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Burial customs in ancient Greece | |
Death and funerary practices are of particular interest to archaeologists, mainly because funerary remains are often some of the best-preserved and most widely available resources for studying ancient cultures. Graves and the objects found within them can potentially provide a wealth of information about everything from the life and death of the deceased individual to the beliefs, rituals, and customs of the society as a whole. Funerary remains allow archaeologists a glimpse into the individual's personal taste, socio-economic status, and position within society. Perhaps a more credible result of studying these remains, however, is the insight into the ways in which the individual was remembered and regarded by his or her survivors (1).
A large number of Greek vases from the Geometric period (approximately 900 - 700 BCE) (2) focus on burial and mourning styles. These vases come primarily from the provinces of Attica, Boeotia , and the Argolid on the Greek mainland. The styles shown on vases from these areas are so similar to one another that scholars believe the styles all originate from Bronze Age traditions some 800 - 1000 years prior (3). Although CU Art Museum 2006.36.T, a funerary amphora from Boeotia, is decorated with animals and geometric patterns, the many mortuary vessels of the Geometric period depicting scenes of funerals and mourning rituals are valuable in helping archaeologists to understand the wide variety of funerary practices in different areas of Greece.
In Attica, Boeotia, and the Argolid, when a person died the women of the family would first wash and dress the body. This was done for sanitary as well as ritual purposes. They then anointed the body with oil and wrapped it in a shroud, covered it in yet another cloth, and laid it on a bier (funeral bed), which embodied the Greeks' association between sleep and death. After the preparation of the body, the deceased person's house would be adorned with wreaths and arrangements of leaves such as marjoram, celery, myrtle, and laurel. Because the dead were believed to exist in the underworld in the form in which they exited the world of the living, proper and careful preparation of the body was essential. In fact, failure to prepare and bury a body properly caused outrage.
Many funerary scenes on vases depict the body lying in state alongside mourners holding a sort of "wake." This is called the prothesis in Greek. Because the Greeks believed that the dead could hear the laments of the living, mourners were an important aspect of the prothesis (4). Both male and female mourners are found quite often on Geometric funerary scenes, shown with both hands raised to their heads as they tear out their hair in grief. We also find scenes depicting mourners carrying gifts or food offerings and even "feeding" the deceased (5). Still other decoration on funerary vessels revolves around battle and possible cult activities such as funeral games, dancing or seated figures holding clappers or rattles (6). Despite the ease with which we can classify funerary vases based on their scenes of this type of ritual, it is important to note that explicit funerary iconography is not always found on these types of vases (7).
Once the body was prepared for burial, it was carried to the cemetery by chariot or on foot in a procession called the ekphora . The procession and burial usually took place at night (8) on the third day after death (9). While there is evidence of inhumation burial of the body during this time period in Greece , it seems that cremation, which probably was adopted around the 11 th century BCE (10), was the more common practice until later years.
At the cemetery, the dead would be burned on a funeral pyre, and his or her ashes would later be collected by a member of the family (11) and placed in a vase such as this amphora. The vase and ashes would then be buried along with other grave goods such as jewelry, weapons, statuettes, vases, or other gifts from the family. Often during the Geometric period, very large amphorae and kraters acted as grave markers. These would have a hole in the bottom through which family members could pour libations (liquid offerings) of oil, wine, wine mixed with water, wine with honey and water, milk, tears, or blood (12).
In addition to honoring the dead, funerary rituals also served the purpose of allowing wealthy families to display their status to the community. From the complex rituals and grand public processions to the expensive grave goods and elaborate tomb markers, funerals acted as a vehicle for "conspicuous consumption" (13) and were "a clear signal of family wealth" (14).
Author: Jessika Akmenkalns
This vase was originally published by Hara Tzavella-Evjen, in "Greek and Roman Vases and Statuettes from the University of Colorado Collection ," Deltion 28 (1973) Athens 1975, pp. 192-197.
(1) Funerary scenes "celebrate the mourning of the dead, his size and beauty, the warmth of family feeling for him, and his place in the extended circle of those who grieve his loss and assist at his passage" (12). For more information about ancient Greek views surrounding death, see Emily Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press 1979).
(2) Dates from John Boardman, Early Greek Vase Painting (New York: Thames & Hudson 1998): 23.
(3) Vermeule, Aspects of Death , 11; dates from William R. Biers, The Archaeology of Greece (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1996): 62.
(4) Vermeule, Aspects of Death , 14.
(5) Boardman, Early Greek Vase Painting , 27.
(7) Nigel Spivey, "Greek vases in Etruria ," Looking at Greek Vases , ed. Tom Rasmussen and Nigel Spivey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991): 147.
(8) Vermeule, Aspects of Death , 18.
(9) Elizabeth Langridge-Noti, "Mourning at the Tomb: A Re-evaluation of the Sphinx Monument on Attic Black-figured Pottery," Archaeologischer Anzeiger , 1. Halbband: 141-55.
(10) Biers, The Archaeology of Greece , 97. Also John G. Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology ( Upper Saddle River , NJ : Prentice Hall 2002): 108-9.
(11) Vermeule, Aspects of Death , 2.
(12) Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology , 115.
For more examples of the ways archaeologists use mortuary remains to learn about past societies, see the following works:
Lewis R. Binford, "Mortuary practices: their study and potential," ed. James A. Brown, Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices (Washington, D.C.: Society for American Archaeology, Memoir 25 1971): 6-29.
James A. Brown, "Introduction," in Brown, Approaches to the Social Dimensions of Mortuary Practices , 1-5.
Robert Chapman, Ian Kinnes, and Klavs Randsborg, The Archaeology of Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981).
John M. O'Shea, Mortuary Variability: An Archaeological Investigation (Orlando, FL: Academic Press 1984).
John M. O'Shea, Villagers of the Maros: a portrait of an early Bronze Age society (New York: Plenum Press 1996).
Michael Parker-Pearson, "Mortuary Practices, Society and Ideology: an ethnoarchaeological study," ed. Ian Hodder, Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982): 99-114.
Michael Parker-Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial ( College Station , TX : Texas A&M University Press 2000).
Christopher Peebles and Susan Kus, "Some archaeological correlates of ranked societies," American Antiquity 42: 421-48.
Joseph A. Tainter, "Modeling change in prehistoric social systems," ed. Lewis R. Binford, For theory building in archaeology: essays on faunal remains, aquatic resources, spatial analysis, and systemic modeling (Orlando, FL: Academic Press 1977): 327-51.
