Objects for the Dead, Practices of the Living: Chamber tombs, burial assemblages, and social dynamics at Ialysos on Rhodes and in the islands of the south-east Aegean

Abstract

The late prehistory of the Dodecanese islands is known to us mostly through numerous chamber tomb sites dated between the 15th and 11th century BC (the Late Bronze Age III period). These sites, and, by extension, the people who used them, have long been considered as belonging to the so-called ‘Mycenaean culture’, which is said to have originated in, and spread from, the southern Greek mainland. Because of this cultural label, funerary behaviour attested in the Dodecanese has been viewed almost exclusively through reference to contemporary chamber tomb cemeteries of mainland Greece. As a result, idiosyncrasies and variability in mortuary practices within and between island communities have not received sufficient attention beyond the ‘Mycenaeanisation’ debate – beyond questions about migrations, acculturation, politics and ethnicity, which have defined studies of the chamber tomb phenomenon in the south-east Aegean. In this thesis I go back to the very foundations of ‘Mycenaean’ archaeology by re-examining the material from the first systematic excavations of a Late Bronze Age chamber tomb cemetery in the Aegean, Sir Alfred Biliotti’s exploration of Ialysos on Rhodes (1868-71). Combining this legacy data with evidence from subsequent investigations at Ialysos, on Rhodes, and on other islands, and employing a revised system of tomb dating, I construct the most comprehensive and chronologically refined account of mortuary practices in the Dodecanese offered to date. I do so in a bottom-up fashion, adopting an explicitly local perspective, and bringing more attention to differences and variation within and between sites, according to what I call here an ‘ethnographic’ agenda. My ‘ethnographic’ account allows us to better understand chamber tomb use, both in the Dodecanese and more generally, and serves to question one of the dominant narratives of Aegean prehistory. First, I demonstrate that chamber tombs cannot be linked to any specific burial custom, not least one of a defined point of origin. The representation of different social units through burial, the varied patterns of tomb use, as well as diverse modes of interaction with dead within burial chambers attest to the fact that this grave type did not promote a distinct ‘ideology’ or a specific socio-political organisation, as some scholars have suggested. Secondly, I argue that the deposition of the same objects in tombs may have served divergent ritual and social purposes. My analysis of tomb assemblages indicates that individual items were relationally combined to represent different activities and social roles, and to express often competing identities. As such, funerary deposition is structured not only by ritual concerns, but also by inter- and intra-community dynamics and changing cultural values, rather than constituting a single, normative practice or a passive reflection of the ethnicity of chamber-tomb-using groups. Thirdly, I show how the chamber tomb phenomenon in the Dodecanese can be explained in mostly local terms, as emulation of prominent groups residing in regionally important centres by more peripheral communities. The findings of my analysis are used to revisit the established view that chamber tomb use spread to the Dodecanese from mainland Greece. Similarities in burial practices and tomb construction between Ialysos and Knossos point towards Crete as the original source of influence, which fits with the picture of close links between this island and the Ialysos community documented for the earlier stages of the Late Bronze Age. By showing how networks of socio-cultural interaction, evidenced by similarities in mortuary practices, do not readily map onto networks of trade in ceramics, I argue that the predominance of pottery imported from the Greek mainland in chamber tombs of the Dodecanese may not be an index of cultural affiliation. This undermines the assumption about the primacy of the Greek mainland built into the label ‘Mycenaean’ and questions the validity of seeing archaeological cultures as reflecting any sort of cultural unity. Lastly, I offer a more complex and dynamic picture of culture change in the southern Aegean, one that shows a multi-directional flow of influences between individual communities occupying nodal positions in regional and inter-regional networks of interaction and exchange.