This article consists of a detailed examination of one of four Late Archaic-era funerary monuments that were excavated in the mid-1950s in the Northern Necropolis of the Pontic Greek settlement of Istros. The exploration of this monument, Tumulus XVII (circa 550-525 BC), revealed several features that were immediately compared to the heroic cremation burials, as described in epic poetry (particularly the funeral of Patroklos in Homer's Iliad). What most attracted attention were the remains of three human victims of sacrifice. Despite the early connection drawn with Homeric epic, for the next three decades Tumulus XVII was classified as a non-Greek (Thracian) monument, principally due to the presence of human sacrifices. In other words, human sacrifice was regarded as primitive and thus foreign to the more 'advanced' Greek culture. For this reason, the evidence from Istros did not have a prominent place in studies related to Greek human sacrifice. However, the growing body of research on Greek and indigenous settlements and cemeteries on the western coast of the Black Sea, along with the more recent discovery of the remains of a bound and decapitated man next to * I wish to thank Erica Angliker and Lorena Lopes for their invitation to contribute to this volume, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments. This article expands upon a section of my Ph.D.
The work under review, the twenty-second installment of the Eretria series, reflects a revised version of the A.'s prizewinning doctoral dissertation, defended at the University of Lausanne in the autumn of 2011. The principal objective of the volume is twofold: first, to offer a synthetic presentation of the Geometric structural and artifactual remains uncovered during the Greek and, subsequently, Swiss campaigns conducted intermittently over the span of roughly one century in and around the sanctuary of Apollo Daphnephoros; and, second, to revisit existing theories on the origin and development of the sanctuary and to advance a new interpretation. 2 Verdan provides, by way of introduction (p. 27-35), a concise historical overview of fieldwork at and research on the sanctuary. Ever since Konstantinos Kourouniotis' inaugural campaigns (1899-1911), excavations have uncovered abundant material, principally ceramics, as well as architectural remains dating to the Geometric period. The archaeological record from this period, albeit rich, presents certain challenges for the A.'s study: the finds from the Greek excavations are published only in brief reports; this situation is exacerbated by the (irretrievable?) loss of much of Kourouniotis' unpublished records during his flight from Smyrna in 1922; 1 and the documentation of these and the earliest Swiss campaigns left gaps in our knowledge about the structural remains, stratigraphy, and precise find spots of certain material assemblages. While the A. takes full account of the finds from the Greek excavations, the bulk of his evidence Samuel Verdan, Eretria XXII. Le sanctuaire d'Apollon Daphnéphoros à l'époque ...
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