Mycenaean Greece - Funerary Practices

Funerary Practices

The usual form of burial in the Late Helladic was inhumation. The dead were almost always buried in cemeteries outside the residential zones and only exceptionally within the settlements (the most famous burials in Grave Circle A originally lay outside the citadel and were only brought within it when the citadel wall was extended c 1250 BC).

The earliest Mycenaean burials were mostly in individual graves in the form of a pit or a stone lined cist and offerings were limited to pottery and occasional items of jewellery. A large cemetery with burials of this kind spread around the northern and western slopes of the citadel at Mycenae. Groups of pit or cist graves containing elite members of the community were sometimes covered by a tumulus (mound) in the manner established since the Middle Helladic period. It has been argued that this form dates back to the oldest periods of Indo-European settlement in Greece, and that its roots are to be found in the Balkan cultures of the third millennium BC, and even the Kurgan culture but an indigenous development is more likely. Pit and cist graves remained in use for single burials throughout the Mycenaean period alongside more elaborate family graves (see below).

The shaft graves at Mycenae within the two grave circles (A+B) belong to the same period and seem to represent an alternative manner of grouping elite or royal burials - and isolating them from those of the majority. Circle B is the earlier of the two groups, already in use in the MH period, and contains lavish grave goods - gold and silver, jewellery, weapons and pottery. Circle A, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann enclosed fewer but extraordinarily well provided graves.

Beginning also in the Late Helladic are to be seen communal tombs of rectangular form. It is difficult to establish whether the different forms of burial represent a social hierarchization, as was formerly thought, with the tholoi being the tombs of the elite rulers, the individual tombs those of the leisure class, and the communal tombs those of the people. Cremations increased in number over the course of the period, becoming quite numerous in LH III C. This is perhaps proof of the arrival of a new population in Greece. The most impressive tombs of the Mycenaean era are the monumental royal tombs of Mycenae, undoubtedly intended for the royal family of the city. The most famous is the Tomb of Agamemnon (the Treasury of Atreus), which is in the form of a tholos. Nearby are other tombs (known as "Circle A"), popularly identified with Clytemnestra and Aigisthos. All contained impressive treasures, exhumed by Schliemann during the excavation of Mycenae. It has been argued that different dynasties or factions may have competed through conspicuous burial, whereby grave circle A represents a new faction in the ascendancy (at this time, LH I, the relative wealth and consistency of 'B' burials declines). The Mycenaean "tholoi" may, again, represent another factional grouping, or a further formalization in burial practices by the faction previously buried in A. Nevertheless, there is a demonstrably apparent expansion in relative size, wealth/cost expenditure, and visibility in the construction of these graves over this period, coinciding with increased foreign/trading contacts and the further entrenchment of the palatial economy.