Burial customs are one of the best researched forms of evidence for Mycenaean culture (for an excellent overview see Cavanagh and Mee 1998). The origins of the Mycenaean states have been investigated through grave elaboration, since little is known of the architecture of contemporary settlements, although this is believed to be unsophisticated until LH2. The tholos tomb (Figure 6.8) is plausibly the prerogative of elite families, although over time it becomes exclusive to the uppermost princely dynasties, as we progress from the MH3 examples within their putative origin in Messenia (Southwest Peloponnese), through to the latest palatial series of LH3B, with an unparalleled concentration at Mycenae. Voutsaki (1998) suggests that the greater numbers from Messenia reflect a wider social use there in final MH/early LH, whereas following the diffusion of the form to the key region of the Argolid and elsewhere in LH1—2, it was designated as more exclusive to an upper class. However, this regional contrast could also mark the increasing centralization of power over time, from numerous local chiefs or Big Men, toward a formal series of regional leaders with defined roles within the palace organization (as the later Linear B archives suggest). That process of hierarchization may also have moved at different rates regionally, with Pylos perhaps assuming regional dominance at a slower rate than Mycenae, where the Shaft Graves might already be taken as a claim to future supremacy.
Indeed at the time of those latter fabulous burials, nothing comparable can be seen at contemporary cemeteries elsewhere in the Plain of Argos (such as at Lerna, Asine, and especially the key MH focus of Argos), and by LH1 these potentially rival centers fade out of competition at the same time as Mycenae adopts the new tholos prestige burial form. However, other significant centers in Mycenae’s region will adopt tholoi, for example Tiryns and Berbati. Might this indicate that after Mycenae had “seen off” potential rivals in the west and southeast Plain, it found itself competing with nearer neighbors to its immediate south, in the eastern Plain? Was there then a period in Early Mycenaean times when Mycenae was the first amongst equals, until the Late Mycenaean era sees a cessation of tholos construction outside of that center, when it seems Mycenae’s preeminence appropriated the tholos as an almost exclusive attribute? Or do we read too much into burial symbolism, as achieved power, when it might have been competitive display between several dynasties in the Argos region? Only in the last centuries of palatial power, LH3, could we say that the virtual restriction of tholos construction to Mycenae in the Plain of Argos should indicate the supremacy of the Mycenae dynasty. Perhaps conclusive is the parallel evidence from Messenia, where a similar wide use of tholoi leads by LH3B to their restriction to the palace of Pylos.
If tholos tombs are complex to read as documents of changing political relationships over time within the separate regions of the Peloponnese, the nature of status burials becomes even less certain elsewhere in the Southern Mainland. In Attica the plausible case for a fortified palatial center on the Athenian Acropolis remains unaccompanied by a royal tomb, whilst the tholoi in other districts of Attica might argue for competing assertive elites. In Boeotia, the palatial center at Thebes ignores the tholos form, but its legendary rival Orchomenos, with the only regional tholos (the Treasury of Minyas) seems to be marking its distinctiveness through imitating the prestige tombs at distant Mycenae.
The commonest Mycenaean burial tradition is however that of chamber-tomb cemeteries (Figure 7.6). Like tholoi, the burial chamber is preceded by an entrance way (dramas), with either of these being sealed so as to allow reuse. This strongly emphasizes the importance of kin-group continuity in Mycenaean society. The shape of chamber tombs could represent an emulation of the tholos at lesser cost in time, labor, and materials, although the social composition of those buried within them is less clear. An older view considered these tombs as designed for a middle class, with the lower class disposed of in cist graves, earth tombs or even discarded into rubbish deposits. Current views prefer to see the majority of non-elite members being interred in chamber tombs. Calculations I have carried out on the recorded chamber tomb burials indicate a relatively high population for the Mycenaean Plain of Argos (Bintliff 1989) and since then their number has risen through
Figure 7.6 Mycenaean-style chamber tomb construction. S. Hood, The Minaans. Crete in the Bronze Age. Thames and Hudson, London 1971, Figure 29. Drawn by Patricia Clarke.
Additional discoveries. This supports the current orthodoxy. Consequently the least sophisticated of body disposal methods just noted may represent a small minority excluded from “normal burial rights” for various reasons. On the other hand, although occasionally chamber tombs have revealed rich burials, or those with elaborate dress (including the famous Dendra warrior with full body-armor), analytical study (Kilian-Dirlmeier 1986) confirms that even the finest chamber-tomb assemblages do not compete with either the older Mycenae Shaft Grave elite graves or the rare surviving objects from the later tholos tombs of the Peloponnese. In a contrasting trend to the increase in the status of tholos burial over time, chamber tombs after LH2 show a decrease in wealth.
In a detailed investigation ofArgolid chamber tomb cemeteries, Mee and Cavanagh (1990) tested a number of propositions.
1. Are the finest tombs nearest the citadel or main settlement area of Mycenaean centers? This might indicate that this was a sign of higher status in the community. It appears not. Are even the oldest there, from which later tombs spread out to a greater distance? The implication would again be that it was desirable to bury the dead close to the living. Again the answer seems to be no.
2. Are there rich and poor cemetery areas? If we look, for example, at the extended cemetery clusters around Mycenae and classify the tombs into four wealth classes on their finds, once again we receive a negative answer. This result and that to question 1 point to an alternative structuring principle, in which the dominating concept in chamber-tomb cemeteries was the discrete cluster of burials, each of which focused on a powerful elite group and also contained its client families, although these social units seem to be small.
3. The analysis also produced an unexpected trend: there is a correlation of early graves being wealthier than later graves. Mee and Cavanagh link this to the changing status of burial forms over time. If tholoi are reserved for the aristocracy, then in Early Mycenaean times “archaic” cist and pit graves (a heritage from MH village tradition), or no formal burial at all, might mark the poorest peasantry, leaving the dominant chamber tomb to a middle class. In mature-late Mycenaean times the “archaic” grave forms fade out and a great rise in the numbers of dead in chamber tombs could mark their use by the middle and lower classes (hence perhaps creating an average decline in the level of wealth in graves), at the same time as tho-loi become exclusive to the inner circle of aristocrats around the dynastic princely family.
However, settlement studies indicate a substantial population rise in LH3 times, suggesting an additional or alternative explanation for an increase in chamber tombs. Their decreasing wealth might reveal an intriguing gulf emerging between the power and lifestyle of the palatial elite (in terms of tholos splendor and the construction of the palace complexes), and the vast mass of the people, maybe some support for theories that the collapse of Mycenaean civilization followed a mass rising by an oppressed majority.
World History
