Mycenae Revisited Part 4: Assessing the New Data

Abstract

This is the fourth and final part of the series inspired by the rediscovery in  of two skeletons excavated in  in Shaft Grave VI in Circle A at Mycenae by Panayiotis Stamatakis. The contribution of Stamatakis to the excavations, the discrepancies between his unpublished reports to the Archaeological Society and Schliemann's account, and the reliability of that account, are discussed. This is followed by a survey of what can now be said about Grave Circle A, following the restudy of the surviving bones from Graves III-VI and the publication of various details of the arrangement in the graves reported by Stamatakis, and by a final somewhat speculative discussion of what the graves contribute to the study of the development of Mycenae at the time of its rapid rise to prominence and the accompanying major changes in the structure of society, at Mycenae and elsewhere on the Greek mainland.The Annual of the British School at Athens, , , pp. - © The Council, British School at Athens doi:./S

Arachne's Web: Women, Weaving and Networks of Knowledge in the Bronze Age Southern Aegean

“…Two out of three individuals identified as being non-local are women; these are the only two among the 11 individuals tested to be securely identified as female (Nafplioti 2009). One of these women, from Shaft Grave III (which also contained two probable male burials, as well as an infant wrapped in gold, found on the female's chest), was accompanied by a large quantity of rich grave goods, and it has been speculated that the women were present at Mycenae as the result of high status exogamous marriage alliances (Dickinson et al 2012, 181–2; Nafplioti 2009, 289; Papazoglou-Manioudaki et al 2010, 160–1). Although the case for exogamy (or formal marriage unions more generally) cannot be proven, intermarriage is highly likely to be foremost among the processes that could account for female mobility in the Bronze Age Aegean (Cutler 2011, 476; 2012, 150; Gorogianni, Cutler and Fitzsimons 2015).…”

The unacknowledged Panayotis Stamatakis and his invaluable contribution to the understanding of Grave Circle A at Mycenae

“…In the context of an interdisciplinary research project that aimed to reconstruct the 'faces' of Grave Circle A for the first time, an anthropological examination of the remains took place. This was combined with analysis of the archaeological data provided in Stamatakis' diary regarding the exact locations within the tombs of the deceased and their grave goods (for the results of the project, see Nafplioti 2009;Papazoglou-Manioudaki et al 2009;2010;Dickinson et al 2012). Since Stamatakis never published his records, the analysis of his diary has resulted in a multitude of new discoveries about the burials, the grave goods and taphonomy in general.…”

A survey of Late Bronze Age funerary archaeology over the last 25 years in the central and southern Aegean

“…Despite the important technological developments which now assist research and expedite publication, traditional records remain equally important. For example, the surfacing of Panagiotis Stamatakis' diaries of the 1876-1877 excavation of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae now allows us for the first time to associate most of the discovered objects with particular burials: see the four 'Mycenae revisited' articles (Nafplioti 2009;Papazoglou-Manioudaki et al 2009;Dickinson et al 2012) For a synthesis of information on tombs and cemeteries in Attica, see also Privitera 2013. 3 Notable also are the advances in DNA and strontium analyses (on the latter, see, e.g., the work of Nafplioti 2011) and micromorphology (Karkanas et al 2012) of the different strands of the funerary archaeology of the southern Aegean during the LBA -where once we had 'appendices' containing specialized studies, we should now be aiming to offer an integrated interpretation of funeral archaeology: a social archaeology of death completely interwoven with the world of the living, 4 with sound methodology and clear theoretical awareness of the problems at stake.…”