Tumulus-burial in Albania, The Grave Circles of Mycenae, and The Indo-Europeans

Abstract

In my recent bookEpirus, published in June 1967, I have dealt with the finds from the tumuli of North Epirus at Vajzë, Vodhinë, Bodrishtë, and Kakavi which were excavated in 1954 and 1955 and reported in Albanian in theBuletin per Shkencat Shoquërore(referred to hereafter asBUSS) 1956, 1. 180 ff.; 1957, 2. 76 ff.; and 1959, 2. 190 ff. It was in 1963 that I first heard of this journal and late in 1964 that I obtained an offprint of the Vajzë report through the kindness of the excavator, Professor Frano Prendi. He dated the tumuli and their contents to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and to the early centuries of the Iron Age, but I have advanced the view in my book that the earliest of these tumuli and the earliest burials in such tumuli date to the Middle Helladic period. When this went to press in December 1964, I was able to publish also a few objects from the tumuli of the Mati valley which were illustrated in the same journal for 1955, and appeared to be of Middle Helladic date but had been dated by the excavator to the end of the Bronze Age at the earliest. Late in 1965 I was sent by Professor Frano Prendi a copy of a new Albanian periodicalStudia Albanica, no. i of 1964. Here the same dates were given for the tumuli of North Epirus and of the Mati valley but reference was made for the first time in my experience to a Middle Helladic dating of tumuli and of objects which had been found at Pazhok. This material was too late to be included in my book. As the evidence at Pazhok is conclusive for the Middle Helladic dating, I give a summary of the brief report, which this time was in French, and I reproduce the illustrations which were not of a high standard. The reports of all these excavations have escaped the notice of scholars in the western countries, so far as I am aware. The Pazhok report runs as follows (with my numbering of paragraphs and a few comments).