The materiality of performance in Mycenaean funerary practices

Abstract

The performance of funerary ritual is one of the hallmarks of the Mycenaean period. The materiality and performative aspects have often been lost in typologies and classificatory approaches concerned with the identity and status of the dead. This paper focuses on the roles of material culture in the spectacle of performance of funerary rites. Strategies for engagement with mortuary processes through material culture are highlighted in the preparation of the corpse, the procession to the tomb, and the production of the interment context. It is argued that two different aspects of death are reconciled during the funeral. The earlier stages emphasise the subject of the funeral. The processes of interment and incorporation of the corpse within the reorganised context of the tomb emphasise the transformation of the individual characteristics of the dead, completed by later rites which incorporated the bones of the dead among the collective material of the tomb.