Death and Burial in the Bronze Age Aegean

Abstract

Death and burials have featured prominently in discussions of Bronze Age Greek society since the inception of the field. The reason behind this is twofold: (1) Early archaeologists prioritized the excavation of tombs and palaces over other types of sites; and (2) Tombs frequently contain a thesaurus of well-preserved array of artifacts such as pottery, but also luxury items, such as gold, semi-precious stones, and bronzes, which contribute to our reconstruction of many aspects of ancient life. Early publications of the tombs tended to focus on a catalog of artifacts and assumed that there was a direct correlation between the tombs and the community. In the last forty years the way in which the tombs and their contents have been studied has shifted to a more dynamic relationship between the tombs, their contents, and the related society. There are several different common tomb types used throughout the Bronze Age (BA) in Greece. Burials in pits (simple sub-rectangular hole) and cists (simple dug holes but some have walls) are found sporadically throughout the BA; intramural burials (burials inside houses) tend to be limited to Early (EBA) and Middle Bronze Age (MBA) on the mainland; tumuli (a somewhat semi-spherical shaped mound of earth that was built over burials or that burials were placed in) also date to late Early Helladic (EH) and Middle Helladic (MH) on the mainland; with the exception of the MH II example on Aegina, shaft graves (large rectangular pits with the sides of the pit lined with built walls) have only been found on the mainland and date predominantly to MH III/Late Helladic (LH) I—II; house tombs (built rectangular tombs) have only been found on Crete in the EBA and MBA; tholos tombs (built tombs with circular plan and sometime with added rectangular rooms; larger in the Late Bronze Age) date to EBA and MBA on Crete and the Late Bronze Age (LBA) on Crete, the mainland, and the islands; chamber tombs (cave like tombs dug into the side of hills) date to EH II on Euboea and LBA I–III on Crete, the mainland, and the islands. Most of our data from tombs comes from Crete and the Peloponnese although recent studies have focused on tombs in the Dodecanese and central and northern Greece. Skeletal remains from the tombs have been understudied, but recent endeavors are rectifying this pattern and are adding to our understanding of the gender division in the tombs and differential access to food resources.