Group Of Tombs Research Articles

The Reconstruction of Two Apulian Tomb Groups. By Andrew Oliver Jr.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Reconstruction of Two Apulian Tomb Groups. By Andrew Oliver Jr.Herbert HoffmannHerbert Hoffmann Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 74, Number 3July 1970 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/503116 Copyright © 1970 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Reconstruction of Two Apulian Tomb Groups

The Reconstruction of Two Apulian Tomb Groups

A Late Minoan Tomb at Palaikastro

A preliminary report of this tomb, dug by Bosanquet in 1902, appeared in BSA viii. 303–5, where it was termed the ‘Beehive Tomb’. This was a misleading term for what was in fact a rock-cut chamber tomb with a dromos. The contents of the tomb listed in that report were not subsequently published in full, although individual items have since been considered of sufficient importance to merit especial attention by scholars. It seems, therefore, worth while to publish all the surviving items of this interesting tomb group, and to re-examine the L.M. IIIA 2 early date assigned to it by Furumark.

The Palace at Knossos: A Matter of Definition and a Question of Fact

First, it is hardly correct to say that not a single vase of the Palace Style was stratified inside the Palace building and to imply that such vases were mainly found elsewhere. Fragments of Palace Style vases were found, for instance, in the 8th magazine (BSA 6 [1900] 25), the 9th, ioth and neighbouring magazines and just outside the W wall of the Palace (BSA 7 [1901] 38 & 51), and many fragments in the NW Palace angle where they had clearly fallen from an upper room inside the building (PM IV 359-360). And without recourse to the material in the Stratigraphical Museum, we may add to the find places within the building, the Room of the Spiral Fresco (PM III 25), the area of the Shrine of the Double Axes (PM II 334) and the E light-court of the Hall of the Double Axes (PM III 330). In fact most of the Palace Style jars which were restored, apart from the tomb groups, come from inside the Palace, principally from upper rooms above the W magazines, from which they had fallen, some into the magazines and some just outside the Palace wall.4 It is unfortunate t at Evans frequently used such imprecise expressions as NW Palace Borders and W Palace Borders in describing this material. It was not the absence of Palace Style jars within the Palace which Evans found it difficult to explain; on the contrary, it was the lack of smaller vessels to go with them. This is the context of one of the references cited by Mrs. Vermeule (PM IV 353); another does not refer to Palace Style jars at all but to ritual chalices in precious metals (PM IV 359). Nor is it correct to say that no single Palace Style vase was stratified within the Palace walls unless we are considering intact vases only. In fact it was the close observance of the stratigraphical position of sherds of Palace Style vases which enabled Evans to correlate this style of pottery with the Palace destruction and to differentiate the period of destruction from that of the reoccupation. A precise account of the stratigraphy in some of the W magazines is given in BSA 7 (I90I) 37-38, and these observations are related to the reoccupation vases in pp. 12-13 of the same report. The Palace Style sherds found in the E light-court of the Hall of the Double Axes, already cited above, were stratified below LM IIIB.

A Tomb Group of the Fourth Century B. C. from the Area of Morgantina

Previous articleNext article No AccessArchaeological NotesA Tomb Group of the Fourth Century B. C. from the Area of MorgantinaR. Ross HollowayR. Ross Holloway Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 67, Number 3July 1963 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/501377 Copyright © 1963 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Lamps from Tharros in the British Museum

The necropolis of the city of Tharros in Sardinia has been extremely prolific in tomb furniture, and many lamps have been found there. Over forty lamps from this site are in the collections of the British Museum. All were acquired at the same time, and most of them were said to be from tomb groups. The groups containing lamps are Tombs 1–10, 12, 16, 18–19, 22, 26, 30–31, 33, 60–63, 65–71 (the tomb numbers for the whole collection run from 1–33, 50–57, 60–63, and 65–71; there are thus several gaps in the sequence).The great majority of the British Museum lamps from Tharros are of Athenian manufacture and with the recent publication of Howland's book on lamps from the Agora these can be dated very accurately. But unfortunately such is the indeterminate nature of the tomb groups themselves that these lamps cannot be used to date the objects said to have been found with them. As will be seen in the brief descriptions given below in the Catalogue, many of the objects found in a given tomb are in almost impossibe chronological juxtaposition to one another, and few tomb groups, if any, can be regarded as homogeneous (except perhaps the Roman tombs 50–57 with glass cinerary urns and brittleware pottery, which, being lampless, do not concern us here). But looking at the objects from the tomb groups with lamps as a whole, one might put forward the following remarks.

The Overland Route across Anatolia in the Eighth and Seventh Centuries B.C.

An overland route by which oriental merchandise and ideas were transmitted to the Ionian Greeks via the Anatolian plateau and the river valley routes of the west was long ago posited by Hogarth, and supported by Karo, Barnett and others, although there was little evidence from central Anatolia to confirm it. More recently this route was virtually discounted in favour of a sea route from N. Syria, especially Carchemish, through the port of Al Mina, to Greece and Etruria, via Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete, discussed by Sidney Smith, Humphrey Payne, Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop and others, which is assumed to have been at its height in the earlier eighth century; and Barnett has also shown the importance of a third route, from Azerbaijan to Trebizond and west via the Black Sea, for which the main evidence, a tomb group from the Caucasus, is probably later seventh century.It is clear that the second of these three routes carried the bulk of Oriental trade to Greece and the west. Undoubtedly the most important Orientalizing influences on Greece, as shown by Payne, were those from the Cypro-Levantine cultural province, and there is ample evidence of the exchange of pottery, terracottas and ornamental bronzes of Cypriot and Phoenician production between the Syrian coast, Cyprus, Rhodes, Samos, Miletus, Chios, Delos and the west.

Early Iron Age tombs at Knossos: (Knossos Survey 25)

This group of tombs lies about 50 metres south-west of the main Knossos–Herakleion road, immediately opposite the new Sanatorium. Here in the autumn of 1953 Mr. David Smollett, then engaged in making the map for the Knossos Survey, noticed some large sherds which had been thrown into a rubbish pit on the edge of a small patch of ground newly ploughed for a vineyard (Plan, Fig. 1, a). The vineyard lay on the top of a slight knoll behind the café on the west side of the road. The knoll had until this time been occupied by a threshing floor, and was pointed out by the local inhabitants as the site of the ‘Tomb of Caiaphas’. But the great Roman concrete-built tomb traditionally known as the ‘Tomb of Caiaphas’, was really, it appears, on the main road some metres away to the north-west (Knossos Survey 23): it was destroyed about 1880 when the road was built.The sherds recovered by Mr. Smollett, some of them large and freshly broken from fine Geometric vases, made it seem likely that there was a disturbed tomb of that period in the area. Permission was therefore sought, and readily granted by Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, to explore the field before it was planted with vines. Trials led to the discovery of three small collapsed chamber tombs, all apparently Iron Age in date, cut in the soft kouskouras rock. The tombs clearly belong to the same complex as tombs L, Π, and TFT which have been published by Brock in Fortetsa (1957). They stood in a row with their entrances facing south towards Knossos. Two isolated burials (Plan, Fig. 1, b, c), extended on their backs with their heads to the west and feet to the east immediately below the surface of the field, may be Roman or later; there was a bent iron nail by the left hand of burial c. The knoll with the tombs lies near the western edge of the big Roman cemetery which covered the region now occupied by the new Sanatorium (Knossos Survey 35).

Megalithic and Other Art: Centre and West

The occurrence of designs cut on the stone walling slabs of certain prehistoric tombs in Central Germany has led from time to time to a search for comparisons, even prototypes, in the mural art of megalithic tombs in Atlantic Europe. Within recent years, some new observations and discoveries of considerable interest have been made principally as a result of a re-excavation at the well-known Lohne (Züschen) megalithic tomb near Fritzlar, and through the excavation of a tumulus on the Dölauer Heide near HallelSaale (FIG. I).The first of these monuments is a large, megalithically constructed, collective tomb with a long rectangular chamber entered through a port-hole slab which is set between the main chamber and a short ante-chamber. The whole monument is set in a trench so that the roof was approximately at ground level. This is one of a group of such tombs in Hesse; there is a neighbouring group in Westphalia, and these are related both to a group in Sweden, and, more particularly, to the classic tombs of this type in the Paris Basin (SOM). The Dölau tumulus is something quite different, for in it, amongst other things, has been found a stone-constructed grave for only one individual. The wall and cap-stones are of moderate size but not megalithic, and the grave can be likened in various respects to some three other stone-built graves, all in the Halle district, and of which the best known was that found at Göhlitzsch with its representations of bow, quiver, and battle-axe, cut, with other decoration, on the wall faces.

Inscriptions in the Libyan Alphabet from Ghirza in Tripolitania

Ghirza is the site of a Roman frontier settlement in the pre-desert zone of Tripolitania in North Africa, 5 miles south-west of the confluence of the Wadi Ghirza and the Wadi Zemzem, 80 miles from the coast of the Gulf of Sidra and 150 miles (in a straight line) south-east of Tripoli. It is best known for its two groups of monumental tombs decorated with rough sculptured reliefs showing the life of the inhabitants; but it is also notable for other antiquities, and especially for its ‘town’ of fortified farmhouses, clustered together on the edge of the wadi.

Notes on some distinctive types of bronzes from Populonia, Etruria

The weapons from Populonia and Vetulonia have been the subject of an admirable study by Signora Tallochini and I am most grateful for her help when I was working in the Archæological Museum at Florence, where I was afforded every facility for studying the bronzes from these sites.Tomb 7 at Piano delle Granate, Populonia, an inhumation ‘fossa’ grave contained the bronze dagger (fig. 1, no. 1), a fibula with slightly thickened round bow, a bronze ring, fragments of bronze nails and bronze hooks, and fragmentary remains of the bows and pins of fibulas. There was no pottery. The description and contents of the tomb are published in Notizie degli Scavi, 1917, p.76 and also in A. Minto, Populonia: la Necropoli arcaica, Florence, 1922, p. 64. This tomb was one of a group of ‘fossa graves’ excavated in 1915 and situated close to the seashore on the flat area known as Piano delle Granate. When I visited Populonia in 1953 it was still possible to locate the tholos tombs and the fossa graves, which, with many cremation burials, were found all over this area, in spite of the thickness of the ‘macchia’ often entirely covering the tombs. An examination of the relative position of the chamber tombs and fossa graves certainly confirmed Minto's conclusion based on a study of the contents of the three different kinds of burials, that the cremation, fossa and some of the earliest type of chamber tombs must all have been used contemporaneously. This group of tombs when excavated also yielded the series of stilted fibulas and the fibula ‘a serpegiante’ (fig. 2).

Four Tomb Groups from Jordan. By G. Lankester Harding.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsFour Tomb Groups from Jordan. By G. Lankester Harding.Karl KatzKarl Katz Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 60, Number 1January 1956 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/500096 Copyright © 1956 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Archaeology in Cyprus, 1953

There was no excavation in Neolithic or Chalcolithic sites, but a notable event was the publication of the report by P. Dikaios on his excavations in the mainly pre-pottery settlement at Khirokitía, in which he reviews the relationship and chronology of the cultures preceding the Early Cypriot. A new site of the Erimi stage was located at Palaiómylos near Ayios Thomas by surface finds, including a headless andesite idol of fiddle shape, now in the Limassol Museum.Bronze AgeFurther material from the Kafkála cemetery between Dhenia and Akaki reached the Cyprus Museum through confiscation of pottery looted in the south area, where the tombs are relatively small and poorly furnished. It includes some good red polished II and III and also black polished pottery. With the sponsorship of the Department of Antiquities and the assistance of Mr. G. R. H. Wright of the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, Mr. Justice Griffith-Williams undertook the excavation of two of the large looted tombs in the north part of the cemetery. These proved to be Middle Cypriot, and yielded large quantities of fragmentary but restorable white painted pottery. A small intact Early Cypriot II tomb group was excavated in the south area as part of the same operation. At Onísia near Dikomo a Middle Cypriot cemetery was brought to light by cultivation and one tomb with typical furniture, including some bronze weapons, was excavated by the Department.

Pottery from Eretria

Most of the material published in this study is at present housed in the National Museum at Athens or in the museum at Eretria. It was excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service and under the direction of Kourouniotes over the period of years 1897–1917; annual reports were published in PAE. The vases which Kourouniotes published in AE 1903 and the black figure amphorae published by Laurent in AE 1901 were taken to Athens, together with all the complete subgeometric and orientalising grave amphorae and a number of other fragments now in an apotheke of the National Museum. The remainder, mainly sherds, was left in a small museum at Eretria. Unfortunately the pottery in Eretria has suffered in the course of time. No record of provenance has been kept and tomb groups are confused; complete profiles are hard to find as many plain fragments of body or foot had been thrown away or have since been lost. Much also had not been thoroughly cleaned, hence the hitherto unnoticed inscriptions on the archaic amphora (no. 17, p. 43 below).

Italic Tomb Groups in the University Museum. By Edith Hall Dohan.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsItalic Tomb Groups in the University Museum. By Edith Hall Dohan.George M. A. HanfmannGeorge M. A. Hanfmann Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 48, Number 1January–March 1944 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/499230 Copyright © 1944 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Neolithic Culture of the Hebrides

The publication of Dr Daniel's last essay on the typology of British chamber tombs seems to make it desirable to offer such a note as present circumstances allow on the writer's excavations in the Hebrides, subsequent to the publication of his papers on the Rudh' an Dunain tomb in Skye and the Clettraval tomb in North Uist. For to Dr Daniel the Hebrides are something of a mystery, and a good deal of an embarrassment, lying as they do between the Clyde group of tombs and the groups of Caithness and the Orkneys, and yet not playing the part that could be desired in any line of typo-logical development. To Dr Daniel the area is one of mixed culture but the explanation, though it may be true, is a little like a confession of uncertainty—a little like the late M. Reinach's ultimate explanation of Glozel. Fresh facts would, it is felt, be welcome.

Mycenæan Origins and Chronology

THE beehive tomb or tholos at Mycenas known as the “Treasury of Atreus” is one of the most important monuments of the Bronze Age in Greece, and the finest example extant of Mycenæan architecture. Its significance in the reconstruction of the course of development of the early civilization of the eastern Mediterranean was further emphasized when Sir Arthur Evans, on the evidence of a beehive tomb then recently discovered in Crete, attributed the Treasury of Atreus to a Minoan derivation, assigning it to an earlier date than that generally accepted and making it the archetype of which other and inferior beehive structures at Mycenæ were degenerating derivatives. This conclusion ran counter in particular to the results of excavations in the dromos, the walled passage approach to the Treasury, carried out by the British School of Archæology at Athens in 1920–23. On general grounds and in view of their numerical distribution, the beehive tombs might well be, it seemed, a product of the Mainland or Mycenæan civilization, while the excavations pointed to a date not later than 1350 B.C. This date harmonized with a logical and natural evolution in architectural development which emerged from study of the three groups of beehive tombs.

Part I. The Third Kilometre Cemetery

In 1899 during his excavations Tsountas found three rock-cut chamber tombs (Tomb 102, the Fig Tree Tomb, and another, fig. 1) on the west side of the carriage road just to the south of the Treasury of Atreus. In 1904 Bosanquet published the goldwork and other small objects from Tomb 102, together with one of the vases. It is to be hoped that Tsountas will soon be able to publish the rest of the pottery of that tomb and the contents of the others. In 1921 we made trial trenches on the slopes on both sides of the road, and found three similar rock-cut chamber tombs, the positions of which are shown on the accompanying sketch plan, fig. 1. As these tombs lie on either side of the third kilometre stone of the road, we have for the sake of convenience called this the Third Kilometre Cemetery to distinguish it from the other groups of tombs that surround Mycenae. Tombs 502 and 504 were both excavated in 1921; Tomb 505 was begun in 1921 but, owing to difficulties caused by the dangerous state of the doorway, the chamber was not completely cleared till 1922.

Some Recent Acquisitions at Toronto

A catalogue of the Greek Vases in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, has recently been published. A number of vases have been acquired recently, too late for inclusion; and it seems desirable to publish here the more important of these additions as nearly as possible simultaneously with the catalogue. They are as follows:(a) A Geometric Tomb Group from Athens (PI. VI. figs. 1–4)All the objects in this group come from a single grave, in the neighbourhood of Athens. They consist of six egg-shaped vases, two pyxides, two ‘flower-pot’ vases, a fluted glass bead, a loom-weight, a decorated bronze ‘sail’ fibula, and two bronze pins.The following is a description of the objects:1. Egg-shaped vase with lid. Accession No. C. 1033. Height without lid, 0·111 m. (4⅜ ins.); with lid, 0·162 m. (6⅜ ins.). Diameter, 0·099 m. (3⅞ ins.). Two string-holes in rim, four in lid, two on either side. Decoration on lid of broad and narrow bands with double row of dots near the edge. Concentric narrow bands on knob handle. On the body, main decoration is a maeander pattern, with a chessboard pattern below, and at intervals narrow bands, zigzags, and upward-pointing ray pattern. On shoulder and point of base, a broad band.

Early Greek Vases from Knossos

The vases to be discussed in this paper come from two separate excavations at Knossos: the greater number from two tombs excavated by Sir Arthur Evans in 1907, the rest from one of several tombs which I excavated three years ago. The three tombs in question lie a little less than a mile to the north of the Palace, at the foot of the western slope of the hill known as Zafer Papoura (cf. Fig. 1); they are cut into a low bank, immediately to the right of the footpath as one goes from Makry Teichos to Isopata, and are marked in Fig. 1 by a black bar. A glance at the map will shew that this group of tombs is in the same straight line as the group which was excavated by Hogarth in 1899. Hogarth's tombs are at the foot of a rather higher bank which is obviously part of the same formation. There is, however, a break between the two banks, and as the greater part of it is covered by a vineyard it is impossible to tell precisely how closely the two groups of tombs are connected. But even if there is an empty space between them, it is certain the history of the two groups of tombs is the same.