30 Beyond the General and the Particular: Rethinking Death, Memory and Belonging in Early Bronze Age Crete
Abstract
Over the past century of investigation into Cretan prehistory, the most persistent field of enquiry has been that of the emergence of the ‘palaces’ at the onset of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA). Recently, the long-dominant tendency to portray the third millennium BC on Crete as a developmental threshold leading towards ‘palatial complexity’ has received much criticism. What appears to be gaining ground instead is adherence to the premise that the island’s early history ought to be examined on its own terms. The present study argues that this epistemological shift of perspective poses a false dilemma, for neither causal reductionism nor historical particularism can sufficiently capture the interplay between the general and the particular in sociohistorical analysis. To exemplify this point, the study focuses upon the reinvestigation of the Early Bronze Age (EBA) funerary evidence from the island. The detailed examination of practices concerning the treatment of the deceased, the distribution of roles during funerary rites and the positioning of cemeteries within the wider landscape indicates that, despite any obvious regional patterning, early Cretan communities invested consciously in the establishment of a common symbolic and material vocabulary for understanding death, memory and identity, a vocabulary whose reworking towards the end of the third millennium BC provides the key for establishing a new historical question regarding the EBA/MBA transition.
The Problem: The General versus the Particular
From the late stages of the nineteenth century until very recently, archaeological work in Crete has been dominated by the concept of the ‘palace’ in terms of both theory and fieldwork. Even a cursory glance at the tremendous bulk of material and associated literature, from what appears to be one of ‘the most intensively explored archaeological periods/localities in the world’ (Hamilakis 2002: 3), demonstrates that the appearance of these monumental structures on the island during the early stages of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), has been taken to signal far more than the development of yet another architectural novelty. Essentially, the general consensus within the confines of the discipline had long been that the ‘palaces’ ought to be viewed as the clearest token of a watershed event: the establishment of a highly complex form of social organisation on the island of Crete for the first time in its history (Renfrew 1972; Cherry 1983; Branigan 1988).
Largely drawing upon the general principles of evolutionism (Trigger 1998), the term ‘complexity’ was employed to describe what appeared to constitute a larger, more internally differentiated and more complexly articulated societal body, which relied upon a centralised authority mechanism (i.e. the ‘palace’) for its effective operation. Under this scheme, history was perceived as the road to complexity, a self-maintaining, self-transforming and self-transcending process, directional in time and therefore irreversible, which in its course generated progress: higher societal forms arose from, and surpassed lower forms (Sahlins and Service 1960: 37–38).
This theoretical understanding of society and history had a large impact not only on the perspectives that we brought to bear on the period(s) of the so-called palaces but also on the ways whereby the period(s) prior to their construction were understood. The surplus of importance accorded to the palatial phenomenon and the degree of directionality that this phenomenon imposed on the study of early Cretan prehistory is attested in numerous examples, ranging from the distinction of pre-palatial and palatial phases (Day et al. 1997) (Table 30.1) to the tendency to portray the island as a ‘Minoan entity’, the latter being painted in turn, as a ‘laboratory’ of ‘socio-political achievement’ (Hamilakis 2002: 17).
| Early Minoan I (EM I) | Early | ca. 3000–2650 BC |
| Early Minoan IIa (EM IIa) | ‘Prepalatial’ | ca. 2650–2450 BC |
| Early Minoan IIb (EM IIb) | Late | ca. 2450–2200 BC |
| Early Minoan III (MM Ia) | ‘Prepalatial’ | ca. 2200–2050 BC |
Obvious echoes of this mode of thinking can also be traced in a substantial number of studies focusing on the analysis of the funerary evidence, the richest body of empirical information we have at our disposal from Early Bronze Age (EBA) Crete. A long-standing consensus within the confines of the discipline has been that throughout the third millennium BC, communal tombs were among the main points of reference by which the Cretan landscape and a person’s place in that landscape could be defined (Branigan 1970; 1993). The need to fit collective burials into a framework of interpretation that would somehow justify the subsequent emergence of the palaces on the island can be inferred from the tendency expressed in several writings to portray the EBA/MBA transition as a process leading from egalitarian forms of social organisation, linked to ideologies of community and the collective, to hierarchically structured societies which were, in turn, linked to ideologies of social exclusion and the individual.
This was a model created from an essentially detached position, since the identity of EBA cemeteries was described only through reference to later periods, only by fitting it into a diachronic totalising framework. In short, the diversity and variability in the funerary evidence had to be ordered, fixed and shaped according to an ideal model, that of ‘palatial’ society. Under this scheme, it comes as no surprise that what became highly visible in the record of the middle/late stages of the EBA was the unequal distribution of ‘exotic’ goods and items of ‘wealth’ in funerary assemblages (Nakou 1995; see also Colburn 2008; Schoep 2010: 66), as well as the appearance of small burial containers (in the form of larnakes and/or pithoi) in several tombs around the Cretan landscape (Branigan 1993). All these were taken as confirmation that the concept of the individual had ‘at last broken free from the demands of communal burial’ (Branigan 1993: 66), with the crystallisation of distinction/exclusion being manifested and legitimised by the conspicuous and/or symbolic use of material culture in ritual contexts.
More recently, this impressive and highly persistent core of agreement has slowly begun to dissolve. The main concern expressed in several contemporary writings is that the emphasis laid upon the construction of an evolutionist typology of societal development for Cretan prehistory has not only aimed at the creation of self-sufficient and exclusive analytical categories but has also resulted in a normative and highly deterministic ordering of history. For this intellectual project to be realised, plural differences had to be reduced to abstract forms, for any empirical instance and detail would have threatened (if not undermined) the efficacy of such sociohistorical typologies. In this respect, the silencing of empirical diversity and the simultaneous adherence to the concepts of ‘complexity’ and the ‘palace’ provided epistemological security: not only did they guarantee conceptual/analytical unity, a vision of homogeneity for the archaeological record but they also managed to establish a clear direction of enquiry, a straightforward historical question.
Increasing theoretical problematisation over the foregoing mode of thinking about the early Cretan past led to the realisation that providing an alternative epistemological argument required some radical moves. The primary aim soon became the need to challenge the empirical reductionism and historical determinism that the evolutionary outlook breeds. A new, post-evolutionary agenda began to be formulated, arguing first of all against the idea of the ‘societal’ and, instead, in favour of the ‘social’; the latter was now perceived as ‘an overdetermined relational whole, an open field of relations, an indeterminate articulation’ (Shanks and Tilley 1987: 59). In this respect, to speak about the early Cretan past meant that we had to take into account seriously the primacy of detail, diversity and heterogeneity in the structuring of social reality. It almost goes without saying that under this scheme, the concept of complexity could not be conceived as an outcome but rather as an ontological condition, hence a constant in sociohistorical analysis. For the concept of complexity to be considered analytically useful, it had to be disassociated from the traditional concern/question of what constitutes a complex society, and the focus shifted instead to the complexity inherent in various contexts of social interaction (Kohring and Wynne-Jones 2007). With complexity being used as a given (and not as a desired/predetermined effect), it becomes immediately apparent that post-evolutionary accounts of the Cretan past would also reject the compartmentalisation of history. It was argued in particular that the latter should no longer be portrayed as ‘a layer cake or flow diagram’ (Shanks and Tilley 1987: 59), but rather as an ongoing, multidimensional and inherently dynamic process that could be captured analytically only by shifting attention from the macro- to the micro-scale. The immediate consequence of the above change of perspective was the conscious avoidance (if not rejection) of the term ‘Prepalatial’, with the new epistemological vocabulary concerning the EBA period in Crete now bringing to the fore regional and local histories (Whitelaw 2004).
The disassociation of the third millennium BC from subsequent sociopolitical developments goes hand in hand with the increasing tendency to accentuate the heterogeneous character of the extant funerary record. What is currently professed is that the detailed analysis of mortuary evidence has transformed EBA Crete into ‘a complex context’, an image that goes far beyond the ‘unified culture that the term “Minoan” implies’ (Legarra-Herrero 2009: 29). The immediate consequence of this has been the proliferation of studies dealing with the funerary traditions of specific regions, locales or even individual cemeteries (Barrett and Damilati 2004; Relaki 2004; Papadatos 2005; Vavouranakis 2007; Legarra-Herrero 2009), while in a similar vein, the study of different types of material culture (many of which have been used as funerary paraphernalia) highlights the high degree of diversity attested to a variety of levels, such as in production techniques (Day et al. 1997; 2006; Whitelaw et al. 1997; Carter 1998; 2004; Catapotis 2007), stylistic development (Betancourt 1985: 71) and consumption choices (Whitelaw et al. 1997; Wilson and Day 2000):
All this evidence suggests the possibility that communities on Crete lived in completely different ways, to the point where the possibility of culturally different groups should be considered ... Establishing this has the potential to radically change our understanding of Prepalatial Crete, as it would mean different regions possibly having undergone very different processes of change during the Prepalatial period, which need to be understood in their own right. Specific local trajectories may need to replace traditional island-wide models, shattering our ideas of a ‘Minoan’ culture. (Legarra-Herrero 2009: 31)
If an attempt was made to assess all of the aforementioned developments in early Cretan studies, it could be argued that the differences attested by the two contrasting perspectives are not simply epistemological but also ontological. At a primary level, what is at issue here is how the concept of sociocultural diversity should be specified and how this diversity might relate to wider notions of structure and historical development. A closer look at this dilemma, however, unveils an even deeper conceptual problem for the study of the EBA period in Crete: if we indeed accept that narratives of causal reductionism are founded, as they were, upon an imperialism of the societal totality, could the newly emerging trend of historical particularism be proposing a new kind of imperialism, namely an imperialism of detail (Giddens 1984: 2)?
Looking at how precisely these ‘empire-building endeavours’ (Giddens 1984: 2) have worked in the case of the Cretan EBA, one may indeed appreciate the criticism that evolutionary approaches have received, particularly regarding their tendency to divide the multitudes of different social forms into abstract phenomena, to separate them from contingent detail and to establish this distinction according to the degree to which communities around the island approached ‘palatial society’. At the same time, however, what one soon realises is that post-evolutionary approaches introduce us to a new set of (equally important) problems: to be more specific, entering into the labyrinth of detail surely brings several important advantages (our object of study looks richer all of a sudden), and yet, eventually, the price we have to pay by making this choice is to give up any sense of orientation in our analyses. If the social is equated with notions of multiplicity, diversity and detail, how then can it be possible to identify patterns, or even more so, to specify our analytical categories? And if this fluidity is a constant, how can we then profess to be in a position as analysts to produce historical narratives? Does this imply that history is nothing more than an aggregate of diverse intentions, reasons, motives and expressions that we are somehow unable to assess?
The rejection of the ‘palace’ question left us with an image of early Cretan prehistory that celebrates the ontological potential of ‘acting otherwise’. Otherwise in relation to what exactly? Whereas difference is always established with reference to similarity (Jenkins 1996), the current analytical scheme does not seem to deal with this issue effectively. More to the point, what sort of answer may the post-evolutionary school provide to the question of why, throughout the third millennium BC in Crete, there appears to be an island-wide investment in the arena of death? To acknowledge regional diversity is certainly important, but is it not equally significant to address the question of commonality, in other words, to problematise the continuous, spatio-temporal reworking of a common/shared theme? Furthermore, is it not analytically worthwhile to examine how this long-standing tradition is abandoned as we move into the MBA? Leaving aside for a moment the ill-defined question of the emergence of complexity, would it not be plausible to rephrase our historical question on the basis of this very contrast, i.e. the marked visibility of Cretan funerary monuments during the EBA and their subsequent invisibility (disappearance?) from the second millennium BC onwards?
Restating the Problem, Rephrasing the Question
The present chapter brings forward the premise that the identification of similarities at an island-wide level could redirect attention to the wider picture without surrendering detail to totalitarianism. The ultimate aim would be neither to homogenise the record nor to attempt an association of particular practices and/or materials with groups of exclusive membership. Rather, the whole point of this analytical enterprise would be to investigate funerary monuments as a broadly shared vocabulary, establishing the material conditions as well as the structuring principles for the very negotiation of difference. This broadly shared vocabulary would have been predicated upon common attitudes towards death, memory and the deceased, and possibly a common understanding of the roles and obligations during funerary and commemorative practices. The reworking of this commonality would have taken place during every single performance and on every single occasion; it would have been an issue constantly at stake, for it would always have involved different circumstances, purposes, landscapes and personae, conditions and unknowns. These factors, unique in any given case, are unlimited in scope, for they are conditions of complex motivations as well as creative actions and thus go beyond the scope of any form of (archaeological/epistemological) investigation. It is for this reason that the adherence to the doctrine of regional/local analysis does not guarantee analytical precision and empirical sensitivity but instead incorporates the coordinates of a highly problematic epistemological apparatus.
By acknowledging the diversity and contingency inherent in every single performance and occasion, our perception of history is also radically altered. Although the evolutionist image of deterministic development has been considered highly problematic, the notion that history ought to be envisaged as an amalgam of regional/local developmental trajectories should also be dismissed. Change cannot be sought in nomothetic temporal sequences of societal entities or in the internal workings of a region and/or locale. The scale of change is not the issue here; it is the very concept of change that we need to reconsider. To be more specific, if discussion so far has demonstrated that to study the social is an investigation of the anatomy of sharing and not of diversity, then accordingly to study the historical cannot be about change but instead about continuity and transformation, i.e. the continuous process of revisiting and reworking the elements of change inherent in every occasion; the ongoing process of levelling and reordering the centrifugal tendencies (i.e. the ability to act otherwise) inherent in every single performance. Taking as our new point of departure that the notion of history-as-change ought to be replaced by the notions of continuity and transformation implies that the alternative to the long-dominant definition of the EBA period in Crete as ‘prepalatial’ cannot be a focus upon micro-scale change. Instead, a new direction of historical enquiry ought to be established, which examines critically how the continuous reworking of a broadly shared vocabulary concerning death, memory and identity for a period spanning more than a millennium allowed acts of discovery and remembrance through which traditions of knowledge and of more general moral order were sustained and eventually recalled. It is only through such an investigation that we may begin to understand the concept of reworking; how, in other words, while broader frames of reference continued to operate, some particular traditions of remembrance began to fall away and others to emerge.
For the purposes of this new analytical programme, attention will be directed in what follows to the investigation of three interrelated issues/questions:
(1) If we perceive burials as the medium through which an objective category of death is confirmed, then what conclusions can we draw regarding the treatment of the deceased in EBA Crete? What were the (material and symbolic) strategies employed for the objectification of the image of the dead and how was this reworked through time?
(2) If we define funerary practices as the means whereby the obligations of the mourners are realised, how did the performance of such rituals on the island during the period in question shape people’s understanding of self and belonging? Moreover, how were funerary and commemorative practice affected by (as well as how did they contribute to) the redefinition of roles during such performances?
(3) Finally, if we accept that funerary monuments facilitate a certain order in the distribution of human relations not only during specific funerary occasions but also through their positioning in the wider social landscape, what sort of historical understanding can we provide with regard to issues of memory, identity and value? Put simply, how can we situate this broader issue of order in the context that is the third millennium BC in Crete?
Imagined Communities
It is commonly accepted that the advent of the EBA period on the island of Crete coincides with the appearance of two distinct funerary traditions (Figure 30.1). The first concerns mainly (but not exclusively; cf. Goodison and Guarita 2005) the south-central region of the Asterousia Mountains and involves a novel architectural type, the tholos, a circular edifice designed to accommodate multiple burials (Branigan 1970; 1991; 1993; see also Xanthoudides 1924). The second is attested along several parts of the north coast and involves mainly clusters of small-sized cist or rock-cut tombs, a funerary tradition that, both in terms of morphology and material culture, is highly reminiscent of EBA cemeteries from the Cyclades and, to a lesser extent, from the Greek Mainland (Cavanagh and Mee 1998; Day et al. 1998; Davaras and Betancourt 2004: 238; Galanaki 2006; Papadatos 2007; 2008). To those, a third type may be added, which is defined by the use of caves and rock shelters, a surviving tradition of the Neolithic (Branigan 1988); geographical distribution in the latter case is not region specific and appears instead to span the entire island.
Figure 30.1. Map of Early Bronze Age funerary sites mentioned in the text: 1. Kommos, 2. Agia Photia, 3. Gournes, 4. Siva, 5. Platanos, 6. Aghios Kyrillos, 7. Drakones, 8. Koumasa, 9. Mochlos, 10. Myrtos-Pyrgos, 11. Phourni-Archanes, 12. Apesokari, 13. Vassiliki, 14. Gournia, 15. Knossos, 16. Malia, 17. Phaistos, 18. Moni Odigitrias (Catapoti).
In seeking to provide an understanding of this highly heterogeneous pattern, several scholars have highlighted that the onset of the third millennium BC is a period during which the island of Crete had mainly consisted of dispersed populations and/or fragmented groups (Legarra-Herrero 2009; Nowicki 2002; Relaki 2004; Whitelaw 2000). First and foremost, what has channelled interpretive effort in this direction is the ‘occupation of defensible locations (hills, ridges, promontories, rock ledges) and the colonisation of agriculturally more marginal landscapes’ during the Final Neolithic/EBA transition (Tomkins 2008: 36). Furthermore, in the western Mesara plain (i.e. south-central Crete), survey evidence indicates that early EBA settlements were mainly situated in high locations, while their small size has been linked with seasonal occupation (Watrous et al. 1993: 224). Similar types of early sites have been recognised in the adjacent coastal area around Kommos (where EM habitation seems even more sparse and of short-term character), while in the mountainous area of the Asterousia small-scale sites are also reported; their clustering at very short distances from each other may (once again) favour their interpretation as short-lived installations succeeding each other in the same area (Relaki 2004).
Even though the foregoing description of the extant archaeological record confirms the highly versatile character of funerary expression in early EBA Crete, it could be argued nevertheless that a common denominator might be established at a purely morphological/functional level because the striking majority of these monuments were communal in character (i.e. with the capacity to accommodate multiple burials). Moreover, by being used (and by bearing signs of this use) over many generations, these edifices would have been perceived and experienced as a shared place, where common histories and experiences could be inscribed. Even though these loci were not continually occupied and frequented only on an occasional basis, conditions would have been laid down concerning their future use. The choice of these places was essentially a collective production of orientation and memory, in that it established patterns of return, interaction and belonging.
It would be misplaced to argue that this image of unity would have extended beyond the occasion of funerary rites and commemorative ceremonies, projecting (and regenerating) itself as a compact value to all other spheres of social activity. Such a suggestion would be an implicit adherence to the long-dominant tendency to view communal tombs as manifestations of an egalitarian sociopolitical regime. Instead, power, authority, roles and identities ought to be perceived as relative to the context in which they are exercised. In this respect, people and communities in EBA Crete would also have been capable of participating in a series of overlapping spheres of practice, developing social strategies and notions of personhood which were occasion specific. Seen from this perspective, the collective character of Cretan tombs during the early stages of their use ought to be approached as a constructed unity, a (material and symbolic) manifestation of togetherness specific to the context of the funerary monuments themselves.
It appears that, for this image of ‘collectiveness’ to be sustained in contexts such as a tholos or a cave, for instance, the final deposition of the corpse into the tomb had to be perceived not merely as a transition from the world of the living to the realm of the dead but also as a ‘manifestation of irreversibility’, signalling (once and for all) the end of individuality and the complexity of personhood. Individual corpses had to be sacrificed to (if not consumed by) what appeared to be a homogeneous ancestral body (Hamilakis 1998). It is indicative in this respect that this was a technology of sacrifice, a language of mortuary expression that exhibited no apparent concern with establishing post-mortem distinctions of any kind between and among the deceased but instead sought to absorb, blend together people who might have never coexisted in life, people of near and distant times. As a result, the interior of these funerary loci gave the impression of an undifferentiated whole whilst also provoking a sense of great temporal depth (Catapoti 2005).
In view of the above, it is now necessary to direct our attention to the funerary contexts of the north coast, where images of the collective appear to take a different form. If we were to establish a common point of reference for these loci, this would have to be sought in the forcefulness by which they establish off-island linkages in terms of both morphology and material repertoire. The suggestion that cemeteries such as Agia Photia (Davaras and Betancourt 2004) or Gournes (Galanaki 2006) look like ‘virtual copies’ (Legarra-Herrero 2009: 38) of those found in other parts of the southern Aegean region indicates that implicit in the appearance of every single grave and or material in those contexts was a form of individuation which nevertheless drew attention to common origins. Continuous adherence to this principle would have the effect of manifesting (and objectifying) the network of relationships in which different people, materials and practices were embedded. In fact, it is precisely the enduring tendency to employ this particular kind of vocabulary that may have served as the principle means whereby a focus, a locus of return and ultimately a sense of place was constructed for the communities in this part of the island.
Seen from this point of view, strategies of integration in early EBA Crete seem to converge on a very fundamental point: if we take the conspicuous ‘killing’ of subjects in tholoi and/or caves as a strategy aiming to evoke a sense of belonging through reference to distant times, then the use/consumption of objects, materials and practices with personalities (i.e. products of complex life paths, which stretched between a number of different types of contexts before final deposition) is a choice that instigates a similar sense – albeit through reference to absence and distance, i.e. distant/absent worlds that lie beyond the immediate context(s) – of physical co-presence. In sum, it may be plausible to suggest that the main purpose served by all funerary monuments in Crete during the early stages of the EBA was the establishment of a spatio-temporally fixed locus, which materialises (real-ises) an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983).
A Shift Towards Intimacy
By acknowledging that the emphasis during the early third millennium BC was upon constructing a sense of belonging through reference to spatial and/or temporal distance, then what we are faced with as we move towards the middle/late stages of the EBA is a fundamental reworking of this funerary/ontological principle. Already from the EM IIa period, northern cemeteries exhibiting off-island links are abandoned, with the exception of the necropolis at Pseira, which nevertheless undergoes significant structural modifications (Betancourt and Davaras 2003). These modifications form part of a wider new trend, which introduces rectangular constructions, commonly labelled as house tombs, to the architectural repertoire of the northeast coast. Meanwhile, in the south-central part of the island, the correlation between tholos tombs and the Asterousia range continues, yet examples are now also reported from the adjacent valley of the Mesara.
As we move towards the end of the third millennium BC, probably the most important island-wide development is the marked increase in the number of available rooms/spaces for secondary treatment of the corpse, both within and outside collective funerary structures. Secondary treatment was also a common practice in earlier times (Hamilakis 1998: 122), during the late stages of the EBA period. However, what appears to become an increasingly dominant (hence analytically noteworthy) trend is the obvious concern to present contexts of secondary treatment as spatially distinct units (Catapoti 2005).
Loci for secondary treatment in house tombs, for example, were provided by adding rooms to the original edifice (Soles 1992a: 204) (Figure 30.2). In certain cases, these additions seem to have been made long after the construction of the original unit. Even in those remaining cases where both original and additional units belong to the same ceramic phase, the additions appear to be of later date (Soles 1992a: 204–205). Another type of rectangular funerary structure that makes its appearance on the north coast during the late stages of the third millennium BC is also of relevance here: these are large structures with a regular external appearance, subdivided in a number of small rooms by cross walls usually running parallel to the outer walls and intersecting at right angles. Often the interior rooms do not connect and appear to be isolated cells entered from above (Soles 1992a: 205). Similar developments are also attested in the case of tholos tombs (Branigan 1970; 1993; Petit 1987).
Figure 30.2. Adding rooms to the original unit: house tombs (adapted from Soles 1992a: figs 16, 20, 11, 62) (Catapoti).
In addition to the small antechambers commonly found before the doorways of the tholoi, a series of other chambers were now built against the original edifice (Figure 30.3). According to some scholars (Branigan 1970: 95–96; 1993: 63; Petit 1987: 35–37), there also exists a group of tombs that seems to have had a standardised suite of outer chambers, comprising a small antechamber, a larger outer chamber and a narrow corridor-like room running along the side of both rooms. All these tombs are late EM III/MM I in date, and it is tempting to see them as a late regularisation of an earlier architectural layout (Branigan 1993: 63). Some tholoi which belong to this type, such as Siva (Paribeni 1913), Platanos B and Γ (Xanthoudides 1924), have been dated to the early third millennium BC, and yet, even these cases have had suites of outer chambers added to the initial plan at a later stage, possibly during the EM II period (Branigan 1970: 95).
Figure 30.3. Adding rooms to the original unit: tholos tombs (adapted from Branigan 1993: figs 5.1, 1.3, 4.4, 2.5, 5.2) (Catapoti).
It is necessary to examine the foregoing structural transformations in conjunction with yet another development of the late stages of the third millennium BC, namely the appearance of burial containers, i.e. rectangular clay coffins (larnakes) and large jars (pithoi) in an array of funerary sites throughout the island (i.e. large open-air cemeteries, house tombs, caves, rock shelters and tholos tombs) (Branigan 1970; 1993; Petit 1987; 1990). In the past, the appearance of larnax and pithos burials in EM tombs had been taken to signify a developing trend for individual inhumations (even though, initially, they were still made in a communal funerary context) and, by extension, the operation of two different kinds of social strategy, one hiding and the other making explicit the existence of rank and status among the living (Branigan 1970: 127; 1993: 66, 141). In more recent years, the above premise has been challenged, for there is now a substantial body of empirical evidence to suggest that larnakes and pithoi served as burial facilities for many successive burials but also as ossuaries (Papadatos 2005). It could be advocated, therefore, that rather than individual burials, these containers acted as smaller collective units inside the larger tombs where they had been placed (Figure 30.4).
Figure 30.4. Pithos and larnax burials, Tholos E at Archanes (adapted from Soles 1992a fig. 59/plan of Archanes and Branigan 1993: fig. 4.7/plan of Tholos E) (Catapoti).
It could be inferred from the above that from the late third millennium BC onwards, funerary structures throughout the island produce an image of ‘diasporic’ belonging (Bell 1999: 3). Burial containers, on the one hand, serve to isolate certain inhumations and burial remains from the rest of the tomb, while the increase of spaces for secondary treatment implies that the removal of burial remains from their initial context of deposition and their dispersal in various parts of the cemetery had begun to constitute dominant funerary strategies. On the other hand, the emphasis laid upon the conspicuous compartmentalisation of these structures may be taken to stem from a need to archive the dead, to recognise more easily where (the remains of) specific corpses were placed – in other words, to ensure that these groups could be detectable even after death and not enmeshed within a homogeneous totality (Catapoti 2005).
Under these newly established conditions, the integrity of the ancestral body and the notion of imagined belonging are greatly challenged. Every new corpse is placed in the tomb but only temporarily; it is then removed (in some form, at a certain time) and placed closer to a smaller assemblage of remains, possibly to an assemblage that is felt to be more intimate. The impression of intimacy that we gain from the way smaller funerary units are now shaped is accentuated through the structural modifications of the cemeteries described above. In fact, it is precisely this intimacy that now acquires a conspicuous spatial/architectural dimension, with funerary space becoming transformed into a forest of names and close associations as opposed to a homogeneous ancestral surplus (Catapoti 2005).
From Restricted Access to Rotated Obligation
The changing conditions of the late third/early second millennium BC have been examined in an attempt to understand how certain funerary practices could have guided particular forms of discourse with the past and how they would thus have led to the construction of particular forms of community and terrains of belonging. Such discourse and forms of understanding would have occupied a region of time-space; in other words, they would have been occasion specific (Giddens 1985: 244). To know when and how to act on these occasions would require an understanding of the immediate situation, an awareness of position, movement, posture and timing (Barrett 1994; Giddens 1987; Goffman 1971). To a large extent, this practical knowledge would also have been constructed and negotiated through active engagement with existing material conditions. Orientated by all those pre-understandings, people would enter these occasions, and it is precisely this prior knowledge that would have enabled them to recognise and monitor their conditions and their roles as participants (Barrett 1994; Thomas 1996).
First and foremost, the organisation of a funerary rite would have contributed to the way the relationship between life and death was understood by the participants. The relationship would have been structured spatially as the corpse was carried into death, a journey that terminated at the grave. Each socially recognised death would have initiated the period during which that path had to be followed, an activity that – each time it was repeated – had the potential of inscribing a spatial orientation between life and death upon the remembered landscape.
During the early EBA period in Crete, it is significant that this orientation does not seem to have been widely recognisable, for most if not all funerary contexts (natural and/or built) were either situated in remote (and often not physically prominent) locations (Branigan 1998) or dug into the ground (and only rarely sealed with a stone slab or pebbles on top, i.e. Agia Photia) (Davaras and Betancourt 2004). The marginality of these places would have played a crucial role in the definition of the conditions of access to funerary rituals. This phenomenon appears to be far more pronounced in the case of tholoi and cave burials for reasons that pertain to the disturbed nature of these structures. To explain this further, we may begin by suggesting that to the eyes of an archaeologist, the recurrent use of these contexts results in what we could broadly define as a highly disturbed context; the latter, however, could be seen alternatively as an image of inhabited architecture, as the product of a diverse range of practices organised in and through different temporalities (Barrett 2004). In accepting this point, we would also have to allow that this obvious surplus of past temporalities is not only what the archaeologist encounters in the present but also what people in the past would have experienced every time they entered the tomb.
Circulation within these funerary structures would have been difficult, since a substantial part of their interior was already filled with remnants of past activities (Catapoti 2005; Papadopoulos 2010). Such a situation probably implies that only a limited number of people would have been able to enter the tomb every time the funerary ritual was conducted. Another factor that would have made the actual execution of the ritual difficult would be the poor lighting inside the tomb, resulting from the lack of openings (in both tholoi and caves), as well as the sunken floors of a tholos’s compartments (Branigan 1993; see also Xanthoudides 1924). Although some kind of artificial light might have been used, a prior experience and knowledge of ‘where is what’ and ‘where to do what’ would have been the only means to guarantee that the funerary ritual was carried out effectively and with precision. Under these circumstances, it seems plausible to suggest that the organisation of funerary rituals in communal tombs during the period in question was a responsibility accorded to a specific (restricted) group of individuals.
The presence and actions of those few who would be able to enter the tomb would have contributed to the creation of a cultural geography of time and place (Barrett 1994: 56). By its own actions, this group would bracket a period of funerary activity that would have linked a front space (the tomb’s entrance) to a back space (the tomb’s interior). This period would commence when the initiates moved through the entrance and terminate as they re-emerged. For those who moved within the funerary edifice and for those who watched, the tomb thus would have represented a container of resources accessible only to the former. The markedly small size of the cave’s entrance – and interestingly also the entrances of early tholos tombs (not exceeding 50 cm in height) (Branigan 1993) – might have served as a literal as well as symbolic confirmation of this distinction/boundary.
During the later part of the third millennium BC, however, an obvious dismantling of the funerary process takes place. The involvement of more people/groups in the funerary ritual might be implied by the fact that the height and width of the tombs’ entrances increase markedly (Branigan 1970: 34–36; 1993: 60). Among late EBA tholoi, we find doors between 1.5–2 m high and 1 m (or more) wide, with examples from Aghios Kyrillos (Sakellarakis 1968) and Drakones Z (Xanthoudides 1924: 76–80). Similar observations can also be made with respect to house tombs. These structures usually consist of three or more rooms, some of which are additions to the initial plan. What is particularly noteworthy is that access to these additional rooms is facilitated by separate entrances, which points to the establishment of a different form of regionalisation: if additional rooms served as ossuaries, then the removal of human remains from their original burial context (the latter being a back space of potential secrecy separated from observers) and their deposition into these added compartments would have necessitated coming out from the tomb. As such, this particular stage of the funerary process would have now acted as a front region, enhancing visibility and demystification. If, on the other hand, the different compartments of a tomb served as loci for primary burials, then it is obvious that the introduction of a new corpse to the tomb would no longer entail circulation within the entire compound but only in specific parts of it.
Important observations may also be made with regard to rectangular funerary structures with multiple rooms (Soles 1992b: 205). Often the interior rooms do not connect and, as such, appear to constitute isolated cells, possibly entered through hatches on the roof or through the employment of ramps. The use of cells, on the one hand, indicates a concern for compartmentalisation, the division of the tomb into small units; on the other hand, the arrangement of cells implies that every time a corpse was deposited in any of them, only a limited part of the tomb needed to be used. The division of cells therefore seems to orientate movement and action towards specific parts of the funerary edifice. If, indeed, entrance to the cells was facilitated from above (through hatches or ramps), then this might also indicate that different cells were used simultaneously and/or at different times.
The foregoing process of compartmentalisation attested throughout the island during the late stages of the EBA would have reinscribed the structural conditions of the funerary process with a new meaning: it does not merely manifest a visible presence of ‘known history’, but also the crystallisation of a reaction against the established ordering of relations during funerary practice, and perhaps the exclusive control/manipulation of this practice by specific individuals and/or groups. Under these newly established conditions, a greater number of people could actively take part in the execution of the funerary ritual, and it is highly likely that the affinal relationship to the deceased would have been the main criterion specifying who would take over this responsibility every time (Catapoti 2005).
A New Historical Question: From Absence to Presence
During the late stages of the third millennium BC, an increasing investment appears to be laid, at an island-wide level, upon the provision and/or architectural elaboration of open spaces in both funerary and domestic contexts (Branigan 1970: 132; 1993: 127–29; 1998: 19; Hamilakis 1998: 120; Murphy 1998: 36; Driessen 2004: 78–79). Examples of the funerary sector include the cemeteries at Platanos, Koumasa, Mochlos, Chrysolakkos (phase I), Myrtos-Pyrgos, Archanes, Apesokari II and Aghios Kyrillos (Xanthoudides 1924: 6, 90; Soles 1992a: 223; Georgoulaki 1996: 85) (Figure 30.5). From the settlement sector, public/open areas (at times with a specially laid pavement or surfacing) are reported from the EM IIb settlements at Vassiliki and Myrtos-Phournou Koryfi, as well as the EM III/MM Ia building complex at Kouphota, Agia Photia (Warren 1972; Zois 1976; 1980; Tsipopoulou 1988). At Myrtos-Pyrgos, a paved road (more than 20 m long) was laid along the western side of the settlement, overlying the EM II remains, while at the south end, the road opened into a paved courtyard (Georgoulaki 1996: 85). In addition, the paved 40×15 m large public court at Gournia has been dated to the end of the Prepalatial period (Damiani-Indelicato 1984: 53). Interestingly, from the middle stages of the EBA onwards, the large sites of Knossos, Malia and Phaistos also provide evidence for large-scale building operations and terracing aiming at the provision and elaboration of open spaces in the areas where the so-called Old Palaces later stood (Pelon 1992; Wilson 1994; Todaro and Di Tonto 2008).
Figure 30.5. Tholoi associated with enclosure walls (light grey) and/or paved areas (dark grey) (adapted from Branigan 1993) (Catapoti).
Despite the fact that open areas were contexts where a wide array of diverse activities and experiences would normally cluster, it is particularly noteworthy that they all seem to have served as meeting points for the (regular?) organisation of collective consumption events. Already from the middle stages of the EBA, empirical support to the foregoing premise is offered not only from the sheer quantities of eating and drinking paraphernalia reported from the open areas of large-scale sites such as Knossos (Wilson and Day 1999; 2000), but also from the concern to sustain a surplus of such vessels for outdoor social events in small-scale settlements, such as Myrtos-Phournou Koryfi (Catapoti 2005; see also Tenwolde 1992).
Around the same time, large concentrations of ceramic shapes such as drinking vessels (mainly conical cups), jugs, plates and/or bowls have been discovered in several cemeteries (Walberg 1987; Branigan 1993; Georgoulaki 1996). These discoveries have been linked with ritual ceremonies that most likely involved communal consumption, as well as the performance of other forms of embodied practice such as dancing (Branigan 1991; 1993; Hamilakis 1998). While it is not possible to specify whether these sets of practices were part of the funerary ceremony or commemorative rites, we could suggest nonetheless that the labour invested in the formalisation of areas outside the tombs points to a concern for creating a place imbued with special value and meaning.
Although several recent studies have portrayed the aforementioned commensality acts as technologies of social distinction and elite status legitimisation (Moody 1987; Hamilakis 1998; Day and Wilson 2002; Macdonald and Knappett 2007), the extant body of empirical information does not confirm in any way that the hosting of such events was a privilege shared by groups of exclusive membership. Instead, their organisation as outdoor events in a variety of diverse contexts seems to strengthen the possibility that they constituted a collective responsibility or a rotated obligation (Catapoti 2005). The latter hypothesis appears to be a highly plausible scenario, particularly with regard to the evidence from the funerary sector. If the duty to officiate the ritual was indeed accorded to those who had an affinal relationship to the deceased, then perhaps the serving of food and drink in the course of the funerary rite was a task also undertaken by the same group.
These transformations mark a fundamental shift in the ways whereby unity and collectiveness would have been perceived and, by extension, materialised by Cretan communities of the late third millennium BC. If the early EBA was a period during which belonging was sought through reference to distance, the late stages of the third millennium BC mark a shift of emphasis towards proximity. The strategic elevation of open spaces into symbols of togetherness, as well as ‘centres of gravity’ (Peperaki 2010), and the simultaneous prominence of commensality practices in these contexts bring to the fore (once again) the issue of intimacy. Under these circumstances, the communal sharing of food and drink could have been highlighted ‘as a strategy employed in creating and sustaining “consubstantiality” (i.e. the sharing of substance), which is the essence to relatedness’ (Peperaki 2010: 254).
The tendency to elevate in importance (and, in a way, institutionalise) face-to-face relations may be further exemplified by the attempt to establish a closer spatial association between cemetery and settlement, and at times even delineate the boundaries of the living community. For instance, in the Mesara, there are numerous examples of settlements that appear to belong to a much later date than the tombs with which they are found associated (Xanthoudides 1924). Surveys conducted in Ayiofarango, the area of Moni Odigitrias and the south coast of the Asterousia range provide further empirical support to this pattern (Blackman and Branigan 1975: 35–36; Blackman 1977: 41; Vasilakis 1989–90: 72; 1995: 71; Alexiou 1992: 164). The effects of the close association established between settlements and cemeteries at the time may be appreciated more fully in the case of rectangular funerary structures, i.e. the house tombs. As the very term indicates, house tombs have close parallels in domestic architecture and were constructed along the lines of real houses (Soles 1992a: 202). In these cases, the connection between cemetery and settlement is established not only through spatial proximity but also through symbolisms at the level of morphology and architectural expression, thus making it impossible to draw a boundary between the two domains merely on the grounds of external appearance. It is noteworthy, in that respect, that even in areas not commonly associated with the house-tomb tradition (such as the Mesara), the extensive use of rectangular funerary buildings (Xanthoudides 1924) may be pointing to a more broadly shared concern over blurring the morphological distinction established between the domestic and the funerary sphere.
Conclusions
The main aim of this chapter was to demonstrate that funerary transformations taking place on the island of Crete during the third millennium BC may be assessed with reference to processes pertinent to the island as a whole. Rather than seeking to provide an understanding of these processes through the investigation of regional or other localised readings, I have argued that there are grounds to suggest that all these heterogeneous dynamics appear to converge at the level of principle (Table 30.2).
| Early third millennium BC | Late third millennium BC |
|---|---|
| Ancestral body | Close kin |
| Integration | Compartmentalisation |
| Restricted access | Rotated obligation |
| Consumed | Consuming |
| Closure/mystification | Openness/demystification |
| Absence | Presence |
The proposed interpretive scenario, arguing in favour of an ontological shift of emphasis from the imagined to the face-to-face, may in fact provide a novel perspective to our historical question, i.e. the marked visibility and subsequent invisibility of funerary loci within the wider Cretan landscape shortly before the construction of the so-called palaces. The rich fabric of meaning accorded to (and generated by) the notions of openness and presence may also be confirmed by the information we currently have at our disposal regarding the morphology and layout of the early palaces (Driessen 2004; Schoep 2004). Not only do ‘courts’ constitute a cardinal feature of the monumental structures at Knossos, Phaistos and Malia (Schoep 2004), but as Driessen (2004) has rightly pointed out, there is an obvious connection (if not direct association) between these courts and the open spaces reported from preceding phases, at least in terms of location and orientation. However, it has been repeatedly advocated over the past few years that, throughout their history, these monumental structures accommodated large-scale consumption events (Hamilakis 1996; 1999). To see the EBA/MBA transition under those terms suggests that the ‘palace’ does not represent an architectural novelty or a new type of social organisation, but instead a monument, whose morphological and functional character served as a memory device, a mechanism of reiteration of broadly shared values concerning groupness and collective identification, whose roots ought to be traced in the workings of the late stages of the third millennium BC. Whoever used or made claim to this structure (be that a king, an elite or several competing groups) would have adhered to the rules of a broadly decipherable and highly prominent way of seeing and being in the world: in this respect, if the ‘palace’ constitutes a representation of some kind, then this representation would have to be one of shared ontology and not exclusive power (Bell 1992: 129).
Acknowledgements
I owe a special debt of thanks to Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen for inviting me to contribute a chapter to this volume. I am also grateful to Maria Relaki, Giorgos Vavouranakis and Yannis Papadatos for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Many thanks are also due to Kostas Vrakatselis, Vasilis Tzavaras, Emma Wager and Michalis Catapotis for their practical help and support. Responsibility for any remaining errors is entirely my own.