We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2013
This is a true cist burial, in that the skeleton, of an infant, was placed in a stone casket. The casket is a single block of poros, roughly hollowed out until the requisite depth was reached. Its dimensions are 0·60 m. × 0·50 m., but the block is not a perfect rectangle by any means. The depth is c. 0·30 m. Underneath the block a group of seven roughly circular shallow holes and two shallow rectangular depressions are to be seen; the only explanation I can suggest for these is that it was perhaps originally intended to hollow out the block from this side. Over the casket two blocks of sandstone were placed; both have a shallow depression underneath. At the west end of the casket and closely adjoining it lay a triangular block of poros about 0·48 m. wide and 0·35 m. high (only partially visible on Plate 43). This, from the similarity of material and workmanship, seems to have had some connection with the burial. Could it have been a small unsculptured stele? The unsculptured stelai from Schliemann's Grave Circle are triangular at the top.
The burial lies partially over a wall which may have been intended as a boundary for the Prehistoric Cemetery area, thus showing that the height of the wall mentioned can have been no higher at this point at the time of this burial, and suggesting that, if in fact this is an enclosure wall, it was not felt desirable to bury the dead outside the enclosure, either in the case of this burial or in that of the Geometric cist and pithos burials, and arguing some continuity in the cult of the dead. The wall itself, so far as has yet been ascertained, cannot be later than the L.H. IIIA period, and is probably considerably earlier.
2 Wace, Mycenae, pl. 38d. I owe this suggestion to Professor Wace.
2a Fig. 1 (18).
3 Asine 300, no. 3, and fig. 207, 3. The decoration differs, but the shape appears similar.
4 Kerameikos I 92, 188 and pls. 59 and 63.
5 Cf. Protogeometric Pottery 224.
6 AE 1912, 127.
7 ibid.
8 BCH LXXVII (1953), 260.
9 Mycenae 84 and fig. 106b; Professor Wace is now of the opinion that he dated these sherds too late, and considers that they are contemporaneous with Geometric pottery. Cf. BSA XLVIII 60.
10 Cf. BCH LXXVII (1953), 260 and fig. 53, from Argos.
11 Evangelides, , AE 1912, 127 ff.Google ScholarSchliemann, , Mycenae and Tiryns 103–4, 120, pls. XX, XXIGoogle Scholar, Papadimitriou (recent excavation).
12 Cook, J. M., BSA XLVIII 30 ff.Google ScholarSchliemann, , Mycenae and Tiryns 66–8.Google ScholarTiryns I 145, fig. 9; 146, fig. 10. Wace, , Mycenae 33, 27, 84, and fig. 106.Google Scholar
13 Protogeometric Pottery 210 and pl. 28B.
14 Schliemann, , Mycenae and Tiryns 65, no. 26.Google ScholarTiryns I 157, fig. 21. Wace, , Mycenae 84, fig. 106.Google Scholar
15 Tiryns I 136, fig. 8 and n. 1. Said to have been found ‘an der Nordseite μεταξὺ βορείας πύλης και κρυπτῆς καταβάσεως’. It was presumably dug by Tsountas, who was digging in that area in 1893, PAE 1893, 8.
16 Perrot, and Chipiez, , Histoire de l'Art VII 162, n. 1.Google Scholar
