes themselves. The bowl featuring a plastically rendered shepherd with a flock of sheep from Palaikastro (Bosanquet & Dawkins 1023: 12) shows that the key roles of people were depicted in relation to other activities as well. The change in the human:nature relationship may be interpreted in two ways. On one hand, the human part of this relationship may have grown stronger and more autonomous than before. On the other hand, it is possible that the more instrumental non-human actants became, the more actively they participated in the web of social relationships. Whichever the case, the depiction of human activities was a means to bound up and objectify the human:nature relationship, probably to invest it with new values and meanings that emerged alongside and as a result of the palatial phenomenon. This objectification immediately brings to mind the similar transformation of the funerary stage at Apesokari, which thus seems to have actively participated once more in the palatial phenomenon, albeit from a peripheral position. A key role to this participation was played by the local funerary monuments and especially Apesokari B, which attained its malleable and dynamic constitution, actively incorporated diverse material entities and their socioideological connotations and even outplayed attempts to rivalry, such as Apesokari A.

Recollecting Apesokari in the Neopalatial period Apesokari B ceased to function by the end of the Middle Minoan II period, more or less when the palace at Phaistos was destroyed. The settlement became the only prominent Neopalatial landmark left at Apesokari. The related cemetery has not been located, but as a rule Neopalatial burial places are little known and the known ones are rather inconspicuous, mostly pits in the ground. The few exceptions, such as the Temple Tomb at Knossos or the Kamilari tholos are supposed to be markers of elite display. Although Apesokari A and B lay in ruins, pottery vessels continued to be deposited in both. Among the most prominent examples are two of the so-called ‘Egyptianising’ amphorae. One such vessel was deposited in each tomb [Fig. 5]. These vessels have been recently studied by L. Girella (2013a), who argues that they were high quality vessels manufactured in the Mesara. Fifteen of them were found in the tholos at Kamilari.

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Fig. 5: The ‘Egyptianising’ amphora from Apesokari B (after author).

The discovery of these vessels in the Apesokari tholoi may reflect an attempt to appropriate old monuments. Such an attempt would be in accord with the wider

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Middle Minoan III sociopolitical context of south-central Crete. Part of the functions and of the authority of the palace of Phaistos was transferred to the houses around it (Girella 2011). Power decentralisation extended outside Phaistos, too, with the gradual rise of factual competition (Girella 2013b). Agia Triada and Kommos started to emerge as major Neopalatial centres. Kamilari may have been another focus of power, with its monumental tholos and the tendency to revive Prepalatial burial customs, such as collective burial and the conspicuous deposition of pottery (Girella 2004: 276). As a result, the deposition of the ‘Egyptianising’ amphorae at the tholoi of Apesokari may have served the need of the local community to reposition itself in the redefined geopolitical regional map and attune to the funerary vocabulary of Prepalatial ritual revival. It also adds an extra link to the Kamilari tholos, which, as mentioned above, had followed the annex layout of Apesokari B in the Protopalatial period.

Conclusions This paper has attempted to examine a less prominent but nonetheless significant aspect of the emergence of palatial society in south-central Crete, namely the ways in which Early Minoan dispersed communities responded to such a social transformation. Emphasis was placed upon funerary monuments, which were the pivots of Prepalatial kin-based social organisation. The case study of Apesokari with its two tholos tombs has been examined from a posthumanocentric point of view, advocating that people are in a dynamic and symmetrical relation with their environs, both natural and man-made. Environs do not simply materialise ideologies or connote communal values; rather they offer people a wide gamut of affordances, which virtually dictate ways of life. People choose to activate only part of these affordances each time. Their choices rework the potential of the world to facilitate social goals and needs and such a dynamic relationship affects the course of sociohistorical developments. Apesokari B was established within the context of a dynamic relation between people and their environs in the early Prepalatial period. Apesokari B became a major focal point in the landscape, due to its liminal character and its ability to recollect, rematerialise and facilitate ritual renegotiation of diverse aspects of life in the area. The same happened to most contemporary communities in south-central Crete, many of which, especially in the western part of the Mesara, participated in a network of social relations and technological knowledge centred on Phaistos. The evolution of Phaistos into a palatial centre respected its peripheral communities, such as Apesokari, which thus experienced a relative affluence, attested in the additions to Apesokari B, the establishment of Apesokari A, the progressive elaboration of funerary rites and the funerary consumption of high-quality pottery. The values that heralded the new sociopolitical order prompted people to respond by

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reworking the potential of funerary monuments. More specifically, they attempted to fix them as entities and render them commodifiable objects. In turn, the malleability and ontological porosity of the tholos tombs was channelled into the fusion of their funerary depositions with their architectural setting. In effect, the monumentalisation and objectification of the funerary stage maintained the symmetrical relationship between people and their environs, but it was the funerary monuments themselves, rather than the whole landscape, that played the role of the non-human part, exactly because these funerary monuments had been reinforced through architectural additions and conspicuous and elaborate depositions. The power of both Apesokari A and B was long-lasting, since they both accepted depositions after their closure and after the related destruction of the palace at Phaistos and the demise of its political institution. Acknowledgements: I wish to thank the editors for the invitation to participate in this volume and for all their copious efforts to improve my text; Costis Davaras for his kind permission to study and publish the finds of his excavation at Apesokari; the Institute of Aegean Prehistory, the I. S. Latsis Foundation, the Mediterranean Archaeology Trust (Oxford) and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens for funding the study and publication project; the Archaeological Museum of Herakleion, the 23rd Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, the British School at Athens and the Society of Aegean Prehistory-Aegeus for the facilitation of the project; Neoptolemos Michaelidis, architect, who mapped the architectural remains as part of his MSc dissertation at the National Technical University of Athens and with whom I discussed aspects of the architecture of Apesokari B; Luca Girella for the ground plan of the Kamilari tholos; George Manginis for his comments and for editing notes. Nonetheless, all responsibility for this text rests with me.

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Emily Miller Bonney

From Performing Death to Venerating the Ancestors at Lebena Yerokambos, Crete Introduction Recent scholarship has emphasised the ways in which Aegean mortuary architecture mediated the reproduction of social relationships and the assertion of status, wealth or power by various actors in its formal organisation, situation in the landscape and structured rituals (e.g; Soles 1992 Branigan 1998a; Cavanagh & Mee 1998; Boyd 2002; Vavouranakis 2007; Murphy 2011a). The tombs and associated structures were not passive repositories for bodies and offerings, but interventions into the landscape that acquired agency in the formation and perpetuation of memories (Jones 2007) upon which communities were predicated. As the papers in this volume demonstrate, these technologies of remembrance varied significantly across the Bronze Age Aegean but particularly in Early Bronze Age Crete, where interments were made in caves (Haggis 1993), cist graves (Davaras & Betancourt 2004), house tombs (Soles 1992) and tholoi (Branigan 1970; 1993; 1998a). Each burial type entailed a distinctive relationship with the landscape and facilitated a particular way of staging death and thus of forming both social and individual memories. Scholars of Aegean mortuary practices have paid particular attention to the circular stone-built tombs or tholoi of the Mesara Plain and Asterousia Massif in south-central Crete. Since the initial excavations (Paribeni 1904; 1913; Marinatos 1929; 1930–31; Xanthoudides 1916; 1918; 1924) the tombs, which first appeared at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age around 3100 BCE (Manning 2010: table 2.2), have been central to discussions of the character of Cretan mortuary ritual (Branigan 1998a; Murphy 2011a) and the formation of complex society on the island (e.g. Branigan 1970; 1988). These communal burial sites, some of which accommodated hundreds of burials, have been regarded as the work of kin groups dwelling in nearby settlements (e.g. Branigan 1998b; 2012; Murphy 1998). From this perspective, changes in tomb contents and the addition of anterooms and paved areas signalled the emergence of elites who manipulated architecture and landscape to assert their dominance (e.g. Murphy 2011b; Legarra Herrero 2011). Recognition that the sociology of the tombs is more complex (Relaki 2004; Legarra Herrero 2012; Tomkins in press) has not altered the inclination to assess the structures and their contents in terms of social differentiation. From this perspective mortuary architecture serves both as a container for bodies and goods as well as a stage for rituals and display representing otherwise immaterial social and economic relationships. Yet the tombs were from their conception material agents in the formation of community and social reproduction. They created a humanised, sensuous and embo-

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died landscape and contributed to the transformation of relationships among the living and between the living and the dead. The biography of the complex at Lebena Yerokambos reveals the processes by which this cemetery participated in the creation of a mnemoscape central to the formation and subsequent redefinition of community. At present the cemetery comprises a well-preserved primary tholos (tomb II), smaller adjoining tholos (tomb IIa) and suite of small rectangular rooms. Yerokambos is one of perhaps eight cemeteries that can be dated to the earliest phases of tholos construction in the region, and, exceptionally, remained in use into the early Middle Bronze Age, until around 1900 BCE. Excavated in 1957 and 1959 (Alexiou 1960a, b; 1992; Daux 1960) and fully published only recently (Alexiou & Warren 2004), the tomb is unique for its state of preservation and essentially intact burial deposits of bones and hundreds of ceramic vessels. Its long use-span, measured by the chronological markers of the ceramic sequence, provides an exceptional opportunity to investigate the role of Yerokambos in particular and perhaps by analogy other Early Bronze Age tholos cemeteries in social reproduction. The sequence of reconfigurations of tomb II with the addition of the secondary tholos and rectangular anterooms altered the relationship of the architecture with the landscape, and in turn, with the users. As a place (and perhaps the only place) to which the living returned repeatedly over at least 500 years to form a community, the craggy tomb in the landscape became a place where people recalled their past and strengthened or reshaped communal bonds. Interactions were multisensorial, comprising the actions and experiences associated with inhumation and the secondary manipulation of the remains inside the tomb(s) and the rituals, both mortuary and other, conducted on the exterior. The gradual addition of rooms and spaces not only reflected, but also constituted processes by which the community of the living recentred and reordered itself. The dead became more distant and the ‘staging’ in this phase comprised of veneration, and offerings to, the ancestors as the mnemoscape was translated into a new arena for negotiating social relationships.

Theoretical Framework: Setting the Stage The relationship between the rituals and the monuments by which a community responds to death is complex. A tomb is never simply a passive memento mori but instead can be the locus and agent of the survivors’ active engagement with the dead (Jones 2007), including the formation of a collective memory (Laneri 2007). Conceptions of the relationship between the living and the dead (particularly those belonging to the distant past) are mutable, as evident at Yerokambos. Modifications to tomb II’s architecture changed its relationship to the landscape and its affordances for performance and the formation of memories.

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Creating a Mortuary Landscape Landscape, once viewed as a passive backdrop for human activity, is now implicated in the formation of memory, identity and social order (Knapp & Ashmore 1999), deemed central to the way in which people make meaning of their lives (Ingold 2000; Tilley 1994). Humans do not merely occupy the landscape, they form it by drawing boundaries through their activities (Ingold 1993: 156), consciously remaking and reshaping it (Bradley 1993), and in the process become part of it (Hegmon 2003: 224). Prominent natural features, such as mountains, caves and rivers, acquire meaning as part of the cosmic order (Feld & Basso 1996) by which people organise their lives and which they may incorporate in the ways in which they position the built environment (Brady & Ashmore 1999; Day & Wilson 2002; Rowlands & Tilley 2006: 506–7). However, the landscape always evolves so that what was once part of the present becomes part of the past (Knapp 1999), although the rate of such changes varies (Bradley 2002). The landscape is not purely visual, but comprises the full range of sensory experiences (Bender 2002: S107) that create associations (Thomas 1996: 91), so that it is neither symbolic nor representational. Instead the landscape is an element of people’s experience of the world in which things are no longer passive recipients of human action but the means by which human intention is made effective (Robb 2010). It is part of the tangle of interactions among people, things (including the landscape) and social forces—Ingold’s (2010) meshwork and Hodder’s (2012) entanglement—from which human action and social reproduction are always emerging. Interactions between people and the landscape are not purely personal but social (Kuchler 1995), so that a funerary monument, by appropriating space within the landscape, influences the behaviour of the community (Thomas 1994), directing mortuary activity toward a particular place. Provision of a formalised monumental structure for burials extends the relationship between the living and the dead (Mizoguchi 1993; Bradley 1998) as the tomb and its position in the landscape regularise mortuary practices. The choice of site expresses meaning and values already immanent in the place because of the builders’ presence (Casey 1996), who interpret the landscape in the context of mortuary practice (Barrett 1999). At the same time, their collaboration in selecting the site and constructing the monument constitutes an insertion and assertion of the collectivity into the landscape (Cooney & Grogan 1998; Bradley 2000). Construction effectively objectifies the landscape (Barrett & Ko 2009), as the monument embodies and mediates the human relationships that give it form and which, in turn, are based on social memories shaped and perpetuated by the monument (Jones 2007). Ultimately the final product is an expression of a shared vision of what a building serving a particular purpose should be, and while the monumentality of the structure ensures it will continue to be read as significant by impinging on the people’s vision (Richards 1994), its precise meaning changes over time (Meskell 2003).

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Identifying the Affordances for Mortuary Ritual The mortuary monument’s situation in the landscape and its particular architectural features determine the ways in which both structure and environment can be used, i.e. its affordances (Gibson 1977; Knappett 2005: 45–57, 111–3; Hodder 2012) for the performance of mortuary ritual. The architecture and landscape within which extraordinary performances transpire are, through their affordances, agents or actors in determining the parameters of those rituals (Vavouranakis, this volume). The spatial organisation of the tomb and its disposition in the landscape dictate the kinds of rituals that are capable of being performed (Chountasi, this volume). Thus, for example, the Mycenaean chamber tomb with its extended dromos provided a stage suitable for processions that were both public and involved significant numbers of community members, while the more restricted space of the burial chamber limited the numbers of participants and the range of activities that could be incorporated in the ritual (Boyd, this volume). These arrangements of space and place conveyed significant messages about the relationships among the members of the community depending in part on the extent to which movement through the landscape was manipulated by the placement of burial structures (Vavouranakis 2007; Murphy 2011b; Johnson & Schneider 2013). The tomb’s affordances determine not just movement possibilities, but the range of other sensory experiences. Employing local materials in construction roots the tomb in its locale (Vavouranakis 2007: 99), while the use of distant materials may serve as an integrative tool (as in the Neolithic tombs of Britain and Sweden, Rowlands & Tilley 2006) in the bringing together of stones from different parts of the landscape. The ways in which people move in and around the mortuary complex and the landscape determine the sights, smells, tastes, tactile and kinesthetic experiences which the participants share in forming collective memory; consider, for instance, the multisensory experiences of the Neolithic people who walked the Sweet Track (a timber causeway in Britain), encountering water, plants and earth, which helped maintain group identity and memory of a distant past (Bond 2007).

The Efficacy of Performance The rituals afforded by a mortuary site consist of performative actions essential for the safe transition of the community through the social rupture caused by a death (Van Gennep 1960). These prescribed rituals (Carr 1995; Parker Pearson 1999) may be analogised to the script that determines the course of the theatrical performance (Pearson 1998). Formality and scriptedness endow the proceedings with structure, regularising practice to ensure the transmission of memories across generations (Bradley 2003). Performances and the resulting spectacles facilitate community integration (Inomata & Coben 2007). Because mortuary rituals operate at multiple

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levels they can knit together the bereaved at a time of loss. Effectively conducted they provide catharsis for the mourners, while affirming the continuity of the community in the face of a tear in the social fabric. At the same time, as repeat performances, they reach back to the past evoking memories of previous similar events and hearkening to the more distant past of the ancestors. However, they also function prospectively laying out a roadmap for future similar occasions in the community, reinforcing memories of what appropriate mortuary conduct is. Finally, they pave the way for forgetting, which is essential to the formation of a new community identity (Connerton 2006). Because funerary rituals occur outside the daily course of events, they are exceptional and have implications beyond the immediate context of the burial of a member of the community (see Coleman & Collins 2000). All human interaction involves performance, the sequence of complex and subtle manoeuvres by which community is established (Schieffelin 1998). Performance is historical, unfolding over and through time but only ever existing in the present, conveying significance through the sequence of actions and the experience of presence such performances evoke (Giannachi, Kaye & Shanks 2012). Yet, clearly there must be a distinction between the quotidian and the exceptional (Mitchell 2006). At the same time we should not imagine performance in the purely western sense of viewing the actions of someone creating a separate reality. Rather performance evokes in the observers an awakened sense of a different reality and draws them into the altered state of the performers fully engaging them in the dynamics of the event (Schieffelin 1998; Mitchell 2006; Pearson 2010). Extraordinary rites, such as initiation or marriage, alter the status of those involved, and these effects extend into the realm of the everyday. The initiate may acquire both new rights and new obligations, while the newlywed, now free to interact with the opposite sex within the marriage is more restricted in that respect outside the marriage. The families of the deceased likewise enter into altered relationships with the survivors in the community in the wake of the funeral (Parker Pearson 1999).

Memory and the Performance The struggles over how properly to memorialise the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Vietnam War and other historical events (e.g. Linenthal & Engelhardt 1996) highlight the role of monuments in creating social memories (Rowlands & Tilley 2006) and in that capacity serving as potential sites for contestation and (re) negotiation of social status. The instability of oral traditions which rarely survive more than 200 years (Bradley 2002: 8, 14), even in the case of ancestors (Meskell 2003), elevates the significance of commemorative architecture in the crucial work of linking the past to the present (Connerton 1989) through prescribed practices. Particularly in a society in which shorter life expectancy reduced the overlap of generations, monu-

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ments became essential mnemonic devices, a vehicle for transmitting social memory and a testament to collaboration among the community’s members (Kilmurray 2009). Monuments served as active memorialisation, a way to recall repeatedly the vitality and continuity of the community as a whole. Cemeteries in particular are technologies for remembering (Chapman 2009), with a monument’s permanence countering the transience of human life. Yet remembrance must be practised or performed (Jones 2007: 49–50); the actors engaging with the past are embodied in and symbolised by the monument (Devlin 2007), so that its spatial organisation and layout are integral to the processes of remembering and forgetting. Modifications or changes to the essential features of the tomb thereby relate to the production of a new social order (Barrett 1994: 24; Bradley 1998: 85–100).

Staging Death at Lebena Yerokambos Act 1: Performance of Construction Selecting the Scene The history of the Yerokambos complex, approximately 1.5 km west of modern Lentas [Figs. 1, 2], began with the decision to construct tomb II on a flat shelf of land at the southern edge of the arid Asterousia Massif in south-central Crete with a distant view of the Libyan Sea to the south and the rocky slopes of the mountain rising to the north, an act that appears to have been an assertion of community by people who otherwise lacked an established social or political centre. Branigan had argued that proximity to preexisting settlements determined the locus of the individual tomb (1993; 1998b), a ‘conscious decision to provide burial places that were close to the homes of the living and readily accessible’ (2012: 12). However, surveys of the Asterousia Massif have revealed evidence only for individual farmsteads (Whitelaw 2000) established following the dispersal of the large communities and the emergence of the nucleated family as a social unit at the end of the Neolithic (Tomkins 2004). In order to survive, some of the more isolated and independent groups colonised marginal areas, such as the Asterousia (Tomkins 2008; in press), where limited resources could not support longterm concentrated occupation, producing a pattern of dispersed hamlets unlikely to survive more than a few generations (Relaki 2004; Legarra Herrero 2011; Sbonias 2012). In such marginal environments, the thinly spread population maintained a sense of community by establishing a common ritual area, which appears to have been the tholos cemetery in the Asterousia (Tomkins in press). Hence the latter apparently served as a locus of social reproduction and the reinforcement of social relationships.

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Fig. 1: Map of Crete (after author).

Fig. 2: Lebena Yerokambos II (after author).

As a consequence, tomb II, like most other Early Minoan I tholoi, served as a community centre, and its accessibility and visibility within the landscape were desirable. Most of the other securely dated Early Minoan I tombs—for instance, Ayia Kyriaki (Blackman & Branigan 1982), Kaloi Limenes (Blackman & Branigan 1977), Trypiti and Stou Skaniari to Lakko (Vasilakis 1990)—were similarly situated on broad, level open spaces. The sole exception, Megaloi Skinoi C (Blackman & Branigan 1977: 37–8), sits on a steep rise immediately adjacent to a dramatic rock outcropping that could have seemed suitable for ritual activity. The entrance at tomb II, as at most Early Minoan I tholoi, faced almost directly east perhaps to permit the rays of the rising sun to penetrate the interior of the tomb at an astronomically significant time (sometimes the

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solstice, sometimes the equinox, Goodison 2001). This orientation effectively situated the tomb in the much greater cosmic landscape (Bradley 1998: 145) and, like the Neolithic long houses of northern Europe (Bradley 2002), may have linked the structure with an origination myth.

Building the Set From conceptualisation to completion, the construction of tomb II involved a sustained engagement with the landscape. The tomb recapitulated its environment, the irregular, craggy contour of such early tombs (still visible at Ayia Kyriaki [Fig. 3], and Kaloi Limenes [Fig. 4], which unlike tomb II have not been silted up), echoing the mountains and outcroppings, the caves of which may have inspired the builders (Branigan 1970: 148; 2012; Tomkins 2012), much as Neolithic builders in Britain (Tilley & Bennett 2001) sought to evoke the rocky natural environment. This visual alignment of the tomb with the natural world may have been symbolic, connecting the tholos and those who used it with the long, perhaps mythic past of the rocky slopes and peaks. It also enabled burial in a cave-like environment overlooking any settlements (Branigan 1998b), without the need to situate the dead at higher elevation.

Fig. 3: Ayia Kyriaki (after author).

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Fig. 4: Kaloi Limenes (after author).

The actual construction necessitated a collaborative performance (Legarra Herrero 2012: 327), to accomplish the transport and positioning of boulders, some in excess of 500 kg in weight, requiring as many as 15 or 20 people to move. The builders embedded the tholos in the landscape, digging down to the bedrock, exposing previously hidden earth thereby, as Charles (2005) has suggested in a similar context, revealing its generative and creative force, and extracting the constituent rocks and boulders from the local soil. As they worked, their perceptions of the terrain changed as they came to know it better and in turn adjusted their techniques, much as the potter adapts to the emerging pot on the wheel and the knapper to the not yet finished handaxe (Malafouris 2013). They were physically engaged in the collection, transport and positioning of large rocks and boulders to construct the nearly 2 m thick and 1.50 m high walls and the corbelled vault (Branigan 2012), with its 5.10 m span, the remains of which lay above the burial deposit (Alexiou & Warren 2004: 18), using the smaller stones and other debris as filler for the interstices and the space between the inner and outer courses. These construction strategies resemble those of the builders of Irish Neolithic megalithic tombs who, as Cooney describes (2007: 146), incorporated the bedrock and the debitage in their constructions: “they […] capture the notion of what the transformation of stone in monuments is about; breaking it open by human action and in doing so creating new materialised arenas for human experience.” In the case of tomb II materials and people were entangled (Hodder 2012), human action responding to the possibilities of the material, the boulders imposing the need for collaboration, with transformative results. All Early Minoan I tholoi featured

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architectural innovations—the corbelled vault and the trilithon post and lintel (Branigan 2012)—that endowed the tomb with a measure of theatricality. The corbelled vault accentuated and dramatised the interior space as no flat wood or reed ceiling could. The bulk of the trilithon post and lintel components that framed the 0.75 m square entrance underscored the difficulty of entering the chamber within. These architectural features appeared in these tholoi for the first time likely as intentional manipulations of materials to maximise the effect on visitors to the site. In the process of moving and positioning the materials, thinking about and organising the steps of construction, the builders, by their own performances, formed memories linking them both to the project and to each other. They were working in and on and with the rock of which the landscape was constituted. Kinesthetic memories were formed, the physical experiences of clearing the soil and transporting, moving, and raising the boulders embedded in the builders along with the olfactory and auditory remembrances of hard work with other people (words exchanged, the sound and scent of straining bodies) and of the reworking of the landscape (the smells and sounds of rocks pried loose and carried, the feel of the tools and their impact on the lightly worked surfaces of the tomb interior). When the tholos was completed finally, the landscape, the people and the rocks all had been transformed.

Act 2: Burial and Reburial as Performance of Community The completed tholos and its environment offered two arenas for ritual performance: the building and the surrounding landscape. The structure, dedicated entirely to the mortuary practices of primary interment and secondary manipulation, was visible from at least 100 m on all sides, but revealed its entrance only on the east. From that eastern viewpoint visitors would have learned of the affordances for performances. The trilithon entry with its blocking stone expressed the constraints on movement out of and into the tomb. The blocking stone contained the stench of decay and may have been intended to prevent the escape of the dead (Branigan 1993), but it also limited entry as at least four to five people were needed to move the stone. The trilithon doorway clearly demarcated the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The metre-long entry served as a dramatic transition from the exterior world of everyday experience into the liminal world of the tomb. Nor could visitors simply walk into the tomb, because the narrow opening forced individuals to crawl through the deep passage on their hands and knees, pushing and pulling the corpse and passing in the various grave goods. Finally, while the spacious exterior could accommodate an entire community, only a few individuals actually could be in the tomb at a single time. Using computer modelling, Papadopoulos (2010: 63) has determined that tomb C at Arkhanes, with an interior diameter approximately 2 m smaller than tomb II’s 5.10 m, could have accommodated eight people in the tomb at a single time, although the volume of material and stench of decay would have

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reduced that to no more than four, and over the centuries the number would have diminished further as the tomb filled up. These data suggest that at tomb II the maximum number of people who could have been inside the tomb was 24, but more likely 12, so that while the exterior of the tomb was available to all, the interior was not. Those who actually deposited the body and the grave goods were ‘interior performers’, and any other community members present for the funeral likely were only ‘exterior performers’. The quarters within the tomb and the restricted entry brought the interior performers into intimate contact with the dead. In a profoundly material and multisensorial interaction with the latter (Miller Bonney 2013; Hamilakis 2014), the burial party enacted the prescribed rituals for dealing with the body (Parker Pearson 1999), both at the time of the primary inhumations and during the secondary treatment of the remains. As the living entered the tomb, they left the open sunlit landscape and architectural references to monumental time and entered the compressed space of the darker, lamp-lit interior. There, time manifested itself not through external references but solely through the duration of their actions, which were thus placed outside of the confines of ordinary space and time. At interment, the tight entrance pressed the bodies of the living and the dead close together as the burial party pushed and pulled the body through the opening. The deceased was placed directly on the ground, accompanied by two or three pieces of pottery and perhaps a few personal belongings, but without any lasting markers of identity. Subsequently, members of the living community reentered the tombs and rearranged the grave goods and human remains, disarticulating the skeleton, occasionally segregating long bones and skulls and disposing of smaller bones, perhaps through simple discard. The secondary manipulations may have occurred on an individual basis at a fixed time after the initial interment, or as part of a community reburial that involved a larger number of interments accumulated over many years. There are ethnographic parallels for both practices (Metcalf & Huntington 1991: 98). In either case, the dead had lost the unique characteristics that distinguished them when alive and fully fleshed, and completion of their transition required acknowledgment by the community. The rearrangement of bones and goods was in a sense a final step in the process of forgetting and relinquishing the individual. Both at interment and at the time of secondary manipulation the living interacted intimately and intensely with the deceased, eroding the barriers between the two realms. Auditory memories were formed as bones rubbed against each other, the hands, the dirt, and the grave goods. The intense olfactory experience of the lingering stench of putrid flesh would have induced a gustatory sensation. In the dark tomb, daylight provided only partial illumination, while a flickering lamp revealed in shifting light the bodies, bones, and grave goods from the past. The viewers saw pottery shapes that were vaguely familiar, but with decoration the meaning of which may have been as obscure to them as the individual identities of the people among whose bones they moved. While they would have recognised the purpose of the pots generally the decorative motifs of 300 and 400 years before would have confused

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them, just as the contact with ancient bones that had no connection to a person they had known would stirred them in unpredictable ways. As the community inside the tomb grew, and the deposit of bodies and grave goods rose toward the ceiling, participants in the rituals could not stand erect and were forced to navigate a tangle of bodies, bones, and grave goods. Although the state of preservation of the osteological material precludes a statistical analysis by age or sex, it seems clear that both men and women and the whole spectrum of ages, i.e. all the members of the community, whether the community at large or of a prominent clan, were buried in the tholoi. Mortuary performances in the tomb were thus intended to form the shared social memory. Performances outside the tomb presumably served the same purpose. The immediate environs of tomb II originally provided affordances for large gatherings, and while the evidence for the consumption of food and drink increases after Early Minoan I, it was an important practice from the beginning. Later building activity, both Bronze Age and modern, apparently has destroyed any traces there may have been for ritual feasting, but bones and teeth from a variety of animals have been reported (Alexiou 1960: 226). There is evidence from other Early Minoan I sites that food and drink were shared in commensal events in the areas around the tombs. At Moni Odiyetria (Branigan 2008) there were significant finds of cooking wares and jugs and cups to support the notion that feasting and toasting took place at the site of the tomb. Substantial amounts of the pottery at Ayia Kyriaki were found outside the tomb, perhaps a result of the looting of the tomb but also partly due to rituals (Blackman & Branigan 1982). Clear evidence for drinking or toasting at least appeared with the discovery at the otherwise looted Early Minoan IB tholos at Livari Skhiadi of a deposit of jugs abutting the western wall of the tholos (Papadatos 2012). While Branigan (2008) has speculated that the rituals outside the tomb were directed toward fertility, the consumption of food and drink in a mortuary context are well-attested ethnographically (Hamilakis 1998). In any case, there is no evidence in Early Minoan I that these extra-tholos activities were anything but mortuary in nature. The movement of dancing (Branigan 1993) and the gustatory, olfactory and tactile experiences of the food and drink, and the effect of likely alcoholic beverages, would have compounded the already rich environment of the natural landscape and the sea just visible to the south. Thus, whether inside or outside the tholos, participants in the performances were exposed to a variety of sensory experiences that helped construct social memory for more than 400 years. Since there is no evidence at the moment for a substantial Early Minoan I settlement in the area tomb II, the tomb served as one of the places where community was performed over the centuries forming and reinforcing the collecting memory and forging traditions that shaped the future (Relaki 2004; Tomkins in press).

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Act 3: Performance of Veneration Roughly 450–500 years later, while the original tholos was still in use, those who used the tomb began a sequence of architectural modifications that transformed the possibilities for performance [Fig. 5]. The reconfigurations did not just alter the options for ritual activity, but also reflect a change in the understanding of what was appropriate for the burial site of a community member: that is to say, new possibilities for performance and the architectural framework that facilitated these innovations coemerged. At the beginning of this process, in late Early Minoan IIA, a secondary tomb, IIa, was constructed abutting tomb II on the southeast. Unlike tomb II, the smaller tholos IIa, with an interior diameter of 3 m (Alexiou & Warren 2004: 15–8), was constructed of smaller blocks that did not require substantial collaborative effort to collect and put them in place. Because the entrance area of IIa had been destroyed by robbing activities associated with the primary tholos, its actual location is uncertain, although it is likely that it was as on the north side as restored, and thus at a right angle to the main tholos entry. It has been suggested (Alexiou & Warren 2004: 18) that it could have been in the unexcavated southwest quadrant, but given the apparent aversion to westfacing tombs (Branigan 1998b) this seems unlikely. Not long after construction, the interior of IIa was burned and the floor covered with sand. Burials continued in tombs II and IIa, and, in Early Minoan IIB, at about the same time the sand was laid down in IIa, the users added rectangular annexes AN and Delta, with a third compartment further to the southeast, fragmentary wall stumps of which remain. For the next 400 years the community continued to make burials in II, IIa and Delta, while using AN as a receptacle for offerings. AN and Delta imposed a different pattern of movement on the users as neither had a door and thus must have been entered from above. Around 1900 BCE the entry to tomb II was filled and that to IIa sealed; rooms A and M (as well as two additional rooms, of which only a wall fragment survives) were added directly to the east of the entrance to tomb II, with room A abutting and effectively blocking access to both tholoi. Apparently rooms AN and Delta continued to be used at that time, while A was used as an ossuary and M was the locus for liquid offerings based on the hundreds of cups found in that space. Burial use of the site ceased late in Middle Minoan IA or during the Middle Minoan IA/B transition (Alexiou & Warren 2004: 180). The sequence of modifications to the tomb that took place over the 600 years in question gradually changed the way in which people could access tomb II and altering the relationship between the cemetery and the landscape. Murphy (2011b) has argued that the addition of the secondary tholos abutting and incorporating in its structure the primary tholos, and with an entrance immediately adjacent to that of the original tomb, embodied an interest in propinquity to the individuals in the original tomb. Yet in terms of performance at the site, the addition downplayed the centrality of the original tholos and created ‘adjoining tombs’ that separated the dead into two distinct, simultaneous categories, suggesting there had been an underlying change in the meaning of community. The original tholos no longer stood as a unified symmetrical whole, but became

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irregular, asymmetrical and obscured from the southeast by the encroaching smaller tomb. Whereas before construction of tomb IIa, tomb II was the sole focus of mortuary activity, now with two possible places for interment the centre of attention was less clear. Moreover, obscuring the south jamb of tomb II’s entrance reduced the visual impact of that structure. The addition of room Delta provided a third option for burials, while AN introduced a new kind of space: one used not for burials at all, but rather for liquid offerings. Since we do not know the original wall height, we cannot be certain how much these rooms encroached on the view of the tholos from the southeast. From the east, the visitor still could have seen the entrance to tomb II, but the secondary tholos and the smaller rooms stretching to the southeast would have drawn attention away from the original tomb. Moreover, the line of the rooms from the secondary tholos to AN and Delta had the effect of setting apart the area in front of the tomb and formalising it. Whereas before the addition of IIa, AN and Delta, exterior ritual space would have been unbounded and surrounded the entire tholos, the annexes provide a clear boundary on the south side of the space before tomb II. Moreover, as noted above, the secondary tholos was burned in Early Minoan IIA, and a layer of sand was put down with deposits continuing above. These upper deposits and the pottery in the southeast rooms are distinctly different from the vessels found in tomb II. In contrast to the tankards, pyxides and other fine ware shapes that compose most of the pottery in tomb II, these later deposits contain almost exclusively cups, suggesting an increase in the practice of toasting at the tomb. Thus, both new structures of behaviour and buildings in the form of the annexes coemerge in Early Minoan IIB.

Fig. 5: Plan of Yerokambos II (after Alexiou & Warren 2004, fig. 12).

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With the addition of rooms A and M immediately adjacent to the tombs, the affordances for performance clearly were changed. First, it was no longer possible to make burials in either tomb II or IIa, and while some burials continue in Delta, primary interment seems to take place somewhere else. Room A was filled with defleshed bones, but there is no indication of an actual burial and no access to tomb II or IIa. Secondly, ritual practices changed placing emphasis on funerary consumption of liquids. Thus the multisensory experiences associated with mortuary activity particularly inside the tomb II and IIa were replaced by a different set of sensory experiences associated with the consumption of liquids and a physical distancing from the remains of the ancestors.

Conclusion The architectural changes at the Yerokambos complex over 1,200 years of use contributed to and reflected important changes in and among the living and between the living and the dead. Architectural agency, the power of the built environment to shape the human experience and attendant memories, is intended to promote thinking through materiality (Preucel 2005: 259), so that monuments become integral to the formation and perpetuation of the collective memory by impinging on the social (Jones 2007). The original tholos, tomb II, with its insistent evocation of the landscape it occupied, connected the performative actions of the participants to the cosmic order embodied in the natural world. While entry to the world of the dead was controlled, the tholos remained accessible and its surrounding field did not define or limit the ways in which individuals could interact with each other. For 500 years the tomb stood alone, the sustained pattern of visits by the living for both mortuary and nonmortuary rituals testifying to its mnemonic power. The addition of the secondary tholos and the suite of rectangular rooms AN and Delta soon thereafter changed both the options for interment and, with AN and Delta, formalised the space in front of the tomb suggesting a refocusing on performance outside the tomb. The architecture, more clearly manmade, signals a shift away from the unquestionable embeddedness of the monument in the landscape, a move Vavouranakis (2007) has described as a switch from architecture embedded in the natural landscape to more overt human intervention in the latter using architectural forms. The smaller blocks of the secondary tholos and the rectilinearity of the added rooms evoked the human built environment in contrast to the Cyclopean circuit wall of tomb II. Since by Early Minoan II more durable settlements had begun to appear in the Asterousia and Early Minoan walls on the Lentas promontory may belong to such a settled community, the construction techniques of the Early Minoan IIB architecture at Yerokambos was a familiar part of daily life, while the more massive blocks of tomb II resonated with a mythic, distant past. This difference had consequences for the burials in tomb II, which also now receded into the remote

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past. The smaller tomb IIa and rooms AN and D extended toward the visitors who approached from the east pushing the tholos into the visible background. Distanced physically and visually, the tholos and its contents were separated from the land of the living. The once open, more natural landscape became increasingly bounded and humanised as new structures, through a gradual process of accretion, raised a barrier and created distinct spaces, separating the area immediately in front of the tholos entrance from that to the south. The wall stubs on the eastern edges of rooms AN and Delta suggest further intrusion into the visual field, such that the length of the annexes exceeded the external diameter of the original tholos. This formalised space was accompanied by a similar regularisation of ritual activity. While eating and dancing may have persisted at the site during this time, the proliferation of cups implies non-mortuary drinking or toasting may have become more important as the number of burials at the site declined over the latter part of Early Minoan III and the beginning of Middle Minoan I. As ritual activities outside the tholos became more prominent, cups became more abundant inside the tomb as well and the diversity of grave goods was diminished. While both primary and secondary mortuary practices appear to have continued within the tomb, it is clear that external activities received special attention. The architectural elaboration witnessed at the site suggests that the tomb complex became symbolic of an earlier reality (Bradley 1998). Such architectural complexity diffused ritual focus, as seen slightly later in the East Cretan mortuary landscape (Vavouranakis 2007). The final addition of rooms A and M impeded the performance of mortuary rituals within the tomb and relocated the centre of activity entirely outside, presumably into the northeast, unbuilt quadrant of the site. In this process of architectural and functional refocusing, bodies buried in the tomb were no longer simply deceased members of the community, but became ancestors occupying a different historical position (Bradley 2002). The complex no longer served the same mnemonic purpose and within perhaps 100 years went entirely out of use.

References Alexiou, S., 1960a. New light on Minoan dating: Early Minoan tombs at Lebena. Illustrated London News 6 (8), 225–7. Alexiou, S., 1960b. Ἀνασκαφὴ Λεβῆνος. Ἀρχαιολογικὸν Δελτίον 16Β, 257–8. Alexiou, S. & P. Warren, 2004. The Early Minoan Tombs of Lebena, Southern Crete. Sävedalen: Paul Åströms Förlag. Barrett, J. C., 1994. Fragments from Antiquity: an Archaeology of Social Life in Britain, 2900–1200 B. C. Oxford: Blackwell. Barrett, J. C., 1999. The mythical landscape of the British Iron Age. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Ashmore, W. & A. B. Knapp. Oxford: Blackwell, 253–65. Barrett, J. C. & I. Ko, 2009. A phenomenology of landscape. A crisis in British landscape archaeology? Journal of Social Archaeology 9 (3), 275–94.

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Angélique Labrude

Aegean Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Burials in the Ruins of Rulers’ Dwellings: a Legitimisation of Power? Introduction The importance of the landscape context of burial sites has been at the heart of numerous studies in recent years (e.g. Branigan 1998; Dickinson 2006: 174–95; Vavouranakis 2007). It is now generally admitted that topographical features alone cannot always explain the strategies used in situating cemeteries in landscapes of cultural and historical significance. The combination of space, landscape, and architecture created a specific deathscape where social memory and local identity interacted. This chapter thus aims to investigate the links between Aegean Late Bronze and Early Iron Age burial sites and the former non-funerary buildings housing them. Building remains formed part of the landscape, being conspicuous landmarks like other prominent natural features. Unlike the latter category, however, ruined dwellings were clearly linked to particular episodes of human history, which were known or imagined by the new generations contemplating them. Ruins have been defined as ‘liminal and timeless places that existed in both the past and the present’ (Williams 1997: 25). Indeed, ruins played a specific role as the interface between the world of the living and the world of the dead: the dead inhabitants ‘haunting’ their former houses, but also the dead deliberately placed within them to materialise the finality of their initial domestic function. The main issue raised in this chapter is linked to the role of burials within new settlement patterns established in connection with ruined rulers’ complexes. By creating new funerary landscapes among these conspicuous decayed structures, did Late Bronze and Early Iron Age communities wish to proclaim their ancestral rights and legitimise a new power? Or rather, did they intend to declare the death of the Bronze Age world, as suggested by I. Morris (2000: 206)? In this chapter, I would like to determine the specific role attributed to these conspicuous ruins as well as the burial strategies used within new settlement patterns in Crete and on the mainland without losing sight of the variable contexts that these remains may have signified for the inhabitants. My analysis begins by exploring the links between the dead, ruined ordinary settlements, and memory in the Aegean before turning to several case studies of rulers’ complexes reused as burial sites. I will focus on burials in connection with Minoan palatial sites and Mycenaean citadels and then examine the deliberate destruction of Iron Age elite dwellings and their transformation into highly visible funerary places as a symbol of an elite status. Drawing from

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the results of this investigation, several conjectures are made to identify different patterns in the attitude shown towards abandoned structures and explain their different usages in the context of sociopolitical changes. This topic, at the crossroads of several issues—the afterlife as a location, the elaboration of memoryscapes, and the use of the past as a source of power and identity—deserves further consideration in the framework of the ‘archaeology of place’.

From domestic to funerary places: defining ‘intramural’ burials The reuse of ruined settlements has been little investigated to date, with research focusing on Early Iron Age ritual activities conducted on top of important Bronze Age remains (see Prent 2003; 2005; Wallace 2003). However, the deliberate reuse of domestic, artisanal, and residential buildings as burial places was not uncommon (for Bronze Age examples, see Nordquist 1987: 95; Dietz 1991: 275–6; Maran 1995; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–5; Boyd 2002: 33–6; Milka 2010) as confirmed by several Late Bronze and Early Iron Age cases on the Greek mainland and Crete as well as the Aegean islands and Asia Minor (Labrude in press). I would like to stress here that it would be inappropriate to speak of ‘intramural burials’, a term reserved for burials between inhabited walls. In my opinion, reference should rather be made to ‘intermural burials’, that is to say, burials between uninhabited walls. Due to the datedness of many of the excavations and rescue operations, and the consequent ambiguous stratigraphical sequences, the reuse of previously inhabited areas in the prehistoric Aegean may not have been sufficiently addressed. Another difficulty directly linked to the nature of this issue is the great variability in the significations attributed to such practices, which depend on several criteria: the spatiotemporal frame and sociopolitical context; the lapse of time between the initial abandonment and burial reuse; the location of contemporaneous settlements and their possible placement among the ruins; the purpose of the reuse as an individual, familial, or community initiative; the nature of the ruins (domestic, artisanal, residential, or administrative); the degree of preservation at the time of reuse. Of course, there are other criteria that we do not fully understand because they are archaeologically invisible and/or linked to popular or personal beliefs. I have deliberately chosen to retain one of the criteria mentioned above in order to examine its validity and importance within the strategies of location: to what extent did the initial function of the buildings influence the strategies used to localise the burial places later situated in proximity to their ruins? In addressing this topic, I will firstly concentrate on ordinary settlements reused as burial places in order to identify the different intentions motivating such a practice and their role in the reinforcement of the collective memory and local identity.

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The dead, ruins, and memory The concept of ‘collective memory’ (mémoire collective) in reference to the collective knowledge shared by members of the same community was elaborated by the sociologist M. Halbwachs and has since been widely adopted by scholars interested in the archaeology of memory, that is, the material culture attesting to the recognition and interest of social groups in their own past or in the past in general (Alcock 2002; Van Dyke & Alcock 2003; Yoffee 2007; Gallou & Georgiadis 2009). Artefacts, iconography, and architectural remains play a role in the transmission of collective memory, with these elements being used, reused, and reinterpreted by succeeding generations. Architectural stone remains have this trait in particular, since, even after their abandonment, they are still openly and publicly inscribed in the landscape for generations to come. They may gradually disappear due to a general indifference or natural taphonomic processes, or they may be invested with new functions, thus delaying their disappearance. The remains may also have been rediscovered after being partially or totally buried. Like natural landmarks, often assumed to have played a role in the location of sanctuaries or cemeteries, ruins linked to a more or less remote past may have shaped the choices of settlement and cemetery establishment. The appropriation of the local past was certainly a means to reinforce collective memory, and ancient architectural remains may have played a role similar to that of artefacts in the performance of commemorative ceremonies. Monument reuse for funerary purposes, rarely mentioned in Aegean studies, was analysed in other chronological and cultural contexts, such as the Anglo-Saxon world (Williams 1997). R. Bradley (1998) was the first to draw attention to burials intentionally situated on abandoned prehistoric monuments. According to him, rulers used the practice to reinforce their power by creating a link to the mythical past. H. Williams (1998) broadened the spatiotemporal scope of his study, demonstrating that monument reuse was rarely due to practical reasons alone, such as incorporating the preexisting walls into the graves’ construction. A detailed investigation of several sites with decaying structures characterised by the intrusion of burials leads us to question the reasons of this peculiar practice in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Aegean context. Even if the transformation of ruins into cemeteries is manifested throughout the Aegean basin [Fig. 1], the signification of this practice may have varied depending on regional, community, or individual criteria and the specific chronological frame. In Crete, an abandoned Neopalatial artisans’ quarter deliberately reused as a burial site was identified in Mochlos as early as the Late Minoan IIIA-B period (Soles & Davaras 2003); in contrast, contemporaneous cases have not been detected on the mainland. From the Late Helladic IIIC phase onwards, however, following the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial period around 1200 BCE, there was a noticeable increase in the number of abandoned settlements reused as burial sites in the Aegean.

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Fig. 1: Late Bronze and Early Iron Age abandoned dwellings reused as burial sites in the Aegean (after author).

Isolated tombs overlapping or in proximity to Bronze Age houses or settlements were located in Thessaly at Palaiokastro (Snodgrass 1971: 154, 316), east Lokris at Mitrou (Van de Moortel 2007: 250; 2009: 364–5), Euboea at Lefkandi-Xeropolis (Lemos 2006: 519), Argolid at Argos, and Asine (Lemos 2002: 157–8; Courbin 1974: 103–5; Touchais & Divari-Valakou 1998: 17–18; Frödin & Persson 1938: 129–39), Asia Minor at Klazomenai (Aytaçlar 2004: 27), and Crete at Halasmenos (Tsipopoulou 2005: 320; Eaby 2007: 49) and Krousonas (Eaby 2007: 103). At the majority of these sites, the initiative for burying people among the ruins appears to have been taken by families or individuals, and does not involve the community at large. Child burials are especially numerous, though sometimes accompanied by one or two adults. The tradition of burying children under the family house is well-attested from the Bronze Age, continuing throughout the Early Iron Age (Mazarakis Ainian 2010; McGeorge 2011). Nevertheless, these cases cannot be defined, strictly speaking, as intramural burials, because of the incorporation of child tombs after the abandonment of the houses. It may be inferred that ancestor ruins in the Early Iron Age Aegean world, as in other

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chronological and cultural contexts, may have possessed an apotropaic character (Williams 1997: 3; Liston 2007: 65, with references). Isolated individuals or children may thus have been placed under the protection of the past inhabitants in what still resembled domestic buildings. Familial burial plots or community cemeteries, with a more equilibrated repartition of adults and children, seem more clearly linked to territorial claims at a number of sites: Marmariani-Magoula in Thessaly (Heurtley & Skeat 1930–1931); the eponymous city on the island of Kos (Morricone 1975; 1982); Grotta on the northern coast of Naxos (Lambrinoudakis 1988; Vlachopoulos 2003); Thorikos in Attica (Mussche 1974; Mazarakis Ainian 1997, 146–7), and Vronda in eastern Crete (Day 1995; 2011). These burial sites housing a large number of graves were established after the settlements relocated, sometimes quite some distance away. In the case of Vronda, for example, after an interlude of approximately four centuries, the ruined settlement was transformed into a burial place during the Late Geometric/Early Orientalising period. At the time, the rivalry between the closest settlements, Kastro and Azoria, probably intensified, and faced with the emerging polis of Azoria, the community of Kastro may have felt the need to reassert its ancient rights to the territory in a visible way. One may also argue that the growing community of Azoria endeavoured to reinforce its collective identity by taking control of the area to mark the extent its new territory (Day 2011: 750). Burial markers and funerary activities involving the burning of mortuary pyres were probably sufficient to assert the reoccupation of the ruined area in spite of its previous desertion. In all likelihood, the reuse of small-scale dwellings was linked to human history, especially to direct ancestral ties. This in no way excludes the worship of previous generations and their possible elevation to a status of immortals or deities. For example, at Grotta, Asine, and possibly Thorikos, an ancestor cult developed in proximity to the graves situated among Mycenaean ruins (Hägg 1983; Lambrinoudakis 1988; Mazarakis Ainian 1997: 147). The assimilation of decayed houses or even workshops into settlement and cemetery patterns occurred according to different modalities: after short or long intervals, and in connection with isolated individuals, single families, or larger kinship or social groups. This process was favoured by the reorganisation of territories following the ‘1200 destruction’ and during the phases of formation of the polis.

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Bronze Age monumental complexes reused as burial sites: absorbing the past, establishing a new order Minoan monumental complexes In the attempt to understand the practice of placing burials among the ruins of rulers’ dwellings or in their vicinity, our investigation begins with Minoan monumental complexes, where such cases were reported during the Late Minoan IIIA-Late Minoan IIIB periods (ca. 1400–1200 BCE), when Mycenaeans are thought to have arrived on the island1. In Crete, at numerous sites discovered at the beginning of the 20th c., the absence of a clear stratigraphical sequence or the erosion of the architectonic remains led to different interpretations of the same structure. The so-called Tomba degli Ori in the Ayia Triada complex was initially interpreted as an imposing Neopalatial ruined house with five rooms reused as an ossuary during the Late Minoan IIIA (La Rosa 1992–1993: 125). However, D. Puglisi (2003: 185–8) recently affirmed the original funerary character of the structure due to the presence of ceremonial and ritual objects placed in or close to the tomb, especially in the large ancillary complex of the Mazza di Breccia. In this latter area, signs of artisanal production and storage areas in addition to public rooms situated in front of the Tomba degli Ori would consequently attest to cultic and funerary activities occurring in connection with the tomb. Monumental residential complexes, destroyed during the Late Minoan IB phase and partially reconverted into burial places during the Late Minoan III period, are nevertheless attested elsewhere in Crete, even if poorly documented. The Late Minoan town of Gournia, located on the north coast of the Isthmus of Ierapetra, is particularly rich in Neopalatial remains, including a small palace. There is evidence of a reoccupation of the site during the Late Minoan IIIA2-B period (Boyd et al. 1908). At this time, several houses, a shrine to the Goddess with Upraised Arms (probably part of a larger structure), and a tomb were established within the Neopalatial complex in the vicinity of the palace. House He, often called a megaron, is regarded as one of the most important ‘Mycenaeanising Corridor Houses’, and may have belonged to an important Mycenaean family. The pit tomb dug into a Neopalatial house, located to the northwest of the palace in room E58, contained a fragmentary larnax with an octopus decoration and several vases, including a Late Minoan IIIB double vase and a rhyton in the shape of a pregnant woman (Boyd et al. 1908: 46). According to Gesell (1985: 50) this rhyton may belong to a tomb cult. Our vision of the Late Minoan III reoccupation at Gournia is unfortunately only partial, thus impeding

1 See Langohr 2009: 35–6 for a summary of the debate on the arrival of Mycenaeans in Crete; punctual and regular arrivals now seem more likely than a massive invasion.

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any attempt at a conclusion, although the insertion of a tomb among the Neopalatial wreckage is clearly part of a larger reoccupation. To the northwest of Gournia, the vast Proto- and Neopalatial monumental complex of Malia, located on the northern coast of Crete, east of Knossos, also featured contemporaneous reoccupation. In the north of the ruined complex that includes a palace, several burial plots were found close to the sea, while different habitation areas were discovered within or around the ruins of the Neopalatial town. A small Late Minoan IIIA cemetery was identified in the so-called House of the Dead (Maison des morts) in the Pierres meulières area, situated in a complex of at least nine rooms whose initial funerary character has been queried. Further investigations revealed the original domestic function of what was, in all likelihood, a Protopalatial house reused as a cemetery during the Late Minoan III (Van Effenterre & Van Effenterre 1963: 85–102; Farnoux 1989: 148–54). The stratigraphical sequence of the site is rather ambiguous, but no doubt remains as to the insertion of ten cist graves containing Mycenaean objects above and in direct proximity to the nine-room complex. More than ten skeletons were discovered in the cist tombs, at least half being children and with some of the remains being placed in Protopalatial vases. Moreover, numerous funerary pithoi, sheltering mostly child bones, were identified on the strata immediately below the cists; some were aligned with the interior walls, while others were placed in doorframes as with pit inhumations. Initially dated to the Middle Minoan I period on account of the funerary containers, it is possible that the pithoi were reused during the Late Minoan III period (Farnoux 1989: 153–4).While a handful of Middle Minoan I objects discovered close to the pithoi were probably abandoned at the same time as the building, one Mycenaean pyxis was found in one of the overturned funerary vases. Modest enclosures also appear to have been built around these Mycenaean tombs (Van Effenterre & Van Effenterre: 88, plan III). Without complementary stratigraphical data, it is problematic to establish the chronological link between the pithoi—seemingly placed at the same time as the inhumations on the plastered ground when the walls were still visible—and the cists on the upper level. The fact that some of the Mycenaean cists overlapped the walls seems to indicate that part of the building structure was buried when the tombs were dug. These tombs appear rather modest, which concurs with the discovery of other tombs excavated in the area of Malia. The question beckons as to why one part of the population chose to bury their dead among Minoan ruins, while others preferred a natural setting. One may be tempted to argue that certain families native to Crete sought to foster nostalgia for the past, despite embracing the material culture of the new Mycenaean community. On the other hand, the cist tombs, being rather uncommon in Crete during this period, may have been brought by newcomers. At Mochlos, on the eastern part of Mirabello bay, where a Mycenaean settlement was established directly above or close to the Neopalatial houses, J. Soles excludes the possibility of a Minoan return after the population abandoned the region approximately 40 years prior. He gives convincing

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arguments in favour of a community of new settlers from the mainland (Soles & Davaras 2008: 198–205). While the main cemetery of the community was located on an overhanging hill (Soles & Davaras 2003: 135–45), a modest familial burial ground, contemporaneous to the latter, was discovered among the ruins of a Neopalatial artisans’ quarter. Amongst the debris of two buildings, the seven shallow pit graves containing six or seven subadults and two adults placed in burial containers probably served a single generation (Late Minoan IIIA2-B1). This small burial ground with an amphoroid krater used as a grave marker was most certainly destined for the same family. Consequently, at Malia as at Mochlos, the scarcity of burial plots located above the ruins in the environs of the main cemeteries would suggest that their location was rather chosen due to its proximity to undiscovered isolated houses. In the absence of anthropological studies, it is difficult to know whether the children at Malia were really too many or whether several generations, including a few adults and their children, were buried here. In summary, in the former palatial sites of Gournia and Malia as in Mochlos, visible Minoan ruins were incorporated into new settlement patterns, most probably by Mycenaean communities, after a chronological lapse. Some of the former houses were reinhabited, while others were transformed into burial places, thus excluding their reuse by the living. The new strategies used to localise the domestic and burial sites were to a certain extent motivated by the monumental character of the ruins that testified to the former power in Malia or Gournia. On the other hand, with regard to the contemporaneous reoccupation of the town of Mochlos, the choice likewise seems to have been motivated by the proximity of the coast and the presence of natural resources. In the framework of a new territorial organisation, the modest burial plots found in Minoan remains and located at some distance from the main settlements may have contributed to visually demarcating the boundaries of the new terrains. Only from the Early Iron Age onwards did seven former seats of power, including palatial complexes, enter into the heart of ‘ruin cults’. Indeed, at Knossos, Phaistos, Ayia Triada, Tylisos, Amnisos, Kommos and Palaikastro, sanctuaries were built amidst ruins (Prent 2003; 2005: 508–54). Notably, these cultic activities were not always located above the former sanctuaries, which attest to an overall respect for the ruins themselves, or rather, for what they conveyed: the power and authority of the ancient. The chosen votive groups and deities confirm this emphasis on elitist functions, considered to be typically Cretan from the Protogeometric period onwards (Prent 2005: 552). The possible reuse of Minoan theatral areas in palatial and elite complexes in the Archaic period was recently queried, as was their replication in new architectural complexes (Cucuzza 2013). Although Early Iron Age Cretan rulers legitimised their power through a close association with Bronze Age monumental remains used for cultic activities alone, with contemporaneous settlements being found only in Knossos and Phaistos, what was the situation on the mainland where the citadels were inhabited in continuity? How were funerary areas integrated into these new settlement patterns?

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Mycenaean citadels Due to the availability of information regarding the Mycenaean citadels on the mainland, this discussion will concentrate on the Argolid, though other sites will be mentioned. The citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns on the Argive plain, built on topographically exposed locations and surrounded by so-called Cyclopean walls, were constructed to impress and leave a durable trace on the landscape. In these ‘performative places’ (Maran 2006b), theatricality was reinforced by imposing architectural symbols that helped to dramatise the processions at the heart of Mycenaean rituals. At Tiryns, a large Late Minoan IIIC settlement was established in the Lower Citadel immediately after the ‘1200 Destruction’ (Late Helladic IIIB2), probably as an initiative of the new upper class. Ritual activities continued in the cult area of the Lower and Upper Citadels with the erection of building T above the Great Megaron, which acted as a witness to the old social order. This material association symbolised a connection with the period prior to the destruction of the citadel, while several other structures were cleared and repaired in order to be reused in other contexts (Maran 2001; 2006a). In the new sociopolitical context, the new ruling authority, though altered, drew from former symbols of power to legitimise its own rule and order. As Maran has stated (2001: 121), “this may mark the beginning of the glorification of the palatial era and in this way anticipate phenomena, which would become conspicuous during the Iron Age, the main difference consisting in the fact, that the people in the 12th c. BCE did not appeal to a mythical past, but rather to a past they still knew very well”. This sociopolitical change led to a reorganisation of the whole territory, which did not undergo important alterations during the Submycenaean and Protogeometric periods. Occupations continued in the Lower Citadel and the adjacent regions as proved by scattered burial grounds. Inhumations in pits and cists were detected outside the citadel close to a contemporaneous collection of houses (Papadimitriou 1998). Furthermore, three cemeteries located to the south and southwest of the Mycenaean citadel were in use from the Submycenaean to the Geometric period. In one of them, the Philaki burial ground, six tombs were discovered in the ruins of Mycenaean houses (Lemos 2002: 159–60). Of particular interest is tomb XXVIII with a double burial, dated to the transitional phase from Submycenaean to Protogeometric. One of the individuals, a warrior, was buried with his armour and an array of weapons, including the earliest iron dagger found in the Argolid (Lemos 2002: 13, 159–60). The Greek Archaeological Service also discovered a child buried with copious offerings in the vicinity. The tombs found in the Philaki burial spot indicate a social hierarchical organisation in Early Iron Age Tiryns with a valorisation of social competition as expressed through warrior values. Some upper-class individuals, like the warrior of tomb XXVIII, may have claimed descent from Mycenaean potentates and sought to materialise this connection through a physical and direct association with the Mycenaean remains. In the Tiryns Upper Citadel, devoted to communal and ritual activities from the Late Helladic IIIC period onwards, the building inside the Mycenaean mega-

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ron continued to be at the heart of rituals during the Geometric period as attested by a votive deposit found nearby. This evidence attests to an enduring reference to the glorious Mycenaean past and its testimonia during the Iron Age. In Mycenae, immediately after the ‘1200 Destruction’, the vast majority of structures were rendered unusable, giving the entire area an air of desolation. However, according to E. French (2009b), the rapid resumption of a building programme on what was probably public land, culminating in the finalisation of the well-constructed Granary and the controlled regulation of ceramic production, testifies to the continued presence of a central power. At the time, part of the new Late Helladic IIIC settlement was sheltered within the citadel walls in the Citadel House Area and to its south. Late Helladic IIIC burials were discovered in proximity, in the Lion Gate Strata as well as in the North Baulk and Cyclopean Terrace Building (French 2009a, with references). This organisation of tomb clusters probably testifies to the new sociopolitical context based on strong and competing families as suggested in Tiryns (Maran 2006a: 125–6). Establishing cemeteries among the ruins surrounding the houses may have been a means to demarcate new landownerships and prevent their reuse among the population. As no evidence points to the arrival of newcomers, the burials may have been located in what was claimed to be ancestral properties. From the 11th c. BCE onwards, after the apparent desertion of the Citadel House Area, only cist graves were placed within the walls of the citadel (French 2011: 1). Eleven Submycenaean or Early Protogeometric graves, mostly belonging to children, were dug in the Northwest Quarter and Citadel House Area, some being endowed with rich offerings (French 2009a: 152–3; Desborough 1973: 98–101; Lemos 2002: 160). Outside the walls, six Protogeometric and Geometric graves were discovered in the ruins of the so-called House of the Sphinxes and House of the Shields, whose former use was linked to palatial administration (Desborough 1954; 1955; 1956). In the latter dwelling, three Late Protogeometric and Early Geometric tombs containing a pair of mature adults, young adults, and children, may have originated from the same family. At the time, the impressive remains of the citadel were apparently vested with a unique funerary function. One may naturally ask why people residing outside the citadel felt a need to bury their dead within its walls. The more plausible hypothesis is that the citadel was still occupied during the concerned period, but data connected with poorly constructed, contemporaneous houses were lost due to subsequent occupations. The situation would be therefore comparable to the previous chronological phase. On the other hand, access to the citadel burial plots may also have been reserved for families claiming ancestral rights. Other burial plots located outside the walls confirm a territorial organisation based on a series of settlement nuclei. In any case, the citadel ruins may have contributed to the dramatisation of funerary ceremonies performed within its walls given the discovery of traces of mortuary pyres. As stated by J. Maran with regard to the Argive plain, the memory of the Mycenaean palatial period was more potent in visible and fortified sites, which became the

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focus of cultural memory as early as the 12th c. BCE. In times of social and cultural change, without a strong central power, individuals, kinship, or social groups may have sought protection from ancestral leaders whose perceived authority intervened to legitimise territorial claims. The exceptional architectural context of the ruined citadels provided a particular stage for ritual performances, helping to dramatise the specific moment of funerals as well as the commemorative ceremonies performed above the graves. Mycenae and Tiryns’ Early Iron Age communities continuously expressed their interest for the Bronze Age past as a source of identity by different means, including tomb cults (Antonaccio 1995: 29–53) and cultic activities conducted above architectural symbols of past authority. The association between tombs and Bronze Age architectural remains might be seen as a way to promote the status of the upper class through a direct association with past potentates and prevent any reuse of what was probably claimed to be ancestral properties. The state of documentation in other regions does not permit a similar analysis. At Thebes in Boeotia, the Mycenaean acropolis of Kadmeia from the Early Iron Age presents a more confusing situation. Most likely, the main settlement lay outside the citadel walls, but the archaeological record is sparse. Several isolated tombs were identified. In the Elektrai Gate burial plot, 11 Submycenaean to Protogeometric cist tombs overlaid Mycenaean houses (Symeonoglou 1985: 62, 89; Lemos 2002: 170). Other burials exist closer to the centre of the citadel, as well as to the northeast and northwest (Dakouri-Hild 2011). However, their uncertain relationship to the contemporaneous houses prevents us from drawing any conclusions. In and around the acropolis of Athens, where a Mycenaean palace is attested, burials did not reuse the former habitations, while the relationship between some Submycenaean child burials and former architectural remains is uncertain (Lemos 2006: 511). In the surroundings of the palace of Iolkos, Protogeometric child burials have been noticed as well (Snodgrass 1971: 154, 316). At the present time, only the Argive plain citadels offer a relatively clear picture of the reuse of monumental Bronze Age ruins with a funerary purpose, which formed part of a larger framework of territorial reorganisation. However, in Attica and Euboea, Early Iron Age rulers’ dwellings may have been deliberately destroyed on occasion so as to be transformed in monumental tombs.

The ritual ‘killing’ of rulers’ residences To complete our understanding of the diverse relationships linking monumental architecture, memory, and death, let us now examine two different cases of elite dwellings that were probably deliberately destroyed only to be transformed into monumental tombs. ‘Ritual killing’ may refer to the intentional breakage or burning of an artefact, with the act intended to attribute a new symbolic function to the object by rendering it

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the exclusive possession of the deceased. This practice was common in Bronze and Early Iron Age funerary contexts in the Aegean as well as in other chronological and cultural contexts (Soles 1999, with references; the author stresses the difference between the breakage, its different meanings, and the ‘ritual killing’). Regarding the two well-known structures reflecting this practice, the first is the so-called Middle Protogeometric heroon on the Toumba hill in Lefkandi (Euboea), a monumental apsidal structure measuring approximately 50 metres in length (Popham et al.1993). Although it is generally admitted that this important building never served as heroon, it is still debated as to whether the structure was erected before or after the insertion of the rich double burial of a warrior and his consort. Several scholars present strong arguments in favour of an initial domestic use based on stratigraphical data and architectural evidence (Crielaard & Driessen 1994). Mazarakis Ainian (1997: 48–58) restored a convincing sequence of events corresponding to the first half of the 10th c. BCE. In his view, the building presents architectural features suggesting its initial residential function as the dwelling of a local chieftain and his family. After a brief period of domestic use lasting less than a generation, the burial shafts of the owners were sunk into the central room, as attested by the disruption to the clay floor structure above the burial pits. Following the funerals, this imposing residence was intentionally demolished and covered by a tumulus to symbolise its new funerary function and visibly mark the high status of the deceased and their burial place. This event occurred at a time of sociopolitical change, corresponding to the emergence of new rulers, most probably descendants of the deceased couple. Shortly afterwards, an entire cemetery was established in proximity to the tumulus, thus materialising the connection with the past potentates. In our second case, Mazarakis Ainian (1997: 150–3) restores a similar sequence of events for the Sacred House at Eleusis. During the last quarter of the 8th c. BCE, a period corresponding to important changes involving the inauguration of the cult of Demeter, a grave was dug in front of the Geometric megaron and covered by a mound prior to the construction of the Sacred House. The megaron, the likely dwelling of the man’s family, was destroyed shortly after the funeral, most probably with intent. The Sacred House was then erected in possible connection with an ancestral cult, with sacrifices being performed over the tumulus throughout the 7th c. BCE. The examples of Lefkandi and Eleusis thus attest to the deliberate destruction of elite dwellings, reduced to the state of ruins. The ruins were no longer visible, but were concealed by a tumulus to mark the location visually and symbolise the new funerary function of the area. This incorporation of the past into a conspicuous funerary structure may be interpreted as a way to legitimise the new authority in times of sociopolitical changes.

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Conclusion: rulers’ dwellings as lieux de mémoire? This chapter aimed to shed light on an occasional practice, namely the reuse of abandoned dwellings for funerary purposes, a sporadic custom found throughout the Aegean basin since the Bronze Age. The inclusion of ruins among settlement patterns was invested with diverse meanings depending on socioeconomic and political factors. Rather than allowing the ruins to fall into decay, their incorporation into new settlement patterns aimed to reinforce links with the past during transitional or unstable periods subject to sociopolitical disruption. This phenomenon was thus observed during the transitional phase preceding the rise of the Mycenaean civilisation (Maran 1995; Milka 2010; Philippa-Touchais 2011, on recurrent cyclical periods marked by the collapse of a complex social system and return to simpler forms). Given the diverse reuse of ordinary houses, artisanal and domestic quarters, and elite complexes as burial sites in the Late Bronze and Iron Age transition, I was curious to investigate the extent to which the original function of these structures influenced new settlement strategies on a local scale. Focusing on Bronze Age places of power, it appears that their transformation into burial places could not be adequately understood without first examining the strategies used by communities to locate settlements throughout their territories. The ruined Minoan and Mycenaean monumental places, though violently destroyed, were reoccupied immediately after their collapse (Tiryns, Mycenae) or after a chronological lapse (Malia, Gournia). In both scenarios, the ruins were incorporated into both settlement and burial areas, giving an overall impression of continuity despite the disputed arrival of newcomers. This general reuse of ruins mirrors different intentions and social concerns, and may point to a desire to legitimise new territorial rights either by locals or newcomers who sought to visibly mark the extent of their new landownerships in a context of new opportunities. This real or imagined continuity of occupation, being visible through the reuse of ruins, does not always seem to have been at the initiative of rulers. Monumental Bronze Age remains, including palatial complexes and citadels, did however have a special importance in the Early Iron Age Greece and were especially integrated in the Cretan or Argolid cultic landscape. In Tiryns, burial plots associated with Bronze Age remains as early as the Submycenaean period may be considered to be just one of multiple references to the Bronze Age past initiated as early as the 12th c. BCE, as a reflection of the ‘weakness of rulership’ (Maran 2001: 121) and a search for social legitimacy. The manipulation of monumental architectural remains by new rulers searching to legitimise their power is clearer at Lefkandi and Eleusis, where the deliberate conversion of conspicuous Iron Age elite buildings into monumental funerary mounds after their ‘ritual killing’ testifies to their continuous use as status symbols in the local landscape. With the habitual usage of the building being thus forbidden, the new funerary mound invested a new symbolic dimension and became a lieu de

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mémoire to strengthen the identity of the local elite. According to the French historian P. Nora, who pioneered the concept of lieux de mémoire (Nora 1984; 1986; 1992), the sudden valorisation of the past, whether distant or near, is generally connected with a fear of uprooting and uncertainty about the future. Thus, space and architecture, when reinvested with collective values, do not fall into oblivion, but are rather endowed with new meanings to reflect the new sociopolitical context. Acknowledgements: This chapter was born out of an observation made in the framework of my Ph.D. thesis on mortuary practices in eastern Crete dating from the Late Bronze Age to Classical Times. This thesis was defended on 29 November 2014 under the supervision of Anne Jacquemin (Université de Strasbourg, France) and Nicola Cucuzza (Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy). I am very grateful to Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and Michael Boyd for giving me the opportunity to write this chapter. I would also like to thank my Ph.D. supervisors, Anne Jacquemin and Nicola Cucuzza, and co-supervisor, Daniela Lefèvre-Novaro, for their pertinent suggestions. Many thanks are due to Laetitia Phialon and Céline Dubois for their useful comments and to Victoria Grace for helping to correct the English text. This research was supported by the Franco-Italian University and the European Doctoral College of Strasbourg.

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From Deathscapes to Beliefscapes

Oliver Dickinson

Continuities and Discontinuities in Helladic Burial Customs During the Bronze Age Introduction Although the development of burial customs through the Bronze Age in the Helladic region (meaning the southern Greek mainland and nearby islands like Euboea, Aegina, Ithaka and Lefkas) has been covered in considerable detail quite recently (Cavanagh & Mee 1998), I have been led to consider it again by concern with a particular problem: how radical in fact was the break between Early Helladic and Middle Helladic burial customs? Cavanagh and Mee acknowledged Forsén’s criticisms of Caskey’s arguments concerning the novelty in Early Helladic III of customs such as intramural burial (1992: 237–41), but still thought the case for a major discontinuity strong (1998: 23). The issue is to some extent bound up with the long-established but now increasingly doubted theory of a ‘coming of the Greeks’, which has often been presented as if it suppressed all previous cultural traditions. But the picture of a complete break in major areas of material culture between Early Helladic II and III that was for a while accepted to mark the ‘coming of the Greeks’ has been effectively discredited. New finds have demonstrated that there was no clean break, but rather a very complex period of transition, and that other explanations must and can be found for observed changes (Rutter 2001: 113–6, 145; Forsén 2010: 54; Voutsaki 2010: 101). There is no inherent reason why, even if new population elements did appear, there should not have been some continuity in burial customs, since the survival of ‘nonGreek’ placenames surely guarantees the survival of at least part of the population that used them and the likely blending of their customs with those of any newcomers. Further, recent considerable increases in the relevant evidence, which have gone a long way to filling the Early Helladic I gap noted by Cavanagh and Mee (1998: 15), along with very useful recent discussions by Weiberg (2007; 2010; 2013) encourage reassessment of the topic without any preconceptions.

The transition from Neolithic to Early Helladic The new finds have in fact changed the whole balance of our picture of Early Helladic I burial customs, by taking many of its salient features back to Early Helladic I, if not earlier. It has become clear that the large cemetery at Tsepi near Marathon, much of whose material seems to be contemporary with Early Helladic I, must have begun in the last stages of the Neolithic period (Pantelidou-Gofa 2005: 325–6; Pitt 2008: 9; 2010: 19). The recently excavated tomb 43 in fact held not merely examples of very

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Late Neolithic (Final Neolithic) pottery, like some other tombs, but clear evidence of a Neolithic burial phase, containing the remains of at least three bodies, following which the tomb was remodelled, to be given much further Early Helladic use (Pitt 2010: 19). Two new cemeteries found in the western Peloponnese, at Kalamaki in Achaea and Old Elis (Kalyvia), both dated to Early Helladic I, are also considered to have Neolithic links in some of the pottery (Vasilogamvrou 1998: 377–8; Rambach 2007a: 67–8). At both these new sites the dominant grave type is the rock-cut chamber tomb, which makes an interesting link with the well-known grave in the Athenian Agora, now agreed to be Final Neolithic (Immerwahr 1982). Some of the Old Elis tombs are simple pits, apparently reserved for single children’s burials associated with chamber tombs (Rambach 2007a: 64), while at Tsepi the earliest tombs, including tomb 43, seem to have been stone cists, that were later converted into the elaborate built graves typical of the Early Helladic phase. Both pits and cists have Neolithic parallels, especially a group of variously shaped pits lined with upright slabs at Tharrounia in Euboea, dated to local Late Neolithic II. This group shows many similarities with the Final Neolithic cemetery of Kephala on Kea, and both display features that will become familiar in Early Helladic, the contracted burial position, the reuse of some graves for several burials, the burial of infants in pots, the provision of ‘grave goods’, and even finds that may represent secondary rituals at the graveside (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 7–8). The evidence for Early Helladic I burial customs is increased further by three single adult burials in pits recently found at the Apollo Maleatas site at Epidauros (Theodorou-Mavrommatidi 2010) and a small group of chamber tombs found under the Ampheion tumulus at Thebes, dated late in the phase (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2011: 405–7). It has also been argued that the cemeteries of Ayios Kosmas and Manika began in Early Helladic I, maybe early in the phase (Weiberg 2007: 190). This may well be true, although the dating of Cycladic prototypes of mainland pottery forms can only be considered a guide to the dating of the latter, not an infallible proof. In any case, as Weiberg has pointed out (2007: 190–1), some of the material from both these sites, as from Tsepi, is clearly assignable to Early Helladic II, and there is no reason to doubt that these cemeteries were important in that period. The most important result of these new discoveries is surely the evidence for the transmission of grave types and patterns of behaviour over the artificial division between Neolithic and Bronze Age, without any necessity to suggest Cycladic influence and even colonisation, which has often been put forward to explain Cycladiclooking features in the graves and their contents, especially in Attica. If anything, given Kephala’s strong links with Attica and Euboea, the influence could have travelled the other way in the first instance. The Cyclades did develop their own distinctive burial traditions, but it must be emphasised that in the Grotta-Pelos phase (Early Cycladic I) chamber tombs are unknown and the use of tombs for several burials is very uncharacteristic (Barber 1987: 76, 80; Broodbank 2000: 152). Cycladic

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influences are better explained in the context of the systems of lively exchange developing within the Aegean.

Early Helladic I-II burial customs The attribution of large quantities of burial evidence to Early Helladic I has considerably diminished what can be described as specifically Early Helladic II, and the common assumption that graves or finds generally attributable to Early Helladic are of the latter period is no longer safe. This applies to many of the chamber tombs and cists found or suspected at various sites in Attica and Boeotia (Weiberg 2007: 228–31, with Boeotian references; cf. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 16–7), and a cemetery of tombs with circular chambers, long eroded, at Pavlopetri near Elaphonisi in Laconia (Harding et al. 1969: 130).1 The most substantial finds that are clearly Early Helladic II are the well-known pit graves from Zygouries; other pit graves that held multiple burials have also been found at Avlonari in Euboea and by the Vouliagmeni lake near Perachora, where a natural cave was also used (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 16; on the Perachora graves, see Weiberg 2007: 257–5, 324–45). A further recent find of considerable importance is a stone-built grave at Delpriza near Koiladha in the southern Argolid, that, to judge from the 30 skulls and four layers of bones that it contained, may have served as an ossuary for burial remains over a considerable period (Kossyva 2010: 355–64). There is also evidence for likely Early Helladic II pit and cist graves containing single burials from various sites, within or very close to a settlement (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 22); particularly notable is a group that may form a small cemetery in Area A of the settlement at Ayios Stephanos in Laconia (Taylour 1972: 208–22). The cemetery of R graves on Lefkas also seems to have been founded in Early Helladic II, but this has so many individual features that I think it should be considered a specifically local phenomenon, with little general relevance; however, the use of large storage jars (pithoi) to hold burials, found in several R graves, is paralleled at Strephi in Elis and Pelikata on Ithaka (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 16), and may be a specifically western feature. The Ampheion tumulus at Thebes, built of mudbrick, also deserves mention. Its construction date was clearly Early Helladic II, making it quite possibly the earliest of all tumuli, and it contained at its core a massive stone cist, but it has been argued that this was late Middle Helladic, added to the original structure (Dakouri-Hild 2010: 694, 696). There was evidence of robbery, but remains of gold jewellery were found in the fill, including elaborate gold beads that look more likely to be Early Bronze Age than

1 A further single grave, of similar type to those at Kalamaki but completely empty, was discovered at Kambos near Neapolis in Laconia, where a local toponym suggests that others existed once (I am grateful to Adamantia Vasilogamvrou for this information).

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anything later (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2011: 405, 407). This is a reminder, along with the Louvre gold sauceboat, of the likely existence of truly rich Early Helladic graves (cf. Rutter 2001: 117), probably constructed for exceptional individuals. But overall, while variations in the contents of graves in Early Helladic cemeteries suggest societies in which significant differences of wealth and status existed, the burial record does not provide very convincing evidence for any established hierarchy, although there may have been a distinction between those who were buried in cemeteries and those who were not. Since there is little indication of any major changes in practice in the later period, it makes sense to discuss Early Helladic I and II material together. One salient feature is the striking degree of variability from site to site. This suggests a development of and loyalty to local traditions reminiscent of much later times in Greece. Some features may be considered broadly typical of Early Helladic in general, such as the custom, nearly universal, of laying out the dead in the contracted position (at Old Elis some early burials were extended, Rambach 2007a: 66); this is shared with the Cyclades and is probably a common inheritance from Neolithic times. Perhaps more significant is the strongly marked tendency to use graves for more than one burial, sometimes only two or three (as in many Manika graves and some in Boeotia, Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 19), but often for a whole series, up to 20 and more. Use for a series of burials can be identified in every type of tomb, although every type can also be used for single burials only, as shown especially in the cemeteries of Manika and Kalamaki. There are also some multiple burials in non-standard contexts that may represent a single occasion and probably have a special explanation, especially in the Vouliagmeni cave, the Cheliotomylos well near Corinth (Weiberg 2007: 216–21), and under the mudbrick tumulus covering a large building at Thebes (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2011: 402–4, cf. Weiberg 2007: 215–6). In many cases graves held the burials of children as well as adults, though never many; children might also be buried separately within a cemetery, sometimes in small versions of the main grave-type, sometimes in cists, pits or jars (Weiberg 2007: 209– 12). However, children, especially infants, might also be buried intramurally, close to or under a house in a settlement, and there is some evidence for adult intramural burials also (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 15; Weiberg 2007: 208–9 for children, 212–5 for adults). Again, this practice has Neolithic parallels (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 7). Some of these burials seem to be rather informal, with little attempt to create a grave structure, or may have a special explanation, like a woman buried within a wall at Tiryns. But, although the graves are mostly rudimentary in form, the contracted position of the bodies and the occasional provision of ‘grave goods’ fit standard burial practice in cemeteries. Taken together with the examples of isolated graves that were used for multiple burials and do not seem to be part of cemeteries, as most clearly at Delpriza where there is no trace of any contemporary grave, this suggests that, although formal cemeteries were clearly established by many settlements, there was no social obligation on families to bury their dead in one. The community seems to have accepted a

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degree of choice in this socially significant area, particularly in the burial of children. This may in fact have been more widely exercised than the available evidence suggests, for the total numbers of burials reported from cemeteries, even if likely to be underestimated,2 can only represent a fraction of the likely population of the settlements at any one time (cf. Weiberg 2007: 237–42). The users of cemeteries were therefore to some extent a self-selecting group, probably sizeable and socially dominant, possibly even exclusive at some sites, but not equivalent to the whole community. It must also be considered significant that some cemeteries did not outlast Early Helladic I; this suggests that the foundation of a cemetery represents adherence to some kind of belief system that was abandoned generations later. It seems very likely that the relative elaboration of cemetery graves and the customs practised in using them reflects the users’ intention to present themselves as special in some way, a claim they may have later lost faith in or been somehow led or forced to abandon. The question of how the rest of the population was buried, especially the adults, is often lost sight of in the tendency to concentrate on cemeteries, and it becomes a particular problem in regions like the northeast Peloponnese. Here the evidence from Zygouries, Perachora: Vouliagmeni and Delpriza shows that at least some groups or communities in the region followed the multiple burial tradition, and there are some single burials, but we have no indication of how most of the population was buried in what was clearly a well-populated region throughout Early Helladic II. This might seem to require a special explanation, e.g. that they did not adhere to the hypothetical belief system suggested, but I am not sure that this is necessary. Considering how much our knowledge depends on chance discoveries and how variable the burial record is for many periods of the past, we are very lucky to have as much information as we do. The only deduction that seems safe to make is that a great many of the adult population were always buried in a way that did not leave recognizable traces, probably in pits of some form, rarely if ever provided with ‘grave goods’, and that these burials were gathered in small groups or placed singly rather than collected in cemeteries; one must also consider the possibility of very informal, ‘casual’ burials (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 6; cf. Lewartowski 2000: 53; Morris 1987: 104–9, dealing with Mycenaean and post-Mycenaean periods). The evidence of Ayios Stephanos might suggest that adult intramural burials were more common than we think at some sites, but equally it might reflect a purely local development. Graves in the identified cemeteries seem to have been expected to conform to local criteria regarding shape, construction and features, but there is still a discernible element of choice that might reflect family or group traditions. Chambers could be of different shapes, and cists and built graves could be remodelled at will. There does

2 Figures based simply on the number of skulls identifiable run a risk of being too low, as osteological studies of material from Mycenaean tombs have shown (e.g. Immerwahr 1972: 183, fn. 3). Evidence for children’s burials is particularly likely to be missed.

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not seem to have been a required orientation in most cemeteries, although sets of graves grouped together might share one, as at Manika (cf. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: fig. 3.13); in this respect the consistent orientation of graves at Tsepi to the southeast or east is quite exceptional (cf. Pitt 2008: 10, fig. 10). The considerable variations in the evidence for the use and reuse of graves imply that it was up to the group using a particular grave to decide for which burials and how often they would use it, and whether, once it was considered full (or the roof had collapsed), they would establish a new grave next to the older one, using the latter as a kind of ossuary (cf. Weiberg 2007: 312–4), establish a new grave elsewhere, or cease to use the cemetery altogether. The careful marking of stone perimeters around graves at Tsepi and Ayios Kosmas shows the importance of particular graves to the groups using them in those cemeteries. There is no such evidence for marking the grave in chamber tomb cemeteries, but there must have been some surface indications of the entrances, for the entrance passages or shafts never cut into one another or overlap, although chambers sometimes intersect. It is characteristic of cemetery graves that, although often carefully built or cut, they are rarely very large, even if used for a large number of burials. At Manika the length or diameter of the chambers can often exceed 2 m, but elsewhere it is generally less, sometimes below 1.5 m, while the central pits of the Tsepi tombs averaged only 1 m long; similarly, except at Manika, graves were not high enough to allow an adult to stand erect. How these tombs were used for repeated burials has been considered a problem, particularly chamber tombs, in which the linking stomion between dromos and chamber is often so narrow that it is not easy to see how they could be entered at all (cf. Vasilogamvrou 1998: 368; Rambach 2007a: 65; Harding et al. 1969: 130). Nevertheless, since there was no other method of access, the graves’ users must at least have reached into the chamber through the stomion. At Ayios Kosmas, it seems likely that those using the tomb reached down from above, following what was surely the practice with simple cists. Yet at Tsepi the entrances were surely intended for use, since the quite elaborate grave superstructures could hardly have been dismantled on the occasion of each new burial, and the last burial was generally placed immediately inside the entrance, while bones of older burials might be heaped further inside the grave. Heaps, stacks or layers of bones have often been reported from these and other types of multiple-burial graves. The evidence that these represent some form of secondary burial or ritual treatment of remains once they had been reduced to bones —which would make their movement within the grave much easier—is quite compelling. As Weiberg points out in her analysis (2007: 317–36), there are several different ways in which this could have taken place, depending on whether the grave where the remains were found was intended to be their ultimate resting place, or after a while the bones (or at least skulls and long bones) were moved to a different structure or to a pit near the grave (examples of such pits were identified at Manika, Weiberg 2007: 326–7, fig. 72). Weiberg’s survey of the evidence suggests that all these variations can

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be found in different cemeteries, sometimes even within the same cemetery, so that in this as in other features of burial customs there was apparently an element of choice. Not only any primary burial, but all such secondary handling of remains was surely accompanied by rituals, on historical analogies (Garland 1985), which suggest that commemorative ceremonies would have been held at the grave later. Such analogies also make it likely that there were rituals to commemorate the dead of the cemetery-using group generally. Tantalising glimpses of such practices have been identified at Ayios Kosmas, where there are some very suggestive finds in Area A at the eastern edge of the North Cemetery, as well as evidence for activities connected with individual graves (Weiberg 2007: 213, 377–80). At Tsepi, groups of pottery, probably used in previous rituals, were repeatedly deposited in pit 39 and deliberately broken with stones (Weiberg 2007: 360, 362); human remains were also found at one level. Very recently evidence has emerged at Tsepi for the stoning of human bones as well (Pitt 2008: 9; 2010: 19), while at Manika evidence for cut-marks was found on a selection of human bones of all ages, down to infants (Fountoulakis 1987). But these practices have not yet been shown to be characteristic in the relevant cemetery, let alone found elsewhere. The closest to a body of evidence for practices that might have been widespread is provided by Weiberg’s plausible argument that pottery found inside or outside graves, in Tsepi pit 39, and in other contexts like the Cheliotomylos well, had been deliberately left behind after use in eating and drinking ceremonies (2007: 350–69). This plausible hypothesis, not new but supported with systematic analysis of the finds, would account for much of the pottery that has previously been classified as ‘grave goods’, as also for the animal bones sometimes identified. Given the actual rarity of pottery finds in graves in comparison with the number of burials indicated by the bone material, such ceremonies could have varied in their degree of elaboration, according to local tradition or the choices of the group using a particular grave, and there may also have been variant traditions concerning later visits to the grave or cemetery, but establishing this would require much detailed study. Other items, both special pottery forms like the notorious ‘frying pans’, beads and pendants, and a variety of artefacts, might be placed in graves, some perhaps for ritual reasons like the rare figurines, some to adorn the body (this may be the context for the Cycladic-style palettes and bone tubes, which can preserve traces of pigment), and some perhaps relating to the dead person’s life or beliefs in other ways. To be honest, there are so many possibilities that it is probably futile to look for a single general explanation of ‘grave goods’. What was surely fundamental to a ‘proper’ burial was that the body should be disposed of in a way that might reflect the dead person’s wishes but was ultimately the decision of the burying group, and conformed with what was acceptable to the community, whether it was in a cemetery or not. Although there seems to have been plenty of scope for choice in details like the orientation of the grave and the elaboration of the burial ceremony, there will have been basic features that were surely expected in all burials, such as the contracted position of the body, and an irreducible

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minimum of ritual. These basic features would have continued when the cemeteries went out of use and other forms of burial of which we have little evidence became universal.

Developments in late Early Helladic; the appearance of tumulus burials The disappearance of the cemeteries, it is now clear, was as gradual a process as their appearance. Those that survived into Early Helladic II mostly do not seem to have lasted beyond Early Helladic IIA, but Manika certainly lasted until Early Helladic IIB, during which Anatolian types of pottery appeared, if not for a short while beyond,3 and some other tombs in which multiple burial was practised have also been dated in Early Helladic IIB (cf. Weiberg 2007: 190–5; Delpriza also could date in this stage). This chronological spread emphasises how much abandonment, like foundation, of cemeteries must have depended on the decisions of individual communities, so need have nothing to do with the Early Helladic II ‘collapse’. As well as representing a possible loss of faith in the beliefs involved in use of a cemetery, it could also simply reflect practical difficulties in obtaining or supporting the skilled labour that was surely needed to create and maintain the developed forms of tomb typical of cemeteries. For some time after Early Helladic II evidence for any kind of burial is very difficult to find, but given the already discussed difficulty of finding the burials of much of the population in Early Helladic II, this need not be considered significant. Until recently only some intramural burials of infants at Lerna, mostly pits but including a cist and a jar burial, and at Kolonna on Aegina, also pits, could be cited with confidence for Early Helladic III (Weiberg 2007: 209). It seems likely that the ‘Prehistoric Cemetery’ at Mycenae began to be used in this period, probably, again, for children’s pit graves (Shelton 2010: 61–2). But the most substantial and significant find is the burial tumulus recently reported from Atalanti in Phthiotis (Papakonstantinou 2011: 395), that contained at least two pithos burials, one of which was certainly accompanied by Early Helladic III pottery. Unfortunately, the context of this tumulus remains unknown, but it does provide incontrovertible evidence that the burial tumulus type, well-known in Middle Helladic, goes back to Early Helladic III. There are several other supposed pre-Middle Helladic examples (Müller-Celka 2011: 421–2), but with the exception of the Lefkas R graves and the Theban examples they have to be considered possibilities only, often 3 Most of what is called Early Helladic III in older discussions would now be classified as Early Helladic IIB, but the Euboean sequence has not been fully worked out yet. The settlement material from Lefkandi shows that the Anatolianising Lefkandi I types continued to appear in Lefkandi II, which certainly overlaps with Early Helladic III (Popham & Sackett 1968: 8–9).

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unsubstantiated in detail. Thus, at Olympia there is certainly Early Helladic III pottery (Forsén 1992: 88–9), but ‘small pieces of burnt bone’ (Koumouzelis 1980: 139), not even certified as human, are hardly enough to prove a burial, and the theory that the Aphidna tumulus was founded in Early Helladic II but used in later periods also (Forsén 2010a) needs far more supporting evidence. A notable feature of all these reports is the presence of pithoi, that were clearly used for burials in some cases, as they were at Atalanti, in the early Middle Helladic tumuli in western Messenia at Voidhokoilia and Papoulia (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 30, figs. 4.18–19) and others later (Korres 2011, with summary of current knowledge on Messenian tumuli), also at an early date at Argos, both inside and, probably, outside a tumulus (Sarri & Voutsaki 2011, especially 435), and at Asine, in the East Cemetery associated with a tumulus (Voutsaki et al. 2011). Interestingly, the Argolid examples were mostly used for two burials, as was common in Messenia. As noted above, this form of burial was used in the Lefkas R graves and elsewhere in western Greece in Early Helladic, but it is not possible to show a clear link, and this may represent separate use of a similar idea. Its purpose might have been to indicate the special status of those buried in this way; given the likely difficulty in at least some cases of getting an adult body into a pithos, this might in fact have been a form of secondary burial, and transfer to a tumulus would serve to draw more attention to the special nature of the dead. But by no means all tumuli, early or late, contained pithos burials; for example, those of Kastroulia in eastern Messenia (Rambach 2007b; 2010: 108–13; 2011) and Drachmani in Phocis (Papakonstantinou 2011: 395–6), whose pottery indicates their early date, certainly did not. This serves to emphasise how much tumuli can vary in a whole range of features (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 29–30; cf. Korres 2011: 586–7), and even including more recent remains they are relatively rare and unevenly distributed, spatially and chronologically. Müller-Celka is surely right to argue (2011: 425) that they do not ‘originate from a single source or follow a linear development’, and that they had a commemorative function that could have been adapted from the so-called ‘ritual tumuli’ at Lerna, Olympia and Thebes (whose grouping under this classification is questioned in Weiberg 2007: 153–85). The idea of using a tumulus as a commemorative monument would then be what spread, rather than a defined type with specific features. That they were intended to hold the remains of special people is indicated by the effort that would be needed to construct them; in some cases they were extended and remodelled for later burials. But it seems unwise to identify them collectively as the burial places of ‘a dispersed class of local clan-heads or Big-Men’ (Bintliff 2012: 167) or a more vaguely defined elite; apart from anything else, impressive burials, provided with an unusual quantity or quality of ‘grave goods’, have often been found outside and unassociated with tumuli, e.g. at Thebes (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 382, 384–5). What made those buried in tumuli special, and whether it was the same feature in every case, are questions open to considerable debate (cf. Dickinson 2010: 24).

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Middle Helladic burial customs Apart from the use of pithoi to hold their remains, few of the burials in tumuli differ significantly from the Middle Helladic norm. Middle Helladic graves are much better represented throughout the Helladic area than Early Helladic, with a particularly good sample from the Argolid, but also a large number from Thebes (summarised usefully in Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010), and substantial totals from other sites in the Peloponnese, central Greece and eastern Thessaly (cf. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 36–9). It is commonplace to find at least one or two in a settlement excavation, for the majority are intramural. The characteristic features of the ‘standard Middle Helladic grave’ can be swiftly summarised, for they are notably homogeneous throughout the Helladic area (cf. Voutsaki 2010: 103). Bodies were normally buried singly in a contracted position, in a pit or cist, or sometimes, if children, in a jar or other ceramic vessel, very frequently without any obvious ‘grave goods’; where these were found, most often they consisted of a single vessel or other item. No general preference for grave or body orientation can be observed; there may have been a tradition of laying women on their left side and men on their right, but even where this has been noticed as common, at Lerna and Asine, it was not universally followed. Some graves were reused for one or several further burials, but like other departures from the norm, such as the provision of several ‘grave goods’, this was rare. There is no convincing evidence for any kind of general ritual like a drinking ceremony at the burial. Indications of ritual behaviour such as the provision of food, sacrifice of animals, burning of offerings, and deposition of post-burial pottery offerings outside the grave have sometimes been identified (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 32–3). The evidence is definitely sporadic and sometimes ambiguous; thus, the provision of stone markers for some graves might indicate an intention to return for postfunerary rites, but it might equally signal in some way the ‘special’ nature of the burial or burials within the grave; pithoi placed on top of tumuli might act simply as markers or be intended for libations. Quite often such relatively unusual practices seem to be associated with graves that are otherwise ‘special’ in being relatively rich in goods, or set apart in tumuli or extramural cemeteries; also, such practices may have become more common in the latest phases of Middle Helladic, when burial customs were clearly being used to single out particular individuals and groups. There is very little to distinguish average Middle Helladic burials from the pit and cist burials already noted in the Helladic region, going back to Final Neolithic, although Middle Helladic cists are an improvement on their predecessors, often regularly shaped and carefully built rectangular arrangements of upright slabs or stone walls. There are indications, especially at Thebes, that cists were a slightly superior form of grave; it has been pointed out that they required considerably more input, including skilled labour, than other types of grave (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 387). A more important distinction is that the great majority of Middle Helladic graves discovered are intramural; but this general classification obscures an impor-

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tant point. To judge from the close analysis of Lerna evidence (Voutsaki et al. 2013: 135), supported from Argos and Asine (Milka 2010), only rarely were graves placed in areas where houses were in use, let alone under house floors, a position favoured for children (cf. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24), perhaps especially newborn infants. Much more often, burials of both adults and children were dug into or near abandoned or ruined houses in disused parts of settlements. As a result, burial grounds might develop, as at Argos in the region below the Aspis (Sarri & Voutsaki 2011), and at Thebes at various points on the Kadmeia (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 380, 391). Other such burial grounds might be established close to a settlement but not within the built-up area, as is suggested for the graves at Kouphovouno in Laconia (Lagia & Cavanagh 2010: 335). But such areas did not necessarily continue as burial grounds, once founded; they could be built over again in a later phase, as at Lerna and Argos (Milka 2010: 351–2), and Thebes (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 389). The evidence from Lerna suggests that the custom of burying adults within the settlement area was not common in very early Middle Helladic, but grew in popularity during the period. Thus, the situation originally may have been very similar to that in Early Helladic II, when intramural adult burials were very rare, and this strengthens the impression of continuity in customs between Early Helladic and Middle Helladic, which is obscured because of the rarity of Early Helladic III adult burials. The significant change in Middle Helladic would then have been a movement towards burying not just children but also adults within or immediately adjacent to the settlement area. This could well have a social explanation, e.g. that the graves were those of particular families or kin groups that were asserting their rights to the plots of land once occupied by their houses, where they might build again in the course of time. This is argued for some plausibility for Area BE in the centre of Lerna, where the general orientation of the houses built before and after periods of use as a burial ground is remarkably similar; but the evidence from Asine is less persuasive, so it might be unwise to draw general deductions from Lerna. At Lerna seven separate groups of burials could be identified, and their features have been studied in detail (Voutsaki et al. 2013: 137–40). Even at an early stage such groups could display slightly different preferences in their burial customs, e.g. in the reuse of graves (Voutsaki et al. 2013: 139), giving an impression that, as in Early Helladic, there were no rigid rules, but a degree of choice could be exercised. Evidence from Asine makes this even more clear, for, in the same phase (‘Middle Helladic II’) as burials began to be made in Area BE at Lerna, one Asine group founded the extramural East Cemetery, which included a small tumulus and pithos burials (Voutsaki et al. 2011). There was nothing very remarkable about the early burials, except that some at least had a diet rich in animal protein (Ingvarsson et al. 2013: 154, 158), but later ones included the most well-provided so far found at Asine. At Thebes ‘grave goods’ were most frequently found in cists, and they were more often used for several burials (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 381, 384); they appear all over the site.

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Thus, it seems that, within communities that showed few marked differences in nutrition or wealth, some families or kin groups were trying to distinguish themselves from the rest at an early stage. More unusual features such as reuse of graves, unusual quantity or quality of grave goods, evidence of secondary burial and graveside rituals, form clusters which help to define the burial grounds of such groups, and become more and more noticeable in later Middle Helladic times. Interestingly, not all burials in these groups were singled out for exceptional treatment, a feature that can be paralleled in some tumuli. A tendency to focus in this way on individuals is one of the most noticeable features of the Mycenaean development, showing up particularly clearly in their burials.

The transition from Middle Helladic to Late Helladic and the survival of older practices Voutsaki (2010: 104) sums up the developments in burial customs in the late phase of Middle Helladic that blends imperceptibly into the earliest Mycenaean phase more extramural cemeteries, an elaboration of graves and burial ritual, the introduction of new types such as chamber and tholos tombs, probably reflecting a mixture of Aegean influences and local traditions, and the provision of increasingly impressive ‘grave goods’. All these features are shown particularly well in the two grave circles at Mycenae, but they have many parallels elsewhere, and they are the clearest sign of the development of much more hierarchical types of society. Yet side by side with these developments, many older features survived. In the first phases of the Mycenaean period many adults continued to be buried in pits and cists, sometimes set in tumuli, and at Ayios Stephanos such burials continued to be intramural in the old way, though after Late Helladic IIIA1 at latest this practice was maintained only for children (Taylour 1972: 236–9; Taylour & Janko 2008: 143–4). But there are traces of single burials even in Late Helladic III; in some chamber tomb cemeteries pit graves might be found associated with particular tombs (Lewartowski 2000: 55), suggesting that this was still an acceptable way to bury the dead. By Late Helladic III the chamber tomb was the dominant type, although in some regions, especially Messenia, local traditions using various forms of stone-built tomb might continue. What was common to them all was the practice of multiple burial, which as noted above had never entirely disappeared. The practice seems to correlate with other signs of a family or group wishing to distinguish themselves, and Lewartowski’s hypothesis that chamber tombs were used particularly by those who had previously used cists (2000: 13–4) is rather tempting. But the numbers of chamber tombs in some cemeteries and the evidence for multiple cemeteries at major sites suggest that what may originally have been an ‘elite’ practice was adopted by a large section of the population as prosperity became widespread. It seems possible

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that those who did not practise this or other forms of multiple burial used unobtrusive pits, not gathered in cemeteries (see Lewartowski 2000 for much useful discussion). Certainly, when conditions became less stable and prosperity declined markedly, multiple-burial tombs disappeared from most regions and cists and pits returned to prominence. But intramural graves never became popular again; the notion that graves should be at a distance from the settlement had become firmly established. It is easy to see parallels between the development of elaborate burial traditions, in Early Helladic and Late Helladic times, and also to trace the persistence of a tradition of single burial. But the changes should not be ignored. In Middle Helladic the degree of local variability in tomb type seen in Early Helladic effectively disappeared. Although to some extent it reappeared in Mycenaean times, there was a single dominant tradition (the chamber tomb) and practices in all types of tomb, including the surviving forms of single burials, seem very similar. There is no case for arguing that burial customs reflect some kind of ‘ethnic’ difference between upper and lower strata of the population. Rather, the changes seem to reflect constant attempts, often employing very similar methods, by more prominent families and groups to distinguish themselves from the rest, which were never entirely abandoned even when the basis of the prosperity on which such attempts must rest collapsed.

Conclusion Despite the greatly increased amount of evidence, particularly for the Early Helladic period, there is still much that we do not understand about mainland burial customs in the Bronze Age, although it is possible to identify certain features and trends which are very long-lived, if not universal. Inhumation was the almost universal form of burial, and the practice of laying out the dead in the contracted position was prevalent with rare exceptions until Late Helladic, and can be found even after the end of the Bronze Age. Evidence for rituals on the occasion of burial, including the provision of ‘grave goods’, and for ‘secondary burial’ or other forms of ritual commemoration of the dead later, is identifiable but by no means universal. In fact, one cannot fail to be struck by the evidence for variety of practice, especially in Early Helladic when a body of custom must have become widely established. Although there clearly were social norms, they seem to have allowed wide scope for interpretation by burying groups; neither were cemeteries established by all communities, nor was a cemetery the only acceptable burial place where they were. A community might have more than one cemetery, as at Ayios Kosmas, or contain separated groups of graves as at Manika. Graves within cemeteries were normally reused for at least one further burial, but might continue in use for many more burials over shorter or longer periods. Sooner or later cemeteries were abandoned, but there is evidence that this could be gradual, providing a strong indication that the change of custom involved reflected, not the

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arrival of a new population with new customs, but decisions likely to have been taken by the burying group, often referred to as a ‘family’, and to have been caused by a change in beliefs about the proper disposal of the dead. The widespread evidence for variation in behaviour between and within communities and regions, and over time, suggests that the burying groups were able to exercise a degree of choice. Such variation continues to be observable in more subtle forms within the impression of uniformity in Middle Helladic, and becomes more pronounced again with the return of cemeteries in the late stages of Middle Helladic and in Late Helladic, which obviously reflects the spread of beliefs through and between communities. How and why beliefs changed and spread will probably always be beyond our ability to detect; but evidently they did, and this can only reflect a relatively relaxed attitude within communities and regions to quite wide variations in behaviour by burying groups. One basic motivation seems to be the wish to distinguish a group, large or small, from the rest, but there is little evidence that any form of burial was the exclusive preserve of a particular social group. However, in Late Helladic times, when chamber tomb cemeteries became very widespread, certain communities seem to have maintained distinctive burial traditions, surely as a way of asserting their special identities. It only remains to remark that varieties in the place and manner of burial, the grouping or separation of the dead in particular graves, the provision of ‘grave goods’, and the carrying out of ceremonies on the occasion of burial and in commemorative rituals later, are all constant features observable in the burial practices of later Greece, into the Classical period and beyond. Acknowledgements: I wish to thank Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and Michael Boyd for inviting me to participate in the Staging Death project and accepting my suggestion of a study of Helladic burial customs. I also owe thanks to Erika Weiberg for pdfs of her 2007 book and 2010 and 2013 papers; to Adamantia Vasilogamvrou for a pdf of her 1998 paper on Kalamaki and a copy of Rambach 2007a; to Sofia Voutsaki for sending me proof copies of sections from Diet, Economy and Society in the Ancient Greek World and permitting me to cite them; and to Sylvie Müller-Celka for useful discussions. For citations I have relied heavily on the valuable summaries in Cavanagh & Mee 1998, and Weiberg 2007 of material from scattered sources, many of which are not easy to find.

References Aravantinos, A. & K. Psaraki, 2010. The Middle Helladic Thebes cemeteries. General review and remarks in the light of new investigations and finds. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 377–95. Aravantinos, A. & K. Psaraki, 2011. Mounds over dwellings: the transformation of domestic places into community monuments in EH II Thebes, Greece. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the

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Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. and S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 401–13. Barber, R. L. N., 1987. The Cyclades in the Bronze Age. London: Duckworth. Bintliff, J., 2012. The Complete Archaeology of Greece. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Broodbank, C., 2000. An Island Archaeology of the Cyclades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cavanagh, W. & C. Mee, 1998. A Private Place: Death in Prehistoric Greece, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology CXXV. Jönsered: Paul Åströms Förlag. Dakouri-Hild, A., 2010. Thebes. In The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, ed. Cline, E. H. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 690–711. Dickinson, O.T.P.K., 1977. The Origins of Mycenaean Civilisation, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology XLIX. Göteborg: Paul Åströms Förlag. Dickinson, O., 1994. The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dickinson, O., 2010. The “Third World” of the Aegean? Middle Helladic Greece revisited. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d‘Athènes, 15–27. Forsén, J., 1992. The Twilight of the Early Helladics: a Study of the Disturbances in East-Central and Southern Greece towards the End of the Early Bronze Age, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology and Literature Pocket-book 116. Jönsered: Paul Åströms Förlag. Forsén, J., 2010a. Aphidna in Attica revisited. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki, & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 223–34. Forsén, J., 2010b. Mainland Greece. In The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, ed. E. H. Cline. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 53–65. Fountoulakis, M., 1987. Some unusual burial practices in the Early Helladic necropolis of Manika. In Thanatos: Les coutumes funéraires en Egée à l’Age du Bronze, ed. R. Laffineur, Aegaeum 1. Liège: Université de l’Etat à Liège, 29–33. Garland, R., 1985. The Greek Way of Death. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Harding, A., G. Cadogan & R. Howell, 1969. Pavlopetri: an underwater Bronze Age town in Laconia. Annual of the British School at Athens 64, 113–42. Immerwahr, S. A., 1982. The earliest Athenian grave. In Studies in Athenian Architecture, Sculpture and Topography Presented to Homer A. Thompson, Hesperia Supplement XX. Princeton, N.J.: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 54–62. Ingvarsson-Sundström, A., S. Voutsaki & E. Milka, 2013. Diet, health and social differentiation in Middle Helladic Asine: abioarchaeological view. In Diet, Economy and Society in the Ancient Greek World: Towards a Better Integration of Archaeology and Science, eds. Voutsaki, S. & S.-M. Valamoti. Leuven: Peeters, 149–61. Korres, G. S., 2011. Middle Helladic tumuli in Messenia: ethnological conclusions. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 585–96. Kossyva, A., 2010. The invisible dead of Delpriza, Kranidi. In Honouring the Dead in the Peloponnese: Proceedings of the Conference Held in Sparta 23–35 April 2009, eds. Cavanagh, H., W. Cavanagh & J. Roy, Nottingham: Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies Online Publication 2. Chapter 18. (URL http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/csps/open-source/honouring-the-dead.aspx) Koumouzelis, M., 1980. The Early and Middle Helladic Periods in Elis, Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International. Lagia, A. & W. Cavanagh, 2010. Burials from Kouphovouno, Sparta, Lakonia. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki &

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J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. École française d’Athènes: Athens, 333–46. Lewartowski, K., 2000. Late Helladic Simple Graves: a Study of Mycenaean Burial Customs, British Archaeological Reports International Series 878. Oxford: Archaeopress. Milka, E., 2010. Burials upon the ruins of abandoned houses in the Middle Helladic Argolid. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 347–55. Müller-Celka, S., 2011. Burial mounds and ‘ritual tumuli’ of the Aegean Early Bronze Age. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 415–28. Pantelidou-Gofa, M., 2005. Tσέπι Mαραθῶνος: Tὸ Πρωτοελλαδικὸ Νεκροταφείο, Archaeological Society at Athens Library Series 235, Athens: The Archaeological Society at Athens. Papakonstantinou, M.-Ph., 2011. Bronze Age tumuli and grave circles in central Greece: the current state of research. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 391–400. Pitt, R. K., 2008. Attica. Archaeological Reports (54), 8–10. Pitt, R. K., 2010. Athens and Attica. Archaeological Reports (56), 3–19. Rambach, J., 2007a. Tο ΠΕ I νεκροταφείο της Aρχαίας Ήλιδας. In Πρακτικά του Ζ΄ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Πελοποννησιακών Σπουδών, Tόμος Β΄. Athens: Etaireia Peloponnesiakon Spoudon, 63–92. Rambach, J., 2007b. Investigations of two MH I burial mounds at Messenian Kastroulia (near Ellinika, ancient Thouria). In Middle Helladic Pottery and Synchronisms, eds. Felten, F., W. Gauss & R. Smetana, Denkschriften der Gesamtakademie XLII. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 137–52. Rambach, J., 2010. Πρόσφατες έρευνες σε μεσοελλαδικές θέσεις της δυτικής Πελοποννήσου. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 107–19. Rambach, J., 2011. Die Ausgrabung von zwei mittelhelladisch I-zeitlichen Grabtumuli in der Flur Kastroulia bei Ellinika (Alt-Thouria) in Messenien. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 463–74. Rutter, J. B., 2001. The prepalatial Bronze Age of the southern and central Greek mainland. In Aegean Prehistory: a Review, ed. Cullen, T., American Journal of Archaeology Supplement 1. Boston: Archaeological Institute of America, 95–147. Sarri, K. & S. Voutsaki, 2011. The Argos “tumuli”: a re-examination. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 445–61. Shelton, K., 2010. Living and dying around Middle Helladic Mycenae. In Mesoelladika: the Greek Mainland in the Middle Bronze Age, eds. Philippa-Touchais, A., G. Touchais, S. Voutsaki & J. Wright, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique Supplément 52. Athens: École française d’Athènes, 57–65. Taylour, W. D., 1972. Excavations at Ayios Stephanos. Annual of the British School at Athens 67, 205–70. Taylour, W. D. & Janko, R., 2008. Ayios Stephanos: Excavations at a Bronze Age and Medieval Settlement in Southern Laconia. British School at Athens Supplementary Volume 44. London: the British School at Athens.

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Theodorou-Mavrommatidi, A., 2010. A composite pendant in an EH I burial at the Apollo Maleatas site in Epidauros: an attempt at a biography. In Honouring the Dead in the Peloponnese: Proceedings of the Conference Held in Sparta 23–35 April 2009, eds. Cavanagh, H., W. Cavanagh & J. Roy. Nottingham: Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies Online Publication 2. Chapter 41. (URL http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/csps/open-source/honouring-the-dead.aspx) Vasilogamvrou, A. P., 1998. Πρωτοελλαδικό νεκροταφείο στό Καλαμάκι Ελαιοχωρίου – Λουσικών Αχαΐας. In Πρακτικά του E΄ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου Πελοποννησιακών Σπουδών, Tόμος A΄. Athens: Etaireia Peloponnesiakon Spoudon, 366–99. Voutsaki, S., 2010. Mainland Greece. In The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, ed. E. H. Cline. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 99–112. Voutsaki, S., A. Ingvarsson-Sundström & S. Dietz, 2011. Tumuli and social status: a re-examination of the Asine tumulus. In Ancestral Landscapes: Burial Mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages, eds. Borgna, E. & S. Müller-Celka, Travaux de la Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 58. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée, 445–61. Voutsaki, S., E. Milka, S. Triantaphyllou & C. Zerner, 2013. Middle Helladic Lerna: diet, economy and society. In Diet, Economy and Society in the Ancient Greek World: Towards a Better Integration of Archaeology and Science, eds. Voutsaki, S. & S.-M. Valamoti. Leuven: Peeters, 133–47. Weiberg, E., 2007. Thinking the Bronze Age: Life and Death in Early Helladic Greece, Boreas. Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 29. Uppsala: University of Uppsala. Weiberg, E., 2010. The invisible dead: the case of the Argolid and Corinthia during the Early Bronze Age. In Honouring the Dead in the Peloponnese: Proceedings of the Conference Held in Sparta 23–35 April 2009, eds. Cavanagh, H., W. Cavanagh & J. Roy. Nottingham: Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies Online Publication 2. Chapter 42. (URL http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ csps/open-source/honouring-the-dead.aspx) Weiberg, E., 2013. An Early Helladic burial – connecting the living and the dead. In Perspectives on Ancient Greece: Papers in Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Swedish Institute of Athens, ed. Schallin, A.-L., Skrifta utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen 8o, 22. Stockholm: Swedish Institute at Athens, 29–47.

Nikolas Papadimitriou

Structuring Space, Performing Rituals, Creating Memories: Towards a Cognitive Map of Early Mycenaean Funerary Behaviour “Spatium est ordo coexistendi” G.W. Leibniz 1715, Initia Rerum Mathematicarum Metaphysica

This paper focuses on a much-discussed topic: the change of mortuary practices in mainland Greece at the end of the Middle and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (18th to early 15th c. BCE or the ceramic phases known as Middle Helladic III, Late Helladic I and IIA). This period saw a radical shift from poor inhumations in small individual pit and cist graves (often intramural) to ostentatious burials in elaborate tholoi and chamber tombs placed in extramural cemeteries. So far, scholars have focused primarily on questions of social change, interpreting increasing mortuary variability as evidence of growing inequality and competitions among elite groups (e.g. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 121–36; Voutsaki 1998; Wolpert 2004; Wright 1995; 2008a), and secondarily on issues of agency and ideology (e.g. Wright 1987; 2004; Voutsaki 2010b). By contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to the spatial dimension of the change, i.e. the radical shift in the conceptualisation and use of social space, and its various consequences (Dakouri-Hild 2001; Wright 2006; Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010; Phialon 2011: 87–108). I refer to ‘social space’ because space is neither a neutral notion nor an objective mental category. As first suggested by Leibniz (see opening quote and Khamara 1993), and accepted by modern sciences, space is a way of perceiving and representing the relations among physical objects or ‘things’. The relative ordering of such objects, as experienced through the movements of the body (i.e. the observing subject), determines the internal structure of space and defines its boundaries (the ins and outs; Jammer 1993, chapters 5–6; see also Merleau-Ponty 1962, part III). Thus, space is a system of representation rather than an ontological entity in itself (Khamara 1993: 473–4). Bodily movement, however, is rarely a matter of individual choice in human societies; a number of social norms and cultural constructs (e.g. established modes of behaviour, patterns of habitation, architecture and town planning, rituals, etc.), restrict the freedom of mobility, relate the body to established social practices, and dictate the character of the relations among physical and, for that matter, social entities. Therefore, space is also a system of classification, a kind of cognitive ‘mapping’, which both reflects and (re)produces social order. Thus, space is socially constituted through human action and interaction (Lefebvre 1991; Tilley 1994). Such an approach suggests that perceptions of space among humans have a dynamic and negotiable character (Massey 2005), and implies that any major change

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in our sense (or use) of space should entail changes in our systems of classification. In fact, it is only at times of change that people may be conscious of the very existence of such systems, and try to restructure them. This type of interaction between social structure and space perception is important for achieving a spatial understanding of changes in late Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean times. In this paper, I will attempt to outline the most crucial developments in that period and explore how changes in the form of graves, the location of burial grounds, and their shifting relationship to habitation areas may have both reflected and structured social interaction. I will discuss the possible impact of spatial changes on the classification and representation of social entities, and argue that this was a period of increasing social consciousness, in which groups attempted to better define their collective identities and their relationship with other groups within local communities. To study these issues, it is necessary to focus on sites which have produced sufficient remains of both funerary and domestic nature. For the sake of convenience, at the end of the text I have added an appendix with summaries of developments in four such sites: Argos in the Argolid, Malthi in Messenia, Eleusis in Attica, and Thebes in Boeotia. Although this may not seem as the most representative sample, the selection is conditioned by the limitations of archaeological data (for example, the major sites of Mycenae and Pylos have not preserved sufficient domestic remains of the Early Mycenaean period to be included in such an analysis). Van de Moortel’s chapter, in this volume, is also instructive in this direction.

1 From private to public space: the creation of cemeteries Among various developments in the funerary ambit during the 2nd millennium BCE, the change which had the greatest impact on the landscape, and probably on people’s perception of social space, was the establishment of formal cemeteries beyond the limits of habitation areas. This development is usually dated to the later part of the Middle Bronze Age (Dickinson 1977: 59; Dietz 1991: 293; Wright 2008b: 238–9; Voutsaki 2010a: 104); it is widely held that in earlier periods burials were made mostly in intramural graves and sometimes in tumuli. Let us examine the available evidence in some detail and try to understand the reasons for this shift. Intramural burial was common throughout mainland Greece in the Middle Bronze Age and the earlier part of the Late Bronze Age. As a rule, the dead were interred in simple pits, often without offerings. Although in stratigraphic terms it is not always easy to distinguish whether burial pits were dug under house floors, in the interspaces between buildings, or in abandoned sectors of the settlement (Maran 1995: 69–72; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 24–5; Boyd 2002: 33–35; Milka 2010; Sarri, this volume), it is obvious that, for most of the Middle Bronze Age, funerary disposal was made infor-

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mally in the immediate vicinity of houses. This suggests close links between the living and the dead, and may indicate the lack of clear conceptual division between a ‘mortuary’ and a ‘domestic’ domain. As to who was entitled to intramural burial, the available data is equivocal. In some sites there is a bias towards children and infants (e.g. Eleusis, Malthi, Asine), but elsewhere adults outnumber infants (Thebes) or are almost equally represented (Argos, Lerna; for references see Appendix; see also Angel 1971; 1982). This suggests considerable diversity of practices, unlike what is often claimed (e.g. Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 23, 33–4; Voutsaki 2010a: 103–4). Exclusions based on age or gender are possible (Voutsaki 2004) yet they are not generalised; other factors, such as the patterns of residence in each site (about which we know practically nothing), may have also played a role on who was buried where (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 391). In the later part of the Middle Bronze Age extensive grave clusters appeared in some sites, perhaps indicating the creation of formal ‘graveyards’ within the limits of settlements (e.g. Thebes, see Appendix). This may reflect a first effort to separate the dead from the living, something which would be fully accomplished with the establishment of extramural cemeteries (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 391). Nonetheless, in most sites the practice of intramural burial continued until Late Helladic II, albeit with decreasing intensity after the appearance of cemeteries beyond the limits of settlements (Dickinson 1977: 33–34; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 25; see also Appendix). The earliest extramural burials in 2nd millennium BCE mainland Greece were made in tumuli. Unfortunately, the character and setting of these collective funerary monuments are poorly understood. Few mounds have been properly excavated and even fewer published. Moreover, in most cases we ignore their relationship to habitation sites, as their discovery has not been combined with settlement excavation or survey in the surrounding area (Boyd 2002: 37; Merkouri & Kouli 2011). Only in a few instances can tumuli be safely associated with known settlements (e.g. Argos, Thorikos, Asine). Tumuli range in date from the Early Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age, but most belong to the Middle Bronze Age (Müller 1989: 19–23; Merkouri & Kouli 2011). Despite their poor state of publication, we know that at least in two well-documented cases, Kastroulia (Rambach 2007) and Argos (Voutsaki et al. 2007b: 157), tumuli were used already in Middle Helladic I; another three or four mounds may have been as early, but evidence is inconclusive (Voidhoikoilia, Aphidna, Drachmani: Howell 1992: 73; Forsén 2010; Merkouri & Kouli 2011: 215–7). Several tumuli were established in Middle Helladic II (Asine, Marathon and possibly Papoulia, Routsi, Peristeria: Voutsaki et al. 2011: 447– 8; Maran 1992: 320–2; Boyd 2002: 122, 156, 172), and others were built in Middle Helladic III or later (Müller 1989; Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 44). Their typology and distribution vary considerably, preventing generalisations (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 29–30), but their relatively small numbers and the fact that rarely did more than two contemporaneous tumuli coexist (Merkouri & Kouli 2011: 204) suggest that they represent only parts of the corresponding communities. The scanty anthropological data available from Kastrou-

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lia (Rambach 2007) and the Argolid (Voutsaki et al. 2006: 70–6; 2007b: 179–88; Voutsaki et al. 2011)1 suggest that individuals of both sexes and all age groups were buried in them (see also Dickinson 1977: 59). This detail, combined with the relatively small number of graves accommodated in each mound, point to kinship affiliations rather than wider groupings. Moreover, the fact that, in the few sites where both tumuli and settlements are known, tumuli were used in parallel with intramural burials (Argos, Asine and possibly Thorikos, see Appendix; Voutsaki et al. 2011; Papadimitriou in press) indicates that they were the property of specific groups, rather than communal monuments reflecting corporate or transegalitarian societies (as proposed in Wright 2008a: 147; Voutsaki 2010c: 93). In any case, the existence of tumuli already from Middle Helladic I implies that, at least in some sites, the notion of a distinct place for the dead had developed already from the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. We should bear in mind, however, that the use of tumuli was quite restricted geographically, even within the southwest Peloponnese (Boyd 2002: 97). A second type of extramural burial ground is that represented by cemeteries consisting of cists, pits and pithoi, arranged in succession on flat or slightly sloping terrain (henceforth referred to as ‘flat cemeteries’ for convenience). Such cemeteries first appear in the course of Middle Helladic II and become more widespread in Middle Helladic III (Appendix; Dietz 1991: 293). They are widely attested in the Argolid (Mycenae, Prosymna, Argos, Asine, etc., see Voutsaki et al. 2007a), Thessaly (Pefkakia, Sesklo, Dimini, see Maran 1992: 217–26) and some sites in Attica and Boeotia (Eleusis, Thebes, possibly Athens, Orchomenos, Hagios Ioannis etc., see Mylonas 1975; Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010; Phialon 2011: 98–9), though not necessarily in other areas. In Messenia and Elis, for example, cemeteries of cist graves are virtually unknown (Boyd 2002; Nikoletzos 2011). If this is not a hazard of preservation or insufficient research, it may relate to the extensive use of tumuli in these regions. In Attica, too, ‘flat cemeteries’ seem to be absent from sites with tumuli (e.g. Thorikos and Marathon), whereas in other regions, sites that feature large extramural cemeteries of late Middle Helladic date usually lack tumuli (e.g. Eleusis, Mycenae, Pefkakia). Only at Argos, Asine and possibly Thebes do Middle Helladic tumuli and ‘flat cemeteries’ coexist,2 although one has to admit that the burial mounds in these sites are far from typical.

1 Note that the material from Asine includes skeletons from both the East cemetery and the settlement without clear differentiation, Angel 1982; Voutsaki et al. 2011; as for Argos, only two skeletons from tumulus A have been examined and their sex and age are not clearly stated in the report (Voutsaki et al. 2007a: 179–80); the remaining material examined from Argos (from the so-called tumuli Γ, Δ, Ε) comes from graves, which most probably belonged to flat cemeteries, (Voutsaki et al. 2007a: 168–79). No comparable data are available from Messenia and Attica, where the tumulus tradition was stronger. 2 Although the precise date and form of the tumulus at Thebes are far from clear (Dakouri-Hild 2001: 115). Cavanagh and Mee list also Chandrinou, Papoulia, Voidokoilia, Lefkas, Marathon and Thorikos as sites where tumuli coexisted with flat cemeteries (1998: 25), but the evidence for flat cemeteries is meagre.

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Could this imply that tumuli and flat cemeteries were variations on a single theme and, to a certain extent, complementary in function (see also Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 25)? Two observations may provide hints in this direction. First, ‘flat cemeteries’ frequently comprised distinct clusters, either demarcated with built liminal features (such as the peribolos of Grave Circle B, Mylonas 1973: 18–20) or simply spatially distanced (e.g. at Eleusis and Argos, Mylonas 1975, vol. II: 205–6; ProtonotariouDeilaki 2009: 55–9). Such clusters do not seem to have differed substantially from tumuli in the number of burials they accommodated and their composition in terms of sex and age (see, for example, sectors Δ and H at Eleusis, Angel 1975; Thebes, Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010). Therefore, it is possible that they belonged to kin groups of similar structure and size. Second, in some sites with no known ‘flat cemeteries’, tumuli proliferate during Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I (e.g. Kato Samikon, Portes, Marathon, Papadimitriou 2001: 43–5, 51–5, 100–9), probably reflecting the gradual adoption of this burial type by more kin groups. It is thus possible that tumuli and ‘flat cemeteries’ were used by social units of similar structure and composition. The choice of grave type may have depended on resources (a tumulus being much more demanding in terms of materials, planning and effort) or on tradition. In any case, it seems that the practice of extramural burial was generalised in most areas of southern Greece from Middle Helladic III onwards, whereas intramural interments started to diminish until they were abandoned in Late Helladic II. What may have been the reasons for this shift? As has been stressed by various scholars and can be seen in the Appendix, Middle Helladic III (or Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I) was a period of significant changes in habitation patterns: new sites were established and existing ones were expanded and restructured, sometimes with the addition of surrounding walls, the appearance of town-planning elements and a shift from apsidal to rectangular buildings (Dietz 1991: 292–4; Maran 1995; Wright 2008b: 235–8; Voutsaki 2010a: 102–3). Apart from better organisation, such changes suggest increasing numbers of inhabitants, either due to a demographic rise or because of settlement nucleation (or both). The appearance of extramural cemeteries may have been linked to these developments. The fact that, in some cases, houses of this period were built directly over earlier graves (e.g. at Asine in Middle Helladic II, Nordquist 1987: 76; at Argos in Middle Helladic IIIB, Protonotariou-Deilaki 2009: 51 and pl. B2; at Eleusis in Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I, Cosmopoulos 2014: 188), may reflect the pressing conditions of the time and the urgent need for more habitation space. The removal of the dead from residential areas may have generated the need for a redefinition of social identities. According to Mary Helms, the establishment of cemeteries beyond habitation areas transforms the dead into a ‘distinct cosmological entity’, a heterotopia, which functions as ‘a spatial and temporal category of Other’, and may result in a more conscious demarcation of identities (Helms 1998: 23). In the same direction, Aubrey Canon has observed that, while the symbolic presence of the dead in a house-burial may be more powerful for the kin-group, this type of disposal does not

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create abstract forms of commemoration for the community as a whole; by contrast, public burials in collective tombs, which entail the construction of the visible landscape with smaller or more monumental sepulchres and the repetitive occurrence of ritual performances, results not only in the creation of social memories but also in new types of spatial and temporal representations (Canon 2002: 192–3; see also below). At a time of population increase, settlement nucleation and intensification of interregional contacts (which created greater interdependency among sites, see Voutsaki 2010a: 105–6), it is very probable that collective identities were under stress. As groups, who had previously lived apart, came together in large residential agglomerations, they were obliged to reestablish themselves and reinstate their social status and rights. At the same time, they had to create new burial facilities in extramural cemeteries. Such facilities were probably designed to express preexisting kinship relations (Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010: 391–3). Yet, the close encounters among kin groups in the public environment of the cemeteries may have led to the realisation of differences from social ‘others’—a fundamental stage in identity formation (Hall 1996: 4–5)—thus increasing group consciousness, and creating the need for closer definition of their collective identities. Cemeteries may have, therefore, opened the ground for a new type of social discourse about identity: different groups vied to bolster their collective selves through the creation of demarcated places (tumuli or clusters of graves in ‘flat cemeteries’), which could emphasise their symbolic and pragmatic links to a perceptible ancestral past.

2 From burial clusters to collective tombs: a new social framework The establishment of extramural cemeteries did not lead instantly to the adoption of new grave forms (even in Grave Circle B at Mycenae, the earliest burials were made in small cists, not in shaft graves—Mylonas 1973: 246–7, graves Ζ, Η, Θ, Σ; for the dating of the graves, see Graziadio 1988), but soon new types of tombs started to appear. These were invariably of the collective type, although very diverse in form [Fig. 1]: shaft graves, built chamber tombs, small tholos-like structures, rock-cut chamber tombs and large tholoi. Built chamber tombs were used already in the later part of the Middle Bronze Age in Attica (Marathon and Eleusis), Elis (Kato Samikon) and perhaps other regions (e.g. Xeropolis, Papadimitriou 2001: 164–6), whereas shaft graves appeared at Mycenae in Middle Helladic III (Graziadio 1988). Tholoi were introduced at the Middle Helladic/Late Helladic I transition, and rock-cut chambers and small tholos-like tombs at the beginning of Late Helladic I (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 44, 48; Papadimitriou 2015).

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Fig. 1: Types of collective tombs used in Late Helladic I (after author).

Collective tombs did not become popular instantly. For most of the Early Mycenaean period, they were limited in number and unevenly distributed. Chamber tombs, for example, were surprisingly rare in Late Helladic I: only six examples in the Argolid (one at Mycenae, three at Prosymna and two at Kokla), two or three at Laconia (Epidaurus Limera), and more than ten at a single site in Messenia (Volimidia) can be safely dated to this period (Papadimitriou 2015: 83–5, 109–10). They became more common in Late Helladic IIA, but with the exception of Prosymna and perhaps Mycenae, their numbers per site remained low until Late Helladic III (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 48, 59–60). Other types of collective tombs present relatively high concentrations in some sites during Late Helladic I-IIA (tholoi at Mycenae, Peristeria and Kakovatos, built chamber tombs at Eleusis, small tholoi at Koukounara and Kaminia), but in general they are rare (Papadimitriou 2015). This suggests that the custom of collective burial was adopted gradually in mainland Greece. During Late Helladic I and II, ‘flat cemeteries’ or tumuli were still in use in most sites, and collective tombs were often established at a distance from them (e.g. at Mycenae, Prosymna, Argos, Thorikos, Marathon), either for practical reasons (lack of space, soil type) or perhaps because their owners wished to express their differentiation from preexisting funerary traditions (cf. Blegen 1937; Alden 2000; Shelton 2003; Voutsaki et al. 2007b: 154–5; Papadimitriou 2001: 25, 99, 109; Papadimitriou et al. 2015). In any case, it is obvious that the spatial interrelationship among burial grounds, and between cemeteries and

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settlements, fluctuated constantly until Late Helladic IIIA2, when a more homogeneous pattern of extensive chamber tombs cemeteries for the majority of population prevailed. This process can be followed closely at Argos [Fig. 2]: there, a major shift from intramural to extramural burial took place in Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I, and the first collective tombs were constructed in the old cemetery next to the Aspis settlement in Late Helladic I. Slightly later (Late Helladic II-IIIA1) a new cemetery of chamber tombs was established at Deiras. Yet, it was only in Late Helladic IIIA2 that chamber tombs prevailed and Deiras became the main burial ground of the site, now clearly distinguished from the residential area in spatial terms (see Appendix, and Papadimitriou et al. 2015). Such changes suggest a fluid funerary landscape, where the choices made by different groups affected variously the configuration of social space. That these choices may have involved an element of competitiveness is a reasonable assumption. As I have shown elsewhere (Papadimitriou 2011: 470–3), the practice of furnishing the dead with fine garments, gold jewellery and symbolic objects (e.g. weapons and ‘exotica’) is mostly attested in collective tombs of the period. These objects were probably meant to construct generic representations of social roles that were significant for the identity of the burying group (e.g. ‘warriors’), rather than creating a faithful ‘portrait’ of the deceased. In that way, individual biographies were inscribed into powerful ancestral narratives; such narratives underlined the importance of the corresponding groups and advertised their continuity, thus legitimising their social or political claims within expanding communities. This needs not have involved a major change in the organising principles of mainland societies—or, at least, this is what one can surmise from the available evidence. Anthropological studies indicate that the composition of collective tombs did not really differ from that of earlier grave clusters and tumuli (they all comprised individuals of both sexes and children: see, for example, Charles 1963, for the chamber tombs of Deiras, Argos; Angel 1975, for the built chamber tombs of Eleusis). This suggests that kin groups continued to be the main social units represented in the mortuary sphere. The fact that the appearance of collective tombs in a site was usually associated with the gradual abandonment of cist and pit graves (e.g. at Argos, Prosymna, Eleusis, Mycenae, Blegen 1937; Mylonas 1975; Alden 2000; Protonotariou-Deilaki 2009) indicates that we are dealing with changes in the mode of disposal and the form of the burial structures, rather than with a major transformation of the organisational units of society. This is further supported by the following observations. First, in regions with a strong tumulus tradition, collective tombs were often integrated organically into earlier mounds (Vrana, Portes, Papoulia, Samikon, Routsi, Voidokoilia, Papadimitriou 2001: 35–7, 43–4, 51–3, 101–3; Boyd 2002: 126–30) or built in close proximity to them (Kato Samikon, Thorikos, Papadimitriou 2001: 44–5, 97–8). Secondly, in two cases collective tombs were built within the settlement as intramural establishments, following a centuries-old tradition (Eleusis E.III.7, Cosmopoulos 2014: 139–42; Mitrou tomb 73, Van de Moortel, this volume). Taken together, these observations seem to suggest continuity rather

Fig. 2: Changing relations between the domestic and funerary space in prehistoric Argos; left: Middle Helladic I-II; middle: Middle Helladic III-Late Helladic I; right: Late Helladic IIIA2-B; black dots: houses or buildings; red squares: graves (after author).

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than disruption. Consequently, there is no reason to link the appearance of collective tombs with major changes in the structural fabric of Helladic societies. It is therefore possible that the gradual adoption of collective tombs in Early Mycenaean times had two main objectives: a) to increase the visibility of existing social structures, and b) to emphasise the temporal continuity of the owning groups. Both goals may have been associated with the tensions generated by the expansion of settlements and the desire of particular groups to reinstate their distinct identity and claim a privileged status within the community. By subsuming individual graves into a single spacious chamber that could be regularly revisited (unlike earlier individual sepulchres, which were used once), such groups created virtual ‘houses of ancestors’, which persisted through time and functioned as depositories of accumulated memories and experiences. Revisiting the tomb was equivalent to revisiting the ancestral past of the group. The tomb became a topos of collective memory, a place that symbolised the permanence of the group and allowed its members to forge common representations of the past and legitimise their claims over inherited rights and social roles (Wright 2006: 57).

3 Ritual space, public performance and symbolic communication The introduction of collective tombs had consequences on the perception of ritual space as well. It is widely acknowledged that Middle Helladic communities did not have specially designated areas of ritual performance (Rutter 2001: 144; Voutsaki 2010a: 104; Whittaker 2014: 82). This does not mean that rites did not take place in the Middle Bronze Age; most probably, such rites were still integrated in domestic life, and did not require permanent installations or specialised equipment. The only Middle Helladic permanent installations of probable ritual use are to be found in tumuli: they include circular bothroi (Argos, Protonotariou-Deilaki 2009: 36–42), stone platforms, and other arrangements that resemble altars (Papoulia, Kato Samikon-Kleidi, Marathon, Thorikos, see Papadimitriou 2001: 183–4; Gallou 2005: 98–9). Some of them are as early as Middle Helladic I although most date to Middle Helladic II-III and were probably used for public rituals associated with the final stage of the funeral. Finds associated with such features are not abundant and comprise mostly pottery and remains of burnt offerings. Evidence of ritual activities is more ample in late Middle Helladic and early Late Helladic ‘flat cemeteries’. It includes drinking vessels and food residues found above tombs (possibly the remains of funerary meals, Mylonas 1973: 265; Voutsaki 1993: 80– 1; Lindblom 2007: 120–3; Protonotariou-Deilaki 2009: 134–35, 544), the famous ‘altar’ over grave IV of Grave Circle A’ (Gallou 2005: 21–4), and three open-air ritual deposits in the area of the so-called ‘tumulus Γ’ at Argos, consisting of broken cups, animal

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bones, ashes, and portable ‘tables of offerings’ (Protonotariou-Deilaki 2009: 57–9). Although these examples suggest the existence of more or less permanent locales of public ritual, they are rather sporadic and non-standardised. By contrast, most collective tombs built from Late Helladic I and mainly from Late Helladic IIA onwards were provided with a space, which was specifically intended for ritual processions: the dromos. In a recent paper, I have presented evidence for the gradual formation of dromoi (Papadimitriou 2015). In brief, I have argued that dromoi did not appear together with tholoi and chamber tombs but came out of a long process of experimentation, which aimed at the creation of an efficient system of access to collective sepulchres, and had started as early as Middle Helladic II in built chamber tombs placed within tumuli (Vrana tumulus I-tomb 2) or in ‘flat cemeteries’ (Xeropolis, a late Middle Helladic tomb with dromos at Argos, the L-type graves at Eleusis, Papadimitriou 2015: 101–2). The search for an efficient access device intensified in Late Helladic I, when different solutions were tried out in a number of architectural types: large shafts in the Shaft Graves of Mycenae (Mylonas 1973: 243–5); built ‘vestibules’ and open ‘courts’ in front of the chambers of rectangular built tombs (Papadimitriou 2001: 159–61); very short and steep dromoi in a number of tholoi, chamber and built chamber tombs (Papadimitriou 2015: 98–101); a simple opening in the mantle of the tumulus of the Voidokoilia tholos (Boyd 2002: 126); a rudimentary dromos (shorter than the burial chamber) in the ‘oblong tholos’ IV of Thorikos (Papadimitriou 2001: 93–5). It was only at the end of Late Helladic I when the first tombs with well-articulated passageways appeared (Pylos IV, Psari, Corinth, Boyd 2002: 148, 181; Kasimi 2013; Papadimitriou 2015: 98–101). By Late Helladic IIA, almost all collective tombs across mainland Greece were provided with dromoi, sometimes impressively long ones (e.g. Vapheio tholos: 29 m; Dendra chamber tomb 10: 19.40 m). Dromoi continued to evolve throughout the Late Bronze Age, eventually reaching monumental proportions (over 30 m at the Late Helladic III Clytemnestra tholos and Kalkani chamber tomb 505), whereas grave forms without such passageways (e.g. shaft graves) were soon abandoned. The wholesale adoption of the dromos as an access device suggests that it had great functional advantages, which went beyond practical requirements (no tomb required a 20–30 m passageway in order to be approached). Such advantages may have been related to ritual or symbolic needs. Remains of ritual activities are not lacking from early dromoi. They consist of smashed drinking vessels (found in Messenia since Late Helladic I and in the Argolid since Late Helladic II, Boyd 2002: 87–8; Papadimitriou 2015: 92–3); grooves dug under the entrances of several Late Helladic I and II tombs, which connected the dromos with the chamber and were possibly used for libations (Åkeström 1988: 202–5; Gallou 2005: 70–2); and a number of benches, niches, burial pits etc. (Papadimitriou 2015: 88–94). These features are far from impressive and certainly not omnipresent. This, however, is hardly surprising: the dromos was not the terminus of the funeral; instead, it was an intermediate space

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that separated the world of the living from that of the dead, a transitional feature that restricted access to the tomb and allowed selected participants (probably the close members of the kin) to approach the final resting place of burials. Moreover, the presence of this narrow and long corridor, whose walls increased in height as one approached the entrance, gave the space in front of the tomb a standardised appearance, and transformed the ‘descent to the underworld’ into an evocative and highly formalised process, which could be invariably reenacted each time a new burial was to be made. Since formalism and invariance are constitutive parts of ritual performance (Rappaport 1999: 33–7, 50–1), then, in structural terms, the dromos should be seen as a performative space par excellence. The use of the dromos for formalised ritual performances may have had a crucial impact on the cognition of Early Mycenaean people. Paul Connerton, in his seminal study of collective remembering, has stressed that shared representations of the past (which form the basis of collective memory) are created, maintained and transmitted through inscribing and incorporating methods, the former referring to visual forms of communication (including writing), the latter to rituals and other repetitive bodily practices (Connerton 1989: 72–3). Rituals and other incorporating methods are particularly important for oral societies (like the Early Mycenaean one): repetitive action in formalised contexts of high sensorial capacity stimulates the mechanisms of habitual (or procedural) memory and helps participants to incorporate accepted world views and social orders in a non-conscious way (Connerton 1989: 75; Assmann 2006: 87–93; Hamilakis 2014). Such ritualised contexts provide the material frameworks that are deemed necessary for the creation, localisation and reproduction of collective memories (Halbwachs 1992; Bell 1997: 74). Seen from that perspective, the increasingly standardised space of the dromos may acquire new symbolic significance. By participating periodically in the formalised processions held at dromoi, the close members of the kin were able to embody a number of symbolic transitions and oppositions [Fig. 3]: transitions from the world of the living to the world of dead ancestors; and oppositions between the public sphere of the community and the exclusive realm of the burying group, where links to the past were invigorated by ancestral memories. The dromos was, thus, a place where the members of the burying group could share experiences of strong symbolic and emotional power, craft distinct mnemonic traditions and bolster their sense of collective identity (Papadimitriou 2015: 95–7). This, in turn, may have had an impact on their perception of space and time: space, through the sharp division between ‘public’ and ‘private’ (note that dromoi were often bounded by a threshold or blocking wall of clearly symbolic character at their outer ends, see Papadimitriou 2015: 93–4); and time, through the articulation of bodily movement into a disciplined choreography, which led symbolically from the present to the past and, from there, to a projected future—for the luxurious gifts that were carried to the tomb were primarily meant to advertise the status of the group and, thus, to support their future social claims, rather than simply memorialising the deceased. This interplay between past, present and future, may have imposed a new

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rhythm on social practice, which altered the content and shape of time, making it more linear in character and affording it a dynamic role in social negotiations (on the significance of rhythm for social relations, see Lefebvre 2004).

Fig. 3: The symbolic transitions and oppositions of the dromos (after author).

Of course, this was not an abrupt change. A tendency towards the ritualisation of the funeral is observed from the Middle Helladic/Late Helladic I transition in collective tombs without dromoi (e.g. the Shaft Grave of Mycenae or the built tombs at Peristeria and Volimidia) or in tholoi with very rudimentary passageways (e.g. Pylos IV, Peristeria 3, Galatas 3). Yet, it was only in the later part of Late Helladic I and in Late Helladic IIA (i.e. when the dromos-stomion-chamber arrangement was fully established in Mycenaean tombs), that funerary assemblages became homogenised across southern Greece, including not only lavish gifts, such as weapons, gold jewellery etc., but also new pottery types, which were specially designed for ritual or symbolic purposes [Fig. 4]: alabastra and squat jugs, probably containing unguents and perfumed oils for the anointment of the dead, rhyta for libations, ‘palace-style’ amphoras of high symbolic value, elaborate pouring and drinking vessels, etc. Although such vessels are usually found deposited in the chamber, it is improbable that they were meant as ‘burial gifts’; most probably they had been originally used for ritual activities or for public display. The fact that rhyta and ‘palace-style’ amphoras are almost absent from simpler grave types (Lewartowski 2000: 29) suggests that the function of such specialised ceramic types was associated with elaborate rituals taking place only in collective

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tombs. In my view, it is far more likely that such rituals were linked with the visible space of the dromos, rather than with activities taking place in the private and restricted area of the chamber. The ritual function of the dromos may be further supported by the fact that no public cultic devices of the type found in late Middle Helladic burial grounds (see the beginning of this section) are known from Mycenaean cemeteries. It is thus possible that the dromos subsumed most activities previously performed outside of the grave, eventually turning into a place of great ritual intensity.

Fig. 4: Common types of pottery deposited in Late Helladic I-IIA collective tombs (after author).

Increasing ritual intensity may have eventually given rise to more complex forms of communication, which did not depend exclusively on performative practices. One of the most interesting developments in Late Helladic I-IIA tombs is the proliferation of complex imagery. Sophisticated figural compositions appear on a number of media, including grave markers, metal vessels and weapons, ivories, gold ornaments and sealstones (Voutsaki 2010b: 183–8). Since mainland Greece had no preexisting iconographic tradition (apart from some isolated figures of humans, animals, fish and boats on clay vases, Blakolmer 2010: 515–7), it is clear that the vast majority of such images were imported from Crete or heavily influenced by Minoan art, while a few came from other eastern Mediterranean cultures (Dickinson 1977: 84–6). Although questions of artistic transfer and Mycenaean perception of imported motifs have not been adequately explored, this phenomenon indicates the emergence of visual representation

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as a new form of symbolic expression. An emphasis on visual representation is also suggested by the rich decoration of bodies with fine garments, jewellery etc. from Late Helladic I and the decoration of tomb facades with painted motifs from Late Helladic IIA onwards (Sgouritsa 2011). Irrespective of their meaning, such visual representations mark a departure from earlier practices and may reflect the rise of inscribing methods of communication and collective remembering (Connerton 1989: 72–3). For the purposes of this paper, suffice it to stress that such visual media occur almost exclusively in collective tombs during the Early Mycenaean period; therefore, their appearance may have been connected with the process of ritualisation discussed earlier. Although this process had started in Middle Helladic III and saw an explosive outbreak in Grave Circle A, it was only in the tholoi and chamber tombs of Late Helladic IIA that it found standardised expression and wide use, becoming a phenomenon of broad social significance. It is thus possible that the dromos-stomion-chamber arrangement of these tombs created a spatial context that not only articulated the movement of people, but also systematised the flow of information within its confines. For that reason, I believe that if we wish to understand the wider impact of new forms of symbolic communication at the transition from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Bronze Age, we should shift our attention from the impressive but heterogeneous (and largely discontinued) phenomena that are attested in Grave Circle A, and lay more emphasis on the increasingly standardised developments that took place in other collective tombs of the period. At the end of the day, it was chamber tombs and tholoi that prevailed in the rest of the Late Bronze Age and defined the notion of ‘Mycenaean’ in the mortuary field.

Conclusions The late Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean period saw a transition from a phase when death was undistinguished from life in spatial terms, to a period when it was thought to be an exceptional event worthy of public treatment and a special performing place. Although no major changes in the structure of society may have been involved, new burial attitudes made social groupings more transparent than before. At the same time, they created a new concept of time, which was linear in character and gave the past a visible locus. The past was separated from the living time and became an independent entity, which housed the distinct mnemonic traditions of each group and provided legitimacy to its social claims (thus enabling, instead of reflecting, social competition). Revisiting the tomb was equivalent to revisiting the past. The collective tomb became a mnemonic record, to which only members of the kin group had access. This played a significant role in shaping the collective memory of groups. However, the tomb was not only the cradle of ancestral narratives; it was also part of the living history of the kin, a meeting place where people shared new

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experiences and formed new memories, thus consolidating their collective identity and projecting their continuity into the future. Crucial to that process was the standardisation of ritual space. The appearance of dromoi in Late Helladic I-IIA articulated funerary processions in a performative way, which facilitated the embodiment of social values and categorisations through repetitive action. This, however, was not the sole consequence; ritual intensification created favourable conditions for the emergence of more complex modes of symbolic communication. Elaborate funerary representations invested objects with previously unattested abstract dimensions and gave them symbolic meanings that were publicly communicated through ritual performances. Symbolic interaction intensified, eventually leading to the adoption of imagery, which required the creation of sophisticated artistic codes and conventions. The use of visual media shifted the focus of symbolic communication from the experiential (i.e. ritual) to the interpretative (i.e. ‘artistic’) level, perhaps giving rise to what has been dubbed ‘the hermeneutic reading of the past’ (Wright 2004: 66)—itself a strategy of manipulating symbols and creating social distinction, and perhaps political authority. These developments created novel cognitive maps, in which social interaction was not conceptualised only as the result of interpersonal relations and exchanges, but also through symbolic thought and practice. Collective identity was inscribed into new spatiotemporal frameworks, which emphasised the importance of the past and required public performances and abstract representations in order to be visualised and communicated. Such was the communicative power of these innovative forms of social interaction that they became basic components of funerary behaviour in Late Helladic IIB/IIIA1 and may have finally merged with other forms of social practice in Late Helladic IIIA2-B, when palatial elites employed feasting rituals and iconographic programs with highly symbolic themes (including images of elaborate processions) as major tools of ideological legitimisation. Thus, rather than reflecting transformations in the structure of society, the observed changes in the use of social space in Early Mycenaean times brought about innovations in ritual practices and technologies of communication that would become essential tools for the negotiation of collective memory, identity, status and political power in the centuries to follow.

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Appendix: selected sites with large numbers of Middle Helladic-Late Helladic burials and domestic remains Argos Vollgraff 1904; 1906; Deshayes 1966; Philippa-Touchais & Touchais 1997; Papadimitriou 2001: 17–26; Voutsaki et al. 2007a; Protonotariou-Deilaki 2009; Philippa-Touchais 2013; Papadimitriou et al. 2015.

Settlement There is little evidence of pre-Middle Bronze Age habitation in Argos. In Middle Helladic I-II, there were two main habitation areas: the top of the Aspis hill and the South Quarter. An isolated house has been also found in the Deiras ravine. In Middle Helladic IIIA, habitation was concentrated on the Aspis hilltop; the few excavated houses are apsidal. Other habitation areas seem to have been abandoned in that time. In Middle Helladic IIIB, the settlement at Aspis underwent major changes, including the construction of a surrounding (fortification?) wall, many new rectangular buildings in most areas of the hill, a continuous row of long houses (consisting of three rooms each) at a distance of 2 m from the surrounding wall, streets and small ‘plazas’. Occupation was extended to the south and southeast feet of the hill. In Late Helladic I, the installation on top of Aspis was abandoned and occupation concentrated on the foothills of Aspis. In Late Helladic II-III, the settlement expanded southwards and the South Quarter was reoccupied in Late Helladic IIIB (probably as a distinct habitation cluster).

Intramural burials Approximately 20 intramural burials have been excavated on top of the Aspis hill. One or two may be Middle Helladic I-II but the rest date to Middle Helladic IIIA, while none can be dated to Middle Helladic IIIB or later. Most are found in the interspaces between buildings and a few under house floors. They include as many adults (mostly females) as infants. Middle Helladic I-II intramural interments have been also unearthed in the Deiras ravine and the South Quarter. No safely dated Middle Helladic III example is known from these areas. Intramural burials were made sporadically in the Aspis foothills in Middle Helladic III and the Late Bronze Age.

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Extramural burials Pre-Middle Helladic III extramural burials have been identified in a few spots on the south and southeast foothills of Aspis: some of them seem to belong to a Middle Helladic I-II tumulus (tumulus A), others to small clusters of graves built on flat ground. In Middle Helladic III hundreds of extramural graves were constructed in this part of the town. The vast majority belong to Middle Helladic IIIB, while only a few can be dated to Middle Helladic IIIA (when intramural burials were common in the site). As a rule, graves were single, although some accommodated two or three corpses. In Late Helladic I, some burial clusters fell out of use and collective tombs (built chamber tombs) made their appearance. The number of single graves decreased. After Late Helladic IIIA, the area was only sporadically used for burial. The ‘Quartier Sud’ seems also to have been transformed into a burial ground in Middle Helladic III, but fell out of use after Late Helladic I. In Late Helladic IIA, a cemetery of chamber tombs was established at the Deiras ravine, which would become the main burial ground of Argos in Late Helladic III.

Malthi Valmin 1938; Howell, in McDonald 1975: 110–111; Howell 1992: 73, 75–6, 78; Boyd 2002: 33–5, 176–9, 213.

Settlement The site was sparsely occupied since Neolithic and Early Helladic times. The wellknown fortified settlement (phase IV) dates to the Middle Bronze Age. More precise dating is currently impossible, but the apparent rarity (or absence) of Middle Helladic I pottery suggests that the greatest part of the settlement was built at an advanced stage of the Middle Helladic period. The earlier phases of the Middle Bronze Age may be represented by a few apsidal houses. In the later part of the Middle Bronze Age, the settlement consisted of rectangular structures in the central part of the hill, and a row of rectangular buildings attached to the fortification wall. A ‘megaron’ type structure (8 × 6 m) with central column and hearth, built at the highest point of the acropolis may have been a ruler’s house or a cult building. The fortification wall had several gates. The settlement was used uninterruptedly through the Early Mycenaean period (Late Helladic I-II). In Late Helladic III, the site started declining; few new houses were built and the fortification degraded.

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Intramural burials Approximately 50 graves have been found within the settlement. They are mostly pits and cists, and two pithos burials. Among them, 36 contained children, seven adults and three were empty. The majority of burials were made under house floors, but the stratigraphic position of others (cut into walls) suggests that they postdated the use of the associated buildings. No graves were found in open areas. The burials are difficult to date due to the rarity of offerings, but the settlement was primarily in use during Middle Helladic II-III. However, there are graves which certainly date to Late Helladic I or IIA.

Extramural burials No extramural cemetery has been identified on the site, but the presence of at least one adult burial outside the citadel (XXVII) may suggest the presence of more graves in unexplored parts of the hill. Two tholoi found at the foot of the hill are of Late Helladic III date.

Eleusis Mylonas 1932; Mylonas 1975; Papangeli 1988; 1990; Privitera 2013: 100–8; Cosmopoulos 2014.

Settlement There is very little evidence of pre-Middle Bronze Age occupation at the hill of Eleusis; Early Helladic II structures have been excavated in a distinct area to the northwest of the hill, possibly suggesting a different location for the Early Bronze Age settlement or a dispersed system of habitation. In Middle Helladic I-II, the settlement occupied a small area (1–2 ha) in the south slope of the hill and perhaps a few more spots on the west slope and the hilltop. In Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I, the settlement expanded substantially all over the south and east slopes and the hilltop, reaching ca. 4 ha. It also obtained organised layout with rectangular multi-roomed buildings of common orientation. Occupation continued uninterrupted in Late Helladic II and the settlement expanded further in Late Helladic III, reaching areas beyond the hill. The famous Megaron B was built in Late Helladic IIB/IIIA1 and expanded in Late Helladic IIIA2-B.

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Intramural burials The settlement area has yielded numerous intramural burials. None of them can be safely dated to Middle Helladic I and only a few can be attributed to Middle Helladic II. The majority belong to Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I. They include graves in open areas, in the interspaces between houses, under house floors and only a few on top of abandoned houses. The majority of burials are of children and infants. Very few intramural graves can be dated to the Early Mycenaean period. Among them, one (E.III.7) is a collective tomb established at the end of the Middle Bronze Age in the area of the later Megaron B and used until Late Helladic IIB/IIIA1. Of interest is also the Middle Helladic III ‘warrior grave’ E.III.6, built in the same area. Only two intramural burials can be dated to later periods.

Extramural burials The West Cemetery was established in the course of Middle Helladic II or the beginning of Middle Helladic III. The earliest graves were individual cists. The cemetery expanded significantly in Middle Helladic III/Late Helladic I, when many collective graves (built chamber tombs) were constructed, clearly arranged in distinct clusters. The cemetery remained in use until the end of the Late Bronze Age. Four chamber tombs were cut in Late Helladic IIIA2 in the West Cemetery; four more chamber tombs of similar date have been found in a different area. More built chamber tombs and single graves were discovered recently to the east of the settlement in what appears to be another extramural cemetery (announced by Dr K. Papagelli at a colloquium for G. Mylonas in the Athens Archaeological Society, June 1, 2013). They seem to belong to the Middle Helladic/Late Helladic transition and the early Late Bronze Age.

Thebes Kasimi-Soutou 1980; Konsola 1981; Symeonoglou 1985; Aravantinos 1988; Faraklas 1996; Dakouri-Hild 2001; 2010; Aravantinos & Psaraki 2010.

Settlement The settlement on the Kadmeia hill had been sizeable since the Early Bronze Age but expanded considerably in the Middle Bronze Age, possibly covering an estimated area of 19–20 ha. Houses were built independently in rectangular or, less frequently, apsidal form, but only a few can be dated to subphases of the Middle Bronze Age

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(Middle Helladic I, Middle Helladic II-IIIA and transitional Middle Helladic IIIB-Late Helladic I). A large ‘megaron’-type building consisting of two rooms (ca. 9.50 × 5.50 m) at the centre of the citadel probably dates to Middle Helladic IIIB-Late Helladic I and seems to have seen two construction phases. In the Late Bronze Age, the settlement expanded further (ca. 130 plots have yielded Late Helladic finds as opposed to ca. 80 plots with Middle Helladic material), possibly reaching an extent of 32 ha. An early administrative building (‘House of Kadmos’) was built in the course of Late Helladic II and remained in use until Late Helladic IIIA2 or B1. Parts of the Mycenaean palace of Thebes (‘Kadmeion’) have been located in various plots. It was probably established in Late Helladic IIIA2, but there is no consensus as to the chronology of its destruction, which is variously dated to Late Helladic IIIB1 and late LH IIIB2. The site was probably fortified in late Late Helladic IIIA2 or transitional IIIA2/B1, and a system of stone built and rock-cut aqueducts was in use in Late Helladic IIIA. The rest of the Mycenaean settlement is poorly understood.

Intramural burials During the Middle Bronze Age, graves were built under floors, between houses or in small ‘graveyards’ close to houses. Aravantinos and Psaraki mention 57 Middle Helladic intramural graves (mostly cists and pits, but also brick graves and burial pithoi), which contained 57% adults and 43% juveniles. Most were unfurnished, while the furnished ones date primarily to the late Middle Helladic or the transitional Middle Helladic/Late Helladic I period. Among them is the well-known ‘warrior grave’ dating to Middle Helladic II or III. Earlier unfurnished graves have been found under the floors of Middle Helladic I houses. In general, differentiation in the furnishing of the dead does not seem to relate either to the age or the sex of the individuals. ‘Graveyards’ were more common in the later part of the Middle Bronze Age and may correspond to families residing in the nearby houses. Intramural burial started to decline at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age and occurred only sporadically after Late Helladic II.

Extramural burials The earliest extramural monument was probably the ‘tumulus’ at Ampheion, which may have been built at the Early Helladic/Middle Helladic transition, although its history has been severely blurred by improper excavation and publication. A wellfurnished megalithic cist built on top of the ‘tumulus’ contained finds that date probably to the late Middle Helladic or the transitional Middle Helladic/Late Helladic period. An isolated burial pithos found beyond the settlement dates to the earlier part of the Middle Bronze Age and may have also come from an extramural burial ground

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(tumulus?). Three extramural cemeteries seem to have been established at Thebes in the later part of the Middle Bronze Age (Middle Helladic III) or the transitional Middle Helladic/Late Helladic I period. The ‘East cemetery’ (on the east slope of Kadmeia) was the largest one comprising 67 single graves with 75% adults and 25% children. 60% of the graves were unfurnished. The ‘North cemetery’ contained 25 graves of both adults and children; those containing offerings date to Middle Helladic IIIA/B-early Late Helladic I. The ‘West cemetery’ contained 12 graves, mostly unfurnished. The first chamber tomb may have been constructed in Late Helladic I at the site of Kolonaki, to the south of the settlement. More tombs were cut here in Late Helladic IIA, and by the end of Late Helladic II another two chamber tomb burial grounds had been established at Kastelli (northeast of the settlement) and the Ismenion hill (east of the settlement). More than 100 chamber tombs have been found so far at Thebes, and many more are reported. Most of them date to the later part of the Late Bronze Age (IIIA2-B) but the largest and richest ones are Late Helladic IIA-IIIA1. Acknowledgements: Research for this paper was conducted during a Stanley J. Seeger Fellowship at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University. I would like to thank warmly the Director, Mr Dimitri Gondicas, and various colleagues in the Center for their support and the fruitful discussions we had during my stay at Princeton.

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Sam Farnham

Pollution and Purity in the Argolid and Corinthia During the Early Iron Age: the Burials Introduction “All the world’s a stage” proclaims Jacques in the oft-quoted Act 2 Scene 7 of Shakespeare’s As You Like It (see Marshall 2004: 165). Taking that to be the case, and not wishing it to be counted out of this play, concepts of pollution and purity can be said to be ‘played out’ on the stage set in the world of Early Iron Age Greece. Specifically, in this paper I suggest that the relationship between pollution and purity and funerary performance lies in the use of behavioural precepts dependent on the dead to exert control over the living. The dead can be used as a tool to prescribe and prohibit certain acts of performance which thus affected the way people interacted with their landscape and immediate environment. However, researchers’ previous conceptions of pollution and purity in Early Iron Age Greece have attempted to account for the entirety of this diverse and contrasting space at once. They effectively parked a single proscenium arch at the wrong spatial resolution and thereby masked performative variability between sites and regions. I argue that the subject needs to be homed to a local level to properly understand it within the context of the immediate environment of the region, i.e. the community and its familial landscape. This link is ultimately social but also interactive in the sense that social engagements and interactions took place within and made use of the surroundings and settings of their stage.

Pollution and purity Pollution and purity were initially defined by Mary Douglas (2002)1 as a means of ‘structuring social control’. Admittedly, these ideas have recently been used in more ‘secular’ contexts such as the resettlement of Leningrad at the end of the blockade (Peeling 2010: esp. 38, 194, 195) and the identification of secular purification in Minoan Crete (Peatfield 1995: 224). These works, the former a doctoral thesis, highlight the versatility in application of Douglas’ original conception, though they suggest a tighter definition is required for understanding burial ritual. Parker, for instance, draws the important distinction between sacred and profane disorder in defining pollution and in doing so distances the latter from secular defilement. In

1 The Routledge Classics edition is used for reference here, which includes a new preface by the author (Douglas 2002: x-xxi).

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ancient Greek the noun miasma or the adjective miaros are often used to refer to a condition that makes a person ritually impure and unable to enter a temple, contagious and dangerous, which can typically occur from contact with a corpse or a murderer (Parker 1996: 3–4).2 Perhaps the most succinct expression of these ideas used in a comparable context is offered by Jack Lennon (2011: 2), who states that the idea of being ‘impure’ is culturally constructed and amplified in ritual practice. Though they are yet to be studied systematically, the notions of pollution and purity are acknowledged to have had an impact earlier in the Greek past on Mycenaean funerary ritual at some level (e.g. Voutsaki 1998: 46; see also critique by Wells 1990). Regarding later periods, Parker (1996) produced the first systematic study of these ideas. However, as he acknowledges (Parker 1996: 12–3), his geographical and temporal synthesis does mask variation across time and space which is likely to have existed. I suggest here that it is possible to understand such variation by using archaeological evidence, which has been selected from the Argolid and Corinthia dating to the intervening chronological period: the Early Iron Age.

Breaking down the stage: the state of debate in Early Iron Age Greece Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (1981: 35–7) originally argued that the cessation of intramural burial suggested a desire to reduce contact with the dead due to a hardening of attitudes towards pollution during the Archaic period in Greece. These ideas were critiqued by Ian Morris (1989), who gave greater significance to the uses of deathritual, arguing that there was insufficient empirical data to understand the individualism which underpinned much of Sourvinou-Inwood’s argument. However, he did maintain that new ideas about pollution in the 8th c. proper, relating to a ‘person’s place in the cosmos’ caused by the rise of the polis, could explain the change to extramural burial (Morris 1989: 316–20). Fear of pollution was arguably expressed through the articulation of boundaries for certain activities (Sourvinou-Inwood 1983: 47). Archaeologically, the cessation of ‘unreserved’ burial has been used as the main thrust of the argument, with the walling off of sanctuary temene (boundaries), cemeteries and settlements cited in additional support (Morris 1987: 62–9, 190, 192). The difference in viewpoint between both Morris’ (1989) and Sourvinou-Inwood’s (1981; 1983; 1993) arguments seem to depend upon regional differences that create exceptions to each of their models. Morris’ work was based upon detailed analysis of

2 It should be noted that the terminology used to indicate pollution varies with literary genre and pollution may be implied indirectly, e.g. as not clean (katharmos), pure (hagnos) and religiously safe (hosia), and perhaps also through the noun agos (Parker 1996: 5–12).

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the Attic data, whereas the majority of the Early Iron Age sites cited by SourvinouInwood (1993: 6–7) in response derive from outside Attica, three of which are in the Peloponnese and one on Crete (Peloponnese: Nichoria, Asine, Amyklai, Crete: Karphi, although also noted in Attica: Mounichia). In my view, this lends further support to pursuing the debate contextually at a regional level of analysis. I further contest that greater weight has to be placed behind the study of material remains found at potential sites of pollution, as they may reveal how social order was restored in polluted spaces though purification by the performance of rituals.

Pollution and purity and funerary performance Douglas’ original theory was developed and critiqued in various historical and archaeological contexts (see Frevel & Nihan 2013; Bradley 2012; Klawans 2003; Bendlin’s 2007 review; also Meigs 1978). Further developments in the context of funerary performance will be attempted in the present paper. I shall argue that what happened to the corpse postmortem and the sensory experience of this, ultimately created a physically polluted entity—a corpse possessed with contagion—that required purification in order to restore vitality to the social group. It is important to consider all facets of this perception, or what has recently been deemed the social construction and the biological reality (Nilsson Stutz 2008: 25). In drawing upon Hertz’ (1960) widely referred to study, Nilsson Stutz (2008: 22–3) notes the important link between the biological transformation of a body into a cadaver and the arrival of dangerous matter in a liminal zone. This mirrors what Turner (1964: 6–7) deems as being ‘betwixt and between’ in outlining the distinction between states that have been ambiguously or contradictorily defined and states that derive from ritual transitions between states. Indeed, Douglas (2002: 122) originally identified the matter issuing from the margins of the body, i.e. at its orifices, such as spit, blood, milk, urine, faeces and even tears as polluting and dangerous when they traverse boundaries. For example, this could include the formation of a film of cell debris and mucus on the cornea and a complete relaxation of the muscle tone, followed by a temporary rigor mortis and cadaveric hypostasis that contributes to discoloration of the skin. Once the processes of putrefaction and decomposition start, the changes include further discoloration, swelling, emission of gases and fluids, which eventually results in the almost complete consumption of the soft tissues of the body (Nilsson Stutz 2008: 22; Mant 1984). However, I further argue that the way different communities reacted to this biological reality varied in a social sense between sites and to an extent between regions. Archaeologically, I suggest that this can be understood through analysis of the spatial placement of the dead in relation to the living and what the material residue of these spaces tell us about how they were used, particularly in relation to the deposition of pottery and the presence of sacrificial activity. Although, as we will shall see, both these activities cannot be said to have been equally important in the performance of burial ritual.

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Spatial placement of the dead In terms of their location, cemeteries can be identified as existing in areas which are separate from the settlement, reserved exclusively for the disposal of the dead and which may be formally bound (Morris 1987: 52; 1989: 315; cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1981: 34; 1993: 8–9). Yet as one of the most influential scholars on Early Iron Age studies, Anthony Snodgrass has recently noted, the settlement architectural record is generally limited in Early Iron Age Greece (2009: 99–100). Such a situation is probably a consequence of the ephemeral character of domestic remains, along with the impact of later leveling activities upon the landscape (Hall 2007: 74; Barletta 2001: 21; Coldstream 2003: 303). This characterisation is particularly applicable to the present regions of study: the Argolid and Corinthia. As Ian Morris (1987: 63; cf. Coldstream: 2003: 303) suggests, however, this problem can be overcome by considering burial in terms of reservation. Several other Early Iron Age scholars have successfully used this approach (Hägg 1974: 88; Dickinson 2006: 88; Blackman 1997: 23). Larger, more formal cemeteries can be assumed to have been outside of habitation areas, while smaller, less formal plots can be taken to have been within or on the edge of these areas. Admittedly, Keith Dickey (1992: 122) notes that Morris conflates these two terms to an extent, but his criticism is not supported further. But where should the precise line between the two be drawn? Burials placed in close spatial proximity, usually in plots, have widely been considered evidence of familial burial during the Early Iron Age (e.g. Kurtz & Boardman 1971: 56; Snodgrass 2000: 195; Sourvinou-Inwood 1983: 44; Cavanagh 1991: 103). Nonetheless, cemeteries may have had some sort of loose kinship basis. In turn, it might reasonably be expected that the gender and age composition of familial burial spaces reflected that of the living household. Although the combination of adults and children may not conform to what is ‘typically’ expected of the family or household (cf. Kotsonas 2011: 131–4), this is explicable by the selective nature of human burial (Morris 1987). Selection must have been made from the household: it ultimately depended upon the timing and perhaps even the circumstances of the death itself, the status of the individual and the resources accordingly available for burial. Regarding size, little is known about the structure of the oikos (household) at specific sites and regions due to the problems with settlement architecture. Models based on Homer and Hesiod are likely to mask variation at the level of the region and the site. What evidence is available suggests that the familial unit was relatively small and probably nuclear. Small apsidal buildings are known at Argos dating to Early Geometric II from the area west of the South Cemetery (Courbin 1966: 162, n. 1; 1974: pl. 4; Coldstream 2008: 115) and dating to Late Geometric in the Photopoulos plot (KazaPapageorgiou 1980: 116–7, plan 9, pl. 39α). At Asine Late Geometric apsidal Building D and a Middle Geometric II apsidal house have been excavated in the Karmaniola area (Dietz 1982: 32–3, plan VIII, section 9, 7N, 18W; Mazarakis-Ainian’s 1997: 107, building

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D, fig. 222). A small rectangular building was also found nearby, which probably dates to Protogeometric (Mazarakis-Ainian 1997: 69; Dietz 1982: 45, fig. 37). Moreover, located on the ‘Geometric terrace’ at Kastraki was a small Late Geometric rectangular structure (Frödin & Persson 1938: 39–40; Wells 2002: 97–104, figs. 2–6, 9). Granted, more elaborate structures are attested at Corinth: an Early Protocorinthian house was constructed on the Geometric terrace at the south of the Sacred Spring and a further two Protocorinthian building complexes were located south of there (Williams & Fisher 1972: 145, 147; Williams et al. 1973: 3, fig. 1). However, it is possible that a nuclear family would reside in a compound expanded to suit an extended family and an extended family may be prevented from expanding their compound (Whitelaw 2001: 19). Moreover, since these examples occur towards the end of the period in question, it would be unwise to apply them to earlier periods. In light of these circumstances, it is perhaps safest to assume a conservative estimate of household size, particularly since most scholars date any substantial population increase to the 8th c. (now Morris 2005a, pace 1987; Snodgrass 1980; Osborne 2009: 42–4; Coldstream 2003: 20). Moreover, although research is in its infancy, living standards are unlikely to have been high, particularly prior to the 8th c. relative to later periods (Morris 2005b). Presumably if household size or structure had changed significantly it would be linked with population size and living standards. Estimates of nuclear household size have been suggested to be four-five individuals in crosscultural studies which have been applied to Aegean contexts (Laslett 1972: 53–4, 76, table 1.6; Gallant 1991: 22–6; Whitelaw 2001: 18). Accordingly, I suggest it is fair to draw the distinction for cemetery status at a minimum of seven to ten archaeologically visible contemporary burials. This would suggest command of a significant amount of resources in comparison to say two to three burials, fixing an upper limit above what could reasonably be expected to be the size of the domestic group and allowing a little leeway for variation in definition as recommended by Parker (1996: 11). It could be that a burial plot was drawn from the family or the immediate household whereas a cemetery, with its greater number of contemporary burials, drew on the wider community and therefore has broader implications for the belief system of the social group.

The Argolid On this basis, there is meagre evidence for cemeteries in the Argolid, where it is common to bury the dead in plots in use for much of the Early Iron Age. The most recent survey of the Late Bronze Age data noted that prior to the Submycenaean period, the tally of cemeteries in both the Argolid and the Corinthia fell by half in Late Helladic IIIC, dropping from 19 to eight (Cavanagh & Mee 1998: 95–6). None of these eight cemeteries continue in use during the Submycenaean period, though this requires qualification in light of recent research.

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At the Mycenaean chamber tomb cemetery at Deiras, Argos, all seven burials dated to the Submycenaean period by the excavators are in fact Late Helladic IIIC Late, except for the amphora burial in tomb XXIV, meaning there are no examples of Submycenaean burials on the floor of chamber tombs in the Argolid (Mountjoy 1996: 64, n. 87; Hägg 1987a: 208–9; Deshayes 1966: 53, pl. LVIII.1, 5, 6; 54, pl. LIX.1, 2). Submycenaean pots found in chamber tombs in the Profitis Elias cemetery at Tiryns have been identified with burials by Hägg (1974: 82, n. 319): graves V, VI, VIII, XVI (ac) (Rudolph 1973: 39, 44, 76–7, 115, fig. 28, pls. 18. 2, 3, 20.1, 2), however, no human bones have been discovered in conjunction with these vessels to substantiate this claim. Perhaps the last vestiges of transition from the Mycenaean period to the Early Iron Age are evident at Argos during the Submycenaean period, where a cemetery is attested in the Kouros plot. All the burials are made in cists, a rite also practised during the Mycenaean period (Lewartowski 2000) as well as the Early Iron Age. Fuller publication of this material supports Hägg’s original suggestion (1974: 28, 88) that these seven burials originally published by Alexandri (1963: 60, 62) were indeed a cemetery (Kanta 1975: 265–274, figs. 1, 2 10–23). In fact, there are only two clear-cut cemeteries at Argos. The earliest occurs in the Saïdin plot: seven graves were made during the Late Protogeometric: cist tombs 166, 167, 170, and 186, pot burials 165 and 169 and pit grave tomb 168 (Daux 1959: 762–4, figs. 18–19; Courbin 1963: 79, fig. 1). The exceptional discovery of nine Late Geometric enchytrismoi found in the Boulmeti plot (Piteros 1999: 137–8, fig. 2) may be the result of a series of sudden deaths. Elsewhere in the Argolid, it is widely accepted by specialists that some if not most of the 43 graves located within ca. 300 m2 on terraces IV-VI in the Lower Town at Asine were a Protogeometric cemetery (P. G. 1–41, P. G. 45, 46) (Frödin & Persson 1938: 129–39, figs. 110–126, 111A, 118A, 119A; Hägg 1974: 51– 2; Desborough 1964: 83; Lemos 2002: 158). And yet out of the 43 graves only four were dated by Desborough (1952: 205–6) to the Protogeometric on the grounds of containing fine ware (mainly Attic) pottery: P. G. 9, 18, 25–6. Graves P. G. 4, 5 and 24 contained Mycenaean sherds and P. G. 1 even contained a Middle Helladic vase in the grave beside the right shoulder (see Frödin & Persson 1938: 129–32, 134–5,137–8, figs. 111A, 115, 119, 121, 122, 124). I suggest it is safer to say that these graves may have followed a gradual pattern of development akin to that at Argos and other sites in the Argolid rather than exceptionally constituting a cemetery per se at Asine at this stage. Indeed, at Argos, and to a large extent the rest of the Argolid, there was a tendency for burial plots to develop over the course of several centuries and many generations. Eleven burial plots with graves in cists and pithoi from Argos and its environs span most, if not all of the Early Iron Age from the Submycenaean to the 7th c. in the northwest, central and southwest areas of the modern town [Table 1]. Seven of these plots occur in the northwest: 14 Protogeometric and Geometric graves were found west of Herakleous Street and 16 graves were discovered at the centre of the Petropoulou-Xambla plot, starting with two Submycenaean/Protogeometric Attic-

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style ‘trench and hole’ cremations extending at least to Middle Geometric. Eleven Late Protogeometric, Early Geometric, and Late Geometric burials were found in the Makris plot; five burials were made in the Phlessas plot during the Late Protogeometric and Late Geometric; six burials dating to the Protogeometric, Early Geometric I, and Late Geometric II were found in four cist tombs in the Saïdin plot. Of slightly shorter duration, five burials were made in the Protogeometric, Middle Geometric I, Middle Geometric II and Geometric (which may fill the chronological gap in Early Geometric) in the Alexopoulos plot. In west-central Argos, 15 graves dating to the Submycenaean to Middle Geometric eras were found in the Kazantzi plot. At southwest Argos, 12 Protogeometric to Late Geometric II graves were found in the plot located to the west of the South Cemetery. Eighteen dating to the Protogeometric to the 7th c. were made nearby in the Bacaloyannis plot and 12 in the Papaparaskevas plot (mostly cists) date to the Protogeometric to Subgeometric. Eleven graves of Early Geometric, Late Geometric-Archaic and Geometric date (probably made during the intervening Middle Geometric I and Middle Geometric II periods), were found in the Xentaropoulou plot. Just south of the main conurbation at Argos, a recently published burial plot of 28 graves developed over the course of the Protogeometric and Geometric periods starting in Submycenaean in the E. Kourou plot. Less precisely dated graves following a similar distribution pattern, even extending it to the west and south of Argos, tentatively support the idea of continuous use over several generations. Two Protogeometric graves were supplemented by seven Geometric graves at the Vlogiagi plot and ten tombs of Early Geometric, Middle Geometric I-II, Geometric, 7th c. and Archaic date have been found in the Papanikolaou plot. Five Early Geometric and Geometric graves were made in the Zervos plot and five more of Protogeometric and Geometric date to the west, in the Antonopoulou plot. Perhaps the four cists and three amphora burials of Geometric date and the two Late Geometric pithos burials dug at the southeast of the Boulmeti plot, comprised a gradually formed burial plot too (Pappi 2000: 183–4, figs. 25–28). To the northwest of Argos, five Protogeometric and Geometric graves were revealed in the Dagre plot, eight Protogeometric to Middle Geometric burials were found in the Manou plot and six Protogeometric and Geometric tombs are known in the Poulou plot. Although few details are available, Protogeometric to Geometric tombs with mounds were also noted in the Tselebatiotou plot. An additional plot of five Protogeometric and Geometric burials were found to the southwest of Argos in the South Cemetery area.

Dates

PG-G

SM-PG-MG

LPG-EG-LG

LPG-LG

PG/EG I-LG II

PG, MG I, MG II, G

SM-MG, incl. PG-EG trans.

PG-LG II

PG-7th c.

PG-SG

Location

W of Herakleous St

Petropoulou-Xambla plot

Makris plot

Phlessas plot

Saïdin plot

Alexopoulos plot

Kazantzi plot

W of South Cemetery

Bacaloyannis plot

Papaparaskevas plot

Courbin 1974: 65–8, 75–84; Charles 1963: 42; Coldstream 2008: 115

ADelt 54 B1 (1999): 142–3, 144, fig. 12

12 (mostly cists: 262, 263, 265, 266, 273– 278, 295, 296)

18 (cists: Ts 89, 90/1, 2 and 3, 106 1 and 2, 128/1 and 2, 129, 130, pithoi: Ts 101, 108, kraters: Ts 66, 131, pits: Ts 32, 124, amphora: T. 53, pyxis: T. 23)

BCH 91 (2) (1967): 844–846, figs. 25–34; Hägg 1974: 40–1, n. 126, 41

Courbin 1974: 34–7, 41–2, 45–62, pls. 3, 40: 1; Charles 1958: 281–3; Coldstream 2008: 118

11 (cists: Ts 1, 6/1 and 2, 14/1, 2 and 3, 37, Courbin 1974: 2, 12–22, 25–32, 35–6, pithoi: Ts 13, 25, krater: T. 38, hydria: T. 15) 38–40; Charles 1958: 277, 282; 1963: 62

15

ADelt 17 B1 (1961/2): 56–57, pls. 56, 57c, 5 cists (Geometric T. Γ may fill the chronological gap between PG T. B, MG I T. 58a; Coldstream 2008: 120 Δ and 2 MG II burials in T. A and T. Δ/2)

6 burials in 4 cists (Ts 164/1 and 2, 169, 171, 176/1 and 2).

4 cists (Grs 3, 4/1, 5 and one further burial) Alexandri 1960: 93, pl. 71α-γ, ε; BCH 85 (1961): 675, 678, figs. 9-11; Coldstream 2008: 113, 120

Coldstream 2008: 120; Alexandri 1963: 57–60, pl. 70 α- ε; Courbin 1966: 226

ADelt 53 B1 (1998): 112–4, pl. 64 α-ε, plan 2

16, incl. 2 SM-PG Attic-style ‘trench and hole’ cremations 11 burials in 6 graves (Grs. 1-6)

ADelt 47 B1 (1992): 91

Argos

Reference

14 (6 cists, 5 kraters, 3 further)

Tombs

368 Sam Farnham

Table 1: Burial plots in long-term use at Early Iron Age Argos (SM=Submycenaean, PG=Protogeometric, G=Geometric, EG=Early Geometric, MG=Middle Geometric, LG=Late Geometric, EPC=Early Protocorinthian, AR=Archaic). Where numbers or letters have been published for graves these have been noted. References: T=tomb; Gr = grave; ADelt=Αρχαιολογικό Δελτίο; AR=Archaeological Reports; BCH=Bulletin de correspondence hellénique.

SM, PG, G PG, G

EG, MG I-II, G, 7th c., AR 10 (cists: Ts 1- 6, 7a, pithos: 2 (unumbered) ADelt 26 B1 (1972): 192–4, plan 1 and a krater EG, G PG, G G, LG PG, G PG, LPG-EG, EG-MG, G

PG, G PG-G PG, G

SM, PG-LG II/SG

Kourou plot

Vlogiagi plot

Papanikolaou plot

Zervos plot

Antonopoulou plot

Boulmeti plot

Dagre plot

Manou plot

Poulou plot

Tselibatiou plot

South Cemetery area, E of Tripoleos St

SW of citadel

ADelt 55 B1 (2000): 165–7, figs. 3–4

ADelt 54 B1 (1999): 145

Pappi 2000: 183–4, figs. 25–8

ADelt 49 B1 (1994): 140

ADelt 25 B1 (1970): 155; Hägg 1974: 38

21 (cists: Grs 2–15, pithos: Grs 19–21, 24, krater: Gr. 22, pits: Grs 40 and 42)

Tiryns

5 (cists: Ts 2, 3, 4/1 and 2, pit: T. 1)

Graves with mounds

6 (cists: Ts 1, 2, 4–7)

Frickenhaus et al. 1912: 126, 128–131, fig. 1; Desborough 1952: 208; Hägg 1974: 80; Coldstream 2008: 115, 121 n. 2, 122, 131–2, 146)

ADelt 53 B1 (1998): 119–23

ADelt 28 B1 (1973): 95

ADelt 46 B1 (1991): 98, pl. 53δ

8 (cists: Ts 1, 3, 4, 9, pithoi: Ts 2/1 and 2, 8, ADelt 51 B1 (1996): 87–8, plan 1 amphora (handmade): T. 11)

5 (1 cist, 1 pithos, 3 pits)

7 cists, amphorae and pithoi

5 (cists Ts I, IV, V, pits Ts II, III)

5 (cist: Gr. V, pithoi: Grs I, II, VI, VII)

10 (cists: Ts 4, 5, other graves: Ts 11, 12, 14– ADelt 53 B1 (1998): 116–7, plan 3 16)

28 graves (cists: Graves 2–29)

11 (cists: Ts 3, 11, 13/1 and 2, 18/1, 2 and 3, ADelt 53 (B1) 1998: 111–2, 110 plan 1, 19, 20, 24, pithos: T. 16) pl. 63β

EG, G, LG-AR

Reference

Xentaropoulou plot

Tombs

Dates

Location

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Dates SM-LG

LPG, MG II, LG I, LG II

SM, PG, G

PG, G

PG, G

EG II, MG I, LG I, G, EPC

PG, 8th, 7th c.

Location

Phylaki courtyard

NE of citadel

170 m from Mycenaean acropolis opposite agricultural prison

W of citadel

W of citadel

Pronoia

East Cemetery

Reference

4 (incl. one in a larnax)

Troizen

14 (2 cists, 12 pithoi)

Nauplion

5 (cists: 1974/3, 1974/11/1, 1974/11/2, 2 pithoi)

9 (cists: Grs 6, 9, pithoi: Grs 1, 3, further pits and cists: Grs 2, 4–5, 7-8, 1 further grave)

46 (cists, pithoi and pits)

11 (cists: Grs 16, 18, pithoi: Grs 30, 33–36, amphorae (coarse): Grs 37-39, pit: Gr. 41)

AR 2010: 21

Charitonidis 1953, 1954, 1955; Coldstream 2008: 118, 125; Hägg 1974: 74, 105

BCH 99 (2): 613, 615, figs. 53-4; Papadimitriou 2006: 539–40

Gercke & Naumann 1974: 23–4, figs. 18–22

ADelt 35 B1 (1980): 124, pl. 41α

Frickenhaus et al. 1912: 120, 129, 132–4; dating: Desborough 1952: 208; Coldstream 2008: 120, 125, 131; Courbin 1966: 177

29 (cist: Grs I, V, VI, VII (2 burials), X, XV, Verdelis 1963; Coldstream 2008: 113, XVI, XVIII, XXII (in Gr. XXIII), XXIII, XXV, 118, 120, 131; Courbin 1966: 177 pithoi: Grs II, III/1 and 2, IV (2 burials), VIII/ 1 and 2, IX, XI, XII, XIV, pits: XIIIa, XIIIb, XXVIII (2 burials), XVII, pithos: XXIV)

Tombs

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The longevity of burial plot use at Argos is not contradicted elsewhere in the Argolid and there is strong evidence to support it further, even though the data are less plentiful. Admittedly, there were cemeteries at Late Geometric I-II Lerna, in the form of ten cist graves and five pithos burials discovered just to the south of Myloi (Caskey 1956: 171–2, pl. 48 a-h; Coldstream 2008: 125) and at least 12 Late Geometric burials were dug at Pronoia, Nauplion (Charitonidis 1954: 233–4, 239, figs. 1–4). However, these are largely unusual examples. Four instances of comparable longevity to the burial plots at Argos occur at Tiryns starting in Submycenaean or Protogeometric and ending in Late Geometric or the 7th c. Namely, the 21 graves located at the southwest of the citadel, the 29 burials in the Phylaki courtyard, the 11 burials found northeast of the citadel and 46 further graves dug opposite the agricultural prison. Less precisely dated examples from Tiryns are also known in the form of at least eight Protogeometric and Geometric burials located to the west of the citadel at Tiryns and in the south of this area five Protogeometric and Geometric graves were found (Aupert 1975: 613), implying that the later burials in this area signify continuity in burial plot use from an earlier date. Twelve pithoi burials dating to Early Geometric II, Geometric, Middle Geometric I, Late Geometric I and Early Protocorinthian forming a plot were also found at Pronoia, Nauplion and finally, four burials of Protogeometric, 8th and 7th c. date were found including a larnax burial in the east cemetery area at Troizen.

Corinth Conversely, at Corinth, it is clear that a cemetery emerged during Middle Geometric II in the North Cemetery (Salmon 1984: 34; Morgan 1998: 87; Dickinson 2006: 88; Coldstream 2003: 174; 2008: 461). The apparently five earliest Graves 14–16, 14B and 15B were surrounded by a peribolos wall (Young et al. 1964: 21–3). The choice of location seems to have had a bearing on the presence of a Middle Helladic tumulus reckoned to still be visible until the end of the Classical period (Rutter 1990: 455–8). Furthermore, it has been noted that the reopening of the North Cemetery as the first clearly defined burial area marked the start of a protracted move away from burial within settlement areas towards formal cemeteries at Corinth (Morgan 1994: 125; 1998: 87; 2002: 50). My charting of the chronological development of the cemetery from Middle Geometric II to Late Protocorinthian Transitional suggests that 110 burials were made in it during this timeframe (Farnham 2014: 84–8, 90–3).

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Performative implications What do the apparent differences in the locational distribution of burial between Corinth and Argos, and more broadly the Argolid, tell us about funerary performance in these areas during the Early Iron Age of Greece? On the face of it, the spatial placement of the dead in a single location outside of the settlement would have had a different processional dynamic to one where the dead were placed in a number of localities interspersed amongst the habitation areas. However, to fully understand the disparity, it is vital to consider what was actually transported to the site of burial during the procession. Indeed, there are further clear differences in the material culture deposited at Corinth and at Argos and the Argolid which have important implications for purification rituals. Using the methodology pioneered in my Ph.D. thesis, this variability is best demonstrated by used of both quantitative and qualitative analysis (Farnham 2014).

Pottery in graves A further striking difference between the two regions is the configuration of material culture deposited in the graves, the pottery in particular. Recently, emphasis has been placed upon considering the ceramic material deposited in graves as equipment used in the funerary ritual (Kotsonas 2008: 302–4; Dickinson 2006: 177; Papadopoulos 2005: 373, 375–6, 392–3). Following on from this, it is possible to quantify pottery by function in order to analyse distribution patterns between different contexts. It is useful to adapt a distinction used by Coldstream (2001) for the Early Iron Age pottery sequence at Knossos. Large, closed vessels such as the amphora, pithos and pyxis were probably used as containers for storage, fastpouring vessels are considered to be the hydria, jug and oinochoe, whereas slowpouring vessels were stirrup-jars that continued in use from the Mycenaean period, lekythoi and the less common alabastra; vessels used for consumption of food and drink were the skyphos, cup, kotyle, kalathos, plate and tray; the krater was used to mix wine and water (Coldstream 2001: 23–60; 2003: 416–7). The Late Geometric to Early Protocorinthian deposit of a well found beneath the eastern aisle of the Cryptoporticus of the South Basilica at Corinth, contained hydriai estimated to run into dozens of vessels 1 m deep from the bottom, confirming these vessels were indeed used to collect water (Weinberg 1949: 153–4). Moreover, the aryballos seems quite widely noted to have been a container for oil or unguent (Arafat 2006: 118; Roebuck & Roebuck 1955: 162; Hägg 1992a: 174; Coldstream 2003: 416). The number of pots found in burial contexts for a particular functional class can be divided by the total number of pots found in graves during that particular period to get a percentage. As Shennan puts it (1997: 23), a pie chart or circle graph converts absolute numbers to relative proportions by expressing the data as a percentage of the

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total. Similarly for bar charts, the benefits of percentages lie in the relative expression of the data in relationship to its broader context depending on the categories of classification used. Therefore, the data can be considered in terms of the sample from which it derives as opposed to as an arbitrary measure in absolute terms. Kotsonas (2011: 130–1) suggests, drawing on Orton (1993: 178–80) and Orton et al. (1993: 166– 7), that in the case of burial assemblages it is possible to use inferences on the composition of assemblages and the proportions of different types to draw comparisons over the composition of different assemblages. The preference in Argive graves from Late Geometric I onwards seems to have been to deposit vessels suitable for consumption of food and drink [Fig. 1], i.e. mainly skyphoi and cups and further bowls, which constitute over 50% of the vases deposited during the second half of the 8th c. with no significant change thereafter. At the same time, kraters constitute over 10% of the sample, which coincides with a decline in deposition of both fast- and slow-pouring vessels. Conversely, at Corinth the broad pattern is that while (mainly fast-) pouring vessels decrease, vessels related to food and drink consumption and mixing and water vessels increase until around Late Geometric or Early Protocorinthian, at which point they decline in favour of unguent vessels [Fig. 2]. My analysis further suggests that this took place against the backdrop of a much sharper reduction in the deposition of pottery in and outside graves in the Corinthia than in the Argolid [Fig. 3], latent in Dickey’s (1992: 100–8, esp. 104, fig. 5) general analysis of grave good numbers per grave. Thus, it may be reasonably concluded that, as the Early Iron Age progressed, there was more selectivity in terms of vessel types deposited at Corinth in relation to the Argolid.

Fig. 1: Pottery classified by function deposited in Argive graves during the Early Iron Age (after author).

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Statistical data require comparison with qualitative evidence regarding the context of discovery for a full understanding [Figs. 1–3]. For example, closer inspection of the burials’ archaeological contexts show that the rise in water pots from 4% in Middle Geometric I to 15% in Middle Geometric II signifies a new depositional phenomenon at Corinth during the latter period. Indeed, seven hydriai from Middle Geometric II graves 14–18 and 20, and less certainly an example from grave 19, were found beyond the northwest corners of the graves at a level higher than the burials themselves (Young et al. 1964: 21–2, 24, 26–8) and which probably functioned as grave markers (Farnham 2014: 210–2). Each of these hydriai was closed by ceramic skyphoi (14–2, 15–2, 16–10, 17–4, 18–7, 20–2) and, in grave 17, a bronze cup (17–10) was recovered within the skyphos (Young et al. 1964: 21–2, 24, 26–8). Grave 17 also yielded a large stemmed krater (17–3) that had been placed next to the hydria, while graves 32 and 47 both had kraters (32–1, 47–1) that stood at their southwest corners. In my view, the empty krater 43–1 (grave 43), recovered to the northwest of grave 41, is far more convincing as a marker for the latter than as a grave in its own right (contra Young et al. 1964: 34).

Fig. 2: Pottery classified by function deposited in graves at Corinth during the Early Iron Age (after author).

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Fig. 3: Mean number of pots placed in or outside graves in the Argolid and Corinthia during the Early Iron Age (after author).

Strikingly, the practice of placing pots used for water outside of the grave proper was not confined to the North Cemetery at Corinth. There are four possibly five comparable examples from the Lechaion Road Valley. A coarse hydria (no. 77) closed by a clay skyphos (no. 75) with a further bronze skyphos (no. 516) inside it, a pedestalled krater (no. 73) and a smaller krater (no. 74) were found outside Middle Geometric II grave D at the southwest corner (Morgan 1937: 543; Davidson 1952: 68, fig. 1; Weinberg 1943: 25–7; Coldstream 2008: 95–8). A coarse hydria (no. 82) yielding fragments of a bronze phiale with a pointed omphalos (no. 517) from the interior and at the exterior base was located at the northwest corner of the hardpan between graves A-B and F-G in the same burial plot. It seems reasonable to suggest a Middle Geometric II date for this group based on its proximity to graves F-G, the latter of which yielded a Middle Geometric II skyphos (no. 80) (Weinberg 1943: 28; Davidson 1952: 68, fig. 1; Coldstream 2008: 98, n. 1). Two examples of hydriai are known nearby, which were probably once comparable graves. A coarse hydria closed by a bronze bowl found to the west of Temple J should probably also be dated to Middle Geometric II on the basis of rite (see Dickey 1992: A-3). This grave was originally identified as a possible cremation burial, though careful sieving of the contents revealed no evidence of cremated bone (Williams 1970: n. 12, fig. 4; Stillwell 1936: 43; Weinberg 1943: 29–30, no. 86). It should be noted that a further Geometric phiale was also reported with pottery from near three cist graves in the Tsiotaki plot located near Korakou, ca. 5 km northeast of Corinth (BanakaDimaki 1981: 86).

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The profusion of hydriai in a rare use deposit of an Early Iron Age well at Corinth noted above and the fact that all these vessels both funerary and domestic are of coarse fabric, suggest that the significance of these vessels lies not in their appearance but in their contents. Following the use of the water contained in these vessels in mortuary ritual to clean the mourners, the vessels and their remaining contents were placed outside the grave as a reminder that the physical contagion of death had been purified from the living with sanctity. It is possible that those mourners who placed their dead in the North Cemetery had an even greater fear of death pollution and therefore wished to place their dead outside of where they lived in the settlement proper. More evidence from the settlement at Corinth can be cited in support of this argument. Given that Corinth abounded with natural springs (Landon 2003), the increase in the number of wells from four in Middle Geometric II to 11 (possibly 12) in the Late Geometric in central Corinth suggests that control of private water supplies intensified in this area between the two periods (cf. Farnham 2015). The disappearance of water pots from the burial record and the rise of kraters in Late Geometric suggests a progression in that the key use of water was now to mixing: kraters form 33% of the Late Geometric burial assemblage, quite a contrast with the 5% during Middle Geometric II. But mixing what? I suggest that kraters were now seen as the best possible means of ritual ablution in the North Cemetery at Corinth. Indeed, although a variant in form, the London Abduction Krater acquired by the British Museum (with a possible provenance near Thebes), Attic in style, dating to ca. 735 BCE, has recently been said to have been used for ritual bathing (Langdon 2008: 30–2). Moreover, pedestalled kraters with their large, high-footed bowls and thus ‘cauldronesque’ form, Subgeometric in date from Agios Ioannis in the Argolid have been identified as possible louteria and may, therefore, have functioned as receptacles for bathwater (Cook 1953: 33; Hägg 1987b: 96; for dating, see Coldstream 2008: 146, n. 5, 147, ns. 1, 4). The use of such vessels for bathing has also been suggested in the context of later cult activity at the Late Bronze Age Menidi tholos in Attica (Wolters 1899: esp. 132, 134). Importantly, however, this elaboration in ritual is borne out of these vessels being purposefully selected for use within the world of the dead by this point. Outside of the North Cemetery, there is only a single grave that is certainly Late Geometric in date at Corinth. A pithos grave found underneath the museum produced three Late Geometric pottery fragments yet the grave has clearly been disturbed so these sherds could have come from a settlement context (nos. W 103–105: Weinberg 1943: 35–6; Coldstream 2008: 98). Presumably the remains of purification were left in the location they were last used, since they were tainted beyond remedy and no longer fit for use in the world of the living. During the Protocorinthian period, deposition of material culture was focused on sanctuary sites that rapidly proliferated in the two regions during the 8th c. (Morgan 1994; Hägg 1992b; 1995). There is a preference for vast quantities of mesomphalic phialai in sanctuaries dedicated to Hera in the two regions suggesting that the

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significance of water was seemingly inspired by the purification practised at the graves of Corinth. The move away from burial in Corinth proper may even have had something to do with the settlement itself being considered too sacred for burial from Late Geometric onwards. Though still unpublished, it seems probable that cult activity had begun at the Peribolos of Apollo in central Corinth by this date. A remarkable sherd from the site depicting conjoined individuals identified with the Molione/ Aktoriones, alleged by Pindar to have been killed by Heracles near Kleonai (Coldstream 2008: 461; DeVries 2003: 145–7, fig. 8.3), along with the many Geometric sherds reported during the excavation campaigns of 1930 and 1931 (Stillwell et al. 1941: 4), probably signify cult activity from Middle Geometric II onwards. Moreover, Temple Hill on Corinth itself probably has a temple erected during the Middle Protocorinthian. Salmon (1984: 59–60) has convincingly reexamined the stratum of limestone chips used to date the temple to ca. 700 BCE and suggested Middle Protocorinthian as the date (see Robinson 1976: 211–2; followed by Coldstream 2003: 174). Although it is known that Geometric and 7th c. tripods (lebetes) were offered there, destruction of the site during the 6th c. has removed most evidence for votive practices (Morgan 1994: 138–9; Williams 1973: 136). Earlier precedents for the significance of water in burial have been found dating prior to Middle Geometric II in two Late Protogeometric and Early Geometric funerary contexts in the Corinthia, which offer an early precedence for the significance of water in funerary ritual. At the southeast of the site, in the Panayia Field, Early Geometric Grave 2003–12 had a ceramic pointed omphalic phiale located at the northeast corner of the shaft next to the corner of the sarcophagus lid (no. 33: Pfaff 2007: 481–2, figs. 27–8). Moreover, the presence of plain handmade aryballoi in separate parts of this grave—two in the grave itself (nos. 68 and 69) and three in the niche cut in the grave trench to the west with 11 other vessels (nos. 63–65) (Pfaff 2007: 488, 500–1, 506)— may be suggestive of a distinction between pots used to purify the mourners and those used to purify the corpse itself. The discovery of a lekythos (no. 58) closed by a kantharos (no. 59) and three oinochoai (nos. 54, 56–57) which may have themselves been closed by two one-handled cups and another kantharos respectively (nos. 60– 62), also within the niche (Pfaff 2007: 490), could imply that the vessels’ contents were now considered only suitable for use in conjunction with the dead. Additionally, 3.2 km west of Vello in the Corinthia two miniature hydriai were found joined by a hole mid-body with a join for a further hydria, part of an assemblage of 13 Late Protogeometric pots found by villagers probably coming from a grave (Weinberg 1943: 6–7; Desborough 1952: 203), demonstrating a further early significance for water in burial. The picture painted by such a precedent and arrangement of remains presents quite a contrast to that at Argos and in the Argolid. Indeed, the absence of similar trends in water use at Argos and in the Argolid has been noted and it is telling that kraters and hydriai were more commonly used as burial containers here during the Early Iron Age. At Argos burials in kraters during the Late Geometric periods are known as tomb 316 in the Kypseli District (Bommelaer &

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Grandjean 1972: 167, figs. 12, 14), tombs 38 and 43 in the South Cemetery area (Courbin 1974: 39–40), in the Karantanis plot on the Deiras col (Alexandri 1960: 93) and in five graves in the Boulmeti cemetery (Piteros 1999: 137). Moreover, tomb 15 was made in a coarse hydria in the South Cemetery area; although it is difficult to date precisely, it is probably of an Early Iron Age date since it was found on the same level as a nearby Protogeometric krater (Courbin 1974: 32). A salient aspect of Sourvinou-Inwood’s argument according to the spatial placement of the dead relevant to understanding the Argive material should be revisited in light of newly discovered data. She alluded to a Spartan law recorded by Plutarch as created by the mythical legislator Lycurgus that was alleged to permit intramural burial in order to familiarise young men with death in Classical Sparta (SourvinouInwood 1981: 36; 1983: 44). Archaeological excavation has shown that burial did indeed take place in and around Spartan settlement during the Archaic and Classical periods (see Christou 1964; Raftopoulou 1998: 135–6; Zavvou & Themos 2009: 116). The presence of the dead close to the inhabited settlement areas would mean that the living inhabitants were indeed more familiar with the presence of their deceased relatives. Despite it being noted earlier that architectural remains are in short supply, those available from the Argolid further emphasise the spatial closeness of the living and the dead. At Argos, there is a case of intramural burial of a Late Geometric tomb set in the corner of two Late Geometric walls in the east end of the Agora (Aupert et al. 1978: 783) [Fig. 4]. Moreover, in the area west of the later South Cemetery, the Early Geometric II apsidal building (Coldstream 2008: 115) is cited adjacent to Early Geometric II cist tomb 37, whereas tomb 14 situated ca. 15 m to the north was first used for the burial of an adult female perhaps during Early Geometric I, and tomb 15 located to the east of the apse may date as early as the Protogeometric (Courbin 1974: 27–32, 38– 9; Charles 1958: 277). [Fig. 5] Furthermore, at Asine probably two Late Geometric burials in cist graves B3 and 4 have been found within the remains of a Late Geometric house in the Levendis sector on Barbouna Hill (Hägg & Hägg 1978: 106, 120, figs. 98–9; Mazarakis-Ainian 1997: 107).

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Fig. 4: Late Geometric tomb set in the corner of two Late Geometric walls from the east of the ancient Agora, Argos (after Aupert et al. 1978: 781, fig. 15).

Sacrifice It could reasonably be expected that the performance of purification of physical contagion emanating from the dead could also be achieved through animal sacrifice, as appears to be the case in sanctuaries (Isaakidou et al. 2002: 86; Forstenpointner 2003). We might also recall the classic and widely cited mythological example of Orestes’ purification for killing his mother Clytemnestra using the blood of a piglet that has been attested to archaeologically in later periods (Shapiro 1994: 146–7; Parker 1996: 139, 386–8). Specifically in death, given the arguments propagated by Morris (1987: 187–94; 1989) and Sourvinou-Inwood (1981; 1993) it seems sensible to ask whether animal sacrifice followed by consumption of the carcass can be identified in cemeteries as a means of purification. Young et al. (1964: 17–8, 24–6, 29) note that of the sealed Geometric graves at Corinth, large quantities of charcoal were sometimes found with animal bones in the area of the skull or in the upper half of the grave and associated this with graveside consumption and animal sacrifice. However, evidence of such nature is restricted to two Middle Geometric II burials here, graves 17 and 19 (Young et al. 1964: 28). At Argos, the Late Protogeometric Saïdin plot

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cemetery yielded animal bones found in an irregularly shaped pit filled with lumps of grey clay, charcoal, bowl sherds, a kalathos, a krater, a pithos and fragments of handmade pottery; at the bottom of the pit fragments of a large handmade vase with a flat base and burnt bone were found beneath a red and yellow layer (Courbin 1963: 71–2, fig. 8). In the cemetery at Pronoia, Nauplion, burning was noted on the animal bones and an accompanying aryballos from pithos grave XX and on a further aryballos from Late Geometric grave XXVII (Charitonidis 1954: 232–3, 239). Conversely, there is no evidence at all for the practice of sacrifice in the Late Geometric Argive cemetery at Lerna (see Caskey 1956: 171–2, pl. 48 a-h; Coldstream 2008: 125). The presence of comparable evidence coming from burials not located within cemeteries suggests that this was not a diagnostic feature of cemetery use in the Corinthia or the Argolid. Further examples of floral and faunal remains are concentrated in the Argolid, where in earlier periods they appear more suggestive of conspicuous consumption reminiscent of sphagia rather than purification per se. At Tiryns, the head and skeleton of two cows and a small and large dog were found with Protogeometric pithos grave 3 to the west of the Mycenaean town (Gercke & Naumann 1974: 24, fig. 20). At Argos, a pile of charred grain was found in each of Late Protogeometric tombs 150 and 151 from the Saïdin plot (Roux 1957: 656). Burnt organic remains were also noted in a Late Protogeometric to Early Geometric cist tomb in the Livaditis plot near the OTE building (Deilaki 1970: 182). A burnt flat bone of Late Geometric II (7th c.) date was found in tomb 106 at Argos (Courbin 1974: 53), though in a broader context this seems to be an exceptional case of mirroring the burning of the ‘gods portion’ i.e. the inedible bit, in a burial context. In the Rebelou plot, a large pit containing Late Geometric sherds and Argive monochrome vessels, animal bones and evidence of burning has been excavated in an area of Geometric tombs (BarakariGleni 1998: 126–8). Asine has produced two special features associated with three tombs and two likely finds of animal bones in the burials located in the Lower Town. Close to the northwest end of P. G. 25 was found a staghorn embedded in a layer of fire remains and ashes (Frödin & Persson 1938: 134–5, fig. 119). 0.20–0.30 m below the east end of P. G. 29 was a thick layer of ashes situated next to a large stone with a flat upper side (Frödin & Persson 1938: 136). Similarly, although dating is problematic, burnt bone and charcoal were reported in a pithos grave located ca. 120–150 m southwest of the Phylaki Courtyard at Tiryns (see Verdelis 1963: 53–4, pl. 22, fig. 1).

Conclusion This comparative study has suggested that purification rituals at sites of funerary performance were more multifarious than previously realised and in the process it

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has highlighted significant regional differences between the Argolid and Corinthia. In Corinth, the use of water as a purification agent for the living was followed by the spatial placement of vessels outside the grave acting as a memento of physical purity, perhaps even to be used in future in conjunction with kraters used as lustral basins in a cemetery during the Late Geometric. The performative aspects of purification ritual also seem related to an increasingly sacred settlement at Corinth from the Late Geometric onwards. Conversely, in the Argolid (where most of the data comes from Argos), long-duration burial plots and vessel types suitable for the consumption of food and drink were preferred throughout the course of the Early Iron Age. Evidence of animal sacrifice was not found to be a diagnostic feature of cemetery remains since such evidence is not restricted to cemetery contexts, although the most interesting examples come from the Argolid. In these respects it is not surprising, therefore, that Argives were prepared to handle their dead in the practice of multiple burial, while this is not attested in the Corinthia (Farnham 2014: 144–75). Whether these disparities signify wider evidence of changes in the perception of the cosmos, as once argued by Morris (1989: 316–20), requires concomitant study of the evidence from sanctuaries. Indeed, I have noted the presence of vessels associated with liquids outside graves at Corinth and the subsequent presence of phialai and the use of water in sanctuaries following the Middle Geometric II (Farnham in press). Perhaps in such a sense, the answer to understanding this aspect of performance more deeply lies in at least considering the practical possibility of several diverging and intersecting stages, which grants a fuller understanding of the subject ‘in the round’. However, further study is now required on a more systematic level to advance archaeological study of pollution and purity and the broader issues of sanctuary performance.

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Fig. 5: Plan of the area west of the South Cemetery at Argos during Early Geometric II (after Courbin 1974: pl. 2).

Acknowledgements: I am grateful for the opportunity to submit a paper to this volume and wish to thank Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and Michael Boyd for the chance to do so. Special thanks are also due to my supervisors Bill Cavanagh and Hamish Forbes for their support and encouragement during my Ph.D. from which this study arises. I appreciate two years of funding from the AHRC as part of a Block Grant Partnership with the University of Nottingham. I thank Prospect Books for help with referencing. Needless to say any remaining errors are mine alone.

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BIOS Emily Miller Bonney is professor at California State University Fullerton. She received her Ph.D. in Greek and Roman Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 1983. She studies the art and culture of Bronze Age Crete and in particular Early Bronze Age mortuary practices. Her work emphasises the role of the materiality of tombs, pottery and other artefacts as agents in the process of negotiating social roles and constructing the environment. She is interested in archaeological theory, landscape studies, material production as cognition and the importance of the local in understanding the past. She has published articles on Minoan archaeology and Incomplete Archaeologies: Assembling Knowledge in the Past and Present (2015, with K. Franklin and J. Johnson). Michael J. Boyd is senior research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. He received his Ph.D. in archaeology from Edinburgh in 1999. He has worked widely in Greece (at Keros and surrounding sites, Phylakopi, Plataiai, Corinth, Iklaina, Philippi, Palaikastro, and Dorati) and in Bulgaria near Nikopolis ad Istrum. He is co-director of excavations on Keros and survey on Naxos and Kato Kouphonisi, assistant director of the Keros Island Survey, and co-editor of the Keros publications series. His publications include Middle Helladic and Early Mycenaean Mortuary Practices in the Southern and Western Peloponnese (2002), Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World (2015, with C. Renfrew and I. Morley), Early Cycladic Sculpture in Context (2016, with M. Marthari and C. Renfrew), Early Cycladic Sculpture in Context from Beyond the Cyclades: Mainland Greece, the North and East Aegean (in prep., with M. Marthari and C. Renfrew), as well as several papers on Mycenaean funerary practices. Bill Cavanagh is professor emeritus at the University of Nottingham. He received his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of London in 1977. His research has focused on three main areas: field archaeology, the archaeology of death, and mathematical applications to archaeology. His work in the field has concentrated on Laconia, Greece, and most recently the excavations at Kouphovouno. His publications include a multitude of papers on funerary practices, as well as The Bayesian Approach to the Interpretation of Archaeological Data (with C. Buck and C. Litton, 1996), The Laconia Survey: Continuity and Change in a Greek Rural Landscape, Vol. I (1996, with P. Armstrong), A Private Place: Death in Prehistoric Greece (with C. Mee, 1998), The Laconia Rural Sites Project (2004, with C. Mee and P. James), and Sparta and Laconia: From Prehistory to Pre-Modern (2009, with C. Gallou and M. Georgiadis). Maria Chountasi is an independent scholar who has worked for over a decade in the Greek Archaeological Service. She took a Ph.D. in prehistoric archaeology from the University of Thessaloniki in 2011. Her research focuses on religion in ancient and modern societies, in particular performance and ritualistic events, aspects of experience, physicality and the subconscious, and the interpretation of archaeological material with a special emphasis on architecture, utilising a postmodern and anthropological approach.

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Anastasia Dakouri-Hild is lecturer at the University of Virginia. She took her Ph.D. in Classical archaeology from the University of Cambridge in 2004. Her interests include Boeotian archaeology, performance and the politics of identity, and digital technologies. Her publications include Autochthon: Papers Presented to O.T.P.K. Dickinson on the Occasion of his Retirement (with S. Sherratt, 2005) and Beyond Illustration: 2D and 3D Technologies as Tools for Discovery in Archaeology (2008, with B. Frischer). She is preparing The House of Kadmos at Thebes, Greece: the Excavations of Antonios D. Keramopoullos (1906-1929), Vol. I: Architecture, Stratigraphy and Finds, the republication of the Theban cemeteries (with V. Aravantinos and Y. Fappas), and Public Archaeologies of the Ancient Mediterranean. Oliver Dickinson is reader emeritus and honorary research fellow at Durham University. He took his D. Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1970. He taught in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University from 1976 to 2005, covering Greek art, archaeology and history. He specialises in the Middle and Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of the Aegean, with particular emphasis on the origins and development of Mycenaean civilisation. His publications include The Origins of Mycenaean Civilisation (1977), The Aegean Bronze Age (1994), The Aegean from Bronze Age to Iron Age (2006), and A Gazetteer of Aegean Civilisation in the Bronze Age, Vol. I: the Mainland and Islands (1979, with R. Hope Simpson), and a multitude of papers on the cultures of prehistoric Greece. Sam Farnham is an independent scholar and former secretary for the Centre for Spartan and Peloponnesian Studies at the University of Nottingham. He received his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Nottingham in 2014. His research focuses on the quantification of objects and their interpretation in relation to their contexts of discovery in order to illuminate patterns of behaviour in the archaeological record. He has used his novel methodology to shed light on regional archaeologies in comparative perspective and in the archaeology of food and drink. Yannis Galanakis is lecturer, director of the museum of Classical archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow and director of studies at Sidney Sussex College. He received a D.Phil. in Aegean archaeology from Oxford University in 2008. He is former curator of the prehistoric Greek collection and the Sir Arthur Evans archive at the Ashmolean museum (2007-2012), where he prepared ‘The Aegean World’ among other exhibitions. His research focuses on Late Bronze Age burial practices and monumental funerary architecture. He has published extensively on the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age, the history of archaeological research and antiquities trade. He is involved in the publication of Late Bronze Age tombs from Thessaly, Messenia and Crete. His publications include the first companion guide to the Ashmolean’s Aegean collections, The Aegean World (2013). He is currently preparing a monograph, The Antiquities Trade in 19th-Century Greece. Kate Harrell is an independent scholar and adjunct professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Polk State College. She received a Ph.D. in archaeology and archaeomaterials at the University of Sheffield in 2010. She has previously held postdoctoral positions at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgian American Educational Foundation, 2012-2013) and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Jacob Hirsch research fellowship, 2010-2011). Her research focuses on bronzes,

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particularly weaponry, with a focus on the social history of violence in the Mycenaean world. She has published a number of articles on the Mycenaean Shaft Graves, including in the American Journal of Archaeology, and has recently edited Thravsma: Contextualising Intentional Destruction of Objects in the Bronze Age Aegean and Cyprus (2016, with J. Driessen). Angélique Labrude is an independent scholar affiliated with the University of Strasbourg, UMR 7044Archimède. She received her Ph.D. in ancient history jointly from the University of Strasbourg and the University of Genova (2014). She has written and presented widely on mortuary practices in Crete and the Aegean world from the Late Bronze Age to Classical times, and is currently preparing Funerary Dynamics and Identity Affirmations in the East of Lasithi from the Fourteenth to Fifth Century B.C. Anna Lagia is a research associate at the Institute of Biological Anthropology of the University of Freiburg and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago. She also studied anthropology at the Universities of Sheffield and Bradford (MSc.), and conducts research in mortuary archaeology, paleopathology, and economic history in relation to biocultural studies. She has published articles in scientific journals and edited volumes on the manifestation of diseases on the human skeleton and the appraisal of living standards based on diet and health in populations of the Greek mainland spanning the Bronze Age to historical times. Chris Mee † was professor emeritus at the University of Liverpool. He took his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of London in 1975. He served as editor of the Annual of the British School at Athens and assistant director of the School. He specialised in the prehistory of Greece and directed excavation and survey projects in Laconia and on the Methana peninsula. His publications include Rhodes in the Bronze Age: an Archaeological Survey (1982), A Rough and Rocky Place: the Landscape and Settlement History of the Methana Peninsula, Greece (1997, with H. Forbes), A Private Place: Death in Prehistoric Greece (1998, with B. Cavanagh), Greece: an Oxford Archaeological Guide (2001), The Laconia Rural Sites Project (2004, with B. Cavanagh and P. James), Cooking Up the Past: Food and Culinary Practices in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Aegean (2007, with J. Renard), and Greek Archaeology: a Thematic Approach (2011). Ioanna Moutafi is senior research associate at the M. H. Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She received a Ph.D. in bioarchaeology from the University of Sheffield in 2015. She specialises in the excavation and analysis of human remains from the prehistoric Aegean, and her research is focused on social bioarchaeology, investigating the social dimensions of prehistoric mortuary practices. Her scientific approach employs an integrated multidisciplinary methodology that brings together archaeological theory and current advances in biological anthropology, forensic science, funerary taphonomy, and archaeothanatology. The sites she has been working on include Keros, Amorgos, Apollo Maleatas, Epidauros, Kirrha, Ayios Vasilios, Voudeni, Amfissa, Prosilio and Glyka Nera. Raphaël Orgeolet is assistant professor at Aix Marseille University. He received his Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Montpellier in 2008. His research has focused on social change mani-

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fested in different aspects of material culture, such as architecture, settlement organisation, administrative and funerary practices. He has been mainly involved in Aegean Neolithic and Bronze Age field research projects, including Kouphovouno and Malia. He is now co-director of the Kirrha excavations project (Phocis, Greece). He has published several articles on prehistoric Aegean architecture, including villas at Akrotiri and Minoan Crete. Nikolas Papadimitriou is curator of antiquities at the Museum of Cycladic Art and has also worked at the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus (2011-2012). He received his Ph.D. in ancient history and archaeology from the University of Birmingham in 2000. His main research interests include the Aegean Bronze Age, with an emphasis on Mycenaean state formation, funerary rituals as forms of symbolic communication, the archaeology of Attica, Mediterranean interconnections and prehistoric technologies. He is currently involved in the study of the prehistoric tumuli of Marathon (Attica) and the Mycenaean cemetery of Deiras, Argos. He has published Built Chamber Tombs of Middle and Late Bronze Age Date in Mainland Greece and the Islands (2001), Ancient Cyprus. Cultures in Dialogue (2012, with D. Pilides), and How Were they Made? The Materials and Manufacturing Techniques of Ancient Artefacts (2015). Kalliope Sarri is a 2015-2017 Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research, University of Copenhagen. She obtained her Ph.D. in archaeology at the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory of the University of Heidelberg in 1998. She specialises in Aegean prehistory, with a particular interest in prehistoric pottery, settlement patterns and burial customs. Her other scholarly interest concerns textile archaeology: she currently investigates the textile technologies during the Aegean Neolithic, a research project supported by the European Union. Her publications include Orchomenos IV: Orchomenos in der mittleren Bronzezeit (2010) and a series of articles on the Middle Bronze Age in the Aegean. Ilse Schoep is lecturer at the Catholic University of Leuven and co-director of the Sissi excavations, Crete. She obtained a Ph.D. in archaeology from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1996. After being a research fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO-Vlaanderen, 1997-2005), she has lectured on Bronze Age archaeology in Italy and Greece, as well as iconography and archaeological theory. Her interests include Aegean script and seal use, the genesis of the Minoan ‘palaces’, funerary practices and social archaeology. Her publications include The Administration of Neopalatial Crete: a Critical Assessment of the Linear A Tablets and their Role in the Administrative Process (2002), Monuments of Minos: Rethinking the Minoan Palaces (2002, with J. Driessen and R. Laffineur), and Back to the Beginning: Reassessing Social and Political Complexity on Crete During the Early and Middle Bronze Age (2012, with P. Tomkins and J. Driessen). Despoina Skorda is ephor emeritus of the 10th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, former director of the Archaeological Museum of Delphoi and director of the Kirrha excavation in collaboration with the French School of Archaeology. She has excavated for many years in Phocis and the Delphoi area, and has published a number of articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings.

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Peter Tomkins is research associate at the Sheffield Centre for Aegean Archaeology and temporary lecturer at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He specialises in integrated ceramic characterisation and his research addresses questions of technology, identity and social evolution during the Aegean Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, particularly on Crete. He directs the Knossos Kephala Project, which seeks to relate and interpret the subsurface (i.e. Neolithic, Early Minoan and Middle Minoan I) remains from the Palace Hill at Knossos through the integration of archival, artefactual, geophysical and architectural data within a GIS environment. His publications include Escaping the Labyrinth: the Cretan Neolithic in Context (2008, with V. Isaakidou), and Back to the Beginning: Reassessing Social and Political Complexity on Crete during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (2012, with I. Schoep and J. Driessen). He is currently preparing Knossos Kephala I: Neolithic Knossos Stratigraphy, Phasing, Architecture, Spatial Development and Finds. Aleydis Van de Moortel is Lindsay Young associate professor of Classics at the University of Tennessee and co-director of the Mitrou archaeological project in Greece. She took a Ph.D. in Classical and Near Eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College in 1997. Her main research interest is the emergence and decline of complex societies in the prehistoric Aegean, and the role of craft production in periods of societal change. She is currently studying the Middle Helladic to Protogeometric stratigraphy and architecture of Mitrou for publication, and is co-editor of the multivolume Mitrou publication series (in preparation). She is also working on the publication of Bronze Age pottery from the Minoan sites of Malia and the Kamares Cave, and researching ancient and medieval ships and seafaring. Giorgos Vavouranakis is assistant professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He earned his Ph.D. in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Sheffield in 2002. His research interests include Aegean prehistory and archaeological theory. He directs the publication project of the Minoan tholos tomb B at Apesokari and co-directs the excavation of the Prehistoric and Classical Plasi at Marathon. He has published Funerary Landscapes East of Lasithi, Crete, in the Bronze Age (2007) and Image and Archaeology: the Case of Prehistoric Architecture (2015, in Greek). He is editor of The Seascape in Aegean Prehistory (2011) and author of more than 40 papers in co-authored volumes and journals. Julien Zurbach is assistant professor at the École normale supérieure, Paris. His took a Ph.D. in history at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense in 2008. He specialises in Mycenaean epigraphy, Mycenaean archaeology, and ancient economic and social history, including land distribution and exploitation from Mycenaean until Archaic times. He is currently working on Miletus in the Late Bronze Age and co-directing the renewed Greek and French excavation at Kirrha (Phocis). He has edited Mobilités grecques: Mouvements, réseaux, contacts en Méditerranée, de l’époque archaïque à l’époque hellénistique (2012, with L. Capdetrey), and La main-d’œuvre agricole en Méditerranée archaïque: Statuts et dynamiques économiques (2015).

Index Achaea 159–162, 318 Aegina 317, 324 age-at-death 188, 198 Aidonia 159–160, 162 Anatolian 324 Antheia 159–161 Apesokari 6, 253–270 Aphidna 118, 125, 325, 337 archaeothanatology 5, 231–232, 235–236 architecture 1–7, 11–24, 33, 36–38, 40–42, 44–48, 51–53, 57, 72–75, 78, 89–91, 102, 104–106, 108, 117–118, 121–122, 126, 129–131, 155–158, 161–170, 182–185, 187, 227, 255, 257, 261–262, 265–266, 270, 275–276, 278–279, 284–285, 287, 289–290, 297, 299, 304–305, 307–310, 335, 345, 364, 378 Argolid 7, 107, 122, 127, 131, 147, 159, 162, 168, 198, 220–222, 300, 305, 309, 319, 325–326, 336, 338, 341, 345, 361–362, 364–366, 371–373, 375–378, 380–381 Argos 123, 127–130, 159, 168, 221, 300, 325, 327, 336–339, 341–345, 351–352, 364, 366–368, 371–372, 377–382 Asine 123, 125–126, 130, 134, 159, 221, 300–301, 325–327, 337–339, 363–364, 366, 378, 380 Aspis 126–127, 129, 221, 327, 342, 351–352 Asterousia 254, 256, 275, 280, 289 Atalanti 107, 324–325 Athenian Agora 125, 318 Attica 125, 158–159, 301, 307, 318–319, 336, 338, 340, 363, 376 Avlonari 319 Ayios Kosmas 318, 322–323, 329 Ayios Stephanos 128, 319, 321, 328 Barrett, John 57–58, 84, 229 beads 104, 106, 319, 323 body 2, 5, 13–14, 18, 22–24, 36, 38, 60, 62, 73, 79–81, 105, 130, 142, 187, 197–199, 207–208, 211, 215, 218–220, 231–235, 237–239, 246, 265, 285, 323, 325, 335, 363 – dismemberment 215 Boeotia 131, 159, 164, 307, 319–320, 336, 338 bone relocation 198, 218 bone tubes 323

Bronze Age – Early 132, 150, 209, 212, 275–276, 319, 337, 353–354 – Middle 89, 118–119, 121, 126–128, 133–134, 150, 167, 207–209, 215, 219–220, 253, 276, 336–338, 340, 344, 349, 351–356 – Late 5, 7, 89, 96–98, 155, 157–158, 160, 162–168, 170, 181–182, 208, 220, 310, 335–337, 345, 349, 351, 354–356, 365, 376 built chamber tomb 94, 100, 102–108, 340–342, 345, 352, 354 burial – adult 7, 126, 184–185, 192, 318, 327, 353 – chamber tomb 63, 68, 74, 76, 79–81, 94, 97, 99, 107, 157, 159–162, 166–170, 198, 215, 278, 318–319, 322, 328–330, 335, 340–342, 345, 349, 352, 354, 356, 366 – child 4, 118–119, 121–122, 125–128, 130–132, 182, 184–185, 192–195, 198–200, 214–216, 238, 240–242, 265, 300–301, 303–307, 318, 320–321, 324, 326–328, 342, 353–354, 356, 364 – cist 38, 41–42, 46, 79, 93, 98–102, 106, 108, 118–119, 123, 125, 127–128, 133, 182, 184–185, 187–195, 198–200, 212, 215–217, 221, 254, 275, 303, 305–307, 318–322, 324, 326–329, 335, 338, 340, 342, 353–355, 366–371, 375, 378, 380 – collective, see multiple – commingled 185, 187–190, 192, 195, 197, 199, 216–218 – contracted 192, 212, 214, 221, 238–239, 318, 320, 323, 326, 329 – extramural 7, 21, 99, 126, 182, 198, 215, 326–328, 335, 337–340, 342, 352–356, 362 – individual 106, 198, 319–321, 328–329 – infant 121–123, 126, 128, 132, 182, 184–185, 187, 193–195, 198–200, 207, 214, 219, 238, 318, 320, 323–324, 327, 337, 351, 354 – intramural 3–4, 98–99, 117–119, 121–123, 125–133, 298, 300, 317, 320–321, 324, 326–329, 335–339, 342, 351–355, 362, 378 – jar 98, 118–119, 123, 125–129, 142, 184, 237–238, 265, 319–320, 324, 326–327, 353, 355, 367, 369–372, 376, 380 – multiple 7, 182, 185, 200–201, 215, 220, 230, 238, 269, 319–322, 324, 328–329, 337,

396

Index

340–342, 344–345, 347–349, 352, 354, 381 – ossuary 188, 192, 200, 216–217, 219, 236, 262, 265, 287, 302, 319, 322 – pit 39, 49, 78, 82, 98, 106, 118, 123, 125, 127–128, 131, 133, 142–143, 145, 148–150, 184–185, 187, 189, 192, 195–196, 198–200, 210–219, 230, 262, 265, 267, 302–305, 308, 318–324, 326, 328–329, 335–336, 338, 345, , 353, 355, 368–370, 380 – pithos, see jar – plots 98, 100–101, 307, 365, 367, 371, 375 – primary 39, 44, 64, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193–195, 197–201, 213, 232–243, 245–247, 264–265, 284–285, 289–290, 323 – secondary, second 5, 8, 39, 41, 44, 64, 71–72, 82–83, 149, 181–183, 185, 187–189, 191–201, 207–208, 216–220, 232, 234–237, 239, 241–247, 259, 265, 276, 284–285, 290, 318, 322–323, 325, 328–329 – single, see individual – strategies 65, 118, 265, 283, 297–298, 304 – tholos 6, 11, 21, 62, 67, 72–73, 76–79, 104, 107, 139–140, 142, 144–151, 157, 159, 161–162, 167–170, 198, 215, 230, 253–265, 267–270, 275–276, 280–284, 286–290, 328, 335, 340–341, 345, 347, 349, 353, 376 cemetery 3, 5, 7–8, 11, 13, 19, 21, 24, 59, 63, 65, 67–72, 78, 82–83, 98–102, 105, 108, 117–119, 122–123, 125–134, 159, 161–162, 167, 170, 182, 184–185, 198, 215–216, 218, 220–221, 227–233, 236–247, 267, 276, 280, 287, 297, 299, 301, 303–306, 308, 317–330, 335–342, 344–345, 348, 352–354, 356, 362, 364–371, 375–376, 378–382 – flat 338–341, 344–345 Cheliotomylos 320, 323 commemoration 7, 37, 182, 198, 279, 299, 307, 323, 325, 329–330, 340 communitas 34–36 community 6, 11, 22, 34, 42, 51, 60, 63, 74–75, 90, 99–100, 105, 108, 117, 133–134, 151, 167, 201, 207–208, 218–220, 254–255, 260, 265, 269, 275–281, 284–287, 289–290, 298–301, 303–304, 321, 323, 329, 340, 344, 346, 361, 365 contextual analysis 1, 122, 183, 187

Corinth, Corinthia 7, 82, 127, 130, 134, 184, 320, 345, 361–362, 364–365, 371–377, 379–381 Crete 1, 5–6, 82, 90, 97, 109, 140, 149, 151, 157, 159–160, 163–164, 167, 169, 227, 231, 237, 240, 253–254, 256–257, 260–261, 264– 265, 269, 275, 280–281, 297–304, 309– 310, 348, 361, 363 Cyclades 128, 164, 318, 320 Cycladic 318, 323 death 1–2, 8, 11, 20–22, 36, 53, 60–61, 83, 89–91, 99, 102, 121, 134, 146–149, 151, 155, 170, 197–198, 200–201, 207–208, 215, 218, 227, 232–233, 256–257, 262, 275–276, 278, 307, 349, 364, 366, 376, 378–379 deathscape 3, 5–7, 219, 297 Delpriza 319–321, 324 Dendra 104, 141, 150, 159–161, 345 Dimini 96–97, 119, 123, 338 Dodecanese 82, 160, 164, 169 Drachmani 325, 337 Elaphonisi 319 Eleusis 7, 123, 125, 130, 193, 216–217, 308–309, 336–342, 345, 353 Elis 162, 318–320, 338, 340 emotion 4, 14–15, 18, 22–23, 33–38, 47, 51–53, 121, 133, 182, 199–201, 346 Epidauros 318 Euboea 89, 108, 128, 300, 307–308, 317–319, 324 Eutresis 121, 129, 131 feasting 4, 6, 17, 20, 22, 150–152, 220, 260, 265–266, 286, 350 field anthropology 183, 199, 208, 232 fields of action 3, 8, 57–59, 62, 83–84 fields of discourse 57 figurines 18, 22, 101, 107, 323 ‘frying pans’ 323 funerals 3, 13, 58–66, 68, 70–72, 74–75, 78, 81–83, 106, 117, 141, 155, 167–168, 170, 207–208, 215, 219–220, 260, 279, 285, 307–308, 344–345, 347 Gla 164 grave goods 94, 106, 108, 127, 131–133, 141, 148–149, 151, 184–185, 195, 215, 217, 220,

Index

238, 284–286, 290, 318, 320–321, 323, 325–330, 373 gold 39, 79–81, 104–106, 142, 148–149, 239, 319–320, 342, 347–348 Grotta-Pelos 318 Helladic – Early 7, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125–126, 130–134, 164, 184, 317–320, 324–327, 329, 352–353, 35 – Middle 3, 5, 7, 68, 71, 89–91, 95, 97–101, 104, 108, 117–123, 125–129, 131–134, 140–141, 147–148, 150–151, 164, 167, 181–185, 187, 193, 195, 198, 200, 207, 209–210, 213–222, 317, 319, 324–330, 335–340, 342–345, 347–349, 351–356, 366, 371 – Late 4–5, 67–68, 72, 79–81, 89–109, 119, 122, 132–134, 139–141, 146–151, 159, 161–169, 182–185, 187, 193, 195–196, 198, 200–201, 207, 216–217, 219, 221, 299, 305–306, 328–330, 335, 337, 339–345, 347–356, 365–366 house-tomb 236–237, 239, 242, 246, 275 identity 4–5, 35, 90, 100–101, 108–109, 133, 199, 201, 255, 277–279, 285, 297–298, 301, 307, 310, 340, 342, 344, 346, 350 intentional destruction 4, 7, 139–152, 297, 308 intentionality 17, 183, 208 Ithaka 317, 319 jewellery 61–62, 71, 105–106, 142, 319, 342, 347, 349 Kadmeia 126, 307, 327, 354, 356 Kakovatos 145–147, 341 Kalamaki 318–320, 330 Kalapodi 96–97 Kalkani 68–69, 345 Kallithea Spentzes 159–162, 169 Kambos 319 Kamilari 263–264, 267, 269–270 Kaminia 67, 69, 341 Kastroulia 130, 134, 325, 337–338 Kea 108, 318 Kirrha 5, 121, 123, 129–130, 181–202, 216 knife 80, 143–145, 255 Knossos 3, 33–53, 96, 98, 168, 267, 303–304, 372

397

Kokla 168, 341 Kolonna 104, 108, 324 Kouphovouno 5, 207–221, 327 Laconia 5, 68, 102, 128, 198, 207, 319, 327, 341 landscape 1–8, 11–14, 16–17, 19, 21–25, 63–64, 66–70, 72–73, 83, 89, 91, 98, 101, 107–108, 117, 162, 181–182, 201, 218–219, 257–258, 260–262, 269–270, 275–278, 281–287, 289–290, 297, 299, 305, 309, 336, 340, 342, 361, 364 – embodied 11, 14 Lefkandi 7, 300, 308–309, 324 Lefkas 317, 319, 324–325, 338 Lerna 121–123, 126, 129–130, 132, 164, 195, 210, 216–217, 220–221, 324–327, 337, 358, 371, 380 Lianokladi 119, 124, 129 libation 20, 22, 326, 345, 347 liminality 13, 20, 34, 36, 44, 51, 257 Lokris 3, 89, 99, 107, 300 Malia 163, 169, 267, 303–304, 309 Manika 318, 320, 322–324, 329 Marathon 125, 216, 317, 337–341, 344 materiality 5, 8, 12, 14, 16, 20, 227, 231, 257, 260, 289 memory 6, 14, 15, 18–19, 21, 53, 64–65, 100, 108, 132–133, 181, 200–201, 240, 255, 260, 276–280, 286, 289, 297–299, 306–307, 344, 346, 349–350 – topophilia 17 Mesara 247, 254, 256–257, 259, 261–262, 264, 267, 269, 275 Messenia 66–67, 128, 133, 147, 159–160, 198, 325, 328, 336, 338, 341, 345 Minoan – Early 227, 233, 237–239, 241, 246, 253–254, 256–267, 269, 281, 283, 286–290 – Middle 5, 39, 48, 227, 229–230, 237–246, 253–254, 261–267, 269, 287, 290, 303 – Late 3, 37, 39, 41, 48, 163, 167–169, 253–254, 299, 302–305 Mitrou 3, 89–109, 300, 342 mnemoscape 5, 22, 200, 276 multisensory, kinesthetic 6, 14, 33, 53, 278, 284, 289 Mycenae 6, 68–69, 76–77, 96–97, 104, 107, 109, 127, 147, 156–157, 159–162, 168, 170,

398

Index

201, 220, 250, 305–307, 309, 324, 328, 336, 338, 340–342, 345, 347 Mycenaean citadels 89, 305–307

Protopalatial 6, 253, 255, 261–262, 264–266, 269, 303 purity 7, 18, 361–382

Neolithic 7, 117, 121, 130, 132, 155, 157, 209, 212, 231, 240, 278, 280, 282–283, 317–318, 320, 326, 352 Neopalatial 6, 41, 140, 253, 265, 267, 269, 299, 302–304 Nichoria 66–67, 69, 145–147, 149–150, 363

radiocarbon 210, 220–222 reburial 82, 183, 185, 187, 189, 195, 197, 208, 215, 217, 221, 284–285 residential area 181, 339, 342 ritual 3–8, 11–13, 17–22, 33–42, 44–49, 51–53, 58–59, 65, 70–72, 74–75, 82, 84, 89, 106–107, 150–152, 167, 181–183, 199–200, 207–208, 213, 218–219, 229, 231–233, 239, 241–243, 245–246, 253, 260, 262, 264, 269, 275–276, 278–281, 284–290, 298, 302, 305–309, 318, 322–326, 328–330, 335, 340, 344–350, 361–363, 372, 376–377, 380–381 – killing 307–309, 313, 379 road 3, 38, 89, 91–92, 95–99, 101–103, 105–108, 131 Routsi 79, 144, 146–148, 151, 337, 342 Royal Tomb 3, 33, 37–38, 41–46, 48–51, 53

Old Elis 318, 320 Olympia 325 Orchomenos 118–120, 123, 129–131, 170, 338 palettes 323 Papoulia 325, 337–338, 342, 344 Pavlopetri 319 Pelikata 319 Pellana 68, 161 Peloponnese 4, 99, 106, 139–143, 147, 149–151, 159–160, 162, 164, 168, 192, 198, 318, 321, 326, 338, 363 Perachora 319, 321 performance 1–3, 6, 11–13, 15–19, 21–24, 33–38, 41–42, 44–45, 47, 49, 51–53, 57, 59, 63, 65, 72, 75, 83, 84, 89, 91, 96, 146, 148, 167, 169, 170, 182, 187, 199, 217, 253, 259, 276, 278–280, 283–284, 286–287, 289–290, 299, 307, 340, 344, 346, 350, 361, 363, 372, 379–381 Peristeria 107, 130, 144, 146, 337, 341, 347 Phaistos 253–254, 256, 260–261, 266–267, 269–270, 304 Phocis 5, 96, 181, 184, 325 Phthiotis 109, 324 place – ancestral 6–7, 22, 133 – archaeology of 2, 11, 16, 298 – interplace 2, 17, 24 pollution 7, 8, 18, 361–382 posthumanocentrism 253–255, 269 Prepalatial 6, 89–91, 96, 98, 105–108, 253, 256–257, 259–262, 264–266, 269 procession 3, 7–8, 17, 22, 37, 41–42, 44–46, 48, 62, 64–72, 74–75, 78, 82–83, 96, 105, 155, 168, 278, 305, 345–346, 350, 372 Prosymna 79, 127, 130, 168, 215, 338, 341–342

sacrifice 22, 33, 140–141, 150–152, 326, 379–381 sauceboat 320 scale 14, 18, 20, 73, 75–76, 78, 82 Schlachtmesser 142–146, 148, 151 skeletal 8, 183, 189, 195, 197, 199, 207, 215, 217–219, 230–237, 239–243, 245–247 social space 335–336, 342, 350 Strephi 319 sword 4, 62, 70–71, 104, 140–152 Temple Tomb 3, 33, 37–40, 42, 44, 46–47, 51, 53, 267 tempo 3, 57–59, 61, 65–66, 79, 83 Tharrounia 318 theatricality 3, 18, 89, 96, 108, 284, 305 Thebes 96, 126, 130–131, 134, 159–160, 162–163, 165, 168, 198, 307, 313, 318–320, 325–327, 336–339, 354–356, 359, 376 Thessaly 82, 99, 133, 159, 181, 195, 300–301, 326, 338 tiles 156, 163–166 time since death 197 Tiryns 6, 96, 125, 147, 156, 168, 305–307, 309, 320, 366, 369, 371, 380

Index

toast, toasting 20, 22, 58, 82–83, 286, 288, 290 transformation 6, 9, 13, 15–16, 18, 35–36, 53, 57–58, 61, 63, 65, 70, 73, 81, 83, 149, 151, 158, 169–170, 181–183, 198, 200–201, 218, 227, 230, 246–246, 255, 260–262, 265–267, 269, 276, 283–284, 287, 297, 299, 301, 304, 307, 309, 339, 342, 346, 350, 352, 363 tripods 140–141, 151, 245, 377

Tsepi 317–318, 322–323 Vapheio 79, 104, 146, 148, 345 Voidhokoilia 132, 147, 325, 338, 342, 345 Voudeni 72, 82, 159–162, 170 Vouliagmeni 319–321 Yerokambos 6, 275–290 Zygouries 319, 321

399