Current thinking considers Early Minoan tholos tombs and related house tombs (which continued in use during the earlier Middle Minoan First Palace era, but decline or cease in Second Palatial times) as primary foci of kin-group and communal ritual in the vicinity of settlements. These religious ceremonies are believed to have commemorated the individual dead and collective ancestors, but also marked the seasons, and the fertility of crops and humans. A growing representation of leading families in the course of EM has been suggested for grander or more prominent tombs and prestigious gifts (e. g., at Archanes and Mochlos), as well as through the use of seals found in the tombs. In late EM and MM individuals in general are further highlighted through the spread of burial in clay coffins (larnakes) and giant storage jars (pithoi), collective burial declining progressively through the First and Second Palace periods. However, the burial record for these later eras is inadequately researched. Exceptional complex architectural mausolea such as the Temple and Royal Tombs at Knossos, and rich graves at the Knossian port of Poros (including LM1A-B warrior graves), are significantly late, Second Palace, and probably from its final disrupted LM1 period, during which the effects of the Thera eruption may have led to major shifts toward the more prominent role for an elite and more pronounced militarism in Minoan society (Fitton 2002). A rare earlier exception is the MM1—2, First Palace burial building at Chrysolakkos outside the town of Malia, usually considered a rich elite necropolis, but not without controversy (Driessen 2007). But this is not isolated within the First Palace era: at Arkhanes the traditional tholos tomb is now being developed into a clearly status-enhancing grandeur (Schoep and Knappett 2004), while Mochlos has elite burial evidence (Schoep 2006). In the “dynastic” model Chrysolakkos was considered a “royal” burial complex, whereas in the new “heterarchic” approach it is suggested that Malia town possessed neighborhoods with their own leading families, and for each a separate town-periphery cemetery existed on the edge of town. Nonetheless, the rarity of elaborate tombs in Palatial times confirms the “low profile” of Minoan social elites in conspicuous arenas of display such as death ritual and commemoration, a considerable contrast with the later Mycenaean civilization or the contemporary Near East.
Paved areas outside collective EM-MM tombs are interpreted as ritual plazas and also “dancing-floors.” A plausible link ties these small-group arenas to their counterparts which are attested by mature EM times and on into MM, the Central and West Courts in the major settlement and palace complexes, where public events took place, plausibly of a social, political, and religious character. That minor EM settlements such as Vasiliki and Fournou Korifi already during the “early court-complex phase” added plazas to their community design, seems equally significant. The idea that a nested set of rituals, involving increasingly large populations and human catchments, took place in such plazas, finds its possible correspondence in a hierarchy of formal sanctuaries.
World History
