Bases Teóricas Procesales

Introduction

Graves and the material from them provide the greater part of our informa-tion about the whole period covered by this book, from the Collapse onwards. Traditionally their evidence has been used mainly in discussing whether types of burial and artefact, as reflected in the grave-goods, are evidence for the supposed movement of population groups into or within the Aegean in this period, and in estimating the relative wealth, external connec-tions, and sometimes population size of the communities to which the graves belong. More recent attempts to utilise analyses of cemeteries and grave-goods to throw light on processes of social development, particularly at Athens, during the EIA (Morris 1987; Whitley 1991a) represent a welcome change from old preoccupations, but have produced some highly critical reactions, which indicate that these studies are vulnerable to criticism on methodological grounds, quite apart from critics’ doubts about the appro-priateness of their theoretical approaches and the historical conclusions drawn (see Papadopoulos 1993 generally, especially 187–8 for citations of reviewers’ criticisms of Morris, and reviews of Whitley by Shennan in Antiquity 66 (1992) 276–7, Morgan in JHS 113 (1993) 206–7, and Morris in AJA 91 (1995) 157–9). Nevertheless, they raise important questions about the significance of changing patterns of funerary ritual in different periods and regions, and Morris has focused attention on what is one of the most fundamental questions in any discussion that makes use of the evidence of burial customs: what proportion of the population do archaeologically retrieved burials represent?

This question had barely been considered in the context of the EIA before Morris’s work. The tendency was simply to assume that the small numbers of burials recovered reflected a small population. The possibility that a section of the population was socially excluded from using archaeologically detect-able types of burial was considered by Snodgrass, but dismissed on the grounds that

the cemeteries which we do have represent a fairly complete range of ages and sexes, while their general poverty is such as to make it an almost laughable claim that they should represent any kind of elite or privileged group.

(Snodgrass 1980a: 21) However, more recently he has basically accepted the implications of Morris’s analysis, that for the bulk of the EIA the poorer adult males and many women and children did not receive the kind of formal burial that has been preserved, and even ‘poor’ burials represent something beyond the reach of the majority ([1971] 2000: xxviii). Morris’s analysis of the Athenian cemet-eries does indeed suggest that in many phases the range represented is by no means ‘fairly complete’, although it has to be admitted that there are few reliable data relating to the age and sex of EIA burials, whether at Athens or elsewhere in the Aegean. Non-adult burials, especially those of small children and infants, seem to be generally rare, if more in some phases than others. This is also widely evident in the LBA, in notable contrast with the high proportion of such burials found in MH contexts (Dickinson 1994a:

222). It constitutes a strong argument for the existence of types of burial that are hard to identify archaeologically (Morris, 1987: 62 rightly dismisses any suggestion that these variations reflect rises and falls in the standard of living). Nevertheless, EIA children’s and adolescents’ burials have been recovered, both on settlement sites, if not consistently (e.g. none are reported from Nichoria), and in cemeteries, where even infant cremations are some-times identifiable, as at Torone (Musgrave 1990: 284). At Seraglio on Cos the burials of young children predominate among the EIA graves discovered (Desborough 1972: 172–3). Clearly, then, there was no question of the exclusion of all non-adults from the accepted types of formal burial, and, given that what are apparently children’s burials are often well provided with goods, one might well imagine that those who did receive such burials belonged to a select group.

The possibility that similar considerations affected the burial of adults is plausible. Indeed, it has been suggested in Chapter 2 (p. 39) that there might have been a Mycenaean class of dependants who were not entitled to burial in chamber tombs or even the less commonly found cists and pits. Of course, any suggestion that the section of the EIA population excluded from standard formal burial derived from a comparable Mycenaean class would run counter to Morris’s and Whitley’s interpretation of the Submycenaean burials of Athens as representing persons of all ages and statuses. Morris (1997: 542–3) lays particular emphasis on his view that it was at the begin-ning of the EIA proper that a new ritual system was introduced, in Athens and elsewhere in central Greece, that involved the exclusion of children and the poorer class of adults from formal burial and the reflection of an ‘egalitar-ian’ ethos in the burial customs followed for the formal burials of the elite.

But he never explains why this new system came to be introduced at this particular time, and he and Whitley seem to have fallen into the same trap as others in assuming that because preserved burials of the Submycenaean phase are relatively numerous they can be taken as a representative sample of the total population. Moreover, their arguments are heavily dependent on the assumption that the burials preserved from EIA Athens form a statistically usable sample, although both were unable to include the largest group of PG burials yet found there, the Vasilissis Sophias cemetery, still very poorly known (AR 30 (1983–84) 7. As well as Submyc burials sixty-two amphora-cremations and eleven inhumations of PG date are reported; cf. Figure 4.2).

Along with other evidence, this find, though admittedly over 2 km from central Athens, must call into question the common tendency to assume that the Kerameikos can be regarded as Athens’ premier cemetery and its practices as embodying the dominant ethos.

A further common assumption is that some Athenian cemeteries have sur-vived complete. It is true that the city region has been extensively sampled through excavation. But it is surely significant that this has produced virtually no graves at all from the enormously long period of prehistory before LH III during which Athens was occupied as a sizeable centre. This serves to emphasise that the survival of graves is affected by many factors apart from the chances of discovery, and if not completely random is at least variable enough to provide a dubious basis for any statistical analysis. The most significant factor affecting survival is probably the continual disturbance of the soil by agriculture and building. When graves are positioned away from settlements and agricultural land, like the LB rock-cut chamber tombs which needed to be cut in particular types of rock, or are quite elaborate stone structures, like other LB graves, they have a high capacity for survival, although their dis-covery will often be a matter of chance (as with the Elateia cemetery, situated in a relatively remote area). But the majority of graves throughout prehistory and history are likely to have been forms of pit, which there is no need to place at any great distance from settlements; there may even be ritual reasons why graves should be placed near if not within them. The chance that such graves will be disturbed by later activity of some kind, even by the use of the same area for later burials, as frequently at Athens, is high, and in such cases older graves were certainly not always respected. Often they were built into or over, and one may suspect that they were frequently plundered of anything valu-able. Therefore, to describe known cemeteries as ‘fully excavated’ (e.g. Morris 1987: 76, 77) is misleading. At most, what has survived has been fully excav-ated, and even to demonstrate this may not be easy. This is shown, for example, by the continuing discovery of significant graves in the Kerameikos and in the Toumba cemetery at Lefkandi (cf. AR 41 (1994–1995) 4, 31), and the evidence that the Submyc–PG Erechtheiou Street graves at Athens (Brouskari 1980) were part of a larger cemetery area that has only been partially investigated (Whitley 1991a: 201–2).

Despite this, it must seem rather unlikely that, if the class excluded from standard formal burial actually constituted the greater part of the popula-tion, its burials should be quite so difficult to identify. The archaeological record does not provide any clear trace of the charnel pits that Morris thinks the most likely form of disposal. The recent discovery of disarticulated human bones at Thessaloniki: Toumba, clearly from informal intramural depositions (reported by Prof. S. Andreou in Wardle 2000), represents the kind of evidence that one would hope for, but this is not a phenomenon reported so far from sites further south. Other possible examples of ‘informal’

burial that Morris cites (1987: 106–8) seem mostly explicable as evidence of secondary burial practices or as simpler forms of primary formal burial. For example, the intramural burials of Postpalatial Tiryns and Lefkandi might be thought to represent a lower class than chamber tomb users, but at Lefkandi they are associated with notably substantial buildings and two in fact had grave offerings, while a third wore a stone amulet which may be compared with examples in the Elateia chamber tombs (Musgrave and Popham 1991:

273; cf. Dimaki 1999).

It seems preferable to assume that the EIA burials found do represent the practices of the larger part of the population, with the proviso that non-adult burials are certainly under-represented, and to accept that their general rarity fits the common patterns of recovery more closely than the large numbers of Third Palace Period burials identifiable. In Crete, where the majority of graves are of relatively complex forms and involve quite elaborate burial rites, these certainly could represent a select group, as is suggested by the relatively low numbers calculated to have been buried in the large Knossos North Cemetery over a period of more than four centuries (NorthCem: 659–60, between 422 and 671?) and the generally similar burial customs that were followed (NorthCem: 720). Nevertheless, detectable variations in wealth of grave goods and the presence of imports suggest a system of ranking, which could fit quite well with Morris’s distinction between aristocratic and non-aristocratic ‘agathoi’ (1987: 94).

Another question of great significance and considerable complexity raised by Morris and Whitley relates to the significance and functions of grave-goods, which not all finds in or at the grave need be, since pottery might have been used in rituals during the funeral ceremony or in later observances.

This is an enormous subject, on which widely differing views have been expressed, but I have most sympathy with a post-processualist approach which is gaining ground, particularly in early mediaeval studies (I am indebted to my wife, Dr T.M. Dickinson, for advice on this point; cf. Houby-Nielsen 1995 on later Athens, especially 130, 145, and Morris 1987: 38–42 generally). This does not see grave-goods as primarily the treasured posses-sions of the dead and/or as intended for their use in the afterlife, nor yet as faithful reflections of the status of the dead person according to a regular system of rules that dictated what grave-goods should reflect a particular

social status. Rather, they should be interpreted as incorporating statements by the living, who use the burial of a household or group member consciously or unconsciously to proclaim their social position and aspirations. On this view, the goods themselves are drawn from an accepted set of items that carry social significance and are used in life, not manufactured purely for the grave, so could well include possessions of the dead. In the Aegean context, grave-goods may have become a more significant focus for making statements of this kind as the chamber tomb and other multiple-use types were abandoned, since this meant that the place of burial itself had considerably less potential to impress.

But it would be too reductionist to imagine that grave-goods are simply expressions of the status of the burying group. The provision of goods may embody a whole complex of ideas, often not coherently formulated and even potentially contradictory. In particular, when grave-goods of unusual elabor-ation or quantity are provided for children, adolescents, and even young adults, this could have been partly intended to propitiate the spirit of the dead for being deprived of the opportunity to live a full life, and would not only express grief in an expensive material form, as funerary statues and tombstones were used to do later in Greek history, but provide symbols of the status that should have been achieved. Also, it should be remembered that the grave itself preserves only ‘the material residue of burials rather than the totality of rituals associated with the funeral’ (Hall 1997: 130, citing Leach). This point has particular relevance when it is remembered that a considerable percentage of excavated graves held no recognisable grave-goods. Rituals of mourning, bearing the dead to the grave, and completing the burial, secondary rituals conducted with the remains of the dead, and observances at the grave on later occasions could well have offered an even better field for making social distinctions than the grave’s layout and con-tents. Also, the placing of the burying place in relation to the inhabited landscape and to other graves may have had considerable significance, and the attention of anyone in the grave’s neighbourhood may have been drawn to it in various ways, not all of which have left tangible remains.

The Postpalatial Period

Burial customs in the Postpalatial Period superficially appear to continue those of the Third Palace Period (see pp. 38–9), but the analysis by Cavanagh and Mee (1998: ch. 7) reveals various significant differences. Most often, Postpalatial use of chamber tombs represents the continuing use, or reopen-ing, of older tombs. The establishment of a new cemetery at Perati, which eventually consisted of nearly two hundred and thirty tombs, is quite exceptional, although small groups of new tombs are found elsewhere, e.g.

the Aplomata and Kamini tombs at Grotta on Naxos, and new tombs were quite often built within established cemeteries in some regions, especially

Achaea and other parts of the north-west Peloponnese, Phocis and Locris, Cephallenia, and Rhodes.

The Perati cemetery provides by far the largest and best reported body of data on Postpalatial patterns of use (Figure 6.1; Iakovidis 1969, 1980), and its evidence is instructive, although it is worth remembering that over a quarter of the graves had been robbed. Tombs were smaller and less well constructed than previously, and twenty-six were actually pits, interspersed among the chamber tombs and containing one or at most two burials, including four of infants. Although relatively many tombs were used in more than one phase of the cemetery, they often held only two or three burials, and sixty-one tombs held only one. Thus, the reuse of tombs was apparently becoming a rarer and much diluted practice, although it should be noted that, unlike the cremations, the inhumations have not received osteological analysis, which has demonstrated in chamber tombs elsewhere that many more burials may be represented than are identifiable simply by skull-count (Mee and Cavanagh 1984: 55). As repeated use became a rare practice, one might expect that ritual practices associated with such use would cease to be prominent, including the secondary burial practice identified by Voutsaki and others (Voutsaki 1995: 60, with references cited there, cf. 1993: 75–7 for more extensive discussion of the Argolid material, and Cavanagh and Mee 1998: 76, 116). Cremated remains, often representing more than one body, were placed in ten of the chamber tombs in a variety of ways, generally in a pot but sometimes loose on the floor or in a pit (T. 1 pit 2 held three, including that of a small child). The richest grave-goods tend to be found in

Figure 6.1 Plan of Perati cemetery (after Cavanagh and Mee 1998, fig. 7.7).

the largest tombs, but the association was by no means universal, and some relatively large tombs were not well provided. The total absence of a tholos tomb, such as might have been expected at such an evidently important site earlier in the LBA, is worth noting, serving as a reminder that, as already noted in Chapter 3, tholoi had effectively gone out of use as an elite tomb type.

Comparable patterns can be traced in many other cemeteries, especially the tendency to make chamber tombs smaller, but in some regions there is a detectable tendency to use them for more burials over a shorter period than had previously been customary. Often these burials were placed within pits and niches. In the case of the Cephallenian ‘cave-dormitories’, which are large and contain regularly arranged rows of pits, the tombs were clearly con-structed to be used in this way and must have been intended for considerably more than a single family or descent-group. This might reflect the develop-ment of new types of social group that were defining their identity by being buried together, but if so it seems a localised feature, which is traceable in older Cephallenian tombs, that often contain many pits, less regularly arranged, and at Derveni in Achaea, but is without close parallel elsewhere.

Tombs containing numerous pits occur in other cemeteries, like Elateia, but the numbers buried in these tombs seem to fit the usual Mycenaean patterns, although up to thirty or forty burials have been reported from some reused monumental tombs (Cavanagh and Mee 1998: 96 n. 53), and two tombs at Elateia held about one hundred and sixty apiece, though these may have been buried over a very long period (Dakoronia 2003). Such cases may represent a new pattern of use, rather than simply economy of effort, but they are never universal in a cemetery, as they seem to be on Cephallenia.

The appearance of cremation is one of the more remarkable features of Postpalatial burial customs. As noted in Chapter 3, it is widely spread, but in general thinly represented. However, a recently reported tumulus at Argos (Piteros 2001) held no less than thirty-six urn cremations of LH IIIC Middle-Late date, as well as eighteen inhumations. Cavanagh and Mee sug-gest that the sporadic Postpalatial occurrences may reflect the movements of individuals (1998: 97), but it is not easy to reconcile this with the fact that, except in the Khania burial tumulus, 2.5 kilometres south-west of Mycenae, which contains eight LH IIIC Middle urn cremations only, cremations nearly always accompany more numerous inhumations in the same tomb, rather than being confined to separate tombs, as might be expected if they repre-sented immigrants. Moreover, though cremation seems to have been widely popular in Anatolia, it was not the major or sole rite of any community in the Postpalatial Aegean, so it would not necessarily be the natural rite for migrants within the Aegean to take to other sites.

Further, the general occurrence of cremations in the same tombs as inhumations hardly suggests that adopting the rite entailed any basic change

Further, the general occurrence of cremations in the same tombs as inhumations hardly suggests that adopting the rite entailed any basic change