“…Next however to extramural burials a respectable number has been unearthed within the fortified area among houses, public places, shrines, or cisterns as if there was no spatial distinction between the dead and the living. (Dimakis 2016, 31)The striking similarity between Sparta and Argos is reinforced by the fact – evident in Fig. 18 – that intracommunal burials in Argos are strung out along roadsides, just as seems to have been the case in Sparta (on the relationship between burials and roads in Argos, see also Barakari-Gleni 1996–7, 512; Dimakis 2010, 34).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 90%
“…Fig. 18.Burials in Classical and Hellenistic Argos (after Dimakis 2016, fig. 10; reproduced with the kind permission of the author).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Next however to extramural burials a respectable number has been unearthed within the fortified area among houses, public places, shrines, or cisterns as if there was no spatial distinction between the dead and the living. (Dimakis 2016, 31)…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Dimakis also notes that, unlike Sparta and Argos, where intracommunal burials are widely dispersed throughout the urban fabric, the intracommunal burials in Corinth are concentrated in cemeteries (Fig. 19) (Dimakis 2016, 31). Fig.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As John Papapostolou notes in his study of Classical and Hellenistic grave stelai, ‘[t]he surviving grave stelai in the Peloponnese as a whole are relatively few … Moreover they lack indicative inscriptions and [there] exist virtually no representations’ 56 . Dimakis similarly observes that ‘[w]hat characterizes most of the grave stelai in the entire Classical and Hellenistic Peloponnese is their rarity’ (Dimakis 2016, 44). In the same vein, Georgia Kokkorou-Alevras has shown that sculpted stone funerary monuments from the Archaic period are rare in the Peloponnese (Kokkorou-Alevras 2010).…”
This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.
“…Next however to extramural burials a respectable number has been unearthed within the fortified area among houses, public places, shrines, or cisterns as if there was no spatial distinction between the dead and the living. (Dimakis 2016, 31)The striking similarity between Sparta and Argos is reinforced by the fact – evident in Fig. 18 – that intracommunal burials in Argos are strung out along roadsides, just as seems to have been the case in Sparta (on the relationship between burials and roads in Argos, see also Barakari-Gleni 1996–7, 512; Dimakis 2010, 34).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 90%
“…Fig. 18.Burials in Classical and Hellenistic Argos (after Dimakis 2016, fig. 10; reproduced with the kind permission of the author).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Next however to extramural burials a respectable number has been unearthed within the fortified area among houses, public places, shrines, or cisterns as if there was no spatial distinction between the dead and the living. (Dimakis 2016, 31)…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Dimakis also notes that, unlike Sparta and Argos, where intracommunal burials are widely dispersed throughout the urban fabric, the intracommunal burials in Corinth are concentrated in cemeteries (Fig. 19) (Dimakis 2016, 31). Fig.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As John Papapostolou notes in his study of Classical and Hellenistic grave stelai, ‘[t]he surviving grave stelai in the Peloponnese as a whole are relatively few … Moreover they lack indicative inscriptions and [there] exist virtually no representations’ 56 . Dimakis similarly observes that ‘[w]hat characterizes most of the grave stelai in the entire Classical and Hellenistic Peloponnese is their rarity’ (Dimakis 2016, 44). In the same vein, Georgia Kokkorou-Alevras has shown that sculpted stone funerary monuments from the Archaic period are rare in the Peloponnese (Kokkorou-Alevras 2010).…”
This article makes use of recently published graves to offer the first synthetic analysis of the typology and topography of Spartan burials that is founded on archaeological evidence. Our knowledge of Spartan burial practices has long been based almost entirely on textual sources – excavations conducted in Sparta between 1906 and 1994 uncovered fewer than 20 pre-Roman graves. The absence of pre-Roman cemeteries led scholars to conclude that, as long as the Lycurgan customs were in effect, all burials in Sparta were intracommunal and that few tombs had been found because they had been destroyed by later building activity. Burial practices have, as a result, been seen as one of many ways in which Sparta was an outlier. The aforementioned recently published graves offer a different picture of Spartan burial practices. It is now clear that there was at least one extracommunal cemetery in the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. What would normally be described as extramural burials did, therefore, take place, but intracommunal burials of adults continued to be made in Sparta throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods. Those burials were concentrated along important roads and on the slopes of hills. The emergent understanding of Spartan burial practices takes on added significance when placed in a wider context. Burial practices in Sparta align closely with those found in Argos and Corinth. Indeed, burial practices in Sparta, rather than being exceptional, are notably similar to those of its most important Peloponnesian neighbours; a key issue is that in all three poleis intracommunal burials continued to take place through the Hellenistic period. The finding that adults were buried both extracommunally and intracommunally in Sparta, Argos and Corinth after the Geometric period calls into question the standard narrative of the development of Greek burial practices in the post-Mycenaean period.
This paper presents the preliminary results of the Archaeological Project at Abdera and Xanthi (APAX), a systematic regional survey applying intensive pedestrian sample collection conducted in Greek Thrace. This new archaeological programme has investigated different landscape settings in the Xanthi area. Different collection strategies were developed to adapt to the conditions of visibility presented by the areas under study. The preliminary results of this research have provided quantitative and qualitative spatial data on the distribution of ancient activities, particularly for the Archaic and Classical. Moreover, they allowed a useful assessment of two cultural groups that were active in the same region during most of the 1st millennium BC, namely Greek colonists and indigenous Thracians.
Standing archaeological definitions of mortuary space identify it as the location of burials and interments, limiting our capacity to understand broader ‘deathscapes’ within the ancient city. Building upon anthropological and sociological theories of the concept of deathscapes (as opposed to ‘burialscapes’), this paper offers an expanded category of archaeological mortuary space that includes not only interment locations but also mobile and temporary spaces of funerary ritual, performance, and commemoration. Proposed key amendments to the archaeological reconstruction of mortuary landscapes within current models of ancient Greek urban environments are a reconsideration of various temporal scales (including short-lived processes and archaeologically invisible acts), bodily performance, and patterns in remembering and forgetting through funerary behavior. This revised view of mortuary space is applied to select case studies (Athens, Argos, Corinth) in order to take our existing paradigms from the conceived city (i.e., space of planning, logic, cosmological order) to the lived city (i.e., humanistic city of paradoxical, relative, and embodied ontologies).
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