Conclusions

Middle Helladic Thebes emerges as a more extensive settlement than previously suspected. My analysis adduces support to the notion that the south and east parts of the Kadmeia would have been more densely occupied (cf. Konsola 1981: 168). This has been interpreted, more or less, as the effect of a fortification, but I have tried to show that the criteria for tracing the postulated circuit become increasingly hazy as the ongoing exploration of the Kadmeia brings to light new evidence. The contrast between domestic and burial space need not have been as pronounced, at least not in the early and middle part of the period. Domestic burials were

Figure 7.10 Gold jewellery from the Ampheion (adapted from Demakopoulou and Konsola 1981).

Widespread on the Kadmeia and were not reserved for children. They can form extensive clusters in direct association with dwellings. It is towards the end of the Middle Helladic period that more discrete graveyards seem to come into sight, a development which forecasts the establishment of remote, dedicated cemeteries in the Late Helladic I. These discrete graveyards did not necessarily constitute the 'first organized cemeteries'. It is

Not in the presence of organization (a common 'urban essential') that they differed from domestic graveyards, but in the nature of organization. It is perhaps through the gradual transformation of kin-based identities to community based ones that we should seek to explain changes in the Theban settlement. The increasing mortuary deposition of wealth and the appearance of salient burial and domestic structures are remniscent of changing social Strategies of display and identity as recognized in other Mainland sites and seem to mark this transformation.