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Death and the Mycenaeans
328-329 tholos origins hazy: from similar Minoan structures? or from tumulus which goes back to MH 500 years before the Mycenaeans and continued in use?
tholos, shaft graves, and tumuli are designed to be reopened
chamber tomb cut out of rock
tholos has vaulted dry stone walling
330 pit-grave excavated out of the ground
cist grave has sides lined with slabs or walling and would be covered like a box
pithos burial common in MH, surprisingly rare in Mycenaean Greece
336 swords had symbolic value, often more swords buried than could have been used
sword buried with a child at Argos
single graves frequent but still a minority
women underrepresented, not many infants, but still some children with lots of attention/offerings lavished on them
337 in early LBA, no palatial architecture yet, but even before Linear B, elaborate tombs requiring many man-days were built from stone coming from all over Greece, so some power structures must have already been in place
338 women took the lead in the prothesis. faces may scarred and hair shorn, larnakes show that corpse wrapped in a shroud
339 very specific possessions are not very common, like tools, cymbals, ivory caskets
in rare cases, horses sacrificed and buried beside the tomb
skulls & skeletons of horses, dogs, cattle, & other animals suggest more general rite of animal sacrifice
in a good number of cases, excavators have observed that tombs and graves contained no skeleton in situ, even though the blocking or cover was intact and there was no sign of robbing. This is our best evidence that the Mycenaeans conducted a second funeral, sometimes called secondary burial. Such a custom is known in many different cultures and normally explained as a "rite of aggregation", whereby the spirit of the dead person is thought to pass from a liminal and ambiguous status, belonging wholly neither to the living nor the dead, to one where the deceased joins the ancestors.
tholos, shaft graves, and tumuli are designed to be reopened
chamber tomb cut out of rock
tholos has vaulted dry stone walling
330 pit-grave excavated out of the ground
cist grave has sides lined with slabs or walling and would be covered like a box
pithos burial common in MH, surprisingly rare in Mycenaean Greece
336 swords had symbolic value, often more swords buried than could have been used
sword buried with a child at Argos
single graves frequent but still a minority
women underrepresented, not many infants, but still some children with lots of attention/offerings lavished on them
337 in early LBA, no palatial architecture yet, but even before Linear B, elaborate tombs requiring many man-days were built from stone coming from all over Greece, so some power structures must have already been in place
338 women took the lead in the prothesis. faces may scarred and hair shorn, larnakes show that corpse wrapped in a shroud
339 very specific possessions are not very common, like tools, cymbals, ivory caskets
in rare cases, horses sacrificed and buried beside the tomb
skulls & skeletons of horses, dogs, cattle, & other animals suggest more general rite of animal sacrifice
in a good number of cases, excavators have observed that tombs and graves contained no skeleton in situ, even though the blocking or cover was intact and there was no sign of robbing. This is our best evidence that the Mycenaeans conducted a second funeral, sometimes called secondary burial. Such a custom is known in many different cultures and normally explained as a "rite of aggregation", whereby the spirit of the dead person is thought to pass from a liminal and ambiguous status, belonging wholly neither to the living nor the dead, to one where the deceased joins the ancestors.