Download or read book The Funerary Landscape at Knossos written by Madelaine Miller and published by British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited. This book was released on 2011 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last century's archaeological investigations of the advanced Bronze Age culture maintained by the so-called Minoans on the island of Crete, a number of tombs dated to the Late Minoan period and containing weapons have been discovered in the surroundings of the site of Knossos. The tombs are not confined to a certain area or cemetery, but are rather dispersed around the Palace and town. Although they are characterised by their weapons, other artefacts - such as bronze vessels and certain pottery types - also distinguish these tombs. The tombs are of three types: chamber tombs with long dromoi, shaft graves and pit-caves. Various labels have been designated for them: tombs with weapons, warrior tombs, warrior graves and weapon-tombs. The warrior graves are often discussed in relation to the question of when the Mycenaeans arrived in Crete. Most scholars agree that a Mycenaean presence or power in Crete existed in the Late Bronze Age, but when their arrival would have taken place has not yet enjoyed consensus. Previous scholarship raises a number of questions that are dealt with in this work in relation to the funerary landscape at Knossos, including: to what degree do the burial customs in fact change in LM II, and what about the mainland influences? If the archaeological material points in that direction, how are we to understand such a transformation of the mortuary practices? Would this indicate an ethnic change? If, on the other hand, the material points towards a gradual process beginning already in LM I or earlier, with elements of mainland traits, what would that indicate? The tombs, shaft graves and pit-caves of Knossos are re-examined in an attempt to put answers to these intriguing questions.
Download or read book Funerary Landscapes East of Lasithi Crete in the Bronze Age written by Giorgos Vavouranakis and published by British Archaeological Association. This book was released on 2007 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the application of these ideas to Bronze Age burials in east Crete, in order to examine the historical significance of a specific pattern of changes in funerary monumentality. Within the Early Bronze Age landscape, tombs built above the ground were monumental landmarks. Such monumentality was lost during the Middle -Late Bronze Age period, when the dead were usually buried underground or in caves. At the same time, the living made their presence increasingly marked in the landscape, with the erection of 'palaces' and 'villas' and the formation of nucleated settlements. Finally, the re-emergence of burials in the landscape during the Late Minoan III period, albeit in the form of modest semi-subterranean chambers, coincides with a fragmentation of large urban settlements and a return to modest-sized communities. An examination of funerary activity from a landscape perspective can provide a better understanding of the relationship between funerary monumentality and socio-historical process and also the ways in which this relationship was expressed in the landscape.
Download or read book Sacred Landscapes in Antiquity written by Ralph Haussler and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-07-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From generation to generation, people experience their landscapes differently. Humans depend on their natural environment: it shapes their behavior while it is often felt that deities responsible for both natural benefits and natural calamities (such as droughts, famines, floods and landslides) need to be appeased. We presume that, in many societies, lakes, rivers, rocks, mountains, caves and groves were considered sacred. Individual sites and entire landscapes are often associated with divine actions, mythical heroes and etiological myths. Throughout human history, people have also felt the need to monumentalize their sacred landscape. But this is where the similarities end as different societies had very different understandings, believes and practices. The aim of this new thematic appraisal is to scrutinize carefully our evidence and rethink our methodologies in a multi-disciplinary approach. More than 30 papers investigate diverse sacred landscapes from the Iberian peninsula and Britain in the west to China in the east. They discuss how to interpret the intricate web of ciphers and symbols in the landscape and how people might have experienced it. We see the role of performance, ritual, orality, textuality and memory in people’s sacred landscapes. A diachronic view allows us to study how landscapes were ‘rewritten’, adapted and redefined in the course of time to suit new cultural, political and religious understandings, not to mention the impact of urbanism on people’s understandings. A key question is how was the landscape manipulated, transformed and monumentalized – especially the colossal investments in monumental architecture we see in certain socio-historic contexts or the creation of an alternative humanmade, seemingly ‘non-natural’ landscape, with perfectly astronomically aligned buildings that define a cosmological order? Sacred Landscapes therefore aims to analyze the complex links between landscape, ‘religiosity’ and society, developing a dialectic framework that explores sacred landscapes across the ancient world in a dynamic, holistic, contextual and historical perspective.
Download or read book Staging Death written by Anastasia Dakouri-Hild and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Places are social, lived, ideational landscapes constructed by people as they inhabit their natural and built environment. An ‘archaeology of place’ attempts to move beyond the understanding of the landscape as inert background or static fossil of human behaviour. From a specifically mortuary perspective, this approach entails a focus on the inherently mutable, transient and performative qualities of 'deathscapes': how they are remembered, obliterated, forgotten, reworked, or revisited over time. Despite latent interest in this line of enquiry, few studies have explored the topic explicitly in Aegean archaeology. This book aims to identify ways in which to think about the deathscape as a cross between landscapes, tombs, bodies, and identities, supplementing and expanding upon well explored themes in the field (e.g. tombs as vehicles for the legitimization of power; funerary landscapes as arenas of social and political competition). The volume recasts a wealth of knowledge about Aegean mortuary cultures against a theoretical background, bringing the field up to date with recent developments in the archaeology of place.
Download or read book The Prepalatial Cemeteries at Mochlos and Gournia and the House Tombs of Bronze Age Crete written by Jeffrey S. Soles and published by ASCSA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the house tombs of Crete based on a reexamination of the extant remains at the cemeteries of Gournia and Mochlos. Excavated in the beginning of the century by Harriet Boyd Hawes (Gournia) and Richard B. Seager (Mochlos), the cemeteries underwent cleaning operations in 1971, 1972, and 1976. These later investigations resulted in a more thorough understanding of the sites; actual-state plans and sections of the tombs and over-all maps of the cemeteries were produced. Chapters I and II present the excavations of the cemeteries of Gournia and Mochlos. A description of the cemetery as a whole unit is followed by a discussion of each tomb that includes bibliography, a description of location and excavation, a description of architecture, information about burials and chronology, and a catalogue of new and reexamined finds. Chapter III is a catalogue of all known tombs of this type in Crete. These two sections are tied together by the architectural discussion in Chapter IV. Chapter V, Offerings and Shrines, and Chapter VI, Burials and Social Ranking, explore the uses of house tombs and their significance in the religious and political life of early Greece. The volume has a comprehensive index, map and plans of the sites, line drawings of many of the catalogued objects, and photographs of the tombs and found objects.
Download or read book Knossos written by James Whitley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knossos is one of the most important sites in the ancient Mediterranean. It remained amongst the largest settlements on the island of Crete from the Neolithic until the late Roman times, but aside from its size it held a place of particular significance in the mythological imagination of Greece and Rome as the seat of King Minos, the location of the Labyrinth and the home of the Minotaur. Sir Arthur Evans' discovery of 'the Palace of Minos' has indelibly associated Knossos in the modern mind with the 'lost' civilisation of Bronze Age Crete. The allure of this 'lost civilisation', together with the considerable achievements of 'Minoan' artists and craftspeople, remain a major attraction both to scholars and to others outside the academic world as a bastion of a romantic approach to the past. In this volume, James Whitley provides an up-to-date guide to the site and its function from the Neolithic until the present day. This study includes a re-appraisal of Bronze Age palatial society, as well as an exploration of the history of Knossos in the archaeological imagination. In doing so he takes a critical look at the guiding assumptions of Evans and others, reconstructing how and why the received view of this ancient settlement has evolved from the Iron Age up to the modern era.
Download or read book Knossos Monastiriako Kephali Tomb and Deposit written by Laura Preston and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archaeological sites on the Monastiriako Kephali hill analysed in this volume include the earliest known mortuary activity at the key Minoan centre of Knossos on the island of Crete. Two Bronze Age sites are presented, known as the 'Tomb' and the 'Deposit', originally excavated in the 1930s but until now never published in detail. The 'Tomb' represents the earliest known funerary site at Bronze Age Knossos, established in the late Prepalatial period and continuing in use until the Neopalatial. The function of the nearby 'Deposit' site is more ambiguous, but a mortuary interpretation is also possible for the phases contemporary with the 'Tomb', and is almost certain for the subsequent Late Minoan II-III era. This volume presents the excavated material held principally in the Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos. The stone artefacts, human remains, faunal remains, glyptic material and ceramics are described and discussed by Don Evely, Rebecca Gowland, Valasia Isaakidou, Olga Krzyszkowska and Laura Preston respectively, and the sites are placed within the broader framework of Minoan mortuary practices at Knossos during the second millennium BC.
Download or read book Knossos North Cemetery written by H. W. Catling and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A huge four volume work that documents and discusses the excavations that took place between 1967 and 1979 of more than a hundred Early Iron Age tombs from the cemetery one kilometre north of the palace of Knossos. The tombs had rich contents; decorated pottery, iron weapons, bronze vessels and ornaments, and luxury objects of gold, ivory and faience provide an uninterrupted sequence of evidence from c. 1050-630 BC. Volume one documents the tombs themselves and catalogues their finds. Volume two discusses the many different types of pottery found, including orientalising pottery and the many imports-Attic, Corinthian, Euboean, East Greek and Phoenician among them. Also discussed are the objects including terracotta and textile remains, and the burials; the subminoan phase, burial customs and human and animal bones. Emphasis is placed on the role of Knossos in maintaining links with neighbouring regions-with Italy, Cyprus and Phoenicia, the Cyclades and Euboea and, above all, Athens. Volume three contains the figures and a plan of the cemetery and volume four contains the plates.
Download or read book The Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos written by Sir Arthur Evans and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Knossos and the Near East written by Vyron Antoniadis and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2017-07-24 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Dr Vyron Antoniadis presents a contextual study of the Near Eastern imports which reached Crete during the Early Iron Age and were deposited in the Knossian tombs.
Download or read book Knossos North Cemetery The figures written by John Nicolas Coldstream and published by British School at Rome. This book was released on 1996 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A huge four volume work that documents and discusses the excavations that took place between 1967 and 1979 of more than a hundred Early Iron Age tombs from the cemetery one kilometre north of the palace of Knossos. The tombs had rich contents; decorated pottery, iron weapons, bronze vessels and ornaments, and luxury objects of gold, ivory and faience provide an uninterrupted sequence of evidence from c. 1050-630 BC. Volume one documents the tombs themselves and catalogues their finds. Volume two discusses the many different types of pottery found, including orientalising pottery and the many imports-Attic, Corinthian, Euboean, East Greek and Phoenician among them. Also discussed are the objects including terracotta and textile remains, and the burials; the subminoan phase, burial customs and human and animal bones. Emphasis is placed on the role of Knossos in maintaining links with neighbouring regions-with Italy, Cyprus and Phoenicia, the Cyclades and Euboea and, above all, Athens. Volume three contains the figures and a plan of the cemetery and volume four contains the plates.
Download or read book Cultural Identity in Minoan Crete written by Ellen Adams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the Palaces, control networks and spatial dynamics of Neopalatial Crete, the floruit of the Minoan civilization.
Download or read book A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean 2 Volume Set written by Irene S. Lemos and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-01-09 with total page 1484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion that examines together two pivotal periods of Greek archaeology and offers a rich analysis of early Greek culture A Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean offers an original and inclusive review of two key periods of Greek archaeology, which are typically treated separately—the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. It presents an in-depth exploration of the society and material culture of Greece and the Mediterranean, from the 14th to the early 7th centuries BC. The two-volume companion sets Aegean developments within their broader geographic and cultural context, and presents the wide-ranging interactions with the Mediterranean. The companion bridges the gap that typically exists between Prehistoric and Classical Archaeology and examines material culture and social practice across Greece and the Mediterranean. A number of specialists examine the environment and demography, and analyze a range of textual and archaeological evidence to shed light on socio-political and cultural developments. The companion also emphasizes regionalism in the archaeology of early Greece and examines the responses of different regions to major phenomena such as state formation, literacy, migration and colonization. Comprehensive in scope, this important companion: Outlines major developments in the two key phases of early Greece, the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age Includes studies of the geography, chronology and demography of early Greece Explores the development of early Greek state and society and examines economy, religion, art and material culture Sets Aegean developments within their Mediterranean context Written for students, and scholars interested in the material culture of the era, ACompanion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide that bridges the gap between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Winner!
Download or read book Death in Late Bronze Age Greece written by Joanne M. A. Murphy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Late Bronze Age tombs in Greece and their attendant mortuary practices have been a topic of scholarly debate for over a century, dominated by the idea of a monolithic culture with the same developmental trajectories throughout the region. This book contributes to that body of scholarship by exploring both the level of variety and of similarity that we see in the practices at each site and thereby highlights the differences between communities that otherwise look very similar. By bringing together an international group of scholars working on tombs and cemeteries on mainland Greece, Crete, and in the Dodecanese we are afforded a unique view of the development and diversity of these communities. The papers provide a penetrative analysis of the related issues by discussing tombs connected with sites ranging in size from palaces to towns to villages and in date from the start to the end of the Late Bronze Age. This book contextualizes the mortuary studies in recent debates on diversity at the main palatial and secondary sites and between the economic and political strategies and practices throughout Greece. The papers in the volume illustrate the pervasive connection between the mortuary sphere and society through the creation and expression of cultural narratives, and draw attention to the social tensions played out in the mortuary arena"--
Download or read book The Tombs of Mesara written by Keith Branigan and published by Bloomsbury Academic. This book was released on 1970 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tholos Tombs For centuries the Minoans used Tholos Tombs and sacred caves, along with pithoi and larnakes for burial of their dead. Many Tholos Tombs have been found in Crete dating back to prepalatial times. They were usually round in shape with one short entrance, although tholos tombs rectangular in shape were not unusual, like the ones found in Palekastro, and some were cut into hill sides, while most were free-standing structures. What has survived to date consists of the foundations or the lower part of the walls, so it is difficult to gauge their height or their shape at the top. It is believed however that many had a flat wood framed roof. The largest tholos tomb is found in Platanos and measures about 13 meters in diameter. The tholos tombs were used extensively during the Prepalatial and Protopalatial periods (2600-1700 BC), and many were continuously used until historic times."--Http://www.ancient-greece.org/architecture/minoan-archi.html.
Download or read book A Handbook to the Palace of Minos at Knossos written by J. D. S. Pendlebury and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short 1933 handbook on an archaeological wonder in Crete provides an architectural history and illustrated guide to the site.
Download or read book Prehistoric Crete written by Joanne M. Murphy and published by INSTAP Academic Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the inception of Minoan archaeology, studies pertaining to tombs and tomb deposits have played seminal roles in our understanding of Minoan culture and the reconstruction of Bronze Age society. For several geographical areas and chronological periods of Cretan history, tombs are the most abundant source of data. Each author in this volume takes a clear and distinct approach to the data, including some that emphasize political geography on multi-regional and multi-scalar levels, some that examine the commemoration of the dead and of the community for legitimizing purposes but also for maintaining and/or creating elite positions in social systems, and others that underline the overlap between mortuary rituals and religion. The aim of this volume is not to present all tombs in all periods on Crete comprehensively, but the breadth of these papers is intended generate a discourse not just among archaeologists working in different areas and time periods on Crete but also among archaeologists in Greece and a broader anthropological audience.
